188 11 Stages of Cognitive Development 11.2 Piagetan Stages in the Context of a General Systems Theory of Development Our review of AGI architectures in Chapter 4 focused heavily on the concept of symbolism, and the different ways in which different classes of cognitive architecture handle symbol rep- resentation and manipulation. We also feel that symbolism is critical to the notion of AGI development — and even more broadly, to the systems theory of development in general. As a broad conceptual perspective on development, we suggest that one may view the de- velopment of a complex information processing system, embedded in an environment, in terms of the stages: e automatic: the system interacts with the environment by “instinct”, according to its innate programming e adaptive: the system internally adapts to the environment, then interacting with the en- vironment in a more appropriate way e symbolic: the system creates internal symbolic representations of itself and the environ- ment, which in the case of a complex, appropriately structured environment, allows it to interact with the environment more intelligently e reflexive: the system creates internal symbolic representations of its own internal symbolic representations, thus achieving an even higher degree of intelligence Sketched so broadly, these are not precisely defined categories but rather heuristic, intuitive categories. Formalizing them would be possible but would lead us too far astray here. One can interpret these stages in a variety of different contexts. Here our focus is the cognitive development of humans and human-like AGI systems, but in Table 11.1 we present them in a slightly more general context, using two examples: the Piagetan example of the human (or humanlike) mind as it develops from infancy to maturity; and also the example of the “origin of life’ and the development of life from proto-life up into its modern form. In any event, we allude to this more general perspective on d