Emergent Hierarchies in Perception Evolutionary Process, Epistemological process, and Emergent Hierarchies in Perception

Bateson’s difference-based epistemology can be simulated by a Boolean network model. Bateson proposed that taking differences in differences would produce emergent hierarchies of knowledge. Simulating this proposal by taking differences in differences in a Boolean model generates hierarchical categories of perceptual stimuli. The crucial result is that these model-generated categories correspond to human perceptual categorical judgments. This convergence grounds model-defined emergence both to a broad epistemological framework and to human experience. They types of levels defined in the model are used as a basis for making distinctions among types of levels in evolutionary process and epistemological process.