Brit. J. Phil. Sci.

63 (2012), 547575

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

Elliott O. Wagner
Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

ABSTRACT
Common wisdom holds that communication is impossible when messages are costless and communicators have totally opposed interests. This article demonstrates that such wisdom is false. Non-convergent dynamics can sustain partial information transfer even in a zero-sum signalling game. In particular, I investigate a signalling game in which messages are free, the state-act payoffs resemble rockpaperscissors, and senders and receivers adjust their strategies according to the replicator dynamic. This system exhibits Hamiltonian chaos and trajectories do not converge to equilibria. This persistent out-of-equilibrium behaviour results in messages that do not perfectly reveal the senders private information, but do transfer information as quantied by the KullbackLeibler divergence. This nding shows that adaptive dynamics can enable information transmission even though messages at equilibria are meaningless. This suggests a new explanation for the evolution or spontaneous emergence of meaning: non-convergent adaptive dynamics.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Introduction Lewis Signalling Games and Information Transfer Evolution and Lewis Signalling Games Signalling Games with Opposing Interests Dynamics of Zero-Sum Signalling Games Deterministic Chaos and Information Transfer Conclusion

1 Introduction
Is communication possible when messages are free and the interests of the communicators are opposed? According to one common line of reasoning, perhaps not. Consider a sender with private information about the world and an opportunity to convey this information to some receiver. If these two parties have different preferences over the receivers possible actions in each
The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/bjps/axr039 For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Advance Access published on December 16, 2011

548

Elliott O. Wagner

state of the world, then why should the sender bother communicating her information to the receiver? And likewise why should the receiver believe any messages she receives from the sender? As Franke et al. ([2009]) put things, it is easy to see that under conditions of extreme conict (a zero-sum game), no informative communication can be sustained. For why should we give information to the enemy, or believe what the enemy tells us. This questionwhether or not communication can be sustained when interests opposeis not an idle one. On the contrary, an understanding of the strategic foundations of communication is of importance to at least four disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, economics, and biology. Starting with Lewis ([1969]), philosophers have used the tools of game theory to explain how terms can gain semantic meaning and thus how language can be the product of convention (see also Millikan [1984]; Skyrms [1996]; Harms [2004]). Linguists have employed game theory to explicate pragmatics and, in particular, Grices conversational implicatures (Parikh [2001]; van Rooij [2003]). Economists are interested in understanding when so-called cheap talk can inuence strategic decision-making (Crawford and Sobel [1982]; Farrell and Rabin [1996]). Theoretical biologists also turn to game theory to understand how animal signalling systems can evolve (Maynard Smith and Harper [2003]; Searcy and Nowicki [2005]). Many researchers from these disciplines have endorsed the common-sense conclusion that cheap talk cannot convey information when the interests of the sender and receiver are sufciently opposed. As an example from philosophy, consider:
If the kind of intention that Grice uses to analyze speaker meaning is really essential to genuine communication, then it will be essential to the possibility of communication that there be a certain pattern of common interest between participating parties. (Stalnaker [2005])

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

And from economics:

A misinformed listener will do something that is not optimal for himself and, if their interests are sufciently aligned, this is bad for the speaker too. In a nutshell, this is how cheap talk can be informative in games, even if players ruthlessly lie when it suits them. (Farrell and Rabin [1996])

Or that once interests diverge by a given, nite amount, only no communication is consistent with rational behaviour (Crawford and Sobel [1982]). Informative cheap talk is held to be impossible when interests oppose.1 But these researchers have generally relied upon standard equilibrium analysis when analyzing the prospects for information transfer in strategic
1

Although cheap talk is thought to be uninformative when interests oppose, economists and biologists agree that communication can be kept honest in such situations through costly signalling (Spence [1973]; Zahavi [1975]; Grafen [1990]).

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

549

interactions. Lewis ([1969]) proposed a renement of Nash equilibria that he called a proper coordination equilibrium. Economists frequently identify equilibria in signalling games by using something called the intuitive criterion (Cho and Kreps [1987]). And biologists generally turn to Maynard Smith and Prices ([1973]) concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy. What all of these approaches to analyzing strategic communication share in common is that they apply renements of Nash equilibria. But static equilibrium analysis leaves out part of the story: actors have to nd their ways to equilibria. Human players may reach an equilibrium through learning and evolutionary systems may reach one through natural selection,2 but even in the simplest of games, not all adaptive systems reach an equilibrium. In this article, I investigate information transfer in a signalling game in which interests are as opposed as possible. In other words, the game is zero-sum: any gain by one player is a loss to the other. To model biological evolution or social learning, it is assumed that the system evolves according to the replicator dynamic. Although the signals in this game are meaningless when the system is at an equilibrium, the system never reaches one. Instead, it exhibits a very complicated form of out-of-equilibrium behaviour: Hamiltonian chaos. This is the rst observation of chaotic behaviour in a Lewis signalling game.3 Since the system doesnt reach an equilibrium, information transfer is sustained indenitely. And thus, adaptive dynamics make communication possible in a zero-sum signalling game. Section 2 describes the framework of Lewis signalling games and the mathematical machinery necessary to quantify the informational content of a message in such a game. In Section 3, I describe the dynamics of Lewis signalling games in which the communicators have aligned preferences. Section 4 extends this framework to signalling games in which the interests of sender and receiver totally oppose. The game is zero-sum and contains best-response cycles similar to those found in rockpaperscissors. The dynamics of this game, including the deterministic chaos, is described in detail in Section 5. Lyapunov exponents are used to present strong numerical evidence that the dynamics are indeed chaotic. Section 6 spells out the consequences of such chaos for information transfer. It is found that information transfer in this system is partial and that the meaning of the signals uctuates as the dynamics unwind. Section 7 concludes.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Skyrms ([2002]) explores the ways in which preplay cheap talk can inuence the sizes of the basins of attraction of various equilibria in signalling games when the interests of the communicators are not perfectly aligned. Mitchener and Nowak ([2004]) have identied chaos in a different sort of language game. The chaos in their setup is due to mutation, not conicting payoffs.

