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The cultural evolution of socially situated cognition Gabora, Liane
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 Metadata
Title |
The cultural evolution of socially situated cognition
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Creator | |
Publisher |
Elsevier
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Date Issued |
2008-03
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Description |
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.
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Subject | |
Genre | |
Type | |
Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2018-03-05
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0364151
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URI | |
Affiliation | |
Citation |
Gabora, L. (2008). The cultural evolution of socially situated cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 9(1-2), 104-113.
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Publisher DOI |
10.1016/j.cogsys.2007.05.004
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Peer Review Status |
Reviewed
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Scholarly Level |
Faculty
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Rights URI | |
Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International