"Cultural psychology meets e" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verheggen, Baerveldt)
Cultural psychology meets evolutionary psychology
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Cultural
psychology meets evolutionary psychology: Toward a new role of biology
in the study of culture and experience
Paper presented the NCPG on the 8th conference of the International
Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP), April 25-28, 2000, Sydney
Paul Voestermans &
Cor Baerveldt
It
is quite surprising how quickly cognitive scientists who reclaimed--
in the spirit of Ulric Neisser's 1976 book Cognition and Reality--
the study of consciousness as the proper subject for psychology,
adopted the evolutionary psychology framework. Evolutionary psychologists
are organized in various programs to study, among other things,
social psychological issues, issues of mating, sex and gender, and
culture. They claim to have something important to say about how
the mind works. Natural selection and adaptation are chosen as the
hallmarks of a new science of the mind. A rather polemical stance
is taken in stressing the importance of a causal model for a proper
study of the mind. Psychologists should line up with biologists
and together with them construct a real science.
In
this article we will deal especially with psychologists, who in
close cooperation with evolutionary biologists, human ethologists,
cognitivists and neuroscientists, propose a new science of the mind
and a new approach to culture. We call them evolutionary psychologists.
We are well aware of the fact that there exists a wide variety,
but only a few of them deal explicitly with culture (e.g. Barkow,
Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). To them we address
ourselves. We will first give an account of the basic orientation
and assumptions by telling what evolutionary psychology is about.
Then we will try to assess its importance for psychology and for
a psychology of culture in particular. Our central question will
be whether evolutionary psychology's basic orientation and principles
are useful for an understanding of culture. What we have to say
hopefully leads to a better integration of evolutionary biology's
inspiration into cultural psychology than is the case now.
The basics
of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychologists
are much concerned with the behavior generating principles in the
brain, which came into existence under the pressure of adaptive
problems in the environment. They want to get rid of the Standard
Social Science Model (SSSM) of the social and behavioral sciences.
In their view this model is defined and defended by, for example,
Geertz (1973) and Montagu (1964) and it holds that culture is some
sort of superstructure, built upon the natural basis that evolution
has provided. It also holds that culture is a symbolic system, which
brings all kinds of behavioral structures form the outside inside
the human being. The SSSM is a relict from thoughts entertained
already long before Darwin. At that time the human mind was not
considered to be part of nature. It was a pre-given device (from
divine origin), which stood open to the outside world, and took
its content from the social world. The evolutionary psychologists
are convinced that this assumption is still a vital part of the
SSSM. Central to this model is the idea that the mind operates on
the basis of the free social construction of its content. This idea
lies also at the basis of a few incorrect presuppositions with respect
to culture, so the evolutionary psychologists argue. The most important
one is that culture is somehow transmitted to a brain that functions
as a 'general purpose machine'. To this machine belong the abilities
to learn and to imitate others. General intelligence and rationality
belong to it as well. The idea is that these functions are all free
of content. Let us quote what the evolutionary psychologist have
to say on this score: "all of the specific content of the human
mind originally derives from the outside --from the environment
and the social world -- and the evolved architecture of the mind
consists solely or predominantly of a small number of general purpose
mechanisms that are content-independent, and which sail under names
such as 'learning', 'induction', 'intelligence', 'imitation', 'rationality',
'the capacity of culture' or simply 'culture'" (Cosmides & Tooby,
Internet Primer, 1997, p. 3).
What
is the alternative proposed by the evolutionary psychologists? In
the course of evolution a few regulative, functionally specialized
circuits in the brain have been devised. They are designed for the
execution of behaviors which are functionally organized around adaptive
problems our stone age forebears encountered. There is some convergence
on the part of neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, and cognitive
psychologists on the issue of how the brain as a physical system
processes information in order to generate certain behaviors. This
convergence aims at the understanding in terms of 'computations'
and 'information processing' of a variety of behaviors, ranging
from perception, cognitive functioning (Cosmides & Tooby, 1994)
to sex and mating behavior (Symons, 1979), and several social psychological
phenomena (Simpson & Kenrick, 1997). Those who adopt the SSSM have
assumed too readily that: "all significant aspects of adult mental
organization are supplied culturally". Linking the production of
culture solely to "general purpose learning mechanisms or content-
independent cognitive processes" denies the relationship between
biology and psychology and suggests too strongly that human being
are instinctually 'underprepared'. Learning becomes too much of
a "window through which the culturally manufactured pre-existing
complex organization outside of the individual manages to climb
inside the individual" (Tooby en Cosmides,1992, p. 30). Content-specific
brain mechanisms are neglected.
