The Descent of Preferences

Bibliographic Data

ID8399047
AuthorsDavid Spurrett (0000-0003-2542-358X, University of KwaZulu-Natal, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume72
Issue2
Pages485-510
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/bjps/axz020
OpenAlexW3017263413
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited46

More attention has been devoted to providing evolutionary accounts of the development of beliefs, or belief-like states, than for desires or preferences. Here I articulate and defend an evolutionary rationale for the development of psychologically real preference states. Preferences token or represent the expected values available actions given discriminated states of world and agent. The argument is an application of the ‘environmental complexity thesis’ found in Godfrey-Smith and Sterelny, although my conclusions differ from Sterelny’s. I argue that tokening expected utilities can, under specified general conditions, be a powerful design solution to the problem of efficiently allocating the capacities of an agent. Preferences are for efficient action selection, and count as a ‘fuel for success’ in the sense urged by Godfrey-Smith for true beliefs. They will tend to be favoured by selection when environments are complex in ways that matter to an organism, and when organisms have large behavioural repertoires with heterogeneous returns and costs. The rationale suggested here is conditional, especially on contingencies in what design options are available to selection and on trade-offs associated with the costs of generating and processing representations of value. The unqualified efficiency rationale for preferences suggests that organisms should represent expected utilities in a comprehensive and consistent way, but none of them do. In the final stages of the paper I consider some of the ways design trade-offs compromise the implementation of preferences in organisms that have them.

Action (physics) · Argument (complex analysis) · Compromise · Economics · Expected utility hypothesis · Machine learning · Mathematical economics · Microeconomics · Preference · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Sociology · Value (mathematics) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophy and History of Science

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