Abstract

Whereas Brian Skyrms in his chapter views rationality and evolution as alternative ways to derive decision behaviour, indirect evolution allows us to combine the two approaches. By focussing on Skyrms’ examples it will be illustrated how optimal decisions for given rules of interaction can influence the future rules of interaction. Here evolution does not determine behaviour directly, but only indirectly via the rules. We, furthermore, report on an experiment, related to Skyrms’ examples, revealing effects of deliberation in the sense of forward-looking considerations and of path dependence in the sense of adapting to past success