Competition and Cooperation in Language Evolution: A Comparison Between Communication of Apes and Humans - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 89

5.2 Why Do We Communicate? Some Answers

from Evolutionary Biology

Theories on the origin of language are necessarily speculative. However, in recent
years, the range of acceptable speculation has been narrowed by the recognition that
any account of language origins must be consistent with the principles of Darwinian
evolution by natural selection (e.g., Corballis 2011 , 2013a ; Fitch 2010 ; Hurford
2007 ; Pinker and Bloom 1990 ). One of the main problems with an evolutionary
account of human language is the apparent level of altruism involved (Desalles
2007 ; Noble 2000 ). According to the orthodox position of evolutionary biology,
organisms are indeed products of their selfish genes: they do not do things for
the good of the group or the species but rather in order to propagate copies of
their own genetic material (Dawkins 1976 ). In such a perspective, language (and
cooperative behavior in general) can be difficult to account for. Specifically, the
problem is the following: why do speakers freely exchange valuable information
when the theory of natural selection predicts selfishness and competition among
individuals? In addition, speaking or signaling always has a cost in terms of time
and energy and may involve more indirect costs such as exposing the signaler to
greater predation risk. Therefore, reaping the benefits of the informative signals of
others without paying the costs of signaling themselves could have more advantages
(for a discussion, see Noble 2000 ).
As is well known regarding cooperative behavior in general, evolutionary theory
has answered these problems in terms of kin selection (Hamilton 1964 ) and
reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971 ). According to the theory of kin selection, an
organism supports another (even at a cost to the organism's own survival and
reproduction) because it is helping a relative: through cooperative behaviors, the
helper contributes to the survival of part of its own genetic heritage, depending
on the degree of genetic relatedness with the relative. According to reciprocal
altruism theory, an organism offers support to others by behaving in a manner that
temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing that of another organism with the
expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time.
The evolution of cooperation in relation to communication has also received
several explanations (e.g., Ackley and Littman 1994 ; Brinck and Gärdenfors
2003 ; Knight 1998 ; Gärdenfors 2003 ; Noble 2000 ). Knight ( 1998 ), for example,
maintained that the main problem in this regard is to explain the evolution of
honest signals. Following Krebs and Dawkins ( 1984 ), the author started from the
assumptions that animals have conflicting interests and that they seek to exploit and
deceive rather than share reliable information. Communication can evolve only if
there is some mechanism that makes it trustworthy for the other members of the
group. In such a case, in which the advantages of defection overtake the costs of
cooperation, the only reliable signals are those that are costly to fake because they
cannot be imitated by free riders (Zahavi and Zahavi 1997 ). According to Knight,
signals of this kind are rituals: group members demonstrate their allegiance to a
common cause by performing costly rituals, allowing the group to believe their
signals in the future.