• Each individual's part in the process that is important. 
• Individual practices, orientations, plans, to guide their actions. 
• Focus on individual psychology.
• Boyd and Richerson

• supraindividual
• problems don't depend on a particular individual
• large-scalre overarching factors that operate independent of any singular individual
• Boyd and Richerson

What two methodolgies do Boyd and Richerson use to in their analogy?

• methodological individualism
• methodological holism

• Genotype: Genetically stored information serving as instructions for building and replication of the organism. Passed between individual organisms and potentially shared by many if not all members of a population or species.
• Phenotype: The outward manifestation or expression of the genotype in the individual organism, anything comprising the observable structure, function or behavior of a living organism. Product of interaction of organism’s genotype with its environment.

CULTURAL REPERTOIRE: Information capable of affecting individual phenotypes which they acquire from other conspecifics by teaching and learning. Information: conscious or unconscious mental states (belief, desire, value, knowledge, dispositions, and capacity) acquired or modified by social learning that affect behaviors. Nongenetically passed between individual organisms and potentially shared by many if not all members of a population.

CULTURAL PHENOTYPE: The outward, observable manifestation of a cultural repertoire for the individual agent, especially for behavior. Culture phenotypes express ‘cultural variants’ (analogous to genes) – specific elements of the individual’s repertoire. 

CULTURE AS EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

Culture: the transmission from one generation to the next, via teaching and imitation of knowledge, values, and other factors that influence behavior (2).

A system of inheritance with modification, change.

Various “biases” favor transmission of some cultural variants over others.

Conformism, compliance to social norms, imitation of prestigious individuals. 

FOUR “STRUCTURAL” DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CULTURAL AND GENETIC INHERITANCE

1. CULTURAL “MATING SYSTEM” DIFFERS FROOM ITS GENETIC ANALOG
2. CULTURAL “GENERATION LENGTH” IS VARIABLE
3. INDIVIDUALS ARE AT LEAST PARTLY DEVELOPED WHEN THEY ARE ENCULTURATED.
4. CULTURE IS ACQUIRED BY DIRECTLY COPYING THE PHENOTYPE.

“STRUCTURAL” DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CULTURAL AND GENETIC INHERITANCE

1. CULTURAL “MATING SYSTEM” DIFFERS FROOM ITS GENETIC ANALOG

• Potential multitudes of models (“cultural parents”) vs. two genetic parents (“in sexual reproduction.”)
• Cultural offspring: anyone who acquires traits by cultural transmission (observation and imitation).
• not limited to offspring created by sexual reproduction
• Routes of transmission of cultural repertoire: 
• • Vertical: Parent to child (bio parent usually very salient models for young children) or child to parent. Can be heard to disentangle from genetic inheritance. 
  • Horizontal: Peer to peer.
  • Oblique: Nonparental adults to children.

Routes of transmission of cultural repertoire

• Vertical: Parent to child (bio parent usually very salient models for young children) or child to parent. Can be heard to disentangle from genetic inheritance. 
• Horizontal: Peer to peer.
• Oblique: Nonparental adults to children.

“STRUCTURAL” DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CULTURAL AND GENETIC INHERITANCE

• Time scale of cultural evolution can be either shorter or longer than a biological generation
• Transmission is not necessarily from one biological generation to the next.
• Adults can acquire cultural variants/traits from children.
• Horizontal transmission doesn’t exist in genetics
• Rapid infections- FADS.

“STRUCTURAL” DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CULTURAL AND GENETIC INHERITANCE

1. INDIVIDUALS ARE AT LEAST PARTLY DEVELOPED WHEN THEY ARE ENCULTURATED.

• Genes are an a priori constraint on enculturation.
• Enculturation starts off vertical (parent/caretaker to child) a bit like genetics, but becomes increasingly horizontal and oblique.
• No literally passive acquisition of cultural traits.

“STRUCTURAL” DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CULTURAL AND GENETIC INHERITANCE

1. CULTURE IS ACQUIRED BY DIRECTLY COPYING THE PHENOTYPE.

• The cultural information (cultural repertoire) one acquires depends essentially on the psychological-historical events in one’s life- especially opportunities for observation and imitation.
• “acquired variations” are subsequently straightaway available for transmission to cultural offspring. 

THE FORCES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

1. RANDOM VARIATION
2. AN ANALOG OF GENETIC DRIFT
3. GUIDED VARIATION
4. BIASED TRANSMISSION (DIRECT BIAS, FREQUENCY DEPENDENT BIAS, INDIRECT BIAS)
5. NATURAL SELECTION CAN OPERATE ON CULTURE

1. Random Variation: genes can be expressed in various ways, deformation of something due to a deviation, a gene that failed to express itself properly. 

*Mutation

*‘Cold’ (misremembering, info-overload, etc.) or ‘hot’ (wishful thinking, desire, fear, etc.) errors can creep in so that a behavioral variant changes in transmission. 

THE FORCES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

An Analog of Genetic Drift

• Chance variations in frequency with which a trait is observed or remembered lead to changes overtime in the variant.
• E.g. Disease brought by European colonizers leads to reduction in frequency of a ritual, which means the ritual dies out. 

THE FORCES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Guided Variation

• Acquired variants- especially behaviors picked up by individual (strong) learning-tend subsequently to be culturally transmitted (by conspecifics’ observation and imitation), leading to increase in frequency within the population, especially when it is (perceived to be?) adaptive. 

THE FORCES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Biased Transmission

• Adoption of behavioral variants on the basis of individual agent’s evaluations of the available alternatives as furnished by the available models (Bandura). 

Direct Bias

• Evaluation of candidate traits on basis of modeled alternative’s own properties. Children and food preferences. Easier to introduce children to mild and sweet vs. strong and spicy. 

Frequency dependent bias

• Commonness/rarity of a trait within a population is basis for transmission, adoption.

Indirect bias

• Models (cultural parents) chosen on basis of symbolic index traits. 
• Imitation of those agents exhibiting signs of certain traits (prestige, wealth, physical attractiveness, etc.) one admires, desires, is fascinated by, etc. 

THE FORCES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Natural selection can operate on culture

• Many cultural variants will increase (or at least be retained) relative to others because they have an effect on human survival and reproduction (both genetic and cultural) (11).
• Since culture effects the survival and success of the individuals and groups, it is part of human evolutionary process as much as are genes. 

NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN:

• External
• Empirical (Observation, observability)
• Objective
• Ahistorical

GEISTENWISSENSCHAFTEN

• Internal/Subjective
• Mind-created
• Indirectly accessible to senses, if at all
• Historical

Rationality Heuristic

Heuristic: enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves: “hands-on” or interactive approach to learning
Ex: when you step on a crosswalk and see a car arriving, you make the assumption that the car driver will stop and not run over you. You employ your rationality. 

• Geist

• spirit, mind
• separation of the mind and material
• the realm of certain human experiences has partial autonomy from physical or material reality
• geist can be teleological upward development, progressive
• we are not controlled by transcendental forces 
• examine the the human through the separation of the natural sciences and the social sciences

Social Sciences

• internal, subjective, mind-created, indirectly accessible to senses if at all, historical
• Dilthey studies the mind through social sciences, the mind as we have created it and the purposes we give it, mind in the sense of design for living

Goal of the natural sciences

• causes, mechanisms, mindless, non-teleological processes and laws

Goal of the social sciences

• Verstehen: understanding
• reasons, imaginative projection (making your mind like another person’s mind), empathy, hermeneutics, interpretation
• rationality heuristic: difference between what you do and what your beliefs and principles are

Verstehen

• when I wish to think about another person’s thoughts and actions, I take advantage of the fact that I, myself, have a mind
• I make my mind in some way like the mind I seek to predict and understand
• I use my imagination and thereby entertain the same thoughts and inferences as the other
• understanding alone surmounts the limitations of the individual experience and, at the same time, lends personal experiences the character of knowledge of life (36)

Manifestations of Life

Nexus of Lived Experiences

Gelner

Relativism and Universals

Gelner’s question

Whether or not we have good reasons to be relativists. 

He worries about epistemology.

Epistemic, epistemology: questions have to do with knowledge and the study of knowledge. 

Gelner and Reality: crux of his arguement

Naturalistic reality

Natural, scientific conception of reality.

One view of reality that has emerged over time.

Didn’t emerge all over the place, links back to diversity.

Irreconcilable views of reality that one another challenged each other. They emerge by testing each other. 

Co-referential

Although translations or synonyms are meant to mean the same thing, there are many translation issues too: Just like ‘chien’, ‘dog’, ‘hound’. Ultimately cultures and different systems of idea construct their realities, so there cannot be any co-references between languages. No prospect for co-reference. Different theoretical perspectives construct their reality. 

Value-freedom

Objective statement is free of value judgments, or not motivated by it.

Scientific research should be value-free. 

Is/Ought dichotomy.

Some statements are statements of fact: ‘It is cold outside’. Different from: ‘You ought to read to get good grades’. All sorts of ought statements that are prescriptions. What you should, should not do, moral. Is/Ought fundamentally different epistemologically. No right answer by objective facts with ought comments. Is statements have evidence from reality backing them. 

Special interest in truth-seeking.

Attempt at freedom from wishful/fearful thinking

or other sources of biased distorted thinking

that prevent one from gathering and appreciating evidence for/against one’s belief being justified and truth-indicative.

Value-freedom

Is/Ought dichotomy

Special interest in truth-seeking

Mind-independence

Justified true belief. 

Knowledge distinct from belief.

Gelner relies on us as being able to make this distinction. 

what makes something an instance of knowledge as opposed to belief? 

Knowledge is justified through belief. 

A disposition to assert to a proposition, P, in any circumstance where one sincerely and understandingly answers the question whether it is the case that P.

Linguistically expressed.

“CO² emissions are causing global climate change”.