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Synthetic Evolutionary Psychology - a short introduction Walter de Back Synthetic evolutionary psychology (SEP) is the name for the use of computer simulations and autonomous (evolutionary) robotics to test and/or generate hypotheses about the history and structure of the mind. The rationale behind and methodology of SEP is outlined in a paper by Dylan Evans and Walter de Back. Or read abstract. The basic ideas of the field are simple and twofold:
Employing synthetic methods, i.e. the use of computer simulations or autonomous robots, 'keeps the theorist honest' by forcing him to be clear and explicit. Moreover, such simulations serve as inference-machines, deriving the consequences of hypotheses that would otherwise be too complex to grapple with. The specific methodologies that can be used for SEP include (in the order of level of abstraction): Game theory
Originally a tool to study games and economic behaviour, it was also successfully applied to evolutionary problems. E.g.: Prisoners Dillemma game (Axelrod, 1984) to study evolution of cooperation. Agent-based simulations
Simulation in which simple agents and their environment are modelled. Agents' behaviour is determined by simple rules based on local interactions (with other agents and with the environment). E.g.: Sugarscape model, Netlogo, Starlogo, Hemelrijk's simulation of artificial monkeys 3D artificial life simulations Autonomous, evolutionary robotics At the Virtual Life lab, we take the issues of situatedness and embodiment to be essential properties that have influenced the evolution of the mind. Therefore, the methodologies we employ at the Vitual Life lab is limited to the latter two. Moreover, evolutionary robotics suffers from several practical problems as applied to our research. (1) Using physical robots in artificial evolution is very time-consuming. (2) Our interest in open-ended evolution implies the populations must be able to grow, which yields it very expensive and impractical on physical robots. (3) Moreover, evolution of the robot body is not possible in physical robots. Therefore, we mainly use 3D artificial life simulations. We make heavy use of an versatile 3D simulator called Framsticks in which the evolution of morphology and neural control systems is possible. And Framsticks allows for traditional optimization as well as spontaneous and open-ended evolution.
Abstract Synthetic Evolutionary Psychology (Evans, de Back). "Evolutionary psychology is an approach to the study of the mind based on principles drawn from evolutionary biology. In their research so far, evolutionary psychologists have used many different methods, from experimental manipulation of human behaviour in the laboratory to observation of indigenous peoples and analysis of archaeological data. All these methods may be called analytic, in the sense that they collect data about already-existing systems and then analyse them. Here we propose that evolutionary psychologists could benefit from extending their methodological repertoire to include synthetic methods, which involve constructing artificial systems. Such artificial systems can provide useful models of evolved minds and evolutionary histories that might provide evolutionary psychologists with additional means to test their hypotheses about mental structure and evolutionary trajectories. One kind of synthetic method that evolutionary psychologists have so far shown little interest in is evolutionary robotics. We argue that, by ignoring this field, evolutionary psychologists are missing out on a valuable research tool, and sketch out a research program involving the use of robots to test evolutionary psychological hypotheses." Read preprint of full
article (html) at www.dylan.org.uk |