Evolutionary
psychology's explanation of culture
If evolutionary psychologists
depart from the assumption that human beings have a brain which
consists of specialized modules from which the content of their
behavior derives, how then do the evolutionary psychologists look
at culture? They claim that they can explain culture.
Culture
is quite important in the eyes of evolutionary psychologists. Humans
are the only species "that has an extra medium of design preservation
and design communication" (Dennett, 1991, p. 338). Culture "can
swamp many - but not all - of the earlier genetic pressures and
processes that created it and still coexist with it" (ibid.). The
way evolutionary psychologist try to deal with culture has two aspects.
One follows directly from the line of argument that starts with
a critique of the general purpose machine, the other is developed
as an analogue to genes. In the latter case, culture traits are
turned into 'memes' to which the concepts 'variation', 'replication'
and 'fitness' apply equally well as in genetic theory. Ideas of
people tend to survive by using the individual as a reproductive
device; a replica is made, sometimes with some variation, and once
the whole thing fits into a certain environment, the idea carries
on (Blackmore, 1999). Such is true for crucial inventions, a piece
of music, a moral imperative, playing chess, and material things
we cannot do without anymore (Dawkins, 1989). Memetics, as the science
of memes is called, tries to explain cultural patterns this way,
and tries to come to grips with persistent behaviors and ideologies.
Dennett (1991, p. 353 ff.) in his enthusiasm for memetics, has pointed
out that memes are conceptually useful and interesting, because
of the analogy with genes. 'Gene' as a concept for information,
does its work, irrespective of how it is materialized. What is important
is its syntax-like structure which can be read off in order to create
functional organs. The same holds for memes. They carry information
irrespective of how they are materialized. The individual is merely
the vehicle by means of which memes replicate themselves. In memetics
one wants to get rid of the acting person in the same way as in
evolutionary psychology in general, where algorithms and macro's
take over the role of a conscious agent in order to do away with
metaphysical categories like 'mind' and 'god'. Memes as cultural
traits are self-preserving, using the individual mind as bearer
of the traits. Memes are responsible for the persistence of certain
traits, even those that do not directly favor the group in which
those traits spread themselves around.
What
lies at the basis of this Darwinian view of culture? In applying
evolutionary psychological principles to culture, a distinction
is made in cultural phenomena. The primary set contains representations
or features which exist in a single brain. Next you have the set
of phenomena that come into being in other brains. These stem from
the interaction between features of the source and of the receiver.
What is brought about are "inferential mechanisms in the observer
to recreate the representations and elements in his or her own psychological
architecture" (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 118). This secondary class
is termed "reconstructed culture", "adopted culture" or "epidemiological
culture". Unlike the standard social science view, this emphasis
on inference implies that much learning is not the basis of transmission.
The central idea of evolutionary psychologists of culture is that
in this inferential process content-specific and evolutionary produced
psychological mechanisms in the brain do all the work and play a
crucial role. Memes are part of that. Culture thus is something
brought about in and by separate brains. On the one hand one has
the brain as the survival apparatus of memetic cultural traits,
on the other hand one has the brain as a set of specific modules
which determine the content of various cultural behavioral patterns.
The central
issue of cultural psychology
In an attempt to convince
us of an aimless, mindless, and purposeless cosmos full of macro's
and algorithms, memes and modules, evolutionary psychologists tend
to forget that the brain is not a mere controlling system, but exist
in an embodied form and is not singular but plural. For a good understanding
of culture, not just one single brain is crucial; crucial are the
mutually attuned and coordinated bodies of which the brain is a
part. Once it becomes clear in these days of raging wars between
cultural groups in Europe, Africa and Asia, that the civilizing
offensive of the West runs counter rather immutable cultural forms
of behaving and is, as a an enterprise of modern nations, itself
a source of strain, it is rather strange to reduce culture to modules
and memes of all sorts. Of course, the received definition of culture
as the system of meaning and the sum-total of humankind's higher
achievements, leads to the view that culture is a set of traits
or elements. Yet, culture is more than that. As a concept, coined
in the 19th century to delineate peoples' way of life, it is used
to pinpoint the forms of behavior that have certain characteristics,
which typify the individuals of a cultural group. Culture is not
just Beethoven and chess, the combustion engine or an airplane.
