Journal
MIND & LANGUAGE
Volume 21, Issue 2, Pages 137-165Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.0268-1064.2006.00309.x
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In this paper I argue, first, that human lifeways depend on cognitive capital that has typically been built over many generations. This process of gradual accumulation produces an adaptive fit between human agents and their environments; an adaptive fit that is the result of hidden-hand, evolutionary mechanisms. To explain distinctive features of human life, we need to understand how cultures evolve. Second, I distinguish a range of different evolutionary models of culture. Third, I argue that none of meme-based models, dual inheritance models, nor Boyd and Richerson's models fully succeed in explaining this adaptive fit between agent and the world. I then briefly develop an alternative. Finally, I explore (in a preliminary way) constraints on cultural adaptation. The processes of cultural evolution sometimes built a fit between agents and their environment, but they do not always do so. Why is folk medicine, for example, so much less reliable than folk natural history ?
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