Cultural evolution studies are characterized by the notion that culture evolves accordingly to broadly Darwinian principles. Yet how far the analogy between cultural and genetic evolution should be pushed is open to debate. Here, we examine a recent disagreement that concerns the extent to which cultural transmission should be considered a preservative mechanism allowing selection among different variants, or a transformative process in which individuals recreate variants each time they are transmitted. The latter is associated with the notion of “cultural (...) attraction”. This issue has generated much misunderstanding and confusion. We first clarify the respective positions, noting that there is in fact no substantive incompatibility between cultural attraction and standard cultural evolution approaches, beyond a difference in focus. Whether cultural transmission should be considered a preservative or reconstructive process is ultimately an empirical question, and we examine how both preservative and reconstructive cultural transmission has been studied in recent experimental research in cultural evolution. Finally, we discuss how the relative importance of preservative and reconstructive processes may depend on the granularity of analysis and the domain being studied. (shrink)

Metaphors of adorning, crafting, water flowing downward, and growing sprouts appear in the Analects , the Mencius , and the Xunzi 荀子. They express and guide thinking about what there is in human nature to cultivate and how it is to be cultivated. The craft metaphor seems to imply that our nature is of the sort that must be disciplined and reshaped to achieve goodness, while the adorning, water, and sprout metaphors imply that human nature has an inbuilt directionality toward (...) the ethical that should be protected or nurtured. I argue that all the metaphors capture different aspects of human nature and how one must work with these aspects. There is much in contemporary psychology and neuroscience to suggest that the early Confucians were on the right track. It is also argued that they point to a fruitful conception of ethical development that is relational and holistic. (shrink)

Parents influence the development of their offspring in many ways beyond the transmission of DNA. This includes transfer of epigenetic states, nutrients, antibodies and hormones, and behavioural interactions after birth. While the evolutionary consequences of such nongenetic inheritance are increasingly well understood, less is known about how inheritance mechanisms evolve. Here, we present a simple but versatile model to explore the adaptive evolution of non-genetic inheritance. Our model is based on a switch mechanism that produces alternative phenotypes in response to (...) different inputs, including genes and non-genetic factors transmitted from parents and the environment experienced during development. This framework shows how genetic and non-genetic inheritance mechanisms and environmental conditions can act as cues by carrying correlational information about future selective conditions. Differential use of these cues is manifested as different degrees of genetic, parental or environmental morph determination. We use this framework to evaluate the conditions favouring non-genetic inheritance, as opposed to genetic determination of phenotype or within-generation plasticity, by applying it to two putative examples of adaptive non-genetic inheritance: maternal effects on seed germination in plants and transgenerational phase shift in desert locusts. Our simulation models show how the adaptive value of non-genetic inheritance depends on its mechanism, the pace of environmental change, and life history characteristics. (shrink)

This chapter offers a high-level overview of the philosophy of cognitive science and an introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. The philosophy of cognitive science emerged out of a set of common and overlapping interests among philosophers and scientists who study the mind. We identify five categories of issues that illustrate the best work in this broad field: (1) traditional philosophical issues about the mind that have been invigorated by research in cognitive science, (2) issues regarding (...) the practice of cognitive science and its foundational assumptions, (3) issues regarding the explication and clarification of core concepts in cognitive science, (4) first-order empirical issues where philosophers participate in the interdisciplinary investigation of particular psychological phenomena, (5) traditional philosophical issues that aren’t about the mind but that can be informed by a better understanding of how the mind works. (shrink)

To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. This article brings attention to these issues. We focus on three specific areas: the evolution of (...) cooperation, transmitted culture, and epigenetics. We do this to avoid confusion and wasted effort—dangers that are particularly acute in interdisciplinary research. Throughout this article, we suggest ways in which misunderstanding may be avoided in the future. (shrink)

I argue that there is a tension between the claim that at least some kinds in the special sciences are multiply realized and the claim that the reason why kinds are prized by science is that they enter into a variety of different empirical generalizations. Nevertheless, I show that this tension ceases in the case of ‘cultural homologues’—such as specific ideologies, religions, and folk wisdom. I argue that the instances of such special science kinds do have several projectable properties in (...) common due to their shared history of reproduction, and that the social learning involved means that we should also expect these kinds to be multiply realized. (shrink)

