Darwinian decision making

Along with Peter Hammerstein, Jeff Stevens organized an Ernst Strüngmann Forum on Evolving the Mechanisms of Decision Making in June 2011. The edited volume Evolution and Mechanisms of Decision Making is available from MIT Press and Amazon. The goal of this workshop and the project in general was to initiate an alternative to the existing axiom-based decision theory by developing a theory of decision making founded on evolutionary principles. A core component of this approach was to study decision mechanisms, not just the decisions themselves but the processes involved in making decisions. Importantly, we would like to investigate the evolution of these mechanisms. This project cuts across a number of fields and will involve not only evolutionary biologists but also psychologists, economists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, and philosophers.