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would only ever suffice to explain a very, very simple perceiver, such as perhaps a household thermostat, whose comments on any action in the house would go like this: “ . . . ; too cold; too cold; just right; just right; just right; too warm; just right. . . . ” A slightly fancier thermostat that also includes a temperature display provides two related but not identical commentaries on the same situation: one is the on/off track, delivered exclusively for the benefit of the air conditioner, and the other is the number in the little window that shows the temperature. An even better one could include a humidity reading, which perhaps could be wired to a humidity control device that is separate from the air-conditioning unit.
    The possibility of a perceptual information stream having more than one destination explains why in drawing an analogy between perception and a radio show I made a point of including not just multiple “commentators” but also multiple “listeners.” At the very least, the household climate control system just described must have two distinct “listeners” that use the information provided by the sensing channels (the hygrometer and the thermometer): one in charge of the humidifier and the other in charge of the air conditioning. So, if anyone attempts to sell you the idea of a single, indivisible black box labeled THINKING as an explanation for how perceptions give rise to actions, expose it as sham by asking, “Yes, but what’s going on inside the box?”
    As this example shows, because even minimally complex minds simultaneously track multiple aspects of the environment while at the same time controlling multiple means of acting back, their innards must be distributed . This means that minds are composed of at least several—and possibly very many—interacting but distinct functional parts. (Unlike a physical part, such as the wheel of a car, a functional part is a role that can be played by different physical parts. For example, many kinds of vehicles have the functional part “support,” which in a car is played by wheels, in a tank by treads, and in a sled by runners.) The functional parts, their relationships (which may be hierarchical, as when some parts are composed of several others), and the interconnections and interactions among themselves and with the outside world together determine the kind of mind that arises from all this bustle.
    Because what matters about a mind is its functional organization (and not, as we learned at the end of Chapter 2, the stuff it is made of), sharpening our thinking about functional analogies can really help us understand how minds work. It would be particularly helpful to come up with some down-to-earth example of distributed organization, seeing how essential it is to the architecture of minds. We know that on the perception (input) side there are many sensors that send their signals in all at the same time. (Each light-sensitive cell in your retina is one such sensor.) We also know that on the action (output) side the situation is similar: each of your muscles consists of many bundles of individually innervated fibers, and each joint is served by many muscles. There is no reason to assume that in between perception and action—in processing, or thinking—things are any different (more about this in later chapters).
    Is there a good functional analogy, along the lines of the radio show example, that covers all these bases? Yes, there is: a parliamentary democracy.
    The roots of this analogy go back to the ideas of the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. In a book titled A Treatise of Human Nature , published in 1740, Hume wrote:
    I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to a republic or common-wealth, in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination. . . . And as the same individual republic may not only change its members, but also its laws and constitutions; in