Salience and symmetry-breaking in the evolution of convention

Law and Philosophy

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 411-418

  Skyrms, Brian ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032244219     PISSN: 01675249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3505087     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. The subjects of this paper are treated at greater length in Chapters 4 and 5 of my 1996 book. See Skyrms, Evolution of the Social Contract (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
2. D. L. Cheney and R. M. Seyfarth, How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 169, citing M. Kavanaugh, "Invasion of the Forest by an African Savanah Monkey: Behavioral Adaptations," Behavior 73 (1980).
3. D. L. Cheney and R. M. Seyfarth, How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 169, citing M. Kavanaugh, "Invasion of the Forest by an African Savanah Monkey: Behavioral Adaptations," Behavior 73 (1980).
4. See, e.g., P. Marler, "Characteristics of some animal calls," Nature 176 (1955), pp. 6-7
5. and C. H. Brown, "Ventrologuial and locatable vocalizations in birds," Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 59 (1982), pp. 338-350.
6. Lewis' account of signaling games is generalized by Crawford and Sobel. See D. K. Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969);
7. and V. P. Crawford and J. Sobel, "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica 50 (1982), pp. 1431-1451.
8. Cheney and Seyfarth, How Monkeys See the World, Chapter 4.
9. I use the replicator dynamics for these simulations. More details may be found in Skyrms, supra note 1.
10. A. Blume, Y-G. Kim, and G. B. Sprinkle, "Evolution of the Meaning of Messages in Sender-Receiver Games" (1996) working paper, University of Iowa.
11. J. Maynard Smith and G. R. Price, "The Logic of Animal Conflict," Nature 146 (1973), pp. 15-18.
12. For a numerical example, suppose payoff of Hawk against Dove is 50, of Dove against Dove is 15, of Dove against Hawk is 0 and of Hawk against Hawk is - 25.
13. In the example of the previous footnote, the equilibrium state has 5/12 Doves and 7/12 Hawks.
14. Average payoff here in our numerical example is just 6 1/4.
15. P. Vanderschraaf, "Convention as Coordinated Equilibrium," Erkenntnis 42 (1995), pp. 65-87. See also the discussion of one-sided signaling systems in Lewis, Convention, pp. 128-130.
16. P. Vanderschraaf, "Convention as Coordinated Equilibrium," Erkenntnis 42 (1995), pp. 65-87. See also the discussion of one-sided signaling systems in Lewis, Convention, pp. 128-130.
17. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 68-70, 111-113.
18. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see P. Vanderschraaf and B. Skyrms, "Deliberation and Coordinated Equilibria," Philosophical Topics 21 (1993), pp. 191-227.
19. See Lewis' discussion of the stoplight, Convention, p. 129.