Towards a mathematical theory of meaningful communication.
Meaning has been left outside most theoretical approaches to information in biology. Functional responses based on an appropriate interpretation of signals have been replaced by a probabilistic description of correlations between emitted and received symbols. This assumption leads to potential paradoxes, such as the presence of a maximum information associated to a channel that creates completely wrong interpretations of the signals. Game-theoretic models of language evolution and other studies considering embodied communicating agents show that the correct (meaningful) match resulting from agent-agent exchanges is always achieved and natural systems obviously solve the problem correctly. Inspired by the concept of duality of the communicative sign stated by the swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, here we present a complete description of the minimal system necessary to measure the amount of information that is consistently decoded. Several consequences of our developments are investigated, such as the uselessness of a certain amount of information properly transmitted for communication among autonomous agents.
1] Section for Science of Complex Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Spitalgasse, 23 1090 Vienna, Austria [2] ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Dr Aiguadé, 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain [3] Institut de Biologia Evolutiva. CSIC-UPF. CMIMA-Pssg. de la Barceloneta 37-49. 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
Bernat
B
Corominas-Murtra
Departament de Filologia Catalana. Universitat de Barcelona. Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585, 08007 Barcelona, Spain.
Jordi
J
Fortuny
1] ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Dr Aiguadé, 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain [2] Institut de Biologia Evolutiva. CSIC-UPF. CMIMA-Pssg. de la Barceloneta 37-49. 08003 Barcelona, Spain [3] Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 USA.
Ricard V
RV
Solé
D000465:Algorithms; D003142:Communication; D008962:Models, Theoretical