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Does it bother you, the fact that ants, flies, or even cockroaches might be able to read, or otherwise communicate?

True, they don't use ordinary words. And they likely don't "see" things as we do. They certainly don't see "books" and "words." But you must admit most creatures use and react to stimuli such as grunts and shrieks in what seems to be very purposive ways. You also have to admit they observe their worlds in patterns, i.e., that they "recognize" patterned elements of their environments. Otherwise they wouldn't survive, which they emphatically do! You have to believe their actions are mostly deliberate, or purposive, and that they can "read" their surroundings -- interpret and give meaning to it, at least in a behavioral sense.

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Do "poor dumb creatures" use symbols?

It's one thing for bugs to react to signs (like the mass of a hand coming down to swat them). But it's another to say they have the ability to use intermediaries -- in this case the symbol that refers to the object behind the moving hand, namely one of us, or simply hand.

I'm talking about signs of signs -- marks referring to elements not directly in experience, such as the marks on this page. Symbols are once removed from the direct representations of persons, objects, or ideas that we normally call signs. We aren't born with these signs, so the question comes down to whether the creatures can learn to use them.

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There is the matter of reading, generally -- a seemingly nonverbal process that doesn't involve ordinary words but still requires mental models along with the ability to make subtle distinctions. This broad sense of reading, or observation, invokes the idea of reading the environment -- reading in the sense of pattern recognition, whether the patterns are words or people, etc. It covers such phenomena as:

• The ability of the golfer to "read" the putting green
• The skill of the quarterback to detect the opponent's defensive strategy.
• The skill of the stock market trader to recognize the onset of a bullish trend.
• The ability of the astronomer to observe and interpret the heavens.

These are some of the many situations in which we have to check out ongoing events to decide on a course of action. They are examples of acquiring pertinent information through observation. The investigations may involve special tools, such as market indicators. Or special instruments, like odometers, accelerometers, microscopes. Or special techniques, like climbing into a volcano or flying into a hurricane. Each observation structures the environment in ways to elicit the desired information. The observed is bound in a framework of intelligence that spells out the information. In other words, the information is patterned.

Might intelligence be characteristic of all creatures? Haven't you noticed that your own pets, in some respects, can "see" what's going on and can respond appropriately? Like when you're getting ready to go on a trip and the dog "knows" he's not going along?

Such phenomena are products of learning and require more by way of explanation than the notion that physical stimuli generate automatic reactions. Whether or not the ability applies to all creatures, though, it certainly characterizes human perception and definitely requires learning. We aren't born with the perceptual patterns we need to survive.

Reading in the sense of seeing and interpreting what's going on around us is characteristic of everything humans do. It's a process of projecting -- of structuring, modeling, or framing our experience into information chunks -- and thus giving meaning to it. It's also a process of self-managing. In this respect, doesn't it employ symbols, since the modeled phenomena direct attention to things once removed (which is what we intend by symbols)? When meaning is attributed to events, doesn't the so-called nonverbal process then become verbal in that meaning is expressible in linguistic form, whether or not the meaning is explicitly stated?

For example, when the quarterback sees the opposing team shift its defensive posture during the call of a play, that behavior takes on meaning for him and could say that a "blitz" is in the making. The quarterback's "reading" would thus have modeled the sign (the shift pattern) as meaning "preparation for a direct and concerted attack on the quarterback."

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Simulation is an assistive tool that lets you see skills on a one-performance-at-a-time basis. You can appreciate that it is a representation, a realistic portrayal of the world. Specifically, simulation of a skills context is a representation of the particular environment of the world in which the skill is normally performed. Since it faithfully copies the skill's operating arena, it can be a useful substitute to study it.

Potentially using any of a variety of representational techniques, simulation presents structures and behaviors that bear on, or are relevant to, the skilled behavior. So it would include tools or instruments that might be used by any of the players -- the operating personnel -- and would display their use as in the real world. By virtue of the relevance, the behavior acquires meaning, and the meaning establishes a package of information. Reflected in a system of equations, the package constitutes a repository of information.

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