Meaningful Games MEANINGFUL GAMES Exploring Language with Game Theory Robin Clark The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 6 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email special
[email protected] mitpress.mit.edu. This book was set in Syntax and Times New Roman on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Clark, Robin Lee, 1957 Meaningful games : exploring language with game theory / Robin Clark. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 0 262 01617 9 (alk. paper) 1. Mathematical linguistics. 2. Game theory. 3. Language and logic. I. Title. P138.C43 2012 2011005883 401 0 .43 dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Sous les pave´s, la plage! Situationist slogan, May 1968 Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii I THE SOCIAL SIDE OF MEANING 1 Platonic Heaven 3 The Puzzle of Reference 3 Use, Mention, and Truth 4 The Language of Thought 7 Concepts, Mentalese, and the Informational Universe Language and the World 12 Platonic Heaven in a Box 13 Inferences and Mentalese 16 Further Reading 18 2 My Fall from Platonic Heaven 21 Phrase Structure Grammar 21 Grammar and Compositionality 23 Thinking and Computing 25 The Heaven in Your Head 28 Brains in SUVs 30 Symbols and Proofs 31 Into the Chinese Room 36 The Social Nature of Intention 38 The Excesses of Youth 39 Further Reading 41 3 Meaning and the Social Contract 43 Choice and Meaning 43 Internal Predicates and External Behavior Public Knowledge 46 The Economics of Meaning 50 44 10 viii Contents Physical Computation and Social Computation The Sociolinguistics of Meaning 55 Further Reading 58 53 II