550
1, 1 a1 m1 1 m2 a1 1, 1

Elliott O. Wagner
0, 0 a2 s1 2 N 2 a2 0, 0 a1 0, 0 0, 0 a1 s2 m1 1 m2 a2 1, 1 1, 1 a2

Figure 1. An extensive form representation of the standard Lewis signalling game with two states, two messages, and two actions.
Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

2 Lewis Signalling Games and Information Transfer

In this article, I examine a Lewis signalling game with modied payoffs. Lewis ([1969]) introduced signalling games to argue that language and semantic meaning could be the product of a self-sustaining convention. The standard Lewis signalling game involves two players: a sender and a receiver. Nature ips a coin to determine the state of the world. The sender witnesses the state of the world and then sends a message to the receiver. The receiver does not observe the state, but does observe the message sent by the sender. After observing the message, the receiver takes some action. Lewis assumed that each action is correct for exactly one state of the world, so that if the receiver performs the correct action for the state that obtained, then both players receive a payoff of one. Otherwise they both receive a payoff of zero. The senders pure strategies in such a game are functions that map states of nature into messages. Likewise, the receivers strategies are functions that map messages into actions. An extensive form representation of this game (with two states, two messages, and two actions) is shown in Figure 1. Table 1 shows a state-act payoff matrix for such a game. Every Lewis signalling game has several Nash equilibria. There are pooling equilibria in which the sender sends the same message regardless of the state and the receiver performs the same action regardless of message. Such strategy proles are Nash equilibria because neither player can gain by unilaterally deviating. And there are also separating equilibria in which the message precisely identies the state and the receiver always performs the proper action in the state that obtains. Lewis ([1969]) noted that at such separating equilibria (he called these states signalling systems) it appears that the messages have semantic meaning. For instance, if the players are using the separating strategies shown in Figure 2, it looks as though m1 means something like s1 has occured or take action a1. This sort of rudimentary semantic meaning has been called a pushmi-pullyu representation by Millikan ([1984]) and primitive content by Harms ([2004]). Since there are two signalling system

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

551

Table 1. A stateact payoff matrix for a standard three-state, three-message, and three-action Lewis signalling game a1 1, 1 0, 0 0, 0 a2 0, 0 1, 1 0, 0 a3 0, 0 0, 0 1, 1

s1 s2 s3

equilibria that are both equally effective at coordinating action yet use different signals for each state, Lewis argued that meaning here is conventional. Skyrms ([2010]) proposed a more technical notion of information content designed to make discussion of the evolution of semantic meaning more precise. A messages information content is just how the message affects probabilities.4 Since a signal may impact the probabilities of as many states as exist in whatever model is under consideration, informational content must therefore be a vector with components for each state of the world. For example, the information m1 contains about the state in a three-state, three-message, three-action signalling game is the vector: ( ! ! !) Prs1 jm1 Prs2 jm1 Prs3 jm1 Im1 log ; log ; log 1 Prs1 Prs2 Prs3 If the logarithms here are given in base two, then the informational content is yielded in bits. As an example, suppose that nature chooses between three equiprobable states and that the sender only sends message m1 in state s2. Then the informational content of message m1 is simply the vector: Im1 h1; 1:58; 1i 2

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

The 1 components indicate that the states have probability zero given that message m1 is sent.5 So from the informational content vector it is possible to read off the meaning of the signal. The negative innity components make it easy to see that the signal rules out states s1 and s3. Therefore, following Lewis
s1 s2 m1 m2 m1 m2 a1 a2

Figure 2. An example of a signalling system strategy prole. These two strategies constitute a strict Nash equilibrium in the standard Lewis signalling game.

The probabilities here can be either the probability that a certain state occurred (Skyrms calls this information about the state of nature) or the probability that the receiver will perform a certain action (information about the act). For brevity in this article, I focus on information about the state, but all of the ndings discussed below also extend to information about the act. The 1 is an artifact of taking the logarithm and not a reason to worry.

552

Elliott O. Wagner
s1 s2 s1 s2 m1 m2 m1 m2

Figure 3. Two sending strategies that transmit partial information about the state of the world when the sender mixes between them.

we can take the signal to mean something like s2 has occurred, which is appropriate given that this signal is only sent in state s2. The informational content of a signal is a vector, so in order to compute an overall measure of information in a message we can take a weighted average over the components in the vector. In other words, the overall quantity of information in signal m1 is equal to ! X Prsi jm1 Prsi jm1 log KLm1 3 Prsi i This quantity is often called the KullbackLeibler divergence or distance (Kullback and Leibler [1951]). Since receiving a signal is just like looking at the outcome of an experiment, this quantity is called the information provided by an experiment by Lindley ([1956]). The above information theoretic account of the meaning of a signal is necessary in order to discuss the partial information transfer that emerges in the models below. At separating equilibria it is easy to talk loosely about how the signals seem to have gained meaning. In fact, at separating equilibria it is as though the signals have propositional content; i.e. each signal can be understood as identifying a particular world from a set of possible worlds.6 But it is not always the case that messages in a signalling game have propositional content. For example, if the sender randomizes between several different strategies, the signals will only carry partial information about the state of nature. To make this precise, consider the two sending strategies in Figure 3. These are strategies for a signalling game with two messages and two states. If the sender ips a biased coin to decide which of these two strategies to use, then she will not perfectly communicate her private information to the receiver. This is because sometimes the sender will employ the rst signalling system that associates s1 with m1 and s2 with m2, and other times the sender will employ the second signalling system that associates a different message with each state. Suppose that the coin is biased so that the sender uses the rst strategy with probability 0.7 and the second strategy with probability 0.3.
6

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Skyrms ([2010]) argues that a considerable advantage of this information theoretic account of meaning is that it subsumes propositional content as a special case of the information content vector.

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

553

Information transfer here is not perfect, but since, for example, m1 is more likely to be sent when s1 is the case, this mixture of sending strategies does communicate some information. The information content of the messages is I(m1) < 0.485, 0.737> and I(m2) <0.737, 0.485>. To put an English gloss on the signals, m1 can be taken to mean something like s1 is probably the case and m2 conveys something like s2 is probably the case. Neither signal rules out either state, but each signal is more likely in one of the states than in the other. Therefore, the signals carry some information. Solving for the quantity of information in both messages conrms this fact. KL(m1) KL(m2) 0.119. Since the logarithms are taken to base two, this quantity is in bits. The amount of information in these messages is obviously greater than 0 bits, which is the quantity transmitted by the messages in an equilibrium in which messages do not have meaning. And it is also less than 1 bit, which is the quantity transferred by messages in a signalling system. Thus, the mixed strategy here is partially communicative. That is, the messages reveal some information, but do not completely identify the state of the world. The sort of situation described above is not special or unique. Almost all strategies in the senders entire mixed strategy space transmit partial information about the state. The illusion that messages in a signalling game either transmit information or do not is an artifact of a tendency to focus on pure strategies and strategies that form part of a Nash equilibrium. In mixed proles and many out-of-equilibrium strategy proles, messages carry partial information about the state. The dynamical systems investigated in Sections 4, 5, and 6 never reach pure strategy states and never reach equilibrium. Therefore, the information conveyed by the signals is always partial. The information-theoretic account of content described above is indispensable for investigating the emergence of partial communication in such systems.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

3 Evolution and Lewis Signalling Games

Following Lewis and Skyrms, we see that when players in a signalling game adopt certain strategy prolesnamely, signalling systemsthe messages convey information about the state of the world and it looks as though theyve gained some semantic meaning. In the standard Lewis signalling game, such strategy proles are Nash equilibria. Lewis argued that signalling systems are the unique rational solution to signalling games. To advance this point, he developed an equilibrium renement that he called a proper coordination equilibrium. But this equilibrium concept requires a lot from the actors in the game, for example common knowledge that every player expects every other player to conform to the equilibrium. What about simpler agents? Players that are only boundedly rational? Or agents that learn through some sort of na ve imitation? Or organisms that evolve their strategies through a

