Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:24:55.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assertions, Handicaps, and Social Norms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

Peter J. Graham
Peter J. Graham*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How should we undertand the role of norms – especially epistemic norms – governing assertive speech acts? Mitchell Green (2009) has argued that these norms play the role of handicaps in the technical sense from the animal signals literature. As handicaps, they then play a large role in explaining the reliability – and so the stability (the continued prevalence) – of assertive speech acts. But though norms of assertion conceived of as social norms do indeed play this stabilizing role, these norms are best understood as deterrents and not as handicaps. This paper explains the stability problem for the maintenance of animal signals, and so human communication; the mechanics of the handicap principle; the role of deterrents and punishments as an alternative mechanism; and the role of social norms governing assertion for the case of human communication.

Keywords

epistemologynormsanimal cognitionsignalingsocial epistemology
Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 17 , Special Issue 3: Epistemic Norms as Social Norms Conference , September 2020 , pp. 349 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bach, K. and Harnish, R.M. (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, C.T. and Lachmann, M. (1997). ‘Signaling Among Relatives: Is Costly Signaling Too Costly?’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 352, 609–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar of Society. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bicchieri, C. (2017). Norms in the Wild. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (2011). A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. (2018). A Different Kind of Animal: How Culture Transformed Our Species. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. and Matthew, S. (2015). ‘Third-party Monitoring and Sanctions Aid the Evolution of Language.’ Evolution and Human Behavior 36, 475–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, G., Eriksson, L., Goodin, R. and Southwood, N. (2013). Explaining Norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronin, H. (1991). The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Davis, W. (2002). Meaning, Expression and Thought. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, R. (2016). The Selfish Gene. 40th Anniversary Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Originally published 1976.]Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. (1997). Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Enquist, M. and Leimar, O. (1993). ‘The Evolution of Cooperation in Mobile Organisms.’ Animal Behaviour 45(4), 747–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faulkner, P. (2011). Knowledge on Trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitch, T. (2010). The Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frazer, B. (2012). ‘Costly Signaling Theories: Beyond the Handicap Principle.’ Biology and Philosophy 27, 263–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, S. (2015). ‘Recent Work on Assertion.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 52(4), 365–80.Google Scholar
Grafen, A. (1990). ‘Biological Signals as Handicaps.’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 144(4), 517–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, P.J. (2015). ‘Epistemic Normativity and Social Norms.’ In Greco, J. and Henderson, D.K. (eds), Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology, pp. 247–73. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graham, P.J. (2019). ‘The Function of Assertion and Social Norms.’ In Goldberg, S. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Green, M. (2009). ‘Speech Acts, the Handicap Principle and the Expression of Psychological States.’ Mind and Language 24(2), 139–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H.P. (1975). ‘Logic and Conversation.’ In Cole, P. and Morgan, J. (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, pp. 22–40. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grose, J. (2011). ‘Modeling and the Fall and Rise of the Handicap Principle.’ Biology and Philosophy 26(5), 677–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higham, J.P. (2014). ‘How Does Honest Costly Signaling Work?’ Behavioral Ecology 25(1), 8-11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurd, P.L. (1995). ‘Communication in Discrete Action-Response Games.’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 174, 217–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huttegger, S. and Zollman, K.J.S. (2010). ‘Dynamic Stability and Basins of Attraction in the Sir Philip Sidney Game.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277, 1915–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Injaian, A. and Tibbetts, E.A. (2015). ‘Advertised Quality and Resource Value Affect Aggression and Social Vigilance in Paper Wasp Contests.’ Animal Behaviour 102, 259–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, R.A. (1995). ‘Sexual Selection, Honest Advertisement and the Handicap Principle: Reviewing the Evidence.’ Biological Reviews 70(1), 1–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnstone, R.A. (1997). ‘The Evolution of Animal Signals.’ In Krebs, J.R. and Davies, N.B. (eds), Behavioral Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, pp. 155–78. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Johnstone, R.A. and Grafen, A. (1993). ‘Dishonesty and the Handicap Principle.’ Animal Behaviour 46, 215–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkpatrick, M. (1986). ‘The Handicap Mechanism of Sexual Selection Does Not Work.’ American Naturalist 127(2), 222–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, C. (1998). ‘Ritual/Speech Coevolution: A Solution to the Problem of Deception.’ In Hurford, J., Studdert-Kennedy, M. and Knight, C. (eds), Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases, pp. 68–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lachman, M., Számádo, S. and Bergstrom, C. (2001). ‘Cost and Conflict in Animal Signals and Human Language.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98(23), 13189–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laidre, M.E. and Johnstone, R.A. (2013). ‘Animal Signals.’ Current Biology 23(18), R829–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laland, K.N. (2017). Darwin's Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maestripieri, D. (2012). Games Primates Play. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. (1976). ‘Sexual Selection and the Handicap Principle.’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 57(1), 239–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. and Harper, D. (2003). Animal Signals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. (2017). The Enigma of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, S. (2001). Social Action: A Teleological Account. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mokkonen, M. and Lindstedt, C. (2016). ‘The Evolutionary Ecology of Deception.’ Biological Reviews 91, 1020–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Møller, A.P. (1987). ‘Social Control of Deception Among Status Signaling House Sparrows Passer domesticus.’ Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 20, 307–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakao, Y. and Machery, E. (2012). ‘The Evolution of Punishment.’ Biology and Philosophy 27, 833–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagel, M. (2012). Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind. New York, NY: Norton.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. and Boyd, R. (2005). Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rohwer, S. (1977). ‘Status Signaling in House Sparrows: Some Experiments in Deception.’ Behavior 61, 107–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saunders, S. (2009). ‘Costly Signaling: A Work in Progress.’ Biology and Philosophy 24(3), 405–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott-Phillips, T.C. (2010). ‘Evolutionary Stable Communication and Pragmatics.’ In Benz, A., Ebert, C., Jäger, G. and van Rooij, R. (eds), Language, Games, and Evolution: Trends in Current Research on Language and Game Theory, pp. 117–33. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Searcy, W. and Nowicki, S. (2005). The Evolution of Animal Communication. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silk, J.B., Kaldor, E. and Boyd, R. (2000). ‘Cheap Talk When Interests Conflict.’ Animal Behavior 59(2), 423–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spence, M. (1973). ‘Job Market Signaling.’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 87(3), 355–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. (2001). ‘An Evolutionary Perspective on Testimony and Argumentation.’ Philosophical Topics 29, 401–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G. and Wilson, D. (2010). ‘Epistemic Vigilance.’ Mind and Language 25(4), 359–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sripada, C. and Stich, S. (2006). ‘A Framework for the Psychology of Norms.’ In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (eds), The Innate Mind II: Culture and Cognition, pp. 237–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart-Williams, S. (2018). The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strassmann, J.E. (2004). ‘Rank Crime and Punishment.’ Nature 432, 160–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Számadó, S. (2011). ‘The Cost of Honesty and the Fallacy of the Handicap Principle.’ Animal Behavior 81(1), 3–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Számadó, S. (2012). ‘The Rise and Fall of the Handicap Principle: A Commentary on the ‘Modeling and the Fall and Rise of the Handicap Principle'.’ Biology and Philosophy 27(2), 279–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Számadó, S. and Penn, D.J. (2015). ‘Why Does Costly Signaling Evolve? Challenges with Testing the Handicap Hypothesis.’ Animal Behaviour, 110, e9–e12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tibbetts, E.A. and Dale, J. (2004). ‘A Socially Enforced Signal of Quality in a Paper Wasp.’ Nature 432, 218–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tibbetts, E.A. and Izzo, A. (2010). ‘Social Punishment Mediated by Signal Incongruence.’ Current Biology 19, 1637–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tibbetts, E.A., Forrest, T., Vernier, C., Jinn, J. and Madagame, A. (2015). ‘Socially Selected Ornaments and Fitness: Signals of Fighting Ability in Paper Wasps are Positively Associated with Survival, Reproductive Success, and Rank.’ Evolution 69, 2917–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (2008). The Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turri, J. (2016). Knowledge and the Norm of Assertion: An Essay in Philosophical Science. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Von Hippel, W. (2018). The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are. New York, NY: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Webster, M.S., Ligon, R.A. and Leighton, G.M. (2018). ‘Social Costs are an Underappreciated Force for Honest Signaling in Animal Aggregations.’ Animal Behaviour 143, 167–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, T. (1996). ‘Knowing and Asserting.’ Philosophical Review 105(4), 489–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahavi, A. (1975). ‘Mate Selection: A Selection for a Handicap.’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 53(1), 205–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zahavi, A. (1977). ‘The Cost of Honesty.’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 67, 603–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zahavi, A. (2007). ‘Sexual Selection, Signal Selection and the Handicap Principle.’ In Jamieson, B. (ed.), Reproductive Biology and the Phylogeny of Birds, Part B: Sexual Selection, Behavior, Conservation, Embryology and Genetics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.Google Scholar
Zahavi, A. (2008). ‘The Handicap Principle and Signaling in Collaborative Systems.’ In d'Ettorre, P. and Hughes, D.P. (eds), Sociobiology of Communication: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp. 1–10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zahavi, A. (2010). ‘Profile: The Handicap Principle and Social Behavior.’ In Székely, T., Moore, A.J. and Komdeur, J. (eds), Genes, Ecology and Evolution, pp. 535–7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zahavi, A. and Zahavi, A. (1997). The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zollman, K.J. (2013). ‘Finding Alternatives to Handicap Theory.’ Biological Theory 8(2), 127–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zollman, K.J.S., Bergstrom, C.T. and Huttegger, S.M. (2013). ‘Between Cheap and Costly Signals: The Evolution of Partly Honest Communication.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, 20121878.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuk, M. & Simmons, L.W. (2018). Sexual Selection: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar