In the paradigm of Lewis-Skyrms signaling games, the emergence of linguistic conventions is a matter of equilibrium selection. What happens when an equilibrium has ``natural salience'' -- stands out as uniquely attractive to the players? We present two models. We find that the dynamics of natural salience can encourage the learning of more successful signaling conventions in some contexts, and discourage it in others. This reveals ways in which the supposed worst-case scenario -- a lack of natural salience -- might be better than some cases in which natural salience is present.

Forber and Smead (2014) analyze how increasing the fitness benefits associated with prosocial behavior can increase the fitness of spiteful individuals relative to their prosocial counterparts, so that selection favors spite over prosociality. This poses a problem for the evolution of prosocial behavior: as the benefits of prosocial behavior increase, it becomes more likely that spite, not prosocial behavior, will evolve in any given population. In this paper, I develop two game-theoretic models which, taken together, illustrate how synergistic costs and benefits may provide partial solutions to Forber and Smead’s paradox.

This paper provides a formal treatment of the argument that syntax alone cannot give rise to compositionality in a signalling game context. This conclusion follows from the standard information-theoretic machinery used in the signalling game literature to describe the informational content of signals.

A well-known result by Diaconis and Zabell examines when a shift from a prior to a posterior can be represented by conditionalization. This paper extends their result and connects it to the reflection principle and common priors. A shift from a prior to a set of posteriors can be represented within a conditioning model if and only if the prior and the posteriors are satisfy a form of the reflection principle. Common priors can be characterized by principles that require distinct sets of posteriors to cohere. These results have implications for updating, game theory, and time-slice epistemology.