This paper proposes a sender-receiver model to explain two large-scale patterns observed in natural languages: Zipf’s inverse power law relating the frequency of word use and word rank, and the negative correlation between the frequency of word use and rate of lexical change. Computer simulations show that the model recreates Zipf’s inverse power law and the negative correlation between signal frequency and rate of change, provided that agents balance the rates with which they invent new signals and forget old ones. (...) Results are robust across a wide range of parameter values and structural assumptions, such as different forgetting rules and forgetting rates. Analysis of the model further suggests that Zipf’s law relating word frequency and rank arises because of language-external factors and that frequent signals change less because frequent signals are less subject to drift than rare ones. The paper concludes with some brief considerations on model-based and data-driven approaches in philosophy. (shrink)

The idea that cognition makes use of one or more “languages of thought” remains central to much cognitive-scientific and philosophical theorizing. And yet, virtually no attention has been paid to the question of how a language of thought might evolve in the first place. In this article, I take some steps towards addressing this issue. With the aid of the so-called Sender–Receiver framework, I elucidate a family of distinctions and processes which enable us to see how languages of thought might (...) evolve via a series of small, incremental changes. While much work doubtlessly remains to be done in this area, I hope to at least show that there need be nothing mysterious about the existence of languages of thought on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

The ways in which languages have come to divide the visible spectrum with their color terminology, in both their variety and the apparent universal tendencies, are still largely unexplained. Building on recent work in modeling color perception and categorization, as well as the theory of signaling games, we incrementally construct a color categorization model which combines perceptual characteristics of individual agents, game-theoretic signaling interaction of these agents, and the probability of observing particular colors as an environmental constraint. We also propose (...) a method of transparent evaluation against the data gathered in the World Color Survey. The results show that the model’s predictive power is comparable to the current state of the art. Additionally, we argue that the model we suggest is superior in terms of motivation of the principles involved, and that its explanatory relevance with respect to color categorization in languages is therefore higher. Our results suggest that the universal tendencies of color categorization cannot be explained solely in terms of the shape of the color space induced by our perceptual apparatus. We believe that only by taking the heterogeneity of the phenomenon seriously can we acquire a deeper understanding of why color categorization takes the forms we observe across languages. (shrink)

To depict the mechanisms that have enabled the emergence of semantic conventions, philosophers and researchers particularly access a game-theoretic model: the signaling game. In this article I argue that this model is also quite appropriate to analyze not only the emergence of a semantic convention, but also its change. I delineate how the application of signaling games helps to reproduce and depict mechanisms of semantic change. For that purpose I present a model that combines a signaling game with innovative reinforcement (...) learning; in simulation runs I conduct this game repeatedly within a multi-agent setup, where agents are arranged in social network structures. The results of these runs are contrasted with an attested theory from sociolinguistics: the ‘weak tie’ theory. Analyses of the produced data target a deeper understanding of the role of environmental variables for the promotion of semantic change or solidity of semantic conventions. (shrink)

I consider how complex logical operations might self-assemble in a signalling-game context via composition of simpler underlying dispositions. On the one hand, agents may take advantage of pre-evolved dispositions; on the other hand, they may co-evolve dispositions as they simultaneously learn to combine them to display more complex behaviour. In either case, the evolution of complex logical operations can be more efficient than evolving such capacities from scratch. Showing how complex phenomena like these might evolve provides an additional path to (...) the possibility of evolving more or less rich notions of compositionality. This helps provide another facet of the evolutionary story of how sufficiently rich, human-level cognitive or linguistic capacities may arise from simpler precursors. 1Signalling and Self-assembly2Simple Unary Logic Games3Composing Unary Functions for Binary Inputs 3.1Utilizing pre-evolved dispositions3.2Co-evolving logical dispositions3.3Learning appropriate outputs3.4Taking account of the full state-space of unary games3.5Role-free composition4Discussion 4.1Efficacy and efficiency of learning complex dispositions4.2Other binary operations4.3To infinity and beyond5Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper applies the theoretical criteria laid out by D’Arms et al. to various aspects of evolutionary models of signalling. The question that D’Arms et al. seek to answer can be formulated as follows: Are the models that we use to explain the phenomena in question conceptually adequate? The conceptual adequacy question relates the formal aspects of the model to those aspects of the natural world that the model is supposed to capture. Moreover, this paper extends the analysis of D’Arms (...) et al. by asking the following additional question: Are the models that we use sufficient to explain the phenomena in question? The sufficiency question asks what formal resources are minimally required for the model to get the right results most of the time. (shrink)

