Abstract
Predictive information is a popular and promising family of information-based theories of biological communication. It is difficult to adjudicate between predictive information-based theories and influence-based theories of biological communication because the same acts seem to count as communicative on both theories. In this paper, I argue that predictive information theories and influence-based theories give importantly different descriptions of deceptive signals in some non-evolutionarily stable communicative systems by citing a novel case observed in nature. Moreover, predictive information gives a counter-intuitive description to the case while some of its rival influence-based theories do not. I argue that there are no clear ways for defenders of predictive information to respond to this apparent problem without sacrificing important virtues of their theory or deflating the difference between the rival views.
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Notes
See Rendall et al. (2009) and Rendall and Owren (2013) for this criticism. Stegmann (2013) gives a neutral summary of the debate between information- and influence-based theories, including this criticism. See Scott-Phillips (2014) for one among several influence-based theories of communication that makes no appeal to information.
There are different options for describing the relationship between predictive information transfer and biological communication. Skyrms (2010) appeals entirely to information transfer for a theory of signaling; Scarantino (2010, 2013) appeals to information transfer plus influence; Shea (2007) appeals information transfer plus teleological notions like function. The common bond is that predictive information is transferred.
Predictive information has its roots in Dretzke (1981).
Akcali and Pfennig (2014) is discussed below.
Skyrms (2010, p. 74).
See Artiga and Patternote (2018) for numerous examples of biological deception, an overview of some ways of analyzing biological deception, and a novel analysis of deception.
Maynard Smith and Harper (2003, Ch. 5), explore signaling systems whose instability exists because the sender and receiver are not cooperative.
If the cost of being deceived is low enough, deception might proliferate so much that there will have been more deceptive productions than honest productions across time going back to the emergence of the signal. This happens at T4. Whether we take the relevant correlations to be with a production at a moment or across the widest possible relevant time, this kind of case can be generated.
The trend is similar to regions where coral snake population is reduced but still present. In such regions, because signal receivers are less likely to approach a coral snake, they can be more discriminating. Because of the high payoff and relatively low cost of avoiding coral snakes, though, they still have evolutionary pressure to avoid the even small number of coral snakes. That this phenomenon would occur in the Sandhills region with no coral snakes is surprising.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for asking about this.
One worry for this proposal is that the account of honest and deceptive signals sketched here will inherit an indeterminacy problem that Neander (1995) and others have raised for teleosemantic theories of mental content. The worry should not prove problematic for a theory of honesty and deception, however, as long the states that fix whatever plays the role of truth conditions for the signals are indeterminate between states that actually co-occur. How to solve this problem if the states do not, or cease to, co-occur is a serious project, but one that goes beyond this paper.
On Shea’s (2007) reading of Millikan (1984, 2005) and Papineau (1987, 1993), Millikan’s and Papineau’s teleosemantics share this conclusion, though Millikan’s and Papineau’s views are concerned with intentionality in general and not just biological communication. I have nothing to say about theories that more directly appropriate Shannon’s (1948) definition of information such Seyfarth et al. (2010) in which information is a reduction of uncertainty in the recipient. Such proposals may not committed to changes in objective probabilities.
Some readers may not find Scarantino’s link between producer and receiver persuasive. I need not take a position on this. I need only assert that if he successfully establishes the view that information is transferred via this link, then that link is severed on an information* view.
One anonymous reviewer suggested that the predictive information theory could be augmented such that deception is analyzed in the way influence-based theories understand it, but not signaling in general. This seems too great a concession for any information-based theorist who cares about deception to make. All the tools for analyzing deception in such a way are going to be extendable to giving an entirely influence-based account of communication. If deception can be analyzed using only influence, so can communication.
Much of Skyrms (2010) suggests that this might be project for at least some analyses of predictive information.
See Symons (2016) for a discussion of the possible goals of an information theory.
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Looney, W.S. Problems for Predictive Information. Erkenn 87, 1317–1329 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00250-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00250-3