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The cultural evolution of socially situated cognition

Gabora, Dr. Liane M. (2008) The cultural evolution of socially situated cognition. [Journal (Paginated)]

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Abstract

Because human cognition is creative and socially situated, knowledge accumulates, diffuses, and gets applied in new contexts, generating cultural analogs of phenomena observed in population genetics such as adaptation and drift. It is therefore commonly thought that elements of culture evolve through natural selection. However, natural selection was proposed to explain how change accumulates despite lack of inheritance of acquired traits, as occurs with template-mediated replication. It cannot accommodate a process with significant retention of acquired or horizontally (e.g. socially) transmitted traits. Moreover, elements of culture cannot be treated as discrete lineages because they constantly interact and influence one another. It is proposed that what evolves through culture is the mind; ideas and artifacts are merely reflections of its current evolved state. Interacting minds transform (in part) through through a non-Darwinian autopoietic process similar to that by which early life evolved, involving not survival of the fittest but actualization of their potential.

Item Type:Journal (Paginated)
Keywords:acquired traits, autopoiesis, cultural evolution, cultural transmission, Darwinian model, inheritance, natural selection, self-replication, social learning
Subjects:Psychology > Social Psychology
Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology
Biology > Evolution
ID Code:5959
Deposited By: Gabora, Dr. Liane
Deposited On:10 Mar 2008 14:53
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:57

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