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We probably agree on many of your comments--except that I am making the points as part of a phenomenological approach.? For example, I link the critique of the idea that perturbations drive cognitive development to the claim that we would do better to emphasize the internal experience of the logical power of an argument.?Also, I link something much like the idea of hierarchical complexity to the issue of?the individual's internal experience of understanding something. I understand you are more in line with Les's?views than with my emphasis on the phenomenological.?I wonder whether your position is connected for you with valuing certain behaviorist points/prinicples.?This leads me to wonder whether the disagreement between you and me may go further than the disagreement between Les and me. And I want to take the opportunity to ask you the following.?Say we imagine a dog following a scent, (i) do you think the dog actually smells something and (2) do you think that this internal experience plays a role in the dog's success in locating the source of the scent??Or do you think that we can/should ultimately account for the dog's behavior and success on the basis of physical signals coming form the environment and leading to certain behaviors--without any reference to the dog actually having any sensory experience of smell.?Similarly in the case of an eagle catching prey on the ground using light signals entering its light receptors--does the eagle's success involve the sensory experience of seeing, or is the latter ultimately not needed --becasue we should be able to account for the eagle's success using just the issue of physical signals from the environment leading to certain behaviors.? In the case of robots, we would not think any issue of sensory experience in the sense of actually experiencing smell or seeing is involved in the robot's actions--do you think that ultimately the same is true of the dog and the eagle, or in these cases do the internal experiences of seeing and smelling play crucial roles?