Abstract
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of content that is richer than bare informational content, especially in contexts where false content is important. This article shows that this concept can be made precise by defining a notion of functional content that captures the degree to which different states of the world are involved in stabilizing senders’ and receivers’ use of a signal at equilibrium. A series of case studies is used to contrast functional content with informational content, and to illustrate the explanatory role and limitations of this definition of functional content. 1 Introduction2 Modelling Framework3 Two Kinds of Content 3.1 Informational content 3.2 Functional content4 Cases 4.1 Case 1: Simplest case 4.2 Case 2: Partial pooling 4.3 Case 3: Bottleneck 4.4 Case 4: Partial common interest 4.5 Case 5: Deception 4.6 Case 6: A further problem arising from divergent interests5 DiscussionAppendix
Highlights
2 Modelling Framework 3 Two Kinds of Content3.1 Informational content 3.2 Functional content 4 Cases 4.1 Case 1: Simplest case 4.2 Case 2: Partial pooling 4.3 Case 3: Bottleneck 4.4 Case 4: Partial common interest 4.5 Case 5: Deception 4.6 Case 6: A further problem arising from divergent interests
3.1 Informational content 3.2 Functional content 4 Cases 4.1 Case 1: Simplest case 4.2 Case 2: Partial pooling 4.3 Case 3: Bottleneck 4.4 Case 4: Partial common interest 4.5 Case 5: Deception 4.6 Case 6: A further problem arising from divergent interests 5 Discussion Appendix ß The Author 2017
All of the semantic properties are stuffed into the codebook, the interface between source structure and channel structure, which to information theorists is as interesting as a phonebook is to sociologists. (Bergstrom and Rosvall [2011], p. 171)
Summary
The small selection of examples above show that there is an important role for a notion of content that goes beyond purely informational content, even in these simple cases. The way theorists routinely talk about simple signalling systems makes this clear. They say things that implicitly draw on a richer notion of content than informational content. Our functional content vector captures the relative importance of different states when more than one state is involved in stabilizing a pattern of sender and receiver behaviours. We don’t claim that informational and functional content exhaust the rich semantic properties seen in language and thought. They can be thought of as simpler members of a family of semantic properties, or as precursors to real semantic properties. Our notion of functional content captures a theoretically important aspect of sender–receiver interaction
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
