Cognitive Archaeology and the Minimum Necessary Competence Problem

Killin, Anton; Pain, Ross

doi:10.1007/s13752-021-00378-7

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…This poses a problem for cognitive archaeologists: which principles should guide cognitive archaeologists when selecting a cognitive model for use as a mid-range theory? We (Killin and Pain 2021) have recently proposed two complementary, though non-exhaustive solutions: theory choice should be guided by consilience (convergence from multiple independent lines of evidence) and methodological pluralism. This article proposes a further, compatible principle.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example,Hiscock (2014) infers that Acheulean toolmakers maintained apprentice learning systems managed by expert individuals based not on an explicit model from the cognitive sciences but a task analysis of Acheulean technology. Moreover, in addition to cognitive models, cognitive archaeologists may also leverage comparative, palaeoneurological, and other data(Wynn 2016;Currie and Killin 2019;Killin and Pain 2021). Here we are focused on the epistemic licence for an inference from archaeological artefact to cognitive capacity provisioned by a cognitive model.4 We say 'potentially', for not all cognitive domains might be sensitive to the WEIRD problem (we discuss this in Section 4.2); neither is it inevitable that any differences will entail effect sizes large enough to skew conclusions drawn by cognitive archaeologists via WEIRD data; nor is it known how many inferences will be undermined by the use of WEIRD data.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Another route to optimism utilises causal-association inferences, not discussed in this paper. See Currie andKillin (2019) andPain (2019) for analysis; andKillin and Pain (2021) for the role of multiple independent lines of evidence converging on capacity cognitive archaeological theorising.…”

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confidence: 99%

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How WEIRD is Cognitive Archaeology? Engaging with the Challenge of Cultural Variation and Sample Diversity

Killin

Pain

2022

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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In their landmark 2010 paper, “The weirdest people in the world?”, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan outlined a serious methodological problem for the psychological and behavioural sciences. Most of the studies produced in the field use people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, yet inferences are often drawn to the species as a whole. In drawing such inferences, researchers implicitly assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that WEIRD populations are generally representative of the species. Yet neither of these assumptions is justified. In many psychological and behavioural domains, cultural variation begets cognitive variation, and WEIRD samples are recurrently shown to be outliers. In the years since the article was published, attention has focused on the implications this has for research on extant human populations. Here we extend those implications to the study of ancient H. sapiens, their hominin forebears, and cousin lineages. We assess a range of characteristic arguments and key studies in the cognitive archaeology literature, identifying issues stemming from the problem of sample diversity. We then look at how worrying the problem is, and consider some conditions under which inferences to ancient populations via cognitive models might be provisionally justified.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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How WEIRD is Cognitive Archaeology? Engaging with the Challenge of Cultural Variation and Sample Diversity

Killin

Pain

2022

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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“…It may rather reflect contingencies in that group's ecological and cultural context, not innate capacities. More careful use of proxies, such as simply being signals of the latest possible presence of the capacities (Killin & Pain, 2021) are also undermined. On these models, we're not primarily interested in identifying when the innate capacities may have arose (as the basic prerequisites might have a deeper evolutionary history, and they're potentially spread across many hominin taxa), but in mosaic patterns of loss and stabilization.…”

Section: Archaeological Business-as-usual and Rubiconsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioural modernity, investigative disintegration & Rubicon expectation

Meneganzin

Currie

2022

Synthese

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Abstract‘Behavioural modernity’ isn’t what it used to be. Once conceived as an integrated package of traits demarcated by a clear archaeological signal in a specific time and place, it is now disparate, archaeologically equivocal, and temporally and spatially spread. In this paper we trace behavioural modernity’s empirical and theoretical developments over the last three decades, as surprising discoveries in the material record, as well the reappraisal of old evidence, drove increasingly sophisticated demographic, social and cultural models of behavioural modernity. We argue, however, that some approaches to identifying and categorizing modernity have not kept up with this new picture. This is due to what we term ‘Rubicon expectations’: classificatory and interpretive practices which look for or assume clear demarcations in behavioural and cultural processes. We develop a philosophical account of ‘investigative disintegration’ to capture how our understanding of behavioural modernity has changed, and how Rubicon-based practices have become inadequate. Disintegration, in the form we analyse, occurs when scientists’ conception of a phenomenon shifts sufficiently to reshape an investigation’s epistemic structure. For behavioural modernity, the explanatory weight which once lay on identifying ‘switch-points’ in the innate suite of hominin cognitive capacities, lies now in understanding the social and demographic environments that were capable of sustaining and nourishing more complex material cultures. Finally, we argue that the phenomenon itself has not disintegrated to the point that we are left with no interesting explanandum: for all its mosaic, disparate nature, there are still good reasons for behavioural modernity to retain its central place in investigation of our species' origins.

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“…While this point originates in Zollman's work on network epistemology, it has become widely adopted across the philosophical literature, beyond discussions on formal models of science (e.g. Wray, 2010;Douven & Kelp, 2011;Nunn, 2012;Vickers, 2020;Peters, 2020;Killin & Pain, 2021). Since examples of harmful effects of a dense communication flow are hard to find, PUD has been particularly valuable as an illustration of this phenomenon.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

Radomski

Šešelja

Naumann

2021

HPLS

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The history of the research on peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is characterized by a premature abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, which subsequently had its comeback, leading to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori—the major cause of the disease. In this paper we examine the received view on this case, according to which the primary reason for the abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis in the mid-twentieth century was a large-scale study by a prominent gastroenterologist Palmer, which suggested no bacteria could be found in the human stomach. To this end, we employ the method of digital textual analysis and study the literature on the etiology of PUD published in the decade prior to Palmer’s article. Our findings suggest that the bacterial hypothesis had already been abandoned before the publication of Palmer’s paper, which challenges the widely held view that his study played a crucial role in the development of this episode. In view of this result, we argue that the PUD case does not illustrate harmful effects of a high degree of information flow, as it has frequently been claimed in the literature on network epistemology. Moreover, we argue that alternative examples of harmful effects of a high degree of information flow may be hard to find in the history of science.

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Cognitive Archaeology and the Minimum Necessary Competence Problem

Cited by 12 publications

References 74 publications

How WEIRD is Cognitive Archaeology? Engaging with the Challenge of Cultural Variation and Sample Diversity

How WEIRD is Cognitive Archaeology? Engaging with the Challenge of Cultural Variation and Sample Diversity

Behavioural modernity, investigative disintegration & Rubicon expectation

Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology

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