Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution

Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution

This discussion paper responds to two recent articles in Biology and Philosophy that raise similar objections to cultural attraction theory, a research trend in cultural evolution putting special emphasis on the fact that human minds create and transform their culture. Both papers are sympathetic to...

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Main Author: Morin, Olivier
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Springer Netherlands 2016
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4944120/
id pubmed-4944120
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-49441202016-07-26 Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution Morin, Olivier Article This discussion paper responds to two recent articles in Biology and Philosophy that raise similar objections to cultural attraction theory, a research trend in cultural evolution putting special emphasis on the fact that human minds create and transform their culture. Both papers are sympathetic to this idea, yet both also regret a lack of consilience with Boyd, Richerson and Henrich’s models of cultural evolution. I explain why cultural attraction theorists propose a different view on three points of concern for our critics. I start by detailing the claim that cultural transmission relies not chiefly on imitation or teaching, but on cognitive mechanisms like argumentation, ostensive communication, or selective trust, whose evolved or habitual function may not be the faithful reproduction of ideas or behaviours. Second, I explain why the distinction between context biases and content biases might not always be the best way to capture the interactions between culture and cognition. Lastly, I show that cultural attraction models cannot be reduced to a model of guided variation, which posits a clear separation between individual and social learning processes. With cultural attraction, the same cognitive mechanisms underlie both innovation and the preservation of traditions. Springer Netherlands 2016-02-29 2016 /pmc/articles/PMC4944120/ /pubmed/27472420 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-016-9516-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Morin, Olivier
spellingShingle Morin, Olivier
Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
author_facet Morin, Olivier
author_sort Morin, Olivier
title Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
title_short Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
title_full Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
title_fullStr Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
title_full_unstemmed Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
title_sort reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution
description This discussion paper responds to two recent articles in Biology and Philosophy that raise similar objections to cultural attraction theory, a research trend in cultural evolution putting special emphasis on the fact that human minds create and transform their culture. Both papers are sympathetic to this idea, yet both also regret a lack of consilience with Boyd, Richerson and Henrich’s models of cultural evolution. I explain why cultural attraction theorists propose a different view on three points of concern for our critics. I start by detailing the claim that cultural transmission relies not chiefly on imitation or teaching, but on cognitive mechanisms like argumentation, ostensive communication, or selective trust, whose evolved or habitual function may not be the faithful reproduction of ideas or behaviours. Second, I explain why the distinction between context biases and content biases might not always be the best way to capture the interactions between culture and cognition. Lastly, I show that cultural attraction models cannot be reduced to a model of guided variation, which posits a clear separation between individual and social learning processes. With cultural attraction, the same cognitive mechanisms underlie both innovation and the preservation of traditions.
publisher Springer Netherlands
publishDate 2016
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4944120/
_version_ 1613608994959523840

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