Instituto Cavanilles de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
J Evol Biol. 2010 Apr;23(4):661-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.01944.x. Epub 2010 Feb 9.
At the heart of many debates on communication is the concept of information. There is an intuitive sense in which communication implies the transfer of some kind of information, probably the reason why information is an essential ingredient in most definitions of communication. However, information has also been an endless source of misunderstandings, and recent accounts have proposed that information should be dropped from a formal definition of communication. In this article, we re-evaluate the merits and the internal logic of information-based vs. information-free approaches and conclude that information-free approaches are conceptually incomplete and operationally hindered. Instead, we propose a functional notion of information that follows logically from previous adaptationist accounts. The ensuing definition of communication provides a wider, more inclusive theoretical scope that reflects more accurately the evolutionary scenario shaping animal signals. Additionally, it is a definition better equipped to deal with the extraordinary diversity of animal signals, facilitates the distinction of honest and deceptive signals at a proximate level and accommodates a number of conceptual and practical issues (e.g. redundancy, alerting components) that are lost when we fail to acknowledge the informative content of animal signals.
在许多关于交流的争论中，信息的概念是核心。从直观上看，交流意味着某种信息的传递，这可能就是为什么信息是大多数交流定义中必不可少的一个要素。然而，信息也一直是误解的无尽源泉，最近的一些说法提出，信息应该从交流的正式定义中删除。在本文中，我们重新评估了基于信息和无信息方法的优点和内在逻辑，并得出结论，无信息方法在概念上不完整，在操作上受到阻碍。相反，我们提出了一个从先前适应主义者的解释中逻辑上推导出的功能信息概念。由此产生的交流定义提供了一个更广泛、更具包容性的理论范围，更准确地反映了塑造动物信号的进化场景。此外，它是一个更好的定义，能够更好地处理动物信号的非凡多样性，有助于在接近水平上区分诚实和欺骗性信号，并容纳了一些概念和实际问题（例如冗余、报警成分），这些问题在我们未能承认动物信号的信息内容时就会丢失。
