cognitive ability was required. Donald suggests that such an event occurred with the physiological development of a different variant of memory in the brain, that of mimetic memory.

The evolutionary advance brought by mimetic memory is an advance toward metaphoric understanding, which seems to be the doorway to significantly higher levels of cognitive ability. Mimetic memory follows from the mind becoming capable of mimesis. Mimesis essentially refers to the process of imitation. Mimetic learning refers to the process through which one learns by observing someone else doing. Having observed and remembered, and assuming that both the sensory input as well as the motor output from the observation is remembered, then one can evoke a motor response from the memory of having observed someone else perform an action in response to a stimulus. The memory created from observing someone else react to sensory stimuli allows us individually to form a model of the process associated. We should note once again that in Chapter 5 we associated the process of mimesis with the need of belonging. Our assumption was and is that mimetic learning leads to the establishment of trust and subsequently to the creation of groups beyond the core family.

Mimesis is a step toward higher cognitive function, but it is not the final step. Donald suggests that a second mutational event occurred when the mind became capable of mythic comprehension. In our considerations in Chapter 5, we viewed mythic comprehension as an enabler of establishing social groups that were not substantially grounded in the physiological facilities that gave rise to the nuclear family. When the mind became capable of supporting the mythic themes of understanding of otherwise incomprehensible actions, it provided a means of establishing trust infrastructures that could form the basis of large policy infrastructures. Mythic comprehension is an early component in the establishment of causality.

Donald suggests that the most recent, if not final, evolutionary transition of the mind was the enabling of theoretic cognitive processes. As the cognitive facilities of the mind have been enhanced through the evolutionary process, the search for causality in myth has been slowly replaced with the logic-based establishment of causality in theoretic constructs that are grounded upon a more systematic understanding of the physical ecosystem. In essence, mythic comprehension is a seminal quality in the establishment of trust through causality. On the other hand, theoretic processes are foundational to the establishment of trust through process.

Qualitatively similar constructs to these five variants of memory can be identified within computer systems. Realize of course, that qualitative similarity is very different from operational equivalence. While brain anatomy and the corresponding memory facilities are functions of organic development guided by DNA within living species, basic computer hardware simply provides a good paperweight until the necessary programs are added to it. It should be useful, then, for us to consider how we start to meld mind with brain in the case of computers. Please note that we are not going to suggest that the specialized forms of computer memory that we are going to discuss are direct analogues to the indicated characteristics of human memory. The observation we make is that the path to cognitive function, whether pursued organically or mechanically, involves some at least metaphorically similar facilities.

Melding Cognition with Hardware

The set of instructions that tell a computer how to perform specific actions is generally termed a program. The individual instructions, or small sets of these instructions, are sometimes referred to as code. When we define a series of instructions, each to be performed following the one

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