Running head : DECISION - MAKING Decision - Making in The Economy of Nature : Value as Information

This chapter analyzes and discusses one of the most important uses of information in the biological world: decision-making. I will first present a fundamental principle introduced by Darwin, the idea of an “economy of nature,” by which decision-making can be understood. Following this principle, I then argue that biological decision-making should be construed as goal-oriented, value-based information processing. I propose a value-based account of neural information, where information is primarily economic and relative to goal achievement. If living beings (I focus here on animals) are biological decision-makers, we may expect that their behavior would be coherent with the pursuit of certain goals (either ultimate or instrumental) and that their behavioral control mechanisms would be endowed with goal-directed and valuation mechanisms. These expectations, I argue, are supported by behavioral ecology and decision neuroscience. Together, they provide a rich, biological account of decision-making that should be integrated in a wider concept of ‘natural rationality’.