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Games, Actions and Social Software pp 164–183Cite as

The Cognitive and Communicative Demands of Cooperation

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7010))

Abstract

I argue that the analysis of different kinds of cooperation will benefit from an account of the cognitive and communicative functions required for that cooperation. I review different models of cooperation in game theory—reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, cooperation about future goals, and conventions—with respect to their cognitive and communicative prerequisites. The cognitive factors considered include recognition of individuals, memory capacity, temporal discounting, prospective cognition, and theory of mind. Whereas many forms of cooperation require no communication or just simple communication, more advanced forms that are unique to humans presuppose full symbolic communication.

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  1. Lund University Cognitive Science, Sweden

    Peter Gärdenfors

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  1. Peter Gärdenfors
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  1. Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Science Park 123, 1098 XG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jan van Eijck

  2. Department of Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Groningen, PO Box 407, 9700 AK, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Rineke Verbrugge

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Gärdenfors, P. (2012). The Cognitive and Communicative Demands of Cooperation. In: van Eijck, J., Verbrugge, R. (eds) Games, Actions and Social Software. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7010. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29326-9_9

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