Abstract

It is argued that cognitive capacities can be understood as the outcome of the collective action of a set of agents created by tools that explore possible behaviours and train the agents to behave in such appropriate ways as may be discovered. The coherence of the whole system is assured by a combination of vetting the performance of new agents and dealing appropriately with any faults that the whole system may develop. This picture is shown to account for a range of cognitive capacities, including language. -/- Paper presented at the ECHO IV conference, Odense, Denmark, July 31 – Aug 4, 2000.