One way to understand a phenomenon is to build mathematical or computational models that capture some of its key features. Recent years have seen this approach applied productively to the task of understanding communication and signalling. Brian Skyrms and his collaborators exemplify the value of this approach. They construct game theoretic models of various kinds of communication in which simple agents evolve or develop as a result of their interactions. That has told us much about the circumstances in which signalling between and within organisms is likely to evolve, and which sorts of features it is likely to have.
There has been less analysis of the representational contents (if any) that are being transmitted in these signalling systems. Existing treatments tend to focus on a purely information-theoretic understanding of how signals relate to the world. In this paper, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Rosa Cao and I build a richer notion of representational content onto the existing work on signalling games.
The way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of content that is richer than bare informational content, especially in contexts where false content is important. This paper shows that this concept can be made precise by defining a notion of functional content that captures the degree to which different states of the world are involved in stabilizing senders’ and receivers’ use of a signal at equilibrium. A series of case studies is used to contrast functional content with informational content, and to illustrate the explanatory role and limitations of this definition of functional content.
- Update: published version now available through online early access at links below.
Shea, N., Godfrey-Smith, P. & Cao, R. (2017) ‘Content in Simple Signalling Systems’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science [open access pdf] [link]
