The Making of Meaning in Societies: Semiotic & Information-Theoretic Background to the Evolution of Communication
CPM Report No.: 00-66
By: Chrystopher Nehaniv
Date: 2nd May 2000
A Paper at: The "Starting from
Society" symposium at ASIB'2000
convention, Birmingham University, 16th-19th April 2000.
Also published as: Christopher Nehaniv (2000), "The
Making of Meaning in Societies: Semiotic & INformation-Theoretic Background to
the Evolution of Communication", in the Proceedings of the AISB'00 Symposium on
Starting from Society - the Application of Social Analogies to Computational
Systems, Birmingham, UK: AISB, 73-84. (ISBN 1 902956 13 8)
Abstract
We examine the notions of meaning and information for animals or agents engaged in
interaction games. Concepts from cognitive ethology, linguistics, semiotics, and evolution are
surveyed. Innateness, individual learning, and social aspects (social learning and cultural
transmission) of the evolution of communication are treated. Studies on animals and agents
showing degrees of communication are analyzed with an eye to describing what aspects of
communication actually are demonstrated, or also in the case of many simulation studies, are
built-in to the system at the outset. In particular, predication and constituent structure
(subcategorization) have so far never been shown to emerge in robotic or software systems.
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