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The Evolution of Bayesian Updating

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Samir Okasha
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Abstract

An evolutionary basis for Bayesian rationality is suggested, by considering how natural selection would operate on an organism’s ‘policy’ for choosing an action depending on an environmental signal. It is shown that the evolutionarily optimal policy, as judged by the criterion of maximal expected reproductive output, is the policy that, for each signal, picks an action that maximizes conditional expected output given that signal. This suggests a possible route by which Bayes-rational creatures might have evolved.

Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 745 - 757
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to John McNamara, Cedric Paternotte, Jonathan Grose, Chris Clarke, Richard Pettigrew, James Ladyman, and Nick Shea for discussion. This work was supported by the European Research Council Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013), ERC grant 295449.

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