De modo semelhante aos rompantes etnocêntricos de uma cultura humana frente a outras, as relações entre humanos e primatas não humanos incluem um estranhamento pontuado por atração e repulsa, identificação e diferença. Ciência, arte e mitologia são a expressão viva e atualizada disso. Desde 1960, a primatologia destaca-se nesse cenário por contribuir significativamente na revisão das definições sobre o comportamento dos primatas e, consequentemente, na redefinição do humano ao apresentar a polêmica proposição de existência de "culturas" entre animais não humanos. (...) Assim, a aproximação entre humanos e primatas não humanos parece inexorável e irreversível. Isso implica, por exemplo, em cogitar se esse processo engendra, ou não, a constituição de novas alteridades a partir de um novo outro (não humano), carregado de significados. Isso incluiria, por exemplo, a reformulação de representações e de categorias de classificação, bem como o aprofundamento do debate sobre os direitos dos animais não humanos. Ao dirigir tal tipo de desafio a situações de pesquisa antropológica deve-se ter aguda consciência de que o registro etnográfico das relações entre humanos e os outros primatas será uma construção empírica, perceptual e teórica. Dado o tipo particular de relação estabelecida entre humanos e outros primatas, pautada em um universo fronteiriço de incômodas semelhanças e diferenças, constituem-se aí coletivos híbridos em que o alcance e a profundidade das interações possíveis ainda são desconhecidos. The relations between humans and non-human primates resemble the ethnocentric reaction of one human culture in relation to others, and include an estrangement marked by attraction and rejection, identification and differentiation. Art, science and myths are the vivid and updated expression of these phenomena. Since the 1960's primatology stands out in that scenario for contributing significantly to the revision of the definitions about the behavior of primates and, consequently, for the redefinition of human beings, and for making the controversial proposal of the existence of non-human animal "cultures". Then, the close connection between humans and non-human primates seems relentless and irreversible - and raises the question on whether or not these processes engender a new kind of otherness deriving from a non-human other that is full of meaning. This would include, for example, the reformulation of the representations and categories of classification, as well as deepening the debate about the rights of non-human animals. When the challenge is taken up in situations of anthropological research that address the relationships between human beings and the other primates, the ethnographic register that describes the relations between human beings and other primates will be an equally sharp empirical, perceptual and theoretical construction. Given the peculiar type of relationship established between human beings and other primates, implemented in a frontier universe of uncomfortable similarities and differences, they constituted a hybrid collective where interactions are possible but we do not know exactly how complex or how depth they are. (shrink)

At the heart of evolutionary theory lays the notion of replication. Unfortunately, this notion is far less exact than the weight of its importance. In this paper, it is argued that replication always involves coding. Furthermore, when a theory of evolution is built on replication based on coding, a unifying and coherent picture arises that sheds new light on some of the controversies and open questions in contemporary biology, such as what are the roles of phylogeny and ontogeny in evolution, (...) and how to characterize and explain the increase of biological complexity. (shrink)

The goal of forming a science of intentional behavior requires a more richly detailed account of symbolic systems than is assumed by the authors. Cultural systems are not simply the equivalent in the ideational domain of culture of the purported Baldwin Effect in the genetic domain. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.

The docility hypothesis holds that human social learning produces genuinely altruistic behaviors as a maladaptive by-product. This article examines five possible sources of such altruistic mistakes. The first two mechanisms, the smoke-detector principle and the cost-accuracy tradeoff, are not specifically linked to social learning. Both predict that it may be adaptive for cooperators to allow some altruistic mistakes to happen, as long as those mistakes are rare and cost little. The other three mechanisms are specific to social learning: Through culture, (...) individuals may come to adopt altruistic norms selected at the group level. Culture may provide people with cheap, accessible, but occasionally mediocre information that they are too reliant upon—a kind of informational dumping. Lastly, people may copy sources good to follow in one domain but not in another, thus committing calibration errors. I argue that those sources of errors are unlikely to lead to important amounts of altruism toward non-kin. Experimental evidence shows humans to be sufficiently skeptical, discriminative, and conscious of their own interest to avoid such altruistic mistakes in most cases. Docile altruism is unlikely to be an important aspect of human cooperation. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to consider the significance of different types of memory and non-genetic inheritance and different biosemiotic systems for the origin and evolution of language. It presents language and memory as distributed, heteronomous and system-determined processes implemented in biological and social domains. The article emphasises that language and other sign systems are both ecological and inductive systems that were caused by and always correlate with the environment and deductive systems that are inherited by and depend (...) on the internal development of organisms, individuals, and societies. The article also claims that the origin, re-occurrence and evolution of naturally-emerging sign systems presuppose their retention and accumulation in physical, biological, individual, and social types of memory and reinforcement and maintenance by conventional and deliberate social regulation and accumulation. All of this allows language and other sign systems to be situation-relevant and to be transmitted through generations without their constant reinvention. The novelty of the proposed theory of language origin and evolution is in interdisciplinary integration of biosemiotic studies, systems approaches to language and studies of inheritance systems presented by ‘Extended evolutionary synthesis’. (shrink)

