  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.
