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      Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution

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      Biology & Philosophy
      Springer Netherlands
      Cultural attraction, Dual inheritance theory, Cultural selection, Imitation, Cognitive anthropology

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          Abstract

          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.

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          Most cited references31

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          Reasoning the fast and frugal way: models of bounded rationality.

          Humans and animals make inferences about the world under limited time and knowledge. In contrast, many models of rational inference treat the mind as a Laplacean Demon, equipped with unlimited time, knowledge, and computational might. Following H. Simon's notion of satisfying, the authors have proposed a family of algorithms based on a simple psychological mechanism: one-reason decision making. These fast and frugal algorithms violate fundamental tenets of classical rationality: They neither look up nor integrate all information. By computer simulation, the authors held a competition between the satisfying "Take The Best" algorithm and various "rational" inference procedures (e.g., multiple regression). The Take The Best algorithm matched or outperformed all competitors in inferential speed and accuracy. This result in an existence proof that cognitive mechanisms capable of successful performance in the real world do not need to satisfy the classical norms of rational inference.
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            Emulation, imitation, over-imitation and the scope of culture for child and chimpanzee.

            We describe our recent studies of imitation and cultural transmission in chimpanzees and children, which question late twentieth-century characterizations of children as imitators, but chimpanzees as emulators. As emulation entails learning only about the results of others' actions, it has been thought to curtail any capacity to sustain cultures. Recent chimpanzee diffusion experiments have by contrast documented a significant capacity for copying local behavioural traditions. Additionally, in recent 'ghost' experiments with no model visible, chimpanzees failed to replicate the object movements on which emulation is supposed to focus. We conclude that chimpanzees rely more on imitation and have greater cultural capacities than previously acknowledged. However, we also find that they selectively apply a range of social learning processes that include emulation. Recent studies demonstrating surprisingly unselective 'over-imitation' in children suggest that children's propensity to imitate has been underestimated too. We discuss the implications of these developments for the nature of social learning and culture in the two species. Finally, our new experiments directly address cumulative cultural learning. Initial results demonstrate a relative conservatism and conformity in chimpanzees' learning, contrasting with cumulative cultural learning in young children. This difference may contribute much to the contrast in these species' capacities for cultural evolution.
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              The Evolved Apprentice

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                morin@shh.mpg.de
                Journal
                Biol Philos
                Biol Philos
                Biology & Philosophy
                Springer Netherlands (Dordrecht )
                0169-3867
                1572-8404
                29 February 2016
                29 February 2016
                2016
                : 31
                : 447-458
                Affiliations
                [ ]Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Minds and Traditions Research Group, Jena, Germany
                [ ]Social Mind Center, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
                Article
                9516
                10.1007/s10539-016-9516-4
                4944120
                27472420
                a4fa5f08-5bcb-4a47-bc27-ff76c43d96ee
                © 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.

                History
                : 9 November 2015
                : 11 January 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781, European Research Council;
                Award ID: 609819
                Categories
                Article
                Custom metadata
                © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

                Philosophy of science
                cultural attraction,dual inheritance theory,cultural selection,imitation,cognitive anthropology

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