Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-l82ql Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-04T11:58:22.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dynamic Partitioning and the Conventionality of Kinds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jeffrey A. Barrett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Lewis sender-receiver games illustrate how a meaningful term language might evolve from initially meaningless random signals (Lewis 1969; Skyrms 2006). Here we consider how a meaningful language with a primitive grammar might evolve in a somewhat more subtle sort of game. The evolution of such a language involves the co-evolution of partitions of the physical world into what may seem, at least from the perspective of someone using the language, to correspond to canonical natural kinds. While the evolved language may allow for the sort of precise representation that is required for successful coordinated action and prediction, the apparent natural kinds reflected in its structure may be purely conventional. This has both positive and negative implications for the limits of naturalized metaphysics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 74 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 527 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Brian Skyrms, Simon Huttegger, Rory Smead, Kevin Zollman, and Samuel Park for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank the referees who looked at this paper for their excellent suggestions.

References

Barrett, Jeffrey A. (2006), “Numerical Simulations of the Lewis Signaling Game: Learning Strategies, Pooling Equilibria, and the Evolution of Grammar”, UC Irvine Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences Preprint (22 September 2006). http://www.imbs.uci.edu/tr/abs/2006/mbs06_09.Google Scholar
Barrett, Jeffrey A. (2007), “The Evolution of Coding in Signaling Games”, forthcoming in Theory and Decision.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, Nelson (1965), Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Herrnstein, Richard J. (1970), “On the Law of Effect”, On the Law of Effect 13:243–266.Google ScholarPubMed
Huttegger, Simon (2007a), “Evolution and the Explanation of Meaning”, forthcoming in Philosophy of Science.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huttegger, Simon (2007b), “Evolutionary Explanations of Indicatives and Imperatives”, Evolutionary Explanations of Indicatives and Imperatives 66:409–436.Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1969), Convention Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1953), “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 20–46.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1969), “Natural Kinds”, in Ontological Relativity and other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 114–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1981), “Five Milestones of Empiricism”, in Theories and Things. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 67–72.Google Scholar
Roth, Al, and Erev, Ido (1995), “Learning in Extensive Form Games: Experimental Data and Simple Dynamical Models in the Intermediate Term”, Learning in Extensive Form Games: Experimental Data and Simple Dynamical Models in the Intermediate Term 8:164–212.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian (2004), The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian (2006), “Signals”, Presidential Address, Philosophy of Science Association, PSA 2006.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian, and Pemantle, Robin (2000), “A Dynamic Model of Social Network Formation”, A Dynamic Model of Social Network Formation 97:9340–9346.Google ScholarPubMed
Thorndike, Edward L. (1898), “Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals” Psychological Review Monograph Supplement 2:1–109.Google Scholar