A World unto Itself: Human Communication as Active Inference

TL;DR

This paper proposes a formal active inference model for cooperative human communication, suggesting it as an evolved mechanism for aligning mental states, with implications for understanding communication's development and evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel active inference framework to formally model cooperative communication and its neuroscientific basis, filling a gap in prior empirical and theoretical work.

Findings

Humans have an evolved prior belief that their mental states align with others.

Cooperative communication serves as evidence gathering for this belief.

The model has implications for understanding communication development and evolution.

Abstract

Work in developmental psychology suggests that humans are predisposed to align their mental states with other individuals. This manifests principally in cooperative communication, that is, intentional communication geared towards aligning mental states. This viewpoint has received ample empirical support. However, this view lacks a formal grounding, and provides no precise neuroscientific hypotheses. To remedy this, we suggest an active inference approach to cooperative communication. We suggest that humans appear to possess an evolved adaptive prior belief that their mental states are aligned with those of conspecifics. Cooperative communication emerges as the principal means to gather evidence for this belief. Our approach has implications for the study of the usage, ontogeny, and cultural evolution of human communication.