ABSTRACT

Information exchanges between people and their environments provide the basis for behavioral self-construction and self-organization, just as material and energy transactions provide the basis for biological self-construction and self-organization. Information makes coordination of behavior-environment transactions possible. Information transactions function to enable humans to tolerate, create, and manage complexity and variability, and to protect them from the unfamiliar or from uncertainty. A continual flow of selective material-energy transactions with the environment is essential for the existence, functioning, and development of living systems. In limited variability environments, the essential transactions can be mechanically automated. Taste, therefore, provides the primary mechanism for the regulation of most material transactions, identifying the palatability or noxiousness of diverse materials. Patterned sensation and perception must be the foundation of information collection. The function of perception is to make organisms’ everyday behavior practical and successful. While perception and cognition may be different processes, they are mutually influential.