Artificial life, natural rationality and probability matching

Three different agendas for the philosophy of ALife are presented. While the metaphysical and the epistemological ones have been extensively developed, a third one is proposed here. The naturalistic agenda is more interested in resolving empirical problems. Consequently, this paper addresses an empirical issue: the adaptive function of a phenomenon known as "probability matching", that is, the tendency to match the probability of choice with the probability of reward. Probability matching and its common interpretations are presented and discussed. Based on ALife and neural networks simulations, the author presents and alternative hypothesis: probability matching is an adaptation to radical uncertainty