554

Elliott O. Wagner

process of frequency dependent selection? Since Lewis wrote Convention, there have been methods developed to address these questions. This section describes two such methodsevolutionarily stable strategies and the replicator dynamicand their applications to Lewis signalling games. Maynard Smith and Price ([1973]) proposed a renement, called an evolutionarily stable strategy or ESS, of Nash equilibria inspired by biological explanations of the limited wars seen in animal conicts. An ESS is a strategy such that if the entire population played it, a small number of mutants would always do worse against the population than the dominant type. This poor performance would drive the mutants extinct. More precisely, a strategy S is evolutionarily stable if for any other strategy M either: (1) u(S, S) > u(M, S), or (2) u(S, S) u(M, S) and u(S, M) > u(M, M) where u(a, b) is the payoff received by the player of strategy a when matched against a player of strategy b. When the game is asymmetric, this notion of an ESS is equivalent to that of a strict Nash equilibrium (Weibull [1997], Proposition 5.1). Wa rneryd ([1993]) and Skyrms ([1996]) noted that the only evolutionarily stable states of Lewis signalling games are the separating equilibria. This was the rst triumph of evolutionary game theory as applied to Lewis signalling games. If we buy Maynard Smith and Prices supposition that biological systems will be found in equilibrium at an ESS, then we see that meaning will evolve in Lewis signalling games. The second triumph of evolutionary game theory applied to Lewis signalling games originated from theories of adaptive dynamics. The replicator dynamic, which was introduced by Taylor and Jonker ([1978]), is a simple model of an asexually reproducing population. The story behind it is as follows. There is a large population of individuals and each individual uses the same pure strategy throughout her lifetime. Additionally, each individual produces offspring which faithfully inherit their parents strategy, so that the uctuations in each strategys frequency within the population is just given by the rates at which the users of each strategy reproduce. Since this is a game dynamic, the simplest assumption is that the tness of each strategy type is just that types expected payoff when matched against a randomly chosen member of the population. In other words, the tness of type i is just (Ax)i where A is the payoff matrix of the game and x is a vector in which the j-th component gives the frequency of type j in the population. If we assume that in time t each individual spawns (Ax)it additional individuals, then (as t is taken to zero) the continuous time dynamic equation becomes _ i xi Axi x Ax x

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

555

This dynamic has a tight connection to Maynard Smith and Prices evolutionarily stable states: any ESS is an attractor of the one-population replicator dynamic. The derivation of the replicator dynamic can be extended to asymmetric games by increasing the number of populations (with one population for each player role). The two population replicator dynamic, which is used extensively throughout the sections below, is given by the differential equations _ i xi Ayi x Ay x h i _ j yj Bxj y Bx y
Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

In the multi-population replicator dynamic, a state is asymptotically stable if and only if it is a strict Nash equilibrium (Weibull [1997], Propostion 5.13). In addition to its popularity as a simple model of biological evolution, the replicator dynamic is also often employed to model social learning and cultural evolution. In fact, many different models of social learning have been shown to yield the replicator dynamic (see, e.g. Binmore et al. [1995]; Bjo rnerstedt and Weibull [1996]; Schlag [1998]). One such model works as follows. As before, suppose there are one or more large populations of individuals. As time passes, individuals are randomly offered opportunities to adjust their strategies. These individuals revise by picking a player at random and then imitating this players strategy only if this players expected payoff is higher than her own and carrying out this imitation with probability proportional to the payoff difference. This imitation protocol, called pairwise proportional imitation by Schlag ([1998]), generates the replicator dynamic as its aggregate behaviour. Although the replicator dynamic may not be the whole story on either biological or cultural evolution, it surely provides a natural starting point for investigation. Skyrms ([1996]) observed that every computer simulation of a population playing the standard Lewis signalling game with two states and evolving according to the discrete-time replicator dynamic converges to a separating equilibrium. In other words, meaning and perfect information transfer is guaranteed to spontaneously emerge under the discrete-time replicator dynamic. Figure 4 illustrates this creation of information. The replicator dynamic carries the system to a separating equilibrium, and along the way the messages gain informational content. Huttegger ([2007]) provided an analytic proof of the same fact with respect to the replicator dynamic: almost all initial population states evolve to separating equilibria.7
7

This brief survey of the dynamics of signalling games necessarily obscures many interesting complications. For example, if the states are not equiprobable then there is a nonnegligible chance that the system will evolve to a pooling equilibrium in which there is no information transfer. Additionally, if there are more than two states, there is a non-negligible chance that the system will evolve to a pooling equilibrium in which some information is conveyed by the

556
KL m1 1.5

Elliott O. Wagner

1.0

0.5

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

10

20

30

40

50

Figure 4. The creation of information by the replicator dynamic in a three-state, three-message, and three-action Lewis signalling game.

So things look pretty good for the evolution or emergence of meaning in standard Lewis signalling games. The only ESSs are separating equilibria. And in two-state games with equiprobable states, the replicator dynamic guarantees convergence to these separating equilibria. We see how it is that terms can naturally acquire semantic meaning through a mindless process of biological evolution or cognitively na ve social learning, at least when the two parties share an interest in communicating.

4 Signalling Games with Opposing Interests

The standard Lewis signalling thats been under consideration thus far presumes a very strong common interest. This strong common interest is readily evident in the state-act payoffs shown in Table 1. Both players receive identical payoffs in each stateact combination (these stateact combinations are the leaves of the extensive-form game tree). But there is no reason to suppose that real-life communication interactions are like this. In fact, there is reason to suspect that senders and receivers rarely have identical interests. Think of bacteria sending signals that cause their neighbours to produce and secrete an extracellular enzyme that digests protein so that the bacteria can consume the digested nutrients. A bacterium sending the signal has an opportunity to freeride by inducing his neighbour to pay the metabolic cost for creating the enzyme but then reaping the reward of absorbing the nutrients (Keller and
messages, but that two or more states are pooled together. For explorations of these and other issues, see (Huttegger [2007]; Pawlowitsch [2008]; Huttegger et al. [2010]; Barrett and Zollman [2009]; Wagner [2009]; Skyrms [2010]).

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

557

Table 2. A stateact payoff matrix for a modied version of a Lewis signalling game with totally opposed payoffs a1 1, 1 1, 1  ,  a2 ,  1, 1 1, 1 a3 1, 1  ,  1, 1

s1 s2 s3

These stateact payoffs yield a zero-sum signalling game.

