The lecture will take place in room: AB 3.11
Lecture abstract:
Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) was originated as the application of games in evolutionary biology [5, 9, 10, 16, 17]. Subsequently, EGT has been increasingly applied to the study of cultural evolution [1, 17], ranging from elementary questions such as the evolution of coordinated [14] as well as cooperative [2, 11, 12] behavior among individuals to the study of the emergence of elaborated social normative mechanism, such as the so-called social contract of human societies [3, 13]. Additionally, EGT has proven itself to be a convenient tool for the study of the emergence of an essential feature of human culture: language. Here, particularly David Lewis’ [8] signaling game has found its application; in fundamental questions such the emergence of simple communication systems [6, 15], as well as in the study of more specific phenomena in human language evolution [4, 7]. This talk will introduce to the basic concepts of EGT, thereby addressing the following emergent features in human cultural evolution: i) coordination, ii) cooperation and the social contract, iii) communication/signaling systems, and iv) human language.
References:
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[3] Binmore, K.: Natural Justice. Oxford University Press (2005)
[4] Deo, A.: The semantic and pragmatic underpinnings of grammaticalization paths: The
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[5] Fisher, R.A.: The Genetic Theory of Natural Selection. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1930) Huttegger, S. M., Skyrms, B., Smead, R., Zollman, K. J.: Evolutionary dynamics of Lewis signaling games: signaling systems vs. partial pooling. Synthese 172.1: 177{191 (2010)
[6] Huttegger, S. M., Zollman, K. J.: Signaling Games: Dynamics of Evolution and Learning. Language, Games, and Evolution. LNAI
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[11] Nowak, M.A.: Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation. Science 8: 1560-1563 (2006)
[12] Nowak, M.A. and Sigmund, K.: Tit For Tat in Heterogenous Populations. Nature 359: 250-253 (1992)
[13] Skyrms, B.: Evolution of the Social Contract, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)
[14] Skyrms, B.: The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2004)
[15] Skyrms, B.: Signals: Evolution, Learning & Information. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2010)
[16] Taylor, P.D. and Jonker, L.B.: Evolutionary Stable Strategies and Game Dynamics. Mathematical Biosciences 40: 145-156 (1978)
[17] Weibull, J.W:: Evolutionary Game Theory. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA (1995)
