The Model Evolutionary Emergence of Purposeful Adaptive Behavior

The process of evolutionary emergence of purposeful adaptive behavior is investigated. The purposefulness is due to motivations. The model has the following assumptions: 1) The evolution of population of agents (artificial organisms) is simulated; any agent has two motivations: food and sex. 2) Agents sense events in external environment and perform different actions (moving, eating, and mating). Any agent has a neural network that governs its behavior. The results of modeling are as follows. The purposefulness does really emerge in the simulated evolution. Namely, if we compare the population of agents, a neural network of which has inputs from motivations, with the population of agents, in which such inputs are artificially suppressed, then the former population (with motivations) has significant selective advantage as compared with the latter (without motivations). The transition from control scheme with motivations to that of without motivations can be considered as the creation of a new level of a hierarchy in control systems.