Questions that might at first blush seem banal may have illuminating answers from an evolutionary perspective. Why do we have a utility function, for example? Perhaps because it permits a plastic response by an individual to circumstances that are unusual or even novel in our evolutionary history. Think of Mother Nature as a principal, a puppeteer, who knows the fitness consequences of various outcomes, say. Nature wishes to enhance the evolutionary success of the individual, the agent, the puppet, where this individual also has some local information. This local information might be about the probabilities with which these outcomes occur in various gambles, say. An evolutionary strategy that fixes an appropriate hedonic scoring system for the outcomes within the agent and then devolves autonomy onto the agent permits the agent to blend together the two components–outcomes and probabilities. In the end, the agent chooses the optimal gamble in a flexible and optimal way, endowed with free will, but bound in an hedonic straitjacket.
To ask: Why do we value food, warmth, even of the intelligent and well-educated is to invite incredulity. “What are you, stupid? If we lack those, we will die and have no offspring. Aren’t you into biology?” But if utility is the solution to this principal-agent problem, and we credit ourselves with the requisite intelligence, then why would the optimal utility not simply be offspring? Why wouldn’t the optimal evolutionary strategy not set offspring as utility and then leave it to the intelligent and autonomous agent to figure out that it would be a good idea to eat to further this goal. Sex would seem messy and awkward, but it would have to be endured too. For the kids.
Again the reason why utility has as arguments goods that are intermediate to the production of offspring, as clearly it must in reality, might be that Nature has information that the individual lacks. Although there are, in principle, be other ways of conveying this information, as a matter perhaps of historical accident, Nature has come to whisper in your ear “Don’t think about it, just eat that cheesecake, bask in the sun, smile at that pretty girl…”
Cheap Talk 
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July 17, 2012 at 6:16 am
Transparency
I take it that you are a creationist. Either that or you believe that arthropods and tetrapods and protozoa might reasonably all be born with an intellectual understanding that one must eat in order to mature and one must mature in order to reproduce, and that requiring complex intellectual calculations might be the best way to get an animal from here to there.
While we’re at it, let’s put breathing under conscious control too. We just have to explain to a newborn that breathing, like eating, will be necessary for it to reach its goal of reproduction and all will be well. Which will in turn require that a fetus be able to learn sophisticated language in utero.
The fact that the entire animal kingdom does not, in fact, function at this purely intellectual level suggests that pure intellect is not optimal.
Perhaps you just think that pure intellect could be optimal for adult humans and that some time within the last 100k years evolution could have ruthlessly suppressed hunger, fear, pain, pleasure and affiliation for everyone over, say, age seven to leave us with nothing but intellect and an obsession with gametes and the precise relatedness of kin.
It didn’t. Why would it have?
We *are* born knowing that meeting our bodily needs is good and that being under physical threat is bad. But it’s a robust knowledge of emotion and sensation, not a fragile intellectual calculation.
July 17, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Anonymous
I agree with “or something”.
July 17, 2012 at 8:26 am
Arthur Robson
I am a creationist– I believe that Man created God. More seriously, we are pretty much on the same page as far as the facts go; in terms of theoretical explanation, perhaps you confuse my discussion of the counterfactual with advocating it.
July 17, 2012 at 9:18 am
Transparency
No I don’t think you’re advocating anything. It’s more like I think your question is like, “where would cats like to swim if they were the sky?” It doesn’t make sense. If cats were the sky, they wouldn’t be cats. Your question incorporates the word “evolution” but doesn’t demonstrate any understanding of it.
The hypothetical that would make sense includes created beings. “Would a robot lacking qualia but programmed to maximize the production of more robots be more or less efficient at reproduction than evolved animals with or without some degree of qualia who work towards intermediate goals?” Or something.
July 17, 2012 at 8:46 am
erik
The post seems to suggest that the evolution of our preferences and behavior is independent of the countless evolutionary steps that preceded humans — that the dawn of man coincided with an evolutionary blank slate, cutting all ties to the simplistic creatures from which we developed. This conceals a much simpler (partial) explanation: that humans simply inherited their more primal preferences — such as our desire for food and procreation — from creatures that lacked the intelligence to survive without the guidance of impulse and instinct.
July 17, 2012 at 9:02 am
Arthur Robson
We’re pretty much on the same page, Erik; but you seem to doubt it.
July 17, 2012 at 9:10 am
Frances Woolley
Arthur, great to see you blogging.
Have you seen my post on rat choice theory http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2012/07/is-your-dog-rational.html? If evolution gave humans a utility function, why wouldn’t it give non-humans a utility function too? Arguably, it has. But what are the implications for social choice theory of thinking that animals have utility functions? Should we respect animals’ choices? If there are reasons not to respect animal’s choices, do these same reasons apply to humans also?
July 17, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Anonymous
Frances: Nice to see you here. I suppose that humans are more autonomous than dogs, for example, and that utility functions in humans work as the hedonic guidelines for more or less conscious choice. But in dogs, the hedonic guidelines might be closer to being the whole show. But who knows?
July 17, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Anonymous
Transparency: I agree with “or something”.
July 18, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Irina
http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v115y2007p302-337.html
July 19, 2012 at 4:49 pm
David Hugh-Jones
The evolutionary psychologists’ version of this idea: Symons “On the use and misuse of Darwinism in the study of human behavior”, in The Adapted Mind.