Surette [2006]). Or think of stomatopods settling conicts over nesting areas by displaying colored spots on the undersides of their raptorial appendages (Dingle [1969]). Signalers may gain by signalling an exaggerated ghting ability.8 Or think of Harris sparrows that signal their position in the dominance hierarchy by the size of their black chest markings. Since more dominant sparrows have increased access to food and mates, senders may gain by displaying a larger bib than they deserve (Rohwer [1975]). Or think of used car salesmen. In any case, there is no a priori reason to assume the interests of potential communicators must be aligned. In this article, I investigate an extreme form of opposed interests. The setup is the same as a three-state, three-message, and three-act Lewis signalling game, but the stateact payoffs are altered so that the game is zero-sum. Any gain by the sender is a loss to the receiver and vice versa. Interests here are as opposed as possible. The stateact payoff is shown in Table 2. Notice that this stateact payoff has a parameter , which can range from 0 to 1. This parameter determines the payoffs in the stateact outcomes that are intermediate between a win and a loss for both players. If  0, then neither player does better than the other in these outcomes. But when  > 0, then the sender reaps some reward at the receivers expense. In the next section, I explore the dynamics of this game as this parameter is varied. Since this is a three-state, three-message, and three-act signalling game, the players strategy spaces are fairly complex. Since pure strategies in a signalling game are functions mapping states to messages and messages to actions and there are 33 27 such functions, each players strategy space is the 26-dimensional simplex 27. But despite the high dimensionality of the state space, some features of the game are easy to see. For one, separating strategies (i.e. Lewiss signalling systems) are not Nash equilibria. Heres why: Imagine that the sender and receiver have adopted a perfectly communicative
8

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

In fact, stomatopods continue to perform meral spread displays even after a molt, when their exoskeleton is still hardening and their ghting ability is dramatically diminished. For this reason, the display is sometimes considered a paradigm example of a deceptive signal (Searcy and Nowicki [2005], ch. 4).

558

Elliott O. Wagner

signalling system strategy prole. Suppose this strategy prole stipulates sending message m1 when s1 occurs and performing action a1 upon receipt of message m1. This situation is great from the receivers point of view (she earns her highest payoff when performing a1 in s1), but the sender would prefer that the receiver perform action a3 in state s1. Consequently, the sender has an incentive to deviate from this strategy prole so that in s1 she sends whichever message causes the receiver to perform a3. Since the sender has an incentive to deviate from any separating prole, no separating strategy prole can be a Nash equilibrium. It is also easy to see that this game has many Nash equilibria. For example heres one. The sender always sends messages m1 regardless of the state that obtains. And the receiver always chooses action a1 regardless of the message received. This is a Nash equilibrium because neither player has an incentive to deviate. The sender doesnt have such an incentive because her messages are ignored. And the receiver has no incentive because the messages dont carry any information about the state of the world. Another fact is that the Nash equilibria of this game consist of strategy proles in which the messages do not carry useful information. The reason is easy to see. If the messages were informative, then the receiver would be able to use that information to increase her odds of choosing the action that she most prefers for that state. But since this game is zero-sum, any increase in expected payoff for the receiver is a decrease to the expected payoff for the sender. Therefore, messages sent in equilibrium must not be informative. It is for this reason that researchers interested in the theoretical foundations of strategic signalling have thought that communication is impossible in zero-sum games. Separating proles are not Nash equilibria and at Nash equilibria signals do not transmit information. Consequently, when interests slightly diverge, researchers must hypothesize mechanisms (e.g. signal cost or reputation in repeated interactions) that make deception too costly to pay off. And when interests are totally opposed (as in this zero-sum signalling interaction), conventional wisdom says that communication is impossible. But this judgement is too quick. As is shown below, once we look beyond static equilibrium analysis we see that adaptive dynamics can allow persistent information transfer.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

5 Dynamics of Zero-Sum Signalling Games

As reviewed in Section 3 above, the replicator dynamic always carries populations playing a standard Lewis signalling game to an equilibrium. But standard Lewis signalling games are games of common interest. What happens to the dynamics when the players are playing the game of completely conicting interests described above in Section 4? Immediately, we know that the

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

S1 : s1 s2 s3 S2 : s1 s2 s3 S3 : s1 s2 s3 m1 m2 m3 m1 m2 m3 m1 m2 m3 R1 : m1 m2 m3 R2 : m1 m2 m3 R3 : m1 m2 m3 a1 a2 a3 a1 a2 a3 a1 a2 a3

559

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Figure 5. The three sending and three receiving strategies that yield rockpaper scissors payoffs in the signalling game with the stateact payoffs shown in Table 2.

replicator dynamic cannot converge to a stable state in which the messages convey information. This is because the replicator dynamic only converges to Nash equilibria (Weibull [1997], Proposition 3.5), and we know from Section 4 that Nash equilibria here are states in which the messages are necessarily meaningless. But what about out-of-equilibrium information transfer? This section will explore the out-of-equilibrium behaviour of this signalling game. Since both the sender and receiver choose from 33 27 strategies, the replicator dynamics live in the 52-dimensional space 27 27. Unfortunately it is difcult to analyze this high-dimensional space directly. So to get a handle on the dynamics, lets start by looking at the behaviour on some lower dimensional faces of the entire phase space. Faces are forward-invariant under the replicator dynamic, so the behaviour of these smaller systems remains the same as it is in the larger system. Additionally, because the dynamic is smooth, the interior of phase space is a combination of the behaviours on the faces. So by analyzing the dynamics in these smaller faces we can gain insight into the behaviour of the entire 52-dimensional system. Lets start by considering the 4-dimensional space (3 3) composed of the sending and receiving strategies shown in Figure 5.9 Each of these strategies, which are labeled S1, S2, S3 and R1, R2, R3 for convenience, are half of a fully communicative signalling system. If the sender and receiver use a signalling system strategy prole, then action ai is always performed in state si. Remember from the payoffs in the signalling game with totally opposed interests (shown in Table 2), that this guarantees the receivers preferred payoff. But since this is a zero-sum game, any gain by the receiver is a loss to the
9

This space is 4-dimensional because it contains two populations of three types each. The frequencies of each type in a population must sum to one, so each population lives on a 2-dimensional simplex. Thus, the whole system is 4-dimensional.

