chapter 5 Evolving artificial minds and brains

We explicate representational content by addressing how representations that explain intelligent behavior might be acquired through processes of Darwinian evolution. We present the results of computer simulations of evolved neural network controllers and discuss the similarity of the simulations to real-world examples of neural network control of animal behavior. We argue that focusing on the simplest cases of evolved intelligent behavior, in both simulated and real organisms, reveals that evolved representations must carry information about the creature’s environments and further can do so only if their neural states are appropriately isomorphic to environmental states. Further, these informational and isomorphism relations are what are tracked by content attributions in folk-psychological and cognitive scientific explanations of these intelligent behaviors.