Culture is also the personal, individual behavior which is characterized
by an almost automatically produced pattern. How cultural forms
or patterns become desire and start to motivate people, that is
to say, how cultural patterns of behavior cease to be mere empty
form and empty conventions, and become a demonstration that something
really is at stake, is the central issue for a cultural psychology.
It can not be researched on the basis of the rather one-sided metaphors
of computations, modules and memes. How individual brains and bodies
coordinate their behavior with respect to one another and with respect
to the environment, requires a conceptual apparatus to be designed
for that purpose in order to guide our empirical research. A few
bits and pieces of our biological heritage and animal nature are
not enough. We hope to show that brain in the singular with hardly
a real body- and solely in that form to be considered of evolutionary
importance - is one of the great misconceptions of our time. This
preconceived idea puts biology out of play in the attempt to understand
human motivation and ideation. What we nee to understand is foremost
how people produce - among themselves, in mutual relations - ideas
and strivings, in which they firmly believe and which motivate them
with almost the power of a physical process.
The
conception of culture of the evolutionary psychologists bears the
traces of this wrong emphasis on the isolated brain. The problem
of culture to which we so badly need to address ourselves, is to
understand how the bodily conditioned exchange with the environment
and other people is psychologically involved in the production of
culture. That problem is hardly dealt with in the proposed psychological
alternative of the SSSM, the so called Integrated Causal Model (Cosmides
& Toby, 1997), for two reasons which we will elaborate subsequently:
- The defense
of the Integrated Causal Model (ICM) against the SSSM blocks the
study of the causes of behavior by limiting causality to a rather
narrow version of it.
- In an attempt
to put human beings on a par with the higher primates, it is insufficiently
made clear what is specific about the animal side of the human
species. In a final section we hope to show that postulating human's
possession of a rather specialized brain, which is designed for
the solution of adaptive problems from a remote past and which
consists of autonomously operating build-in circuits or modules,
does not help much our understanding of culturally informed behavior,
especially not if the emphasis is on an isolated brain only. We
are in need for a more cooperative stance on these matters from
biologist and psychologists together.
The narrow
view of causality
Let us now try to answer
the question, why causal relationships and causal mechanisms are
emphasized so much in publications of evolutionary psychologists
(See, for instance, a 'Primer' on evolutionary psychology by Cosmides
& Tooby, Internet). It is quite understandable that causal-analytical
procedures, which had been so successful in advancing secularized
solutions to problems of food, shelter and health, were seen as
possibly equally useful for the advancement of rational solutions
to problems associated with politics and policy.
Yet,
the evolutionary psychologists oppose those social scientists who
refuse to apply the laws of biology. What rankles the evolutionary
psychologists in particular is the claim of social scientists that
'environmentalism' and being 'biophobe', that is, considering biological
explanations as something fearful to the extend that such explanations
need to be avoided at all costs, has moral appeal in that it is
easier to fight against sexism and racism from an environmentalist'
perspective. Therefore, biological determinism is declared wrong
at the outset. The evolutionary psychologists believe that the nasty
things that set one cultural group against another do not come from
human nature. On the contrary, we are invited to replace the plasticity
of human nature with an universally shared species-typical and species-specific
architecture in which a variety of causal mechanisms do the work.
This universal architecture harbors all kinds of nice devices, one
for language, one for mating, one that triggers a jealous reaction,
one for the detection of cheating, one for violence directed at
out-groups and so on and so forth. All kinds of species-specific
configurations are involved in the patterning of social behaviors
and evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) have done the filtering
work by causing viable strategies to be preserved and non-viable
ones to become extinct. Such processes take care of the transmission
of certain genetic features. There simply is one class of causes
that is preferred by evolutionary psychologists. These causes are
represented by a rather odd metaphor: 'the selfish gene'. Genes
take care of everything. Yet, it is quite astonishing how little
is said, for example, about the entire process that makes foster
fathers more aggressive towards kids compared to the biological
fathers. I have to admit that the writing about this type of aggression
in the opposite camp of the SSSM is quite disappointing as well.