560

Elliott O. Wagner

Table 3. The normal form game that results from taking the expected payoffs to the strategies shown in Figure 5 when the three states of nature are equiprobable R1 1, 1  ,  1, 1 R2 1, 1 1, 1  ,  R3  ,  1, 1 1, 1

S1 S2 S3

These are the payoffs of a two player asymmetric rockpaperscissors game.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

sender. The sender would prefer that action ai1 be performed in state si. Therefore, if the receiver is using one of the strategies Ri in Figure 5, then the sender would prefer to use the sending strategy Si1. Such a strategy prole will guarantee the sender her most preferred outcome. The above description is a little dense, but the upshot is that these six strategies lead to best-response cycles like the following: Suppose the sender plays S1. Then the receivers best response is to play R1. But if the receiver plays R1, the senders best response is to play S3. But if the sender plays S3, the receivers best response is to play R3. And so on. Such best response cycles are the hallmark of rockpaperscissors. Indeed, if we assume that the three states of nature are equiprobable, then the normal form game yielded by the expected payoffs of the extensive form signalling game is exactly rockpaper scissors. This resulting normal form game is shown in Table 3. This game has a single Nash equilibrium. At this equilibrium both players mix uniformly over their three strategies. Conveniently, the behaviour of the two population replicator dynamic in this exact rockpaperscissors game has been studied by Sato et al. ([2002]). These authors found that the resulting dynamical system is incredibly complex. In fact, it is so complex that for certain parameter values the system exhibits Hamiltonian chaos.10 There is no universally accepted denition of dynamical chaos, but in a fairly representative quote, Strogatz ([1994]) denes chaos as aperiodic long-term behaviour in a deterministic system that exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This system (described in detail below) fullls all three criteria and is additionally Hamiltonian (Hofbauer [1996]). Hamiltonian systems have no attractors, and thus any particular orbit can be either chaotic or quasi-periodic. Since this system is 4-dimensional it is difcult to visualize. To get a feel for the dynamics, I will numerically integrate11 some initial conditions for various
10

11

To my knowledge, Sato et al. ([2002]) were the rst to note Hamiltonian chaos in the replicator dynamic. For strange attractors in the one population replicator dynamic, see (Skyrms [1992]). All numerical integrations are performed using Mathematicas fourth-order symplectic partitioned Runge Kutta method.

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

561

Figure 6. Two time series illustrating the evolution of the initial condition (x1, x2, x3, y1, y2, y3) (0.5, 0.01, 0.49, 0.5, 0.25, 0.25) when  0.0. This trajectory is quasi-periodic.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Figure 7. The evolution of the two populations beginning from the starting state (x1, x2, x3, y1, y2, y3) (0.5, 0.01, 0.49, 0.5, 0.25, 0.25) when  0.0. This orbit is quasi-periodic.

values of . One way to visualize these solutions is to look at time-series data. Figure 6 shows the evolution of the population frequencies of one initial condition when  0.0. This initial condition leads what looks to be a quasi-period trajectory. Another way to visualize the system follows from the fact that it is composed of two populations, each with three strategies. A three-strategy population lives on the 2-dimensional simplex 3. So it is possible to chart the movement of the population states on two 2-dimensional simplexes (one for each population). These charts, which make the quasiperiodic structure of the orbit quite conspicuous, are shown in Figure 7. But by increasing  this orbits structure appears to change. Figure 8 shows the systems behaviour starting from the same initial condition but with  0.5. The time series demonstrate that the uctuations in population frequencies appear aperiodic and unpredictable. And the charts showing the

562

Elliott O. Wagner

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Figure 8. The evolution of the system beginning from the initial condition (x1, x2, x3, y1, y2, y3) (0.5, 0.01, 0.49, 0.5, 0.25, 0.25) when  0.5. This orbit is chaotic.

evolution of the two populations no longer exhibit regular quasi-periodic structure. Instead, the population frequencies look like they meander randomly over the entire simplexes. These features suggest that this same initial condition leads to a chaotic trajectory with  0.5. sections allow us to get another look at the dynamics of this Poincare sections system. Following Sato et al. ([2002]), Figure 9 shows three Poincare for the values  0.00, 0.25, 0.5, and the initial conditions x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; y1 ; y2 ; y3 0:5; 0:01k; 0:5 0:01k; 0:5; 0:25; 0:25 with k 1, 2, . . . , 25. These images show the points where the trajectories originating from these twenty-ve initial conditions intersect the hyperplane x2 x1 + y2 y1 0.12 When  0, these numerical integrations indicate that the system is not chaotic. The trajectories appear to be quasi-periodic. However, when  > 0 it is easy to see the creation of chaotic orbits. As  is sections show that some quasi-period varied from 0 to 0.5, these Poincare trajectories collapse and become chaotic. As is shown in Figure 9 below, these chaotic trajectories cover a larger region of strategy space than their
12

This particular hyperplane was chosen due to the fact that all of these twenty-ve orbits intersect it, but it is not unique in this respect.

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

563

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

sections at x2 x1 + y2 y1 0 for the 4-dimensional face conFigure 9. Poincare sisting of the six strategies shown in Figure 5. Moving from the top downwards are the maps for the system with parameter  0.0, 0.25, 0.5. These maps show that as  is increased quasi-period orbits become chaotic.

564

Elliott O. Wagner

Table 4. Lyapunov exponents () for the initial conditions (x1, x2, x3, y1, y2, y3) (0.5, 0.01k, 0.5 0.01k, 0.5, 0.25, 0.25) with k 1, 2, 3, 4, 5  0.0  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 k1 +1.1 +0.2 0.5 0.8 +49.1 +0.3 0.2 49.1 +61.5 +0.6 0.5 61.4 2 +1.4 +0.4 0.4 1.2 +35.2 +0.3 0.1 35.4 +34.9 +0.3 0.4 35.7 3 +0.4 +0.3 0.3 0.4 +16.5 +0.4 0.4 16.4 +28.0 +0.1 0.2 27.9 4 +0.4 +0.3 0.3 0.4 +0.4 +0.2 0.2 0.4 +12.0 +0.0 0.1 12.1 5 +0.4 +0.3 0.3 0.4 +0.4 +0.3 0.3 0.4 +0.2 +0.2 0.2 0.3

0.25

0.50

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

The Lyapunov exponents in this chart have been multiplied by 103. The positive Lyapunov exponents indicate chaotic trajectories. These Lyapunov exponents are shown in boldface.

quasi-periodic counterparts. And, as is expected by systems exhibiting Hamiltonian chaos, quasi-periodic and chaotic orbits are nely interwoven, meaning that a quasi-periodic orbit can be found arbitrarily close to any chaotic orbit (Lichtenberg and Lieberman [1983]). To numerically demonstrate that these orbits are in fact chaotic, it is possible to compute their Lyapunov exponents.13 These exponents can be thought of as generalizations of the eigenvalues of the Jacobian matrix of a system that remain well dened for chaotic dynamics. A system exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions if the distance between the trajectories originating from one point and another innitesimally close to it increase exponentially with time. Lyapunov exponents quantify this sensitivity. A positive Lyapunov exponent indicates a direction of local exponential expansion. A negative Lyapunov exponent indicates a direction of local exponential contraction. An orbit has as many Lyapunov exponents as the dynamical system has dimensions. A positive Lyapunov exponent is one of the hallmarks of a chaotic orbit (see Strogatz [1994] for an introduction to Lyapunov exponents). Lyapunov exponents for ve initial conditions are shown in Table 4 for each of  0.0, 0.25, 0.5. The largest Lyapunov exponent is clearly positive for some of the orbits when  0.25 and  0.5. This presents very strong numerical evidence that the orbits are indeed chaotic. An indication of the accuracy of these numerical computations can be obtained in two ways.
13

All Lyapunov exponents were computed in Mathematica using an algorithm adapted from Sandri ([1996]). Integration was performed to t 10,000 with an accuracy of 1011.