To explain agent-identification behaviours, universalist theories in the biological and cognitive sciences have posited mental mechanisms thought to be universal to all humans, such as agent detection and face recognition mechanisms. These universalist theories have paid little attention to how particular sociocultural or historical contexts interact with the psychobiological processes of agent-identification. In contrast to universalist theories, contextualist theories appeal to particular historical and sociocultural contexts for explaining agent-identification. Contextualist theories tend to adopt idiographic methods aimed at recording the heterogeneity (...) of human behaviours across history, space, and cultures. Defenders of the universalist approach tend to criticise idiographic methods because such methods can lead to relativism or may lack generality. To overcome explanatory limitations of proposals that adopt either universalist or contextualist approaches in isolation, I propose a philosophical model that integrates contributions from both traditions: the psycho-historical theory of agent-identification. This theory investigates how the tracking processes that humans use for identifying agents interact with the unique socio-historical contexts that support agent-identification practices. In integrating hypotheses about the history of agents with psychological and epistemological principles regarding agent-identification, the theory can generate novel hypotheses regarding the distinction between recognition-based, heuristic-based, and explanation-based agent-identification. (shrink)

This paper examines two paths by which F. A. Hayek’s work has influenced the cognitive theory of institutions: cognition and cultural evolution. It argues that there is a relationship between the sensory order and the social order. The explanation of social order begins with the human mind. This is illustrated with ideas relating to understanding culture from a cognitive viewpoint. Human cognition makes cultural evolution an endogenous process. The paper draws on ideas of co-evolution of individuals’ mental models and their (...) actions. Mental models can be modified by feedback from altered perceived reality as a consequence of peoples’ altered actions. A key to understanding cultural evolution is an understanding of how individuals modify their mental models. (shrink)

In Why We Cooperate, Tomasello addresses the problem of human uniqueness, which has become the focus for a lot of recent research at the frontier between the Humanities and the Life Sciences. Being both a developmental psychologist and a primatologist, Tomasello is especially well suited to tackle the subject, and the present book is the most recent one in a series of books and papers by himself and his colleagues. Tomasello’s basic position is squarely a dual-inheritance account, in which human (...) uniqueness is explained both through genetics and through culture. The main idea is that the phylogenetic specificity of humankind rests in its species-specific adaptation for sociability. The account offered by Tomasello contrasts human cooperation and altruism with nonhuman primate competition, and proposes that human altruism leads to shared intentionality. The evolutionary explanation Tomasello offers is that human ancestors were led through some kind of selection pressure to common foraging leading to collaboration and sharing. After outlining Tomasello’s position as it is described in the book, as well as the comments by Dweck, Spelke, Silk, and Skyrms which follow, I discuss Tomasello’s thesis, noting a few problems with his approach. These criticisms are based on his own work and on a number of his own other books and papers, as well as on other relevant work in the domain. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists identify propensities for social engagement in human infants that are less evident in other apes; Sarah Hrdy links these social propensities to novel features of human childrearing. Unlike other ape mothers, humans can bear a new baby before the previous child is independent because they have help. This help alters maternal trade-offs and so imposes new selection pressures on infants and young children to actively engage their caretakers’ attention and commitment. Such distinctive childrearing is part of our grandmothering (...) life history. While consequences for other cooperative activities must surely follow, the novel rearing environments set up by helpful grandmothering can explain why natural selection escalated preferences and motivations for interactivity in our lineage in the first place, and why, unlike other aspects of infant development, social sensitivities are not delayed in humans compared with genus Pan. (shrink)

