The Evolutionary Psychology of Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Are There Universal Adaptations in Search, Aversion, and Signaling?

Todd, Peter M.; Miller, Geoffrey F.

doi:10.1007/s13752-017-0290-6

Cited by 11 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In this article, we have proposed a pathway of search evolving over time from dealing with problems of finding physical resources in space to seeking information resources in the external environment to finding and creating concepts, ideas, and plans internally in the mind. This pathway should apply to any evolved organisms, helping us understand the thought and behavior not only of humans but also of other terrestrial animals and even of organisms that evolved on other worlds (Todd & Miller, 2018). Further research on these common foraging mechanisms could provide insights to aid our interactions with other species, near and far.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foraging in Mind

Todd

Hills

2020

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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People and other animals can search for information inside their heads. Where does this ability come from, and what does it enable cognitive systems to do? In this article, we address the behavioral and cognitive similarities between search in external environments and internal environments (e.g., memory). These require both maplike representations and the means to navigate them, and the latter involves modulation between exploitation and exploration analogous to a foraging process called area-restricted search. These findings have implications for understanding a number of cognitive abilities commonly considered to be hallmarks of the human species, such as well-developed executive control and goal-directed cognition, autonoetic consciousness (i.e., self-awareness), deliberation, and free will. Moreover, this research extends our conception of what organisms may share these abilities and how they evolved.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foraging in Mind

Todd

Hills

2020

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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“…This seemingly trivial observation is important when it comes to affordances. In order to survive, the extraterrestrial environment must provide the necessary "fitness affordances" to any organism that has the chance eventually evolve toward an interstellar communication partner (Todd and Miller, 2018). The environment must afford to maintain the structural coupling between organisms and the environment.…”

Section: How To Survive?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Affordances in Outer Space: Forms of Life, Material Engagement, and Meaning within Space Exploration and SETI

Döbler¹,

Carbon²

2023

Preprint

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Exploration of outer space is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking endeavor. The fascination about what may be out there only matches by asking who might be out there. Exopsychology is concerned about how humans think about extraterrestrials, but also how extraterrestrials may think. It strives to find generalizable psychological theories to enrich the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Here, we apply the psychological theory of affordance (PTA) and specify the role of the relation between brain, body, environment, and material engagement in the context of SETI. Producing technosignatures requires that a species skillfully realizes the relevant possibilities for action, which the Umwelt offers in all its socio-material richness. These so-called are not fixed but relational to individual and collective available abilities and customs. A successful first contact requires a mutual attunement to species-typical diachronic backdrops, which constitute meaning. One possibility for a meaningful message form and content is the reference to the material environment and its respective engagement. Meaningfulness of affordances is conserved in a form of life and transmitted via social interaction. Considering the affordances within SETI fosters an understanding of how the thinking and behavior of life forms in the Universe emerge in relation to their material environment.

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“…This work suggests that search behavior in both physical and cognitive domains likely relies on a shared set of underlying neural mechanisms, and that these mechanisms almost certainly first evolved to facilitate exploration through external space and subsequently (much later) were further adapted via exaptation to similarly regulate exploration throughout internal space as well. Whereas cognitive search is possibly unique to humans (and its observation is relatively obscured by our skulls), physical search is practically ubiquitous in the animal kingdom (and is relatively straightforward to observe); given their shared implementation and common evolutionary provenance, a well-developed understanding of the nature of physical search—which is relatively easy to attain—can serve as a natural source of valuable insight into the nature of cognitive search ( Hills et al, 2015b ; for general discussion, see Todd and Miller, 2018 ).…”

Section: Goal Pursuit In Motor and Cognitive Domains: Evidence For Ge...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied and embedded ecological rationality: A common vertebrate mechanism for action selection underlies cognition and heuristic decision-making in humans

Nordli

Todd

2022

Front. Psychol.

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The last common ancestor shared by humans and other vertebrates lived over half a billion years ago. In the time since that ancestral line diverged, evolution by natural selection has produced an impressive diversity—from fish to birds to elephants—of vertebrate morphology; yet despite the great species-level differences that otherwise exist across the brains of many animals, the neural circuitry that underlies motor control features a functional architecture that is virtually unchanged in every living species of vertebrate. In this article, we review how that circuitry facilitates motor control, trial-and-error-based procedural learning, and habit formation; we then develop a model that describes how this circuitry (embodied in an agent) works to build and refine sequences of goal-directed actions that are molded to fit the structure of the environment (in which the agent is embedded). We subsequently review evidence suggesting that this same functional circuitry became further adapted to regulate cognitive control in humans as well as motor control; then, using examples of heuristic decision-making from the ecological rationality tradition, we show how the model can be used to understand how that circuitry operates analogously in both cognitive and motor domains. We conclude with a discussion of how the model encourages a shift in perspective regarding ecological rationality’s “adaptive toolbox”—namely, to one that views heuristic processes and other forms of goal-directed cognition as likely being implemented by the same neural circuitry (and in the same fashion) as goal-directed action in the motor domain—and how this change of perspective can be useful.

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The Evolutionary Psychology of Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Are There Universal Adaptations in Search, Aversion, and Signaling?

Cited by 11 publications

References 26 publications

Foraging in Mind

Foraging in Mind

Affordances in Outer Space: Forms of Life, Material Engagement, and Meaning within Space Exploration and SETI

Embodied and embedded ecological rationality: A common vertebrate mechanism for action selection underlies cognition and heuristic decision-making in humans

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