From Teleonomy to Mentally Driven Goal-Directed Behavior: Evolutionary Considerations

Abstract

OverviewGoal-directed activities that do not depend on conscious will or preconceived design are referred to as teleonomic be hav iors.In living systems, the evaluative systems that underlie teleonomic be hav ior sense deviations from homeostasis and employ adaptive plasticity mechanisms that restore, sustain, and boost survival and reproduction.By virtue of their sustainability, all living organisms have an intrinsic teleonomic organ ization, but some show, in addition, a new kind of goal-directed be hav ior (GDB) that supports and overlays it: be hav ior that is driven and controlled by subjectively felt passions and aversions.Such organisms, which can be said to act because they want or do not want to reach some goal, experience sensory inputs as percepts and appraise them and their own actions through feelings.We discuss and compare two approaches to minimal, desire-driven GDB, which suggest that learning was the driving force in the evolution of consciousness: the unlimited associative learning (UAL) model and the hedonic interface (HIT) model.We argue that UAL pre sents a more comprehensive evolutionary view of consciousness and that it was the basis for the evolutionary construction of another layer of GDB, that of attaining goals guided by imagination.During the evolution of humans, yet another layer was added: goals driven by rational design and abstract values that involve symbolic systems of repre sen ta tion and communication.