The evolution of cognition literature is dominated by views that presume the evolution of underlying neural structures. However, recent models of cognition reemphasize the role of physiological structures, development, and external resources as important components of cognition. This article argues that these alternative models of cognition challenge our understanding of human cognitive evolution. As a case study, it focuses on rehabilitating bipedalism as a crucial moment in human evolution. The australopithecines are often seen as “merely” bipedal chimpanzees, with a similar (...) suite of behaviors. But an embodied, developmental approach to understanding australopithecine cognitive abilities shows that the transition between australopithecines and the emergence of the Homo genus is less of a break than is often thought. Bipedalism on this view is not just a physiological and behavioral breakthrough: it represents a major cognitive leap as well. (shrink)

The phenomenon of altruism extends from the biological realm to the human sociocultural realm. This article sketches a coherent outline of multiple types of altruism of progressively increasing scope that span these two realms and are grounded in an ever-expanding sense of “self.” Discussion of this framework notes difficulties associated with altruism at different levels. It links scientific ideas about the evolution of cooperation and about hierarchical order to perennial philosophical and religious concerns. It offers a conceptual background for inquiry (...) into societal challenges that call for altruistic behavior, especially the challenge of environmental and social sustainability. (shrink)

If one’s solution to the free will problem is in terms of real causal powers of agents then one ought to be an incompatibilist. Some premises are contentious but the following new argument for incompatibilism is advanced: 1. If causal determinism is true, all events are necessitated2. If all events are necessitated, then there are no powers3. Free will consists in the exercise of an agent’s powersTherefore, if causal determinism is true, there is no free will; which is to say (...) that free will is incompatible with determinism, so compatibilism is false. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain why evolutionary psychiatry is not where the next revolution in psychiatry will come from. I will proceed as follows. Firstly, I will review some of the problems commonly attributed to current nosologies, more specifically to the DSM. One of these problems is the lack of a clear and consensual definition of mental disorder; I will then examine specific attempts to spell out such a definition that use the evolutionary framework. One definition that deserves particular attention, (...) is one put forward by Jerome Wakefield. Despite my sympathy for his position, I must indicate a few reasons why I think his attempt might not be able to resolve the problems related to current nosologies. I suggest that it might be wiser for an evolutionary psychiatrist to adopt the more integrative framework of “treatable conditions”. As it is thought that an evolutionary approach can contribute to transforming the way we look at mental disorders, I will provide the reader with a brief sketch of the basic tenets of evolutionary psychology. The picture of the architecture of the human mind that emerges from evolutionary psychology is thought by some to be the crucial backdrop to identifying specific mental disorders and distinguishing them from normal conditions. I will also provide two examples of how evolutionary thinking is supposed to change our thinking about some disorders. Using the case of depression, I will then show what kind of problems evolutionary explanations of particular psychopathologies encounter. In conclusion, I will evaluate where evolutionary thinking leaves us in regard to what I identify as the main problems of our current nosologies. I’ll then argue that the prospects of evolutionary psychiatry are not good. (shrink)

The article addresses the issue of dynamics of science, in particular of new sciences born in twentieth century and developed after the Second World War (information science, materials science, life science). The article develops the notion of search regime as an abstract characterization of dynamic patterns, based on three dimensions: the rate of growth, the degree of internal diversity of science and the associated dynamics (convergent vs. proliferating), and the nature of complementarity. The article offers a conceptual discussion for the (...) argument that new sciences follow a different pattern than established sciences and presents preliminary evidence drawn from original data in particle physics, computer science and nanoscience. (shrink)

Kinship was one of the key areas of research interest among anthropologists in the nineteenth century, one of the most hotly debated areas of theory in the early and mid-twentieth century, and yet an area of waning interest by the end of the twentieth century. Since then, the study of kinship has experienced a revitalization, with concomitant disputes over how best to proceed. This special issue brings together recent studies of kinship by scientific anthropologists employing evolutionary theory and quantitative methods. (...) We argue that the melding of the evolutionary theoretical perspective with quantitative and ethnographic methodologies has strengthened and reinvigorated the study of kinship by synthesizing and extending existing research via rigorous analyses of evidence. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward a thesis regarding the anatomy of “cultural evolution”, in particular the way the “cultural” transmission of behavioral patterns came to piggyback, through us humans, on the transmission effected by genetic evolution. I claim that what grounds and supports this new kind of transmission is a complex behavioral “meta-pattern” that makes it possible to grasp a pattern as something that “ought to be”, i.e. that transforms the pattern into what we can call a rule. (Here (...) I draw especially on the philosophical insights of Wilfrid Sellars.) In this way I interlink empirical research done in evolution theory with some more speculative philosophical theories, thus shedding new light on the former and adding an empirical footing to the latter. (shrink)