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

565

First, by comparison with the results of Sato et al. ([2002]). Sato et al. computed these same Lyapunov exponents and their results match my own at least to a factor of 104. Second, it is possible to compare the computed values with some general facts about the Lyapunov exponents of Hamiltonian systems. Since volume is conserved in Hamiltonian systems and the Lyapunov exponents measure the expansion and contraction of an orbit, these Lyapunov exponents should sum to zero. This is true of these calculated exponents up to 104. Additionally, the second and third exponents should sum to zero. This is also true up to 104. So, the dynamics of this 4-dimensional system are incredibly complex. And these three sending and three receiving strategies represent only half of the signalling system strategies available to the players in the full signalling game. When paired against each other these other six separating strategies form best-response cycles just like those weve been investigating thus far. And taking the expected payoffs to these other six strategies yields a normal form representation that is identical to the one shown in Table 3. Since the payoff matrices are identical, the dynamics on this other four dimension face will also be identical. Consequently, the entire phase space has two disjoint 4-dimensional faces that display chaotic behaviour. Since movement inside the interior of the system is determined by movement on the faces, the dynamics of the entire 52-dimensional system must be very complex indeed! Since the entire system is very high dimensional, it is obviously difcult to visualize. But, as before, we can numerically integrate the evolution of individual initial conditions and can compute Lyapunov exponents. Figure 10 shows the behaviour of an initial condition that is inside the interior of phase space but is near its boundary14 (the three signalling system strategies from above dominate the population). The four frequencies shown in these time series are the rst four signalling system strategies from Figure 5. Its clear from the time series that these orbits are quasi-periodic. This intuition is conrmed by the computation of the orbits Lyapunov exponents. The highest exponent is .0014 (a spurious zero). On the other hand, Figure 11 shows the evolution of the same initial condition when  is increased from 0.0 to 0.5. The trajectorys aperiodic behaviour is demonstrated by the seemingly random jumps in frequency. And, as before, sensitive dependence on initial conditions is demonstrated by running the numerical integration and then taking a second point that is very close to the current location of the rst trajectory (the rst sending strategy is increased in frequency by 106 and the other twenty-six sending strategies are decreased
14

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

The three sending strategies from Figure 5 have frequencies 0.1k, .49 .01k, and .5. The other 24 sending strategies are each initialized with frequency 1=2400. The three receiving strategies from Figure 5 have frequencies 0.25, 0.24, and 0.5. And the other twenty-four receiving strategies are each initialized with frequency 1=2400.

566
x6 1.0

Elliott O. Wagner
y6 1.0

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0 x16 1.0

50

100

150

200

0 y16 1.0

50

100

150

200

0.8

0.8

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

50

100

150

200

50

100

150

200

Figure 10. Charts showing the evolution of the initial condition described in footnote 14 when  0.0 and k 1. This trajectory is quasi-periodic. The strategies shown are the rst two sending strategies and rst two receiving strategies from Figure 5.

Figure 11. Charts showing the evolution of the initial condition described in footnote 14 when  0.5 and k 1. The strategies shown are the rst two sending strategies and rst two receiving strategies from Figure 5.

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

567

Figure 12. These charts illustrate the sensitive dependence on initial conditions when  0.5. The solid line shows the evolution of the initial condition described above. The dashed line shows the evolution of an alternative initial condition taken by slightly perturbing the original orbit at t 150. The strategies shown are the rst sending strategy and rst receiving strategy from Figure 5.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Table 5. The maximal Lyapunov exponents (max) for the initial conditions described in footnote 14 with k 1, 2, 3  0.0 0.25 0.50  max max max k1 1.44 30.4 69.7 k2 1.98 46.7 38.9 k3 1.85 15.3 11.8

This Lyapunov exponents in this chart have been multiplied by 103. The positive Lyapunov exponents indicate chaotic trajectories. These exponents are shown in boldface.

uniformly to compensate). As demonstrated in Figure 12. The two initial conditions diverge very quickly, indicating local exponential expansion. And again, the intuition that this orbit is chaotic is conrmed through the numerical calculation of its Lyapunov exponents. The largest exponent is 0.0688, which is clearly positive and an indication of chaos. Lyapunov exponents are more systematically calculated for three initial conditions as  is varied in Table 5. Just as was found on the systems 4-dimensional rockpaperscisssors faces, several of these initial conditions lead to chaotic trajectories (as indicated by their positive Lyapunov exponents) as  is increased from 0.0 to 0.5. In summary, the dynamics of the signalling game with totally opposed interests never brings the populations to equilibrium. Instead, the populations remain out-of-equilibrium in either quasi-periodic or chaotic orbits.

6 Deterministic Chaos and Information Transfer

The previous section showed that the dynamics of the signalling game with opposed interests can be chaotic. This section explores this facts consequences for the possibility of communication in zero-sum games.

568

Elliott O. Wagner

Recall that the equilibria of this game are uncommunicative. That is, messages sent by players at an equilibrium necessarily do not convey information. But the dynamics here do not bring the system to equilibrium. The system has no attractors. Instead of approaching a rest point, orbits traverse phase space indenitely. Therefore, the fact that messages in equilibrium do not transmit information is irrelevant. Instead we must look for information transfer along these non-convergent trajectories. Fortunately, to investigate out-of-equilibrium information transfer here, we can simply apply the information-theoretic account of meaning developed by Skyrms ([2010]) (as outlined in Section 2 above). At the initial conditions specied above in footnote 14 with k 1, the information content vector of signal m1 is approximately <4.64, 0.59, 0.54>. None of the components of this vector are 1, so none of the states are ruled out by the signal. But just the same, the signal does convey information about the state. The rst entry is negative. This is because state s1 is unlikely to be the case given that the signal m1 is sent. The value of Pr(s1Wm1) is approximately 0.013. On the other hand, the second and third entries are positive. This means that states s2 and s3 are likely when m1 is sent. And indeed they are. The values are Pr(s2Wm1) & 0.503 and Pr(s3Wm1) & 0.483. To put an English gloss on the information content one might say that signal m1 indicates something along the lines of probably not s1. But the English gloss is not the important point here. What is important is that although the system is not in equilibrium and although the messages may not perfectly communicate the state, the messages do indeed transfer information. Furthermore, as the dynamics unwind, this partial communication is not eliminated. Recall that the trajectory beginning at this initial condition is chaotic. Consequently, the systems state wanders unpredictably throughout phase space. And as the state evolves the information content of the messages changes. For example, at t 10 the information content vector of signal m1 is <0.64, 0.42, 3.23>. The English gloss for this information content vector would be something like probably not s3. But once again the gloss is not too important. What is important is that the signal still conveys information and, as the system evolves, the meanings of the signals change. This information uctuation of signal m1 is shown in Figure 13. But because the state never reaches any of the equilibria, the messages never lose all meaning. At some times the messages may be more informative than at other times, but the messages never cease to transmit information. Trajectories in this system clearly do not converge to equilibria. One branch of literature (see Fudenberg and Levine [1998]) downplays the importance of non-convergent dynamics by arguing that learning or evolutionary models

