The Cognitive and Communicative Demands of Cooperation

I argue that the analysis of different kinds of cooperation will benefit from an account of the cognitive and communicative functions required for that cooperation. I review different models of cooperation in game theory--reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, cooperation about future goals, and conventions--with respect to their cognitive and communicative prerequisites. The cognitive factors considered include recognition of individuals, memory capacity, temporal discounting, prospective cognition, and theory of mind. Whereas many forms of cooperation require no communication or just simple communication, more advanced forms that are unique to humans presuppose full symbolic communication.

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