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Information, influence, and the causal-explanatory role of content in understanding receiver responses

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Abstract

Sceptics of informational terminology argue that by attributing content to signals, we fail to address nonhuman animal communication on its own terms. Primarily, we ignore that communication is sender driven: i.e. driven by the intrinsic physical properties of signals, themselves the result of selection pressures acting on signals to influence receivers in ways beneficial for senders. In contrast, information proponents argue that this ignores the degree to which communication is, in fact, receiver driven. The latter argue that an exclusive focus on the intrinsic mechanical properties of signals cannot explain why receivers respond as they do. This is because receivers are not prisoners of sender influence. They possess response flexibility, and so we can only explain why receivers respond to signals as they do by positing that receivers ‘derive information’ from signals. I argue that, while basically true, this response flexibility can take one of two forms depending on the causal-explanatory role of information in understanding the response of the receiver: diachronic, on the one hand; and synchronic, on the other. In species with diachronic response flexibility only, information is derived by receivers from signals in a minimal sense. In such cases, information is an ultimate explanatory construct: one underpinned by historical facts at the population level. Alternatively, in species with synchronic response flexibility, information is derived by receivers from signals in a richer sense. Here, information is a proximate explanatory construct: one underpinned by cognitive-mechanistic facts at the level of the individual organism. Without recognising the different ways information can be derived from signals, and the different causal-explanatory roles (ultimate vs proximate) information can play in understanding alternate kinds of receiver flexibility (diachronic vs synchronic), proponents of information leave themselves open to the charge of anthropomorphising some signalling systems.

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Notes

  1. Particularly when fitness interests of senders and receivers diverge.

  2. The ingenious study tested endurance capacity by encouraging lizards to run around specially engineered racetracks.

  3. It must be noted that Shea (2007) employs his notion of correlational information within a teleosemantic view of content.

  4. Although, in reality, it is likely to carry significantly more information.

  5. Another kind is ‘input-oriented’ teleosemantics (Neander 2013). Shea’s (2007) teleosemantic theory is output-based, but it includes the novel requirement that a signal must correlate with its content.

  6. Dretske (1994) calls this type of explanation a ‘structuring’ explanation.

  7. Indeed, when it comes to lizard push-ups, signal honesty is enforced by the target receiver, as opposed to being ensured by cost paid up-front. As a result, we should expect some amount of dishonest ‘bluffing’ to occur (Bruner et al. 2017).

  8. Although here conventional coordination is not the result of rational processes, as opposed to the law of effect.

  9. In the opinion of this author, the issue of arbitrariness is extremely murky. Future work, currently in progress with Ron Planer, will put forward a general account of arbitrariness along the lines suggested here, and identify a class of recurring reasons why arbitrariness is commonly constrained across different kinds of communication systems.

  10. Although Wheeler and Fischer (2012, pp. 196–197) note “the idea that functional referential signals require greater cognitive complexity and provide a clearer link to human language than do other types of animal signals remains pervasive in the animal communication literature”.

  11. Although see Scarantino (2013) for an alternative proposal.

  12. There is an important caveat. Even if the receiver’s cognitive mechanism for learning the signal-world correlation is more sophisticated it would still not follow that the signal would be anything like a word. If, for example, the receiver learns what the signal correlates with via a form of social learning, such as by observing the responses of other animals, this would not make the signal word-like. This is because what is being learned, however cleverly or not, is just a very specific signal-world association. And, as Deacon (1997) pointed out, word meaning is more complicated than a large list of signal-world associations.

  13. For debate about the continuing importance of the functional reference paradigm, see Wheeler and Fischer (2012) and the subsequent exchange between Scarantino and Clay (2015) and Wheeler and Fischer (2015).

  14. Vervet infants initially give alarm calls to warthogs and pigeons that pose no danger to them. But such mistakes are not random: infants ‘over-extend’ leopard alarm calls to terrestrial mammals and eagle alarms to birds. From birth then, vervets divide predators from non-predators, and within the predator category they divide terrestrial carnivores from aerial predators (Seyfarth and Cheney 2010).

  15. This is not to say that signal production in old-world monkeys is inflexible and insensitive to context. Senders do not have to learn the circumstances under which a signal is to be produced, but nevertheless they often must take into account contextual features of the situation to determine whether or not to signal, at any particular time. Audience effects are a good example: senders are sensitive to conspecifics, and adjust when they produce signals based on their presence or absence (Seyfarth and Cheney 2010; Fitch and Zuberbuhler 2013).

  16. It was argued previously that the idea of functional reference is a red herring when it comes to the psychological sophistication of animal communication. This was because the context-specific nature of signals thought to ‘refer’ in fact rules out the likelihood that response mechanisms are sophisticated or language-like. The view being considered now is that vervet communication, for example, is of interest because signals correlate reliably with distal states. This seems like a contradiction. However, note that the mechanisms which are sensitive to the tight signal-world relation in the case of vervets are ontogenetic (on the consumption side of communication), while the functional reference paradigm would characterise hard-wired response mechanisms as possessing some interesting kind of sophistication. The implication is that if Pavlovian conditioning in some animals is representational, as will soon be discussed, then functional reference might be significant for the issue of human-nonhuman communicative continuity if it restricts itself to context-specific signals that are learnt, as opposed to context-specific signals that are developmentally canalized.

  17. All are influenced by Grice’s (1957) analysis of non-natural meaning. Tomasello and especially Scott-Phillips also take inspiration from Sperber and Wilsons (1986) ‘Post-Gricean’ explanation of human communication which stresses the necessity of high-level recursive mindreading.

  18. As noted in the introduction, information proponents take the existence of communication as evidence for signals being honest, unlike information sceptics who emphasise sensory manipulation.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Ron Planer, Kim Sterelny, Stephen Mann, and two anonymous reviewers. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

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  1. School of Philosophy, The Australian National University, 9 Fellows Road, Acton, ACT, 2601, Australia

    David Kalkman

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Kalkman, D. Information, influence, and the causal-explanatory role of content in understanding receiver responses. Biol Philos 32, 1127–1150 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-017-9596-9

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