I'm beginning to suspect a primary function of the neocortex is the
maintenance of a non-symbolic, dynamic model of the environment. The
evidence seems fairly strong that bats live mostly in such a model
(Griffin, 1958), and the difficulty we have training bats to use
symbolic representations (yes/no tokens) in communicating with us,
suggests that their internal model is non-symbolic, possibly like the
analog models used in some contexts like wind tunnels and floatation
tanks.
--
Harry Erwin, PhD, <mailto:herwin at gmu.edu>,Computational Neuroscientist
(modeling bat behavior), Senior SW Analyst and Security Engineer, and
Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, GMU. Looking--CV available at:
<http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin/CV.htm>
