This target article presents a theory of human cultural learning. Cultural learning is identified with those instances of social learning in which intersubjectivity or perspective-taking plays a vital role, both in the original learning process and in the resulting cognitive product. Cultural learning manifests itself in three forms during human ontogeny: imitative learning, instructed learning, and collaborative learning – in that order. Evidence is provided that this progression arises from the developmental ordering of the underlying social-cognitive concepts and processes involved. (...) Imitative learning relies on a concept of intentional agent and involves simple perspective-taking. Instructed learning relies on a concept of mental agent and involves alternating/coordinated perspective-taking (intersubjectivity). Collaborative learning relies on a concept of reflective agent and involves integrated perspective-taking (reflective intersubjectivity). A comparison of normal children, autistic children and wild and enculturated chimpanzees provides further evidence for these correlations between social cognition and cultural learning. Cultural learning is a uniquely human form of social learning that allows for a fidelity of transmission of behaviors and information among conspecifics not possible in other forms of social learning, thereby providing the psychological basis for cultural evolution. (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)