Alexander, J McKenzie 
ORCID: 0000-0002-2663-6993
(2014)
Learning to signal in a dynamic world.
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65 (4).
797 – 820.
ISSN 0007-0882
Abstract
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.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ |
| Additional Information: | © The Author |
| Divisions: | Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) Q Science > Q Science (General) |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Aug 2012 07:25 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Dec 2024 00:10 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/45282 |
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