This article proposes a number of models to examine through which mechanisms a population of autonomous agents could arrive at a repertoire of perceptually grounded categories that is sufficiently shared to allow successful communication. The models are inspired by the main approaches to human categorisation being discussed in the literature: nativism, empiricism, and culturalism. Colour is taken as a case study. Although we take no stance on which position is to be accepted as final truth with respect to human categorisation and naming, we do point to theoretical constraints that make each position more or less likely and we make clear suggestions on what the best engineering solution would be. Specifically, we argue that the collective choice of a shared repertoire must integrate multiple constraints, including constraints coming from communication.

the use of lateralised cues by predators and fellows may not strongly affect lateralisation. conservatism of development is a possible source of consistency across vertebrates. individuals with partial reversal, affecting only one ability, or with varying degree of control of response by one hemisphere do exist. their incidence may depend on varying selection of behavioural phenotypes such as risk taking.

steels & belpaeme (s&b) describe the role of genetic evolution in linguistic category sharing among a population of agents. we consider their methodology and conclude that, although it is plausible that genetic evolution is sufficient for such tasks, there is a bias in the presented work for such a conclusion to be reached. we suggest ways to eliminate this bias and make the model more convincingly relevant to the cognitive sciences.

we accept sunstein's claim that people often use moral heuristics to make judgments and decisions. however, in situations that include a risk of betrayal, we disagree with sunstein about when the relevant moral heuristic may be said to “misfire.” we suggest that the moral heuristic people apply to avoid the possibility of safety-product betrayal may be reasonable.

We propose a way to achieve across-population sharing within the authors’ model in a way that is plausibly in accordance with human evolution, and also a simple way to capture ecological structure. Finally, we briefly reflect on the model’s scope and limits in modeling linguistic communication.

by comparing mechanisms in nativism, empiricism, and culturalism, the target article by steels & belpaeme (s&b) emphasizes the influence of communicational constraint on sharing color categories. our commentary suggests deeper considerations of some of their claims, and discusses some modifications that may help in the study of communicational constraints in both humans and robots.

sunstein advocates a more systematic approach to the study of moral decision-making, namely the heuristics-and-biases paradigm. we offer two concerns and suggest that a focus on decision processes can add value. recent research on decision modes suggest that it is useful to distinguish between the qualitative differences in the ways in which moral decisions can be made when they are not made by reflective, consequentialist reasoning.

the target article proposes that behavioral asymmetries evolved in response to social pressures, accounting for the unequal distribution of handedness across the population. in contrast, we provide evidence that human handedness reflects individual adaptations that enhance movement skill, and that the distribution across the population is best explained by a genetic polymorphism, either balanced or tending toward fixation for right-handedness.

steels & belpaeme's (s&b) procedure does not model much of the important variation that occurs across human color categorizers. human perceptual variation and its corollary consequences impact real-world color categorization. because of this, investigators with the primary aim of understanding color categorization and naming across cultures should exercise some caution extending these findings to explain how different human societies lexicalize color appearance space.

The debate of nativisim versus empiricism is over the relative importance of evolutionary versus ontogenetic mechanisms. This is mostly seen today as a false dichotomy. The synthesis of these positions provides a modern viewpoint of grounded category formation. This combined view places equal importance on feedback between these levels in guiding development, and is more appropriately compared to culturalist positions.

multiple endogenous and exogenous prenatal influences interact to form a system that induces the development of individual lateralization across a range of perceptual and motor abilities in precocial birds. as these influences are nearly invariant for all species members, they produce a phylogenetic influence that creates high levels of population laterality and social cohesion in the postnatal state.

Although Steeles & Belpaeme’s (S&B) results may be useful for development of technical devices, their significance for behavioral sciences is very limited. This is because the question the authors asked was “Why do people use similar words in a similar way?” rather than “How can similar words stand for similar experience?” The main problem is not shared word usage, but shared references.

can we understand brain lateralization in humans by analysis in terms of an evolutionarily stable strategy? the attempt to demonstrate a link between lateralization in humans and that in, for example, fish appears to hinge critically on whether the isomorphism is viewed as a matter of homology or homoplasy. consideration of human handedness presents a number of challenges to the proposed framework.

we describe a possible link between coordinated lateralised group behaviour serving species survival in lower vertebrates and a striking lateralisation phenomenon found in human social behaviour: the universal preference for cradling a young infant on the left side. our exploration offers a different perspective on the role of cerebral asymmetry for the survival of both the individual and the species.

the term “moral heuristic” as used by sunstein seeks to bring together various traditions. however, there are significant differences between uses of the term “heuristic” in the cognitive and the social psychological research, and these differences are accompanied by very distinct evidential criteria. we suggest the term “moral heuristic” should refer to processes, which means that further evidence is required.

interesting as the experiments are, their relevance to the real-life situation is rendered questionable by the unthinking use of given singularities as target objects. the evolutionary process does not respect what one agent takes to be a singular referent. a “singling” from the continuum is rather a varying feature of the necessity to track what is rewarding in it.

with respect to questions of fact, people use heuristics – mental short-cuts, or rules of thumb, that generally work well, but that also lead to systematic errors. people use moral heuristics too – moral short-cuts, or rules of thumb, that lead to mistaken and even absurd moral judgments. these judgments are highly relevant not only to morality, but to law and politics as well. examples are given from a number of domains, including risk regulation, punishment, reproduction and sexuality, and the act/omission distinction. in all of these contexts, rapid, intuitive judgments make a great deal of sense, but sometimes produce moral mistakes that are replicated in law and policy. one implication is that moral assessments ought not to be made by appealing to intuitions about exotic cases and problems; those intuitions are particularly unlikely to be reliable. another implication is that some deeply held moral judgments are unsound if they are products of moral heuristics. the idea of error-prone heuristics is especially controversial in the moral domain, where agreement on the correct answer may be hard to elicit; but in many contexts, heuristics are at work and they do real damage. moral framing effects, including those in the context of obligations to future generations, are also discussed.

Extrapolation of Steels & Belpaeme’s (S&B) results show that colour is a culturalist category. Populations will only share the category of colour if it is built into the system. If “left to themselves” different populations may or may not stumble on the colour category. Populations that do not share a colour category may still be able to communicate in a wide variety of environments.

chicks reared in the absence of light and rat pups reared without extra stimulation fail to exhibit behavioral laterality, implying that a threshold amount of environmental stimulation is necessary for the brain to follow an asymmetry pathway. reverse asymmetry has been reported in the chick, but not the rat, though a sex difference resembling reverse asymmetry has been found in the rat.

The proposal of Steels & Belpaeme (S&B) is on the right track to solve the nativist/empiricist/culturalist controversy. However, their nativist model of colour categorization does not correspond to a proper genetic model. Colour perception is the outcome of a complex process of development. A direct correspondence between genes and colour categories cannot be the right approach to the problem.