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The sea-slug and the VAX mainframe are both effective processors of information. Yet it is only human beings, and perhaps some higher animals, who are credited with genuine thoughts. Is this mere prejudice, or have we somehow latched on to a genuine joint in the natural order? If it is a genuine joint in nature, what feature or set of features mark it? The hypothesis to be considered is that there is indeed a joint in the natural order such that humans fall on one side and many other systems (including some quite sophisticated information processors) fall on the other. The joint, we argue, marks a pivotal difference in internal organisation. The representational redescription (RR) model embodies specific hypotheses about the nature of this joint (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979a, 1979b, 1986, 1990, 1992). For the genuine thinkers, we submit, are endowed with