We present a cross-cultural analysis showing that the presence of an active or moral High God in societies varies generally along a continuum from lesser to greater technological complexity and subsistence productivity. Foragers are least likely to have High Gods. Horticulturalists and agriculturalists are more likely. Pastoralists are most likely, though they are less easily positioned along the productivity continuum. We suggest that belief in moral High Gods was fostered by emerging leaders in societies dependent on resources that were difficult (...) to manage and defend without group cooperation. These leaders used the concept of a supernatural moral enforcer to manipulate others into cooperating, which resulted in greater productivity. Reproductive success would accrue most to such leaders, but the average reproductive success of all individuals in the society would also increase with greater productivity. Supernatural enforcement of moral codes maintained social cohesion and allowed for further population growth, giving one society an advantage in competition with others. (shrink)

Collective action, or the large-scale cooperation in the pursuit of public goods, has been suggested to have evolved through cultural group selection. Previous research suggests that the costly punishment of group members who do not contribute to public goods plays an important role in the resolution of collective action dilemmas. If large-scale cooperation sustained by the punishment of defectors has evolved through the mechanism of cultural group selection, two implications regarding costly punishment follow: (1) that people are more willing to (...) punish defecting group members in a situation of intergroup competition than in a single-group social dilemma game and (2) that levels of “perverse” punishment of cooperators are not affected by intergroup competition. We find confirmation for these hypotheses. However, we find that the effect of intergroup competition on the punishment of defectors is fully explained by the stronger conditionality of punishment on expected punishment levels in the competition condition. (shrink)

The human ability to form large, coordinated groups is among our most impressive social adaptations. Larger groups facilitate synergistic economies of scale for cooperative breeding, such economic tasks as group hunting, and success in conflict with other groups. In many organisms, genetic relationships provide the structure for sociality to evolve via the process of kin selection, and this is the case, to a certain extent, for humans. But assortment by genetic affiliation is not the only mechanism that can bring people (...) together. Affinity based on symbolically mediated and socially constructed identity, or cultural kinship, structures much of human ultrasociality. This paper examines how genetic kinship and two kinds of cultural kinship—affinal kinship and descent—structure the network of cooperating whale hunters in the village of Lamalera, Indonesia. Social network analyses show that each mechanism of assortment produces characteristic networks of different sizes, each more or less conducive to the task of hunting whales. Assortment via close genetic kin relationships (r = 0.5) produces a smaller, denser network. Assortment via less-close kin relations (r = 0.125) produces a larger but less dense network. Affinal networks are small and diffuse; lineage networks are larger, discrete, and very dense. The roles that genetic and cultural kinship play for structuring human sociality is discussed in the context of these results. (shrink)

Human coalitions frequently persist through multiple, overlapping membership generations, requiring new members to cooperate and coordinate with veteran members. Does the mind contain psychological adaptations for interacting within these intergenerational coalitions? In this paper, we examine whether the mind spontaneously treats newcomers as a motivationally privileged category. Newcomers—though capable of benefiting coalitions—may also impose considerable costs (e.g., they may free ride on other members, they may be poor at completing group tasks). In three experiments we show (1) that the mind (...) categorizes coalition members by tenure, including newcomers; (2) that tenure categorization persists in the presence of orthogonal and salient social dimensions; and (3) that newcomers elicit a pattern of impressions consistent with their probable ancestral costs. These results provide preliminary evidence for a specialized component of human coalitional psychology: an evolved concept of newcomer. (shrink)

It is common to portray conservative and liberal Protestant denominations as “strong” and “weak” on the basis of indices such as church attendance. Alternatively, they can be regarded as qualitatively different cultural systems that coexist in a multiple-niche environment. We integrate these two perspectives with a study of American teenagers based on both one-time survey information and the experience sampling method (ESM), which records individual experience on a moment-by-moment basis. Conservative Protestant youth were found to be more satisfied, family-oriented, and (...) sociable than liberal Protestant youth, but also more dependent on their social environment, which is reflected in a deterioration of their mood when they are alone. Liberal Protestant youth appear to have internalized values that remain constant whether in the presence or absence of others. We relate these results to the social scientific literature on liberalism and conservatism and to evolutionary theory as a framework for explaining cultural systems as adaptations to multiple-niche environments. (shrink)

