Cognitive novelties, informational form, and structural-causal explanations

Buskell, Andrew

doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02585-4

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Instead it has to be learned incrementally, and reconstructed in each individual. This process may in turn rely substantially on the organization of traits as they are encountered in artefacts, the environment, and encounters with other individuals (Buskell 2020(Buskell , 2022; although any particular learning encounter may be error-prone, learning can take advantage of the organized structure of traits and multiple opportunities for learning. This is consistent with general findings from developmental psychology, educational science and related fields (Bjorklund & Causey 2017, Ericsson et al 2018.…”

Section: Developmental Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Systems

Jansson¹,

Buskell²,

Enquist³

2022

Preprint

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Many cultural phenomena cannot be understood by studying traits in isolation. Instead, they are embedded in webs of relations, layered with rich social meaning, and sequentially acquired and evaluated, \emph{filtered}, in light of previously acquired traits. Incorporating multiple traits and their relations is needed to understand the organization, dynamics, and emergent products of cultural evolution. We argue that a systems approach offers the potential for: (i) a more thorough understanding of the source and character of emergent phenomena, crucial for understanding the origin and historical development of culture; (ii) an increased scope of cultural evolution, whereby faithful transmission, self-organization and filtering of culture can be accounted for by systems dynamics without the need for strong assumptions about innate machinery; and (iii) a more robust theoretical connection between cultural evolution and processes of development as they are studied in developmental psychology and related fields.

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Section: Developmental Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Systems

Jansson¹,

Buskell²,

Enquist³

2022

Preprint

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“…Taken together, these moves risk reading into the concept of cumulative culture a number of cognitive achievements that were likely outcomes of evolutionary feedback loops that themselves involved cumulative culture. This is especially the case if, as some recent accounts have argued, distinctively human cognitive capacities themselves require ontogenetic exposure to cumulative cultural traditions (Buskell, forthcoming; Heyes, 2018).…”

Section: Complexity and Distinctively Human Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative culture and complex cultural traditions

Buskell

2020

Mind & Language

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Cumulative cultural evolution is often claimed to be distinctive of human culture. Such claims are typically supported with examples of complex and historically late-appearing technologies. Yet by taking these as paradigm cases, researchers unhelpfully lump together different ways that culture accumulates. This article has two aims: (a) to distinguish four types of cultural accumulation: adaptiveness, complexity, efficiency, and disparity and (b) to highlight the epistemic implications of taking complex hominin technologies as paradigmatic instances of cumulative culture. Addressing these issues both clarifies the cumulative culture concept and demonstrates the importance of further cumulative culture research into non-human animals and ancestral hominins.

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“…Heyes does not identify as part of the California school. 8 SeeBuskell (2021) for an analysis of Heyes and a proposal of a view along similar lines. SeeNichols et al (2019) for another assessment.6 I do not commit to their suggestion that humans had to evolve a specialized categorization capacity.…”

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confidence: 99%

The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution

Cadenas

2023

Biol Philos

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Work on cultural evolution, especially that of Boyd, Richerson, and Henrich, has said little about the role of reinforcement in cultural learning. This is surprising, for reinforcement is an old system, it is found across a diverse array of organisms, and it is a successful concept in various scientific disciplines. The main claim of this paper is that social forms of reinforcement play a role in cultural evolution. More specifically, I argue that starting early in human history, social approval and disapproval of behavior function as reinforcers and punishers; approval and disapproval thereby start a process whereby norms are transmitted. After giving arguments for these claims, I discuss work on social learning strategies—cultural rules specifying who to learn from and how to learn from them (Heyes in Philos Trans R Soc 371(1693):1–8, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0369). I suggest that the account I develop here can help explain the connection between these learning rules and cultural evolution. I illustrate this point with recent work on divination practices (Hong and Henrich in Hum Nat 32:622–651, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09408-6). My account proposes that forms of social reinforcement can explain the spread and persistence of divination practices. Besides addressing the central question (a role for reinforcement in cultural evolution), my account indirectly touches on developing themes in cultural evolution, namely, normative psychology (Heyes in Perspect Psychol Sci, 2023; Birch Biol Philos 36:4, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09777-9).

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Cognitive novelties, informational form, and structural-causal explanations

Cited by 3 publications

References 56 publications

Cultural Systems

Cultural Systems

Cumulative culture and complex cultural traditions

The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution

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