Bruner, Justin and O'Connor, Cailin and Rubin, Hannah and Huttegger, Simon (2014) David Lewis in the Lab: an Experimental Study of Signaling Convention. [Preprint]
PDF (Synthese, 2014)
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Abstract
In this paper we use an experimental approach to investigate how linguistic conventions can emerge in a society without explicit agreement. As a starting point we consider the signaling game introduced by Lewis (1969). We find that in experimental settings, small groups can quickly develop conventions of signal meaning in these games. We also investigate versions of the game where the theoretical literature indicates that meaning will be less likely to arise---when there are more than two states for actors to transfer meaning about and when some states are more likely than others. In these cases, we find that actors are less likely to arrive at strategies where signals have clear conventional meaning. We conclude with a proposal for extending the use of the methodology of experimental economics in experimental philosophy.
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Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||||||||
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Keywords: | language, evolution, signaling, game, game theory, evolutionary game theory, convention, experimental economics, experiment | |||||||||||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Economics General Issues > Experimentation |
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Depositing User: | Dr. Cailin O'Connor | |||||||||||||||
Date Deposited: | 12 Apr 2016 22:55 | |||||||||||||||
Last Modified: | 12 Apr 2016 22:55 | |||||||||||||||
Item ID: | 12038 | |||||||||||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory Specific Sciences > Economics General Issues > Experimentation |
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Date: | 2014 | |||||||||||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/12038 |
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