ABSTRACT
It is customary to introduce a chapter like this with a global statement about how adaptive it is for organisms to have an appreciation of the causal structure of the world, or the more modest claim that it is useful to have an appreciation of contingencies between events in the world. In some sense we do not disagree with this as we have each written several of these statements ourselves. They are written to attract interest in a, perhaps, rather arcane and technical area of research. However, each element of this statement requires careful consideration. The claim that it is a useful or an adaptive skill seems commonsense, but it, like many similar arguments, has little empirical justification. Few experiments demonstrate the skill is adaptive. Even if we grant there is something adaptive about understanding the causal structure of the world, what do we mean by understanding? Probably the ability to predict a future event or the consequences of action is the adaptive function, but a number of possible cognitive structures can make predictions about possible future events. In a classical conditioning experiment a metronome might be paired with food. With training, a dog will come to salivate when the metronome is activated. Contrast this with a chemist who might stop a student from trying to drop a bar of sodium into a beaker because she expects a rather violent reaction. An alien observing each scenario might infer that the dog and the chemist both have some understanding of the causal structure or at least the contingencies in their world. Important to note, the predictive or anticipatory behavior of both actors implies that they have internalized some sort of information that will allow them to predict the future.
