Satisfaction and Optimization in Cognmitive Science and Evolutionary Biology

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Appeals to optimality have a prominent role in philosophy, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. Optimizing procedures have been challenged as excessively demanding, and Herbert Simon has proposed an alternative analysis in terms of what he terms "satisficing." It has become common to view satisficing as optimizing under additional constraints. Dr. Richardson is undertaking research that challenges this reduction of satisficing to optimizing, and examines the implications of this result of evolutionary ecology and cognitive science. There are three components to the project. The first phase incorporates a general characterization of satisficing models and the conditions under which they differ procedurally from optimization models. Second, optimization models purport to provide an independent measure of fitness, but have been criticized on the grounds that the measure they provide is not both operational and general. In light of the general characterization of satisficing models, the problem in this second phase of the project is whether satisficing models are likely to resolve methodological problems confronting optimality models in evolutionary biology. The final phase is a preliminary examination of the merits of non- optimizing models in cognitive science, and, in particular, their implications for philosophy of science.