4.6 Article

Enquire within: cultural evolution and cognitive science

Publisher

ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0051

Keywords

cultural evolution; cognitive science; replication; reconstruction; social learning; dual systems

Categories

Funding

  1. All Souls College, University of Oxford

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Cultural evolution and cognitive science need each other. Cultural evolution needs cognitive science to find out whether the conditions necessary for Darwinian evolution are met in the cultural domain. Cognitive science needs cultural evolution to explain the origins of distinctively human cognitive processes. Focusing on the first question, I argue that cultural evolutionists can get empirical traction on third-way cultural selection by rooting the distinction between replication and reconstruction, two modes of cultural inheritance, in the distinction between System 1 and System 2 cognitive processes. This move suggests that cultural epidemiologists are right in thinking that replication has higher fidelity than reconstruction, and replication processes are not genetic adaptations for culture, but wrong to assume that replication is rare. If replication is not rare, an important requirement for third-way cultural selection, one-shot fidelity, is likely to be met. However, there are other requirements, overlooked by dual-inheritance theorists when they conflate strong (Darwinian) and weak (choice) senses of 'cultural selection', including dumb choices and recurrent fidelity. In a second excursion into cognitive science, I argue that these requirements can be met by metacognitive social learning strategies, and trace the origins of these distinctively human cognitive processes to cultural evolution. Like other forms of cultural learning, they are not cognitive instincts but cognitive gadgets. This article is part of the theme issue 'Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution'.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available