Recent work on the evolution of social contracts and conventions has often used models of bargaining games, with reinforcement learning. A recent innovation is the requirement that every strategy must be invented either through through learning or reinforcement. However, agents frequently get stuck in highly-reinforced “traps” that prevent them from arriving at outcomes that are efficient or fair to the both players. Agents face a trade-off between exploration and exploitation, i.e. between continuing to invent new strategies and reinforcing strategies that (...) have already become highly reinforced by yielding high rewards. In this paper I systematically study the relationship between rates of invention and the efficiency and fairness of outcomes in two-player, repeated bargaining games. I use a basic reinforcement learning model with invention, and five variations of this model, designed introduce various forms of forgetting, to prioritize more recent reinforcement, or to maintain a higher rate of invention. I use computer simulations to investigate the outcomes of each model. Each models shows qualitative similarities in the relationship between the efficiency and fairness of outcomes, and the relative amount of exploration or exploitation that takes place. Surprisingly, there are often trade-offs between the efficiency and the fairness of the outcomes. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

We are concerned here with explaining how successful rule-following behavior might evolve and how an old evolved rule might come to be successfully used in a new context. Such rule-following behavior is illustrated in the transitive judgments of pinyon and scrub-jays (Bond et al., Anim Behav 65:479–487, 2003). We begin by considering how successful transitive rule-following behavior might evolve in the context of Skyrms–Lewis sender–receiver games (Lewis, Convention. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1969; Skyrms, Philos Sci 75:489–500, 2006). We then consider (...) two ways that an agent might come to use an old evolved rule in a new context. The first involves the agent evolving successful dispositions for one concrete type of experience, then associating a new type of experience with the old evolved dispositions. The second involves the agent evolving dispositions that represent a general inferential schema, then composing these dispositions with others in a way that allows the agent to make inferences concerning a new concrete type of experience. (shrink)

This paper concerns how rule-following behavior might evolve in the context of a variety of Skyrms–Lewis signaling game, how such rules might subsequently evolve to be used in new contexts, and how such appropriation allows for the composition of evolved rules. We will also consider how the composition of simpler rules to form more complex rules may be significantly more efficient than evolving the complex rules directly. And we will review an example of rule following by pinyon and scrub jays (...) as an illustration of the appropriation of a rule to a new context :142–150, 2013a; Barrett, Philos Sci, 2014). The proposal here is that the composition of rules might occur in a way that is precisely analogous to such simple appropriation. Finally, we will briefly consider how any finite truth-functional operation might evolve by the sequential appropriation of simpler rules. (shrink)

We consider how cue-reading, sensory-manipulation, and signaling games may initially evolve from ritualized decisions and how more complex games may evolve from simpler games by polymerization, template transfer, and modular composition. Modular composition is a process that combines simpler games into more complex games. Template transfer, a process by which a game is appropriated to a context other than the one in which it initially evolved, is one mechanism for modular composition. And polymerization is a particularly salient example of modular (...) composition where simpler games evolve to form more complex chains. We also consider how the evolution of new capacities by modular composition may be more efficient than evolving those capacities from basic decisions. (shrink)

This article considers how a generalized signalling game may self-assemble as the saliences of the agents evolve by reinforcement on those sources of information that in fact lead to successful action. On the present account, generalized signalling games self-assemble even as the agents co-evolve meaningful representations and successful dispositions for using those representations. We will see how reinforcement on successful information sources also provides a mechanism whereby simpler games might compose to form more complex games. Along the way, I consider (...) how an old game might be appropriated to a new context by reinforcement on successful associations between old and new saliences. (shrink)

