Computational Explorations of the Interaction of Evolution and Learning New Models in Evolutionary Psychology

Frequently, human psychology opposes evolution and learning on the basis of their supposed differences in flexibility. Humans are thought to be more flexibly intelligent than other animals, because they lost most of their instincts. But, as William James proposed, we think that it might turn out that just the contrary is true. Human may have more instincts, more powerful instincts to learn for instance. Indeed, the view that instincts are rigid, correspond to fixed, innate, pattern of behaviour that do not enable the organisms to adapt to its ontologically relevant environment, seems to be an ancient believe of many scientist in the social sciences. This is however, nowadays, not the view of many researchers in the field of behavioural biology and ethology. Instincts do take into account information from the environment, that is basically what they are designed for, they provide an organism with behavioural responses to certain environmental stimuli. They are surely not about acting as if no environment existed.