Can Status Inequality Organize Cooperation in Multi-leader Systems? An Evolutionary Theory

Status hierarchies often emerge in small collective task groups. In these groups, clearly defined hierarchies facilitate and stabilize structured cooperative interactions among group members, supporting their evolutionary function in the real world. What the existing research in this field has failed to consider, however, is that cooperation matters in these hierarchies with clear status inequality, as well as in other more realistic, multiple-leader groups with less clear hierarchies. Multi-leadership is ubiquitous but, by definition, flattens status inequality and may, in turn, jeopardize its capacity to sustain cooperation. Leveraging the relationship between multi-leadership and cooperation, our evolutionary game model reveals that hierarchies, in general, promote cooperation in groups with multiple leaders, but these hierarchies only do that up to a point, after which multi-leadership backfires. Accordingly, the model provides not only a theoretical account for how multi-leadership coexists with cooperation but also the conditions under which the coexistence would break.

Fishnition: Developing Models From Cognition Toward Consciousness

A challenge to developing a model for testing animal consciousness is the pull of opposite intuitions. On one extreme, the anthropocentric view holds that consciousness is a highly sophisticated capacity involving self-reflection and conceptual categorization that is almost certainly exclusive to humans. At the opposite extreme, an anthropomorphic view attributes consciousness broadly to any behavior that involves sensory responsiveness. Yet human experience and observation of diverse species suggest that the most plausible case is that consciousness functions between these poles. In exploring the middle ground, we discuss the pros and cons of “high level” approaches such as the dual systems approach. According to this model, System 1 can be thought of as unconscious; processing is fast, automatic, associative, heuristic, parallel, contextual, and likely to be conserved across species. Consciousness is associated with System 2 processing that is slow, effortful, rule-based, serial, abstract, and exclusively human. An advantage of this model is the clear contrast between heuristic and decision-based responses, but it fails to include contextual decision-making in novel conditions which falls in between these two categories. We also review a “low level” model involving trace conditioning, which is a trained response to the first of two paired stimuli separated by an interval. This model highlights the role of consciousness in maintaining a stimulus representation over a temporal span, though it overlooks the importance of attention in subserving and also disrupting trace conditioning in humans. Through a critical analysis of these two extremes, we will develop the case for flexible behavioral response to the stimulus environment as the best model for demonstrating animal consciousness. We discuss a methodology for gauging flexibility across a wide variety of species and offer a case study in spatial navigation to illustrate our proposal. Flexibility serves the evolutionary function of enabling the complex evaluation of changing conditions, where motivation is the basis for goal valuation, and attention selects task-relevant stimuli to aid decision-making processes. We situate this evolutionary function within the Temporal Representation Theory of consciousness, which proposes that consciousness represents the present moment in order to facilitate flexible action.

A continuum of intentionality: linking the biogenic and anthropogenic approaches to cognition

Biogenic approaches investigate cognition from the standpoint of evolutionary function, asking what cognition does for a living system and then looking for common principles and exhibitions of cognitive strategies in a vast array of living systems—non-neural to neural. One worry which arises for the biogenic approach is that it is overly permissive in terms of what it construes as cognition. In this paper I critically engage with a recent instance of this way of criticising biogenic approaches in order to clarify their theoretical commitments and prospects. In his critique of the biogenic approach, Fred Adams (Stud Hist Philos Sci 68:20–30, 10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.11.007, 2018) uses the presence of intentional states with conceptual content as a criterion to demarcate cognition-driven behaviour from mere sensory response. In this paper I agree with Adams that intentionality is the mark of the cognitive, but simultaneously reject his overly restrictive conception of intentionality. I argue that understanding intentionality simpliciter as the mark of the mental is compatible with endorsing the biogenic approach. I argue that because cognitive science is not exclusively interested in behaviour driven by intentional states with the kind of content Adams demands, the biogenic approach’s status as an approach to cognition is not called into question. I then go on to propose a novel view of intentionality whereby it is seen to exist along a continuum which increases in the degree of representational complexity: how far into the future representational content can be directed and drive anticipatory behaviour. Understanding intentionality as existing along a continuum allows biogenic approaches and anthropogenic approaches to investigate the same overarching capacity of cognition as expressed in its different forms positioned along the continuum of intentionality. Even if all organisms engage in some behaviour that is driven by weak intentional dynamics, this does not suggest that every behaviour of all organisms is so driven. As such, the worry that the biogenic approach is overly permissive can be avoided.

A possible evolutionary function of pain and other affective dimensions of phenomenal conscious experience

Evolutionary accounts of feelings, and in particular of negative affect and of pain, assume that creaturesthat feel and care about the outcomes of their behavior outperform those that do not in terms of theirevolutionary fitness. Such accounts, however, can only work if feelings can be shown to contribute tofitness-influencing outcomes. Simply assuming that a learner that feels and cares about outcomes is morestrongly motivated than one that doesn’t is not enough, if only because motivation can be tied directly tooutcomes by incorporating an appropriate reward function, without leaving any apparent role to feelings(as it is done in state-of-the-art engineered systems based on reinforcement learning). Here, we proposea possible mechanism whereby feelings contribute to fitness: an actor-critic functional architecture forreinforcement learning, in which feelings reflect costs and gains that promote effective actor selectionand help the system optimize learning and future behavior.

What is the Function of Reasoning? On Mercier and Sperber's Argumentative and Justificatory Theories

This paper aims to accessibly present, and then critique, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber's recent proposals for the evolutionary function of human reasoning. I take a critical look at the main source of experimental evidence that they claim as support for their view, namely the confirmation or “myside” bias in reasoning. I object that Mercier and Sperber did not adequately argue for a claim that their case rests on, namely that it is evolutionarily advantageous for you to get other people to believe whatever you antecedently believe. And I give my own argument that this claim is false. I also critically look at their suggestion that reasoning has a justificatory function, functioning as a kind of reputation management tool. I argue this suggestion does not amount to a plausible evolutionary function.

Attachment in Adulthood: Recent Developments, Emerging Debates, and Future Directions

Some of the most emotionally powerful experiences result from the development, maintenance, and disruption of attachment relationships. In this article, I review several emerging themes and unresolved debates in the social-psychological study of adult attachment, including debates about the ways in which attachment-related functions shift over the course of development, what makes some people secure or insecure in their close relationships, consensual nonmonogamy, the evolutionary function of insecure attachment, and models of thriving through relationships.