This article concerns how rule-following behavior might evolve, how an old evolved rule might come to be appropriated to a new context, and how simple concepts might coevolve with rule-following behavior. In particular, we consider how the transitive inferential rule-following behavior exhibited by pinyon and scrub jays might evolve in the context of a variety of the Skyrms-Lewis signaling game, then how such a rule might come to be appropriated to carry out inferences regarding stimuli different from those involved in (...) the original evolution of the rule, and how this appropriation involves a step toward the evolution of basic ordinal concepts. (shrink)

Skyrms-Lewis sender-receiver games with invention allow one to model how a simple mathematical language might be invented and become meaningful as its use coevolves with the basic arithmetic competence of primitive mathematical inquirers. Such models provide sufficient conditions for the invention and evolution of a very basic sort of arithmetic language and practice, and, in doing so, provide insight into the nature of a correspondingly basic sort of mathematical knowledge in an evolutionary context. Given traditional philosophical reflections concerning the nature (...) and preconditions of mathematical knowledge, these conditions are strikingly modest. (shrink)

Wittgenstein used the notion of a language game to illustrate how language is interwoven with action. Here we consider how successful linguistic discourse of the sort he described might emerge in the context of a self-assembling evolutionary game. More specifically, we consider how discourse and coordinated action might self-assemble in the context of two generalized signaling games. The first game shows how prospective language users might learn to initiate meaningful discourse. The second shows how more subtle varieties of discourse might (...) co-emerge with a meaningful language. (shrink)

Multiarm bandit problems have been used to model the selection of competing scientific theories by boundedly rational agents. In this paper, I define a variable-arm bandit problem, which allows the set of scientific theories to vary over time. I show that Roth-Erev reinforcement learning, which solves multiarm bandit problems in the limit, cannot solve this problem in a reasonable time. However, social learning via preferential attachment combined with individual reinforcement learning which discounts the past, does.

Sender–receiver games, first introduced by David Lewis ([1969]), have received increased attention in recent years as a formal model for the emergence of communication. Skyrms ([2010]) showed that simple models of reinforcement learning often succeed in forming efficient, albeit not necessarily minimal, signalling systems for a large family of games. Later, Alexander et al. ([2012]) showed that reinforcement learning, combined with forgetting, frequently produced both efficient and minimal signalling systems. In this article, I define a ‘dynamic’ sender–receiver game in which (...) the state–action pairs are not held constant over time and show that neither of these two models of learning learn to signal in this environment. However, a model of reinforcement learning with discounting of the past does learn to signal; it also gives rise to the phenomenon of linguistic drift. 1 Introduction2 Dynamic Signalling Games with Reinforcement Learning2.1 Introducing new states2.2 Swapping state–action pairs3 Discounting the Past3.1 Learning to signal in a dynamic world3.2 An unexpected outcome: linguistic drift4 ConclusionAppendix: A Markov Chain Analysis. (shrink)

Cheap talk has often been thought incapable of supporting the emergence of cooperation because costless signals, easily faked, are unlikely to be reliable (Zahavi and Zahavi, 1997). I show how, in a social network model of cheap talk with reinforcement learning, cheap talk does enable the emergence of cooperation, provided that individuals also temporally discount the past. This establishes one mechanism that suffices for moving a population of initially uncooperative individuals to a state of mutually beneficial cooperation even in the (...) absence of formal institutions. (shrink)

Recently, game theory and evolutionary game theory - mathematical frameworks from economics and biology designed to model and explain interactive behavior - have proved fruitful tools for philosophers in areas such as ethics, philosophy of language, social epistemology, and political philosophy. This methodological osmosis is part of a trend where philosophers have blurred disciplinary lines to import the best epistemic tools available. In this vein, experimental philosophers have drawn on practices from the social sciences, and especially from psychology, to expand (...) philosophy's grasp on issues from morality to consciousness. We argue that the recent prevalence of formal work on human interaction in philosophy opens the door for new methods in experimental philosophy. In particular, we discuss methods from experimental economics, focusing on a small literature we have been developing investigating signaling and communication in humans. We describe results from a novel experiment showing how environmental structure can shape signaling behavior. (shrink)