tion of generalities proven to be impor-
tant over several evolutionary steps.
However, because of the need for cor-
roboration, the cognitive system retains
an ability to change, over time, the defi-
nition of the generalities with the
changing of the environment. The abil-
ity to modify the innate tendencies and
the need to build the understanding of
general properties relative to the envi-
ronment for every generation is what
sets apart the function of cognitive and
noncognitive systems.
Cognitive understanding deals with
specific things and the ability to recog-
nize a great amount of the specific as-
pects of its environment. However, the
ability to deal with all of the varying and
changing aspects of the environment
starts not from the specifics of the world
but from generalities. First are learned
the general metaphors, the useful ex-
amples of general properties, which are
applicable in many different ways to the
world. Once they are grasped, it is easy
to apply them in many different ways to
the world around us. The fact that gen-
eralities take on many different aspects
is not a drawback to learning them. It is
one of the main reasons they are
learned first. We have dealt here with
only three systems and only in a super-
ficial manner; still, we are sure that
studying other cognitive systems will
show similar patterns. Furthermore, we
believe that in studying cognitive sys-
tems discovering the nature of their
useful examples and the general prop-
erties they represent will tell us much as
to those systems basic function and
abilities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Professor Irun Cohen, of the
Immunology Department at the Weiz-
mann Institute in Rehovot, and Profes-
sor Anat Ninio, of the Psychology De-
partment at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. Without their insights and
help, none of these ideas would have
started forming, nor could they have
reached their final shape. This research
was supported by a grant from the Min-
istry of Science, Israel.
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