Dennetts 4 levels can be break to Darwinian creatures (hard-wired creatures),

Skinnerian creatures (reinforcement and learning), Popperian creatures (hypothesis testing)

and Gregorian creatures (cultural enhancement).

According to Charles Darwin, evolution of a species is happened by natural selection.
Organisms are arbitrarily generated by the processes of recombination and mutation of genes,
and only the one with best characteristics will survive and reproduce. These organisms are
called Darwinian creatures.



The process of evolution by natural selection does not happened overnight but when
through millions of cycles, and producing many magnificent characteristics for both plant and
animal. The organisms may not have such characteristic at birth but their characteristics may
slowly adjust by the events that they had to experience during their life (Dennett, 1996). An
example for these creatures is giraffe. Originally the necks of giraffes were not long.
Occasionally, however, some exceptional giraffes had necks just a bit longer than the average
ones. Those that had even a slightly longer neck survived in the struggle for existence.
Generations and generations of those giraffes that even a slightly longer neck than the others
survived, and that is what that brought about todays long-necked giraffes.

Skinnerian creatures differ from Darwin creatures by the presence of a faster, nested
adaptation process (Blommaert and Janssen, 2005). These organisms confronted the
environment by generating a variety of actions, which they tried out, one by one, until they
found the one that worked. Skinnerian conditioning is very useful but if errors occur, it can be
deadly (Dennett, 1996).
Darwinian creatures,
different "hard-
wired" phenotypes
Selection of one
favored phenotype
Multiplication of the
favored genotype


Same as Skinnerian creatures did, Popperian creatures also can learn through trial-
and-error method. But, for Popperian creatures, they also have inner environment which is
some kind of model or representation of their external environment which they can test their
plans before they carry them out in real world (Nobel, et. al, 2010). Popperian creatures can
preselect from possible behaviors or actions by sorting out the unwanted or the bad ones.
Popperian creatures are named after Karl Popper who suggested the mental modeling
of allow our hypotheses to die in our stead. To put it simple, Popperian creatures have the
ability of learning by anticipating experiences or in other words, mapping out the plans in
heads. As example, birds, they considered their chances of success before grabbing their
prey.
Gregorian creatures are evolved Popperian creatures with aids from tools, technology
and culture. They are named after psychologist Richard Gregory (Nobel, et. al, 2010).
Language is considered as one of the important tool which make human a Gregorian creature.
Tool use can also be seen in chimpanzee which shows high relative intelligence. Popperian
creatures would be expected to be better than their Skinnerian counterparts, partly because
they are adaptively responsive to a wider range of high fidelity information. However it is
only at the level of Gregorian creatures that organisms can benefit from others' experience.
For chimpanzees, they are able to use twig to obtain termites as food source. But, they
are also chimpanzees that never learned to do that which divide them into classes call
cultures. Thus, Gregorian creatures can be studied by comparing individuals from different
cultures.



Skinnerian creature
"blindly" tries
different responses...
... until one is
selected by
"reinforcement."
Next time, the
creature's first choice
will be the
reinforced response.
CITED REFERENCES
Blommaert, F., and Janssen, R. (2005) Dennett, Darwin, and Skinner Crows, Evolutionary
Psychology, 3, 179-207.
Dennett, C. D. (1996). In Darwins dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life. (1
st

ed.) Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York.
Mind and Body Intrepationalism, Retrieved on 16
th
March 2014 from
http://www.blutner.de/philom/mindbody/Mind_body_interpret.pdf
Nobel, J., de Ruiter, J., and Arnold, K. (2010) From Monkey Alarm Calls to Human
Language: How Simulations Can Fill the Gap, Adaptive Behavior. 18(1), 6682.