Abstract
What purposes, other than facilitating the sharing of information, can language have served? First, it may not have evolved to serve any purpose at all. It is possible that language is just a side effect of the large human brain — a spandrel or exaptation — that only became useful later. If language is adaptive, this does not necessarily mean that it is adaptive for the purpose of communication. For example Dennett (1996) and Chomsky (1980) have stressed the utility of language in thinking. Also, there are different ways to view communication. The purpose of language according to Dunbar (1993), is to replace grooming as a social bonding process and in this way to ensure the stability of large social groups.
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Notes
- 1.
Simple signaling too transfers information in the sense that it reduces the receiver’s uncertainty about the signaler or the environment.
- 2.
Viscosity is also thought to facilitate reciprocal altruism because of repeated interactions among individuals. This is the first requirement for cooperation among agents that are not related.
- 3.
For larger values, up to 0.5, walking is even better optimized for foraging. The resulting pattern is one of random walk with a occasional large jump. Large jumps would significantly lower viscousity and competition and are therefore not desirable in this case.
- 4.
When the model is set up, the new agents are randomly assigned a type, with a probability of 0.1.
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Čače, I., Bryson, J.J. (2007). Agent Based Modelling of Communication Costs: Why Information Can Be Free. In: Lyon, C., Nehaniv, C.L., Cangelosi, A. (eds) Emergence of Communication and Language. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-779-4_16
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