O'Connor, Cailin (2014) The Evolution of Vagueness. Erkenntnis, 79 (4). pp. 707-727. ISSN 0165-0106

PDF The_Evolution_of_Vagueness_Revision.pdf Download (590kB)

Abstract

Vague predicates, those that exhibit borderline cases, pose a persistent problem for philosophers and logicians. Although they are ubiquitous in natural language, when used in a logical context, vague predicates lead to contradiction. This paper will address a question that is intimately related to this problem. Given their inherent imprecision, why do vague predicates arise in the first place?

I discuss a variation of the signaling game where the state space is treated as contiguous, i.e., endowed with a metric that captures a similarity relation over states. This added structure is manifested in payoffs that reward approximate coordination between sender and receiver as well as perfect coordination. I evolve these games using a variation of Herrnstein reinforcement learning that better reflects the generalizing learning strategies real-world actors use in situations where states of the world are similar. In these simulations, signaling can develop very quickly, and the signals are vague in much the way ordinary language predicates are vague --- they each exclusively apply to certain items, but for some transition period both signals apply to varying degrees. Moreover, I show that under certain parameter values, in particular when state spaces are large and time is limited, learning generalization of this sort yield strategies with higher payoffs than standard Herrnstein reinforcement learning.

These models may then help explain why the phenomenon of vagueness arises in natural language: the learning strategies that allow actors to quickly and effectively develop signaling conventions in contiguous state spaces make it unavoidable.

---

Export/Citation:

EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL

Social Networking:

Share |

---

Item Type:	Published Article or Volume
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID O'Connor, Cailin cailino@uci.edu
Keywords:	evolution, evolution of language, language, signaling, signaling game, sim-max game, learning, learning generalization, evolution of learning, philosophy of biology, philosophy of cognitive science, reinforcement learning, vagueness, evolution of vagueness
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Economics
Depositing User:	Dr. Cailin O'Connor
Date Deposited:	10 Dec 2015 13:27
Last Modified:	10 Dec 2015 13:27
Item ID:	11800
Journal or Publication Title:	Erkenntnis
Publisher:	Springer (Springer Science+Business Media B.V.)
Official URL:	http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-01...
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Economics
Date:	2014
Page Range:	pp. 707-727
Volume:	79
Number:	4
ISSN:	0165-0106
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/11800

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item