There has been much debate regarding when modern human cognition arose. It was previously thought that the technocomplexes and artifacts associated with a particular timeframe during the Upper Paleolithic could provide a proxy for identifying the signature of modern cognition. It now appears that this approach has underestimated the complexity of human behavior on a number of different levels. As the artifacts, once thought to be confined to Europe 40,000 years ago onwards, can now be found in other parts of (...) the world well before this date, especially in South Africa, this suggests that modern cognition arose well before this period. Moreover, the variability of the archaeological record from the time when anatomically modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago suggests cognitive factors alone are unable to explain the obvious unevenness. In this article, it will be demonstrated how neuro-cognition can be assimilated with population dynamics and the transmission of information between individuals and groups that can provide important insights as to the nature and origins of modern human cognition. (shrink)

Bering's argument that human beings are endowed with a cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of psychological immortality relies on the claim that children's beliefs in the afterlife are not the result of religious teaching. We suggest four reasons why this claim is unsatisfactory.

The concept of natural kind is center stage in the debates about scientific realism. Champions of scientific realism such as Richard Boyd hold that our most developed scientific theories allow us to “cut the world at its joints” (Boyd, 1981, 1984, 1991). In the long run we can disclose natural kinds as nature made them, though as science progresses improvements in theory allow us to revise the extension of natural kind terms.

The theory of cultural evolution proposed by economist Friedrich August von Hayek is without doubt the most harshly criticized component in his highly prolific intellectual corpus. Hayek depicted the emergence of the market order as the unintended consequence of an evolutionary process in which groups whose rules of behavior led to a comparative increase in population and wealth were favored over others. Key to Hayek’s theory was the claim that the rules of the market, on which modern civilization relies, evolved (...) at the meta-individual level and therefore surpass human reason. Hayek believed that his theory provided scientific explanation for the superiority of the market order over rational planning. In this article, I conduct a selective comparison between Hayek’s and Darwin’s theories of cultural group selection and analyze the role that demographic growth and reason play in their respective accounts. I first present Hayek’s theory of cultural group selection, its sources of inspiration, and its important place in his intellectual legacy. I then compare Hayek’s claims to Darwin’s views and highlight fundamental differences in their evaluation of the role of reason in moral evolution. Finally, I offer some comments concerning the place assigned to demographic growth in Hayek’s theory and his over-reliance on economics in explaining cultural evolution. (shrink)

Much has been written about the self, yet its evolution and functioning are matters of controversy in evolutionary psychology. The article argues that it is an evolved capacity, essential for co-evolutionary processes, including cultural development, to occur. A model of self-regulation is offered to explain its adaptive functioning, elaborating William James’ I-me distinction, and drawing upon contemporary analyses in social psychology and neuroscience. The model is used to illustrate how adaptive behavior is facilitated by the exercise of self-control, to defer (...) and re-order goals, revise perceptions of the world, modify conceptions of the self, and alter repertoires of learned action sequences, heuristics, and habits. It also identifies potential areas of dysfunction, mediated by self-deception and misperception. Through this lens one can see how leadership is a historically co-evolving function of social systems, changing to meet altered circumstances. The recursive relationship involves interaction between changing leader–follower relationships, within which leaders’ self-regulation is a central process. Individual differences in leaders as agents are thus also critical. The article concludes by considering the need for insight in order to steer these co-evolving functions in directions that help us as a species to master the global challenges and threats we face in our times. (shrink)

Fincher & Thornhill's (F&T's) parasite-stress theory of sociality is supported largely by correlational evidence; its persuasiveness would increase significantly via lab and natural experiments and demonstrations of its mediating role. How the theory is linked to other approaches to group differences in psychological differences and to production and dissemination of cultural ideas and practices, need further clarification. So does the theory's view on the possible reduction of negative group interactions.

Experimental studies on punishment have sometimes been over-interpreted not only for the reasons Guala lists, but also because of a frequent conflation of proximate and ultimate explanatory levels that Guala's review perpetuates. Moreover, for future analyses we may need a clearer classification of different kinds of punishment.

This paper discusses some widespread but often not fully articulated views concerning the possible roles of biology and evolution in the social sciences. Such views cluster around a set of intuitions that suggest that evolution's role is “ballistic”: it constitutes a starting point for mind that has been, and is, superseded by the role of culture and social construction. An implication is that evolved and the socially constructed aspects of mind are separable and independent, with the latter being the primary (...) driver of mind. I outline four variants of the ballistic view. I then show how current findings and arguments in evolutionary thinking as related to mind contradict those ballistic views. The contrary view—that evolutionary and social factors are interdependent in the generation of social psychological capacities—is proposed as a consequence. This view is able to respect some insights of theories that make ballistic assumptions, whilst avoiding those assumptions. (shrink)

In the first part of the article, an account of moral judgment in terms of emotional dispositions is given. This account provides an expressivist explanation of three important features of moral demands: inescapability, authority independence and meriting. In the second part of the article, some ideas initially put forward by Christopher Boehm are developed and modified in order to provide a hypothesis about the evolution of the ability to token moral judgments. This hypothesis makes evolutionary sense of inescapability, authority independence (...) and meriting. It does so by referring to the selection pressures generated in the Late Pleistocene by large-game hunting. If the hypothesis is correct, we can say that, in a sense, meat made us moral. (shrink)

There is increasing evidence that some behavioural differences between groups of chimpanzees can be attributed neither to genetic nor to ecological variation. Such differences are likely to be maintained by social learning. While humans teach their offspring, and acquire cultural traits through imitative learning, there is little evidence of such behaviours in chimpanzees. However, by appealing only to incremental changes in motivation, attention and attention-soliciting behaviour, and without expensive changes in cognition, we can hypothesise the possible emergence of imitation and (...) pedagogy in evolutionary history. (shrink)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term ‘ultimate causation’ and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic (...) plasticity and their roles in evolution, and consideration of the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

Coen offers a unified explanation of natural selection, development, learning and cultural change, based on seven fundamental principles: population variation, persistence, reinforcement, competition, cooperation, combinatorial richness and recurrence. I discuss whether all seven principles are justified, successfully fit the four processes, encompass life processes only, and have any strong explanatory import. I find each of these claims doubtful.

This review article discusses some problems and needs for clarification that are connected with the use of the concepts culture, language, tool, and communication in Daniel Everett's recently published book, Language: The Cultural Tool . It also discusses whether the idea of biological readiness and preparedness for language (rather than grammar) can really be disposed of as a result of Everett's very convincing arguments against a specific genetic predisposition for the syntactic component of a grammar. Finally, it calls into question (...) whether Everett really is true to his professed ideology of scientific ideographical pragmatism. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n1p1 A teoria darwinista tem contribuído para a discussão de problemas nos mais diversos campos filosóficos, entre os quais se inclui a ética e a teoria moral. A sociobiologia e a psicologia evolucionista elucidaram muitos aspectos do comportamento social de diversas espécies animais, a partir de mecanismos como a seleção de parentesco e o altruísmo recíproco que, contudo, são insuficientes para explicar a cooperação no caso humano. Como alternativa, a teoria da dupla herança busca explicar o comportamento humano considerando tanto (...) a biologia quanto as ciências sociais. Segundo esta abordagem, a psicologia social humana é caracterizada por instintos sociais tribais e marcadores simbólicos, que resultam em uma mente que pressupõe princípios morais inatos e universais, selecionados para a vida em grupos orientados por normas sociais, mas que são plasticamente moldados à realidade cultural de cada sociedade. (shrink)

Climate policy decisions are decisions under uncertainty and are, therefore, based on a range of future climate scenarios, describing possible consequences of alternative policies. Accordingly, the methodology for setting up such a scenario range becomes pivotal in climate policy advice. The preferred methodology of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be characterised as ,,modal verificationism"; it suffers from severe shortcomings which disqualify it for scientific policy advice. Modal falsificationism, as a more sound alternative, would radically alter the way the (...) climate scenario range is set up. Climate science's inability to find robust upper bounds for future temperature rise in line with modal falsificationism does not disprove that methodology, rather, this very fact prescribes even more drastic efforts to curb CO2 emissions than currently proposed. (shrink)