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

KL m1

569

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Figure 13. The quantity of information conveyed by signal m1 (as measured by the KullbackLeibler divergence) as the system evolves from t 0 to 150. Logarithms are taken to base 2 so information transmission is measured in bits.  0.5 and the initial conditions are given in footnote 14 above.

that fail to converge are not plausible models of natural behaviour. For example:
Our argument here is that the learning models that have been studied so far do not do full justice to the ability of people to recognize patterns of behaviour by others. Consequently, when learning models fail to converge, the behaviour of the models individuals is typically quite naive; for example, the players may ignore the fact that the model is locked in to a persistent cycle. We suspect that if the cycles persist long enough, the agents will eventually use more sophisticated inference rules that detect them; for this reason we are not convinced that models of cycles in learning are useful descriptions of actual behaviour. (Fudenberg and Levine [1998], p. 3)

The thought is that actors with even crude abilities to learn will gure out when their opponents are choosing their strategies according to a pattern. Once the pattern is learned, the agent will be able to exploit it. This exploitation will break the cycles and (arguably) drive the system to equilibrium. The importance of the chaotic trajectories in this system is that it makes such pattern learning and exploitation impossible. Along orbits with a positive Lyapunov exponent, local expansion is exponential. This makes prediction impossible because any slight error in estimation of the states current position will be magnied exponentially. In particular, since this is a signalling game, it is impossible to predict the future meaning or information content of the messages. The sensitive dependence of meaning on initial conditions and the impossibility of the prediction of the future informational content of a signal

570
KL m1 1.0

Elliott O. Wagner

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

200

220

240

260

280

300

320

Figure 14. An illustration of the sensitivity of meaning on initial conditions. This chart shows the quantity of information conveyed by signal m1 along two nearby trajectories. The solid line shows information from the orbit beginning at the initial conditions above. The dashed line shows information from an orbit with the initial conditions given by slightly perturbing the location of the rst orbit in phase space at t 180.  0.5.

is illustrated in Figure 14. If prediction of the future state and message meaning is impossible, then it is also impossible to use historical information about past play to exploit the receivers behaviour.15 Therefore, the out-ofequilibrium play and the partial information transmitted by the messages are both sustained indenitely. One could call this sort of partial communication when interests conict an example of deception. Searcy and Nowicki ([2005]) say deception occurs when (1) A receiver registers something Y from a signaler; (2) The receiver responds in such a way that (a) Benets the signaler and (b) Is appropriate if Y means X; and (3) It is not true that X is the case. Many of the signals sent in the system described here t this description of deception.16 Suppose the system is in the state described above in which the information content vector of signal m1 is <4.64, 0.59, 0.54>. The English gloss for this vector would be something like s1 is probably not the case.
15

16

This argument is made with respect to chaotic dynamics in the rockpaperscissors game by Sato et al. ([2002]). In fact, these signals qualify as deception according to all information-based accounts of deception. See (Skyrms [2010]).

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

571

But all strategy types are present in this population, so there exists a small quantity of senders who always send signal m1 regardless of the true state of the world. Consider such a sender matched with a receiver who performs a3 upon receipt of m1. Suppose Nature ips its fair coin and the state of the world is s1. This sender then sends message m1 which indicates s1 is not the case even though it is the true state of the world. And the receivers action is appropriate if s1 is not the case. And furthermore, the sender benets from this encounter. This ts the above denition of deception. But what is notable about this system isnt that deception occurs. Whats important is that any information transfer is happening at all. There is no information transfer at this games equilibria. Deception is parasitic upon information transfer, so standard equilibrium analysis would predict that deception is impossible in this zero-sum signalling game. In fact, the commonsense intuition here is that the threat of deception will drive the system to an uncommunicative equilibrium. But due to the sustained out-of-equilibrium behaviour, information transfer is made possible and deception comes along with it. The occurrence of chaos in such a simple signalling game suggests that one ought not assume that real people or real biological organisms will learn or evolve to play Nash equilibrium strategies. And in signalling games this means that partial information transfer can be sustained indenitely in out-ofequilibrium play. Furthermore, this means that, contrary to common wisdom, informative communication can be sustained in zero-sum games in which messages are free and the actors interests are totally opposed.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

7 Conclusion
It is tempting to think that meaningful communication requires the sender and receiver in a signalling interaction to share some overlapping common interest. After all, if the sender has nothing to gain by conveying information to the receiver, why should we think that she will send meaningful messages? And this commonsense hypothesis has been conrmed by scientists and philosophers seeking to understand strategic communication from a game theoretic point of view. These researchers have focused on the equilibria of signalling games (either simple Nash equilibria or a renement like ESS), and their static equilibrium analysis seems to have vindicated common wisdom. The equilibria of games when interests totally oppose are indeed uncommunicative; messages in these equilibria do not transmit any information. However, life is not always lived at an equilibrium. By focusing on static analysis, researchers have overlooked another explanation of the emergence of communication: non-convergent adaptive dynamics. The dynamical system investigated above shows that even in the worst case for communicationa zero-sum strategic interactioninformation

572

Elliott O. Wagner

transmission is sustained indenitely by the replicator dynamic. The key to the persistence of this out-of-equilibrium information transfer is deterministic chaos. If the trajectories formed closed periodic cycles or even easily predictable quasi-periodic orbits, the system would not be a plausible model of robust out-of-equilibrium biological evolution or cultural learning. Any perturbation to the system or any agent with a little talent for pattern recognition would break the cycles and perhaps send the system to equilibrium. But the unpredictability of deterministic chaos entails that such prediction is impossible. So we see how communication can be maintained by non-convergent, out-of-equilibrium play. But the sort of communication that emerges is perhaps not what was expected. At the ESS of signalling games, information transfer is often perfect; that is, the message sent uniquely identies the state of nature. In contrast, the out-of-equilibrium information transfer in the signalling game with totally opposed interests is not perfect. Messages have meaning, at least when meaning is cached out as informational content in the sense of Skyrms ([2010]). And the messages convey a positive quantity of information, at least when the quantity of information is spelled out as the KullbackLeiber divergence. Nonetheless, the messages do not uniquely identify a single state of the world. Nor do they conclusively rule out any states. Instead, the messages simply indicate that some states are more likely to have occurred than other states. This is true information transfer, but it is not the precise information transfer that one nds at a separating equilibrium. This ndingthat partial communication with costless messages can be sustained when interests are totally opposedhas two important consequences for research into the game theoretic foundations of communication. First, it demonstrates the weakness of static equilibrium analysis as a methodology for understanding strategic communication. Real-life agents do not only play equilibria. Whether evolving or learning, agents have to nd their ways to equilibria. Sometimes they may not always make it. But even if they do reach an equilibrium, static analysis is of no use in understanding the system before it gets there. Thus, static analysis necessarily leaves out part of the story. Second, this research shows the importance of partial information transfer. Philosophers and scientists may have a tendency to think about meaning or communication as all or nothing. But information transmission cuts deeper than that. Signals can have informational content without perfectly communicating the state of nature. And signals can be behaviourally important, i.e. they can inuence the receivers actions (as above), without precisely identifying a state or set of states. To understand the impact of partial information transfer, researchers need to look beyond separating equilibria to mixed strategies or polymorphic populations.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

573

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Brian Skyrms, Simon Huttegger, and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science School of Social Sciences 3151 Social Science Plaza A University of California, Irvine CA 92697-5100, USA elliottw@uci.edu
Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

References
Barrett, J. and Zollman, K. J. S. [2009]: The Role of Forgetting in the Evolution and Learning of Language, Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Articial Intelligence, 21, pp. 293309. Binmore, K., Gale, J. and Samuelson, L. [1995]: Learning to be Imperfect: The Ultimatum Game, Games and Economic Behavior, 8, pp. 5690. Bjo rnerstedt, J. and Weibull, J. [1996]: Nash Equilibrium and Evolution by Imitation, in K. Arrow, E. Colombatto, M. Perlman and C. Schmidt (eds), The Rational Foundations of Economic Behaviour, Hampshire, England: Macmillan, pp. 15571. Cho, I. and Kreps, D. M. [1987]: Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 102, pp. 179221. Crawford, V. P. and Sobel, J. [1982]: Strategic Information Transmission, Econometrica, 50, pp. 143151. Dingle, H. [1969]: A Statistical and Information Analysis of Aggressive Communication in the Mantis Shrimp Gonodactylus bredini Manning, Animal Behaviour, 17, pp. 56175. Farrell, J. and Rabin, M. [1996]: Cheap Talk, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10, pp. 10318. Franke, M., de Jager, T. and van Rooij, R. [2009]: Relevance in Cooperation and Conict, Journal of Logic and Computation, doi:10.1093/logcom/exp070. Advance Access Published on November 6, 2009. Fudenberg, D. and Levine, D. K. [1998]: The Theory of Learning in Games, Boston: The MIT Press. Grafen, A. [1990]: Biological Signals as Handicaps, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 144, pp. 51746. Harms, W. F. [2004]: Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hofbauer, J. [1996]: Evolutionary Dynamics for Bimatrix Games: A Hamiltonian System? Journal of Mathematical Biology, 34, pp. 67588. Huttegger, S. [2007]: Evolution and the Explanation of Meaning, Philosophy of Science, 74, pp. 127.

574

Elliott O. Wagner

Huttegger, S., Skyrms, B., Smead, R. and Zollman, K. [2010]: Evolutionary Dynamics of Lewis Signaling Games: Signaling Systems vs. Partial Pooling, Synthese, 172, pp. 17791. Keller, L. and Surette, M. G. [2006]: Communication in Bacteria: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective, Nature Reviews Microbiology, 4, pp. 24958. Kullback, S. and Leibler, A. [1951]: On Information and Sufciency, Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 22, pp. 7986. Lewis, D. [1969]: Convention, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lichtenberg, A. J. and Lieberman, M. A. [1983]: Regular and Stochastic Motion, New York: Springer. Lindley, D. [1956]: On a Measure of the Information Provided by an Experiment, The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 27, pp. 9861005. Maynard Smith, J. and Harper, D. [2003]: Animal Signals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maynard Smith, J. and Price, G. R. [1973]: The Logic of Animal Conict, Nature, 246, pp. 158. Millikan, R. G. [1984]: Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories, Cambridge: MIT Press. Mitchener, W. G. and Nowak, M. A. [2004]: Chaos and Language, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 271, pp. 7014. Parikh, P. [2001]: The Uses of Language, Stanford: CSLI Publications. Pawlowitsch, C. [2008]: Why Evolution does not always Lead to an Optimal Signaling System, Games and Economic Behavior, 63, pp. 20326. Rohwer, S. [1975]: The Social Signicance of Avian Winter Plumage Variability, Evolution, 29, pp. 593610. Sandri, M. [1996]: Numerical Calculation of Lyapunov Exponents, The Mathematica Journal, 6, pp. 7884. Sato, Y., Akiyama, E. and Farmer, J. D. [2002]: Chaos in Learning a Simple Two-Person Game, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, pp. 474851. Schlag, K. H. [1998]: Why Imitate, and If So, How? A Boundedly Rational Approach to Multi-Armed Bandits, Journal of Economic Theory, 78, pp. 13056. Searcy, W. A. and Nowicki, S. [2005]: The Evolution of Animal Communication: Reliability and Deception in Signaling Systems, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Skyrms, B. [1992]: Chaos and the Explanatory Signicance of Equilibrium: Strange Attractors in Evolutionary Game Theory, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 2, pp. 374394. Skyrms, B. [1996]: Evolution and the Social Contract, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skyrms, B. [2002]: Signals, Evolution, and the Explanatory Power of Transient Information, Philosophy of Science, 69, pp. 40728. Skyrms, B. [2010]: Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013

Deterministic Chaos and the Evolution of Meaning

575

Spence, M. [1973]: Job Market Signaling, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87, pp. 35574. Stalnaker, R. [2005]: Saying and Meaning, Cheap Talk, and Credibility, in A. Benz, G. Ja ger and R. van Rooij (eds), Game Theory and Pragmatics, Hampshire, England: Palgrave MacMillan, pp 83100. Strogatz, S. [1994]: Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: with Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering, Reading, MA: Perseus Books. Taylor, P. D. and Jonker, L. [1978]: Evolutionarily Stable Strategies and Game Dynamics, Mathematical Biosciences, 40, pp. 14556. van Rooij, R. [2003]: Quality and Quantity of Information Exchange, Journal of Logic, Language, and Information, 12, pp. 42351. Wagner, E. [2009]: Communication and Structured Correlation, Erkenntnis, 71, pp. 37793. Wa rneryd, K. [1993]: Cheap Talk, Coordination, and Evolutionary Stability, Games and Economic Behavior, 5, pp. 53246. Weibull, J. W. [1997]: Evolutionary Game Theory, Cambridge: MIT Press. Zahavi, A. [1975]: Mate Selection: A Selection for a Handicap, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 53, pp. 20514.

Downloaded from http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/ by Sandra Zuniga on January 1, 2013