There is little concern with sub-personal processes and if such
processes are considered at all, they hardly are analyzed in a plausible
or viable way. By sub-personal or sub-symbolic processes we mean
those behavior generating mechanisms that take care of automatically
produced behavioral forms. In the SSSM explicit verbal accounts
are often preferred, which makes the type of explanations in which
no causes but 'reasons' or 'goals' are involved, look rather silly.
Such a state of affairs adds to a strong emphasis on causes by evolutionary
psychologists. Yet, solid biological determinism requires some idea
about the nature of the process behind sub-personal or sub-symbolic
factors.
What
is most discomfiting about the ICM, is a truly misdirected research
into the ideational basis of the production and styling of behavior.
In the ICM approach there is no room for notions like motive, means,
ends, reasons, affective structuring, desire, personal style etc.
Instead, one encounters a wide-ranging fear that together with a
concern for these matters, "mind first" and maybe even God creep
in again. Moreover, as Kitcher (1985) has pointed out, evidence
which shows that the narrowing down of causes to a few hard-nosed
concepts is fruitful, is almost non-existent. One of the things
that need a much more refined approach is the nature-side or animal
side of the animal rationale, the human species. That is our second
point. The 'adaptation-causalism' of the evolutionary psychologists
needs refinement by showing what is specific for the human species
as a natural kind.
The human
species
Humans somehow unite
within themselves animal and reason. One would expect that evolutionary
psychologists would give a clear exposé about what type of animal
is involved and how reason comes about. In order to turn psychology
into a branch of biology, one would expect rather exact information
on the way our animal inheritance contributed to the 'design' of
specialized circuits in the brain. Evolutionary psychology offers
at the same time too little and too much. Too much because of the
things that are in a broad gesture linked up with locating the human
mind in the stone age. We all still possess a stone-age mind. A
brain that took shape in an environment full of adaptive problems,
whose influences have no bearing any more on the modern requirements
for a well-functioning brain. Too little, since it is quite astonishing
how much evidence with regard to biological contributions to the
symbolic evolution of the human species is left unused by the evolutionary
psychologists. No details are given about the habitat in which 'the
brain' developed. It is not the case that evolutionary psychologists
just forget about the details, they pass over vital species-specific
features of the human species as animal. We list a few.
One brain
is no brain
Fossil remains found
near Laetoli in Tanzania testify to the fact that the hominid life
form dates back about 4 million years. The first as homo classified
fossil dates back 2 million years. The homo sapiens-sapiens lived
200.000 years ago in Africa. Form and size of the skull and DNA
point toward a very specific type of animal. In a period of about
3 to 4 million years the size of the brain increased from 400 ml
to 1400-1500 ml, while the body size did not change much (Holloway,
1996). There are quite a few indications that manipulative skills,
acted out in concert with other members of the species who carried
out comparable movements, contribute probably to the specification
of neural structures, ontogenetically, but phylogenetically as well
(Lock & Peters, 1996). We are not suggesting that psychologists
should become paleontologists, but these indications contradict
the evolutionary psychologists' focus on quantitative increases
in the size of isolated brains in order to explain cognitive skills.
They rather point to the fact that the operations and the evolution
of a distinctively human brain are probably best understood in terms
of a mutual coordination between brains (Singer, 1997, 1999). There
are some indications that the manipulative skills of the species
Homo have played an important part in the specification of the neural
circuitry. These skill were laid down in the brain structures, as
a consequence of their development in the human group. The production
of functional and skillful movements involves not just the eye-hand
coordination, but also the mutual coordination of actions in the
human group. Let us call these coordinations, that are bound to
the community, 'first order consensual coordinations' (the eye-hand
movement being merely a coordination). Such first order consensual
coordinations of action can be found among all kinds of social animals.
A very particular, and much more complex situation arises, however,
when those consensual coordinations of action become themselves
consensually coordinated. Elsewhere
(this site) we argue that second order consensual coordinations
of action can be found in "as-if" behavior, like play, or threat,
or deceit, and also in symbolic behavior. These second-order consensual
coordinations one finds among animals as well. They characterize
fights for dominance among animals, for example. But they clearly
evolved to a very sophisticated extend in the human group. They
often have a ritual, rather than a linguistic or symbolic form.
Rituals are sub-symbolic processes, which create order without the
use of any symbolic or propositional system. Rituals can be fully
automatic (Voestermans, 1999). Their impact on cognition and the
evolution of brain structures is something to be studied in its
own right, on a par with perception and the motor actions. That
should be done in relation to the attempt to delineate its impact
on the ideational processes that create motives of all sorts. Maybe
language has its origin in the way those second, and higher order
consensual coordinations of action is achieved (Baerveldt, 1998;
Baerveldt, Voestermans & Verheggen,
this site). We will return to that. Psychologists have a clear role
here in elucidating paleontological findings. How crucial was the
fact that the production of cultural artifacts was a group process?
By stressing merely the adaptive problems that created the stone
age mind, evolutionary psychologists miss the point.
Our primate
past
Human chromosomes resemble
those of the higher primates, particularly, the bonobos, chimpanzees,
and gorillas. It is tempting to conclude that the human animal is
the "third chimpanzee"(Diamond, 1992). In making such comparisons,
one often hastens to add that this 'third chimp' has a much more
elaborate culture. Yet, to turn culture into something all the chimps,
including the 'third' one, have in common, should be done cautiously
and in a conceptually and empirically adequate way. One of the things
evolutionary psychologist hardly do, however, is demonstrating the
role of sub-symbolic processes in so called culturally informed
behaviors, that is to say, in behaviors of a distinct pattern in
which certain objects (tools) or means (signs etc.) are used in
a characteristic ways. The genesis of life forms in general throughout
the animal kingdom of primates, including the human animal, is something
to be quite precise about. The shadow of culture in the animal world
(Bonner, 1980) is nothing compared to what humans derive from their
culture. But one cannot make culture into something humans and animals
simply share. Bonobos are worth it to be compared to humans, that
is for sure. One can demonstrate, for example, that behavioral change
does not require explicit instruction, whereas there does not exists
a strict genotypical determinism either. Maybe this is the same
among humans. But one can hardly object against a bit more attention
to the variety and distinctiveness of sub-symbolic processes among
animals and humans as well. That should be done in a rather precise
way.
Skill and
language
The human hand has
the special feature of being able to place the thumb opposite every
other finger. Humans walk upright also and have white finger nails.
One can go on like that. To prevent getting lost in a sea of differences,
some should be marked. The manual skill and upright position are
important for the development of a skillful manipulation of weaponry,
but also of all other kinds of manipulation. One would like to know
what the implications are of these skills for the development of
symbolic forms of behavior among humans and animals. There are some
indications that the human brain evolved in connection with the
bringing to perfection of two things: the extremely complicated
coordination of the eye and the hand, which is necessary for throwing
and slinging (e.g. Calvin, 1986) and the development of second-order
coordinations in the band of animals which fostered the coming into
being of communicative skills (e.g. Deacon, 1997). The influence
of these coordinations on the construction of artifacts and particularly
on communication are an issue in its own right, to be dealt with
carefully. Here one-sided evolutionism and biological reductionism
are of no help. On the contrary, 'biologizing' psychology leads
to evading the issue: how the hardware is involved not so much in
behavioral dictates, but in providing bodily structures that can
become part of the software so to speak. Here language enters in
a rather special way.
Language
is much older and more wide-spread than initially believed; it was
already present in human groups who did not evolve further, as fossils
of the place of tongue-bone in the Neanderthals suggest. However,
the physical aspects of language production are not the most important,
since the deployment of language is fully present in the use of
manual signs, for example (Place, 2000). This implies that language
needs tot be viewed in the same respect as other consensual coordinations
of action, that is, in its important role in the human group. Language
is a form of second-order consensual coordination, a coordination
of coordinations. As such, it is not a matter of an isolated brain,
in the same way as first-order consensual coordinations are not.
It is quite probable that language originated in connection with
the skills we talked about earlier. Maybe it is more important to
look for those features than to emphasize the basis of language
in brain structures of some sort. These structures can be the consequence
of the way language has been developed from coordinative skills.
That is the reverse of Pinker's claim that these structures serve
as a point of departure in analyzing language as a tool (Pinker,
1994). Of course, without a brain there is no language, that is
for sure, but that is not the point. Language is a human tool for
getting attuned to one another, and for the mutual coordination
of actions (Baerveldt, 1998; Baerveldt,
Voestermans & Verheggen, this site). Such a tool needs to be
studied in an evolutionary psychological frame, starting from the
assumption that humans have in common with the animals certain sub-symbolic
processes. In the human species the development went much further,
in the direction of symbolic meaning (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Culture
should not be equated with higher mental functioning, or with this
symbolic superstructure alone, but foremost with the experiential
coordination of actions through which certain skills are produced.
Sub-symbolic processes in skill acquisition, involving everyday
automaticity and embodied affective structures, are important for
the way culture ticks (Voestermans, 1999). The processes involved
in these skills need specification in such a way that humans indeed
become what they are: evolved products of the way certain life forms
already developed in animals.
A viable
brain-approach to culture
Evolutionary psychology
is to be commended for trying to put culture on the psychological
agenda. Culture has been rather exclusively the research domain
of sociologists and anthropologists. There is nothing wrong with
that, except for a certain one-sidedness. Culture has been primarily
seen as context, as part of the environment in which behavior takes
place. From an enactive perspective (Baerveldt, 1998; Baerveldt
& Verheggen, 1999; Baerveldt, Voestermans
& Verheggen, this site) such a view of culture runs the risk
of evading the issue. Emphasizing context leads to a preoccupation
with cultural differences, using research tools to assess the effects
of culture on the individual or on the behavior of members of a
cultural group. Culture as a prefixed 'out-there' reality, as an
already given social world, wrongly becomes the source of the content
of the specific human mind. Meanings, in other words, are injected
into individual minds. Evolutionary psychologists rightly focus
on culture as something the mind produces. What, then, is a viable
brain approach to culture?
First,
it is important to allow for a central role for biology in constructing
meaning. It should be acknowledged that despite all the criticism,
evolutionary psychology is on the right track in emphasizing knowledge
of brain structures as vital to a proper understanding of culture.
Culture should not be put in opposition to biology. It is more fruitful
to devise a biologically informed theory of meaning. In that regard,
it is quite right to emphasize the so called cognitive unconscious.
Sub-symbolic processes are of prime importance in researching culture.
However, what the study of the cognitive unconscious reveals, is
quite a different view of biology's part in the constitution of
meaning than evolutionary psychologist make us believe. Evolutionary
psychologists often are satisfied once they have pointed to the
ingenious specialized circuitry of the brain. One circuit for the
detection of shape, one for motion, one for direction, one for judging
distance, one for color, facial recognition and so on. It is easy
to list them, it is easy to postulate that they are organized in
higher level circuits, but it is not easy to explain how minds get
attuned to other minds, and what the impact of such coordination
has actually been, and still is, on cognitive functioning up to
the level of conscious awareness.
What
needs further elucidation is how experience, locked away, so to
speak, in the cognitive unconscious, is involved in the creation
of domains of understanding and practice, the so called 'consensual
domains' (Baerveldt & Verheggen, 1999). A viable brain-approach
to culture necessitates the exchanging of an all too formal approach
to brain processes, including language, with an approach in which
one is concerned with the embodiment of a control structure - the
brain - in a 'community of experiencers', equipped with alike brains
and alike bodies. Cognition needs to be placed into the body and
the brain in such a way that beliefs and desires, needs and wants
are not merely seen as resulting form propositionally organized
thought in the isolated head, but from consensually coordinated
action.
No
actor - be it the human one or the animal one, although in this
latter case the matter is obvious- can have access to his/her or
its own experience apart from the way in which this experience is
recurrently brought to the attention of others by the way meaning
is co-constructed. These so called 'lived' meanings entail an area
of interlocked conduct of which the environment is part as the triggering
instance. Evolutionary psychologists refrained from observing and
conceptualizing body and brain in concert. They took recourse to
an abstract machinery of selective pressures and adaptive problems.
They did not reckon with the fact that socially coordinated actions
in a group of like brains and bodies can provide a starting point
for a viable reconstruction of how meanings get produced.
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Cultural psychology meets evolutionary psychology
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Cultural
psychology meets evolutionary psychology: Toward a new role of biology
in the study of culture and experience
Paper presented the NCPG on the 8th conference of the International
Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP), April 25-28, 2000, Sydney
Paul Voestermans &
Cor Baerveldt
It
is quite surprising how quickly cognitive scientists who reclaimed--
in the spirit of Ulric Neisser's 1976 book Cognition and Reality--
the study of consciousness as the proper subject for psychology,
adopted the evolutionary psychology framework. Evolutionary psychologists
are organized in various programs to study, among other things,
social psychological issues, issues of mating, sex and gender, and
culture. They claim to have something important to say about how
the mind works. Natural selection and adaptation are chosen as the
hallmarks of a new science of the mind. A rather polemical stance
is taken in stressing the importance of a causal model for a proper
study of the mind. Psychologists should line up with biologists
and together with them construct a real science.
In
this article we will deal especially with psychologists, who in
close cooperation with evolutionary biologists, human ethologists,
cognitivists and neuroscientists, propose a new science of the mind
and a new approach to culture. We call them evolutionary psychologists.
We are well aware of the fact that there exists a wide variety,
but only a few of them deal explicitly with culture (e.g. Barkow,
Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). To them we address
ourselves. We will first give an account of the basic orientation
and assumptions by telling what evolutionary psychology is about.
Then we will try to assess its importance for psychology and for
a psychology of culture in particular. Our central question will
be whether evolutionary psychology's basic orientation and principles
are useful for an understanding of culture. What we have to say
hopefully leads to a better integration of evolutionary biology's
inspiration into cultural psychology than is the case now.
The basics
of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychologists
are much concerned with the behavior generating principles in the
brain, which came into existence under the pressure of adaptive
problems in the environment. They want to get rid of the Standard
Social Science Model (SSSM) of the social and behavioral sciences.
In their view this model is defined and defended by, for example,
Geertz (1973) and Montagu (1964) and it holds that culture is some
sort of superstructure, built upon the natural basis that evolution
has provided. It also holds that culture is a symbolic system, which
brings all kinds of behavioral structures form the outside inside
the human being. The SSSM is a relict from thoughts entertained
already long before Darwin. At that time the human mind was not
considered to be part of nature. It was a pre-given device (from
divine origin), which stood open to the outside world, and took
its content from the social world. The evolutionary psychologists
are convinced that this assumption is still a vital part of the
SSSM. Central to this model is the idea that the mind operates on
the basis of the free social construction of its content. This idea
lies also at the basis of a few incorrect presuppositions with respect
to culture, so the evolutionary psychologists argue. The most important
one is that culture is somehow transmitted to a brain that functions
as a 'general purpose machine'. To this machine belong the abilities
to learn and to imitate others. General intelligence and rationality
belong to it as well. The idea is that these functions are all free
of content. Let us quote what the evolutionary psychologist have
to say on this score: "all of the specific content of the human
mind originally derives from the outside --from the environment
and the social world -- and the evolved architecture of the mind
consists solely or predominantly of a small number of general purpose
mechanisms that are content-independent, and which sail under names
such as 'learning', 'induction', 'intelligence', 'imitation', 'rationality',
'the capacity of culture' or simply 'culture'" (Cosmides & Tooby,
Internet Primer, 1997, p. 3).
What
is the alternative proposed by the evolutionary psychologists? In
the course of evolution a few regulative, functionally specialized
circuits in the brain have been devised. They are designed for the
execution of behaviors which are functionally organized around adaptive
problems our stone age forebears encountered. There is some convergence
on the part of neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, and cognitive
psychologists on the issue of how the brain as a physical system
processes information in order to generate certain behaviors. This
convergence aims at the understanding in terms of 'computations'
and 'information processing' of a variety of behaviors, ranging
from perception, cognitive functioning (Cosmides & Tooby, 1994)
to sex and mating behavior (Symons, 1979), and several social psychological
phenomena (Simpson & Kenrick, 1997). Those who adopt the SSSM have
assumed too readily that: "all significant aspects of adult mental
organization are supplied culturally". Linking the production of