The conjectured role of Polani et al.’s relevant information, behavioral variation and recursive cognition in selection for a human language faculty

The speculative argument presented in this review is based on the assumption that Polani et al.’s formalization will limit communication to the minimal amount of information needed to employ adaptive behavior. Selection for some of the distinct features of human language is argued to generally depend on relevant information, behavioral variation, and recursive aspects of cognition. Behavioral variation is argued to cause the perception of relevant objects to vary between individuals, thereby favoring selection for phenotypes with a greater referential signaling capacity in cooperative contexts. If the memory-dependent aspects of recursive cognition reflect the perception of relevant fitness problems over wide space–time intervals, then individual difference in behavior will also unevenly distribute the perception of relevant objects between agents in a similar manner, even if similar relevant objects are perceived. Where individual fitness is highly dependent on the local coordination of behavior between agents in the social structure of an interaction network, an unevenly distributed perception of different relevant objects in space–time will then increase interaction uncertainty and the behavioral error potential in the ongoing local coordination of interdependent behavior. The extent to which a discrete message capacity can evenly distribute information in communicative interactions is argued to depend on the recursive capacity of language to referentially pinpoint the coordinates of discrete referential objects in continuous intervals. Given asymmetric interaction valuation between individuals in a diversified social ecology, an evenly distributed perception of relevant objects is argued to be limited by the referential coding efficiency problem of differences in the attention paid to communication effort, thereby indicating the stable role of recursive cognitive inference.

► A variety of evolutionary theories are reviewed to investigate selection for language. ► Language selection is argued in terms of a referential signaling capacity. ► The investigated features are discrete capacity and recursive capacity. ► The argument is theoretically constrained by Christiansen and Chater’s hypothesis. ► Relevant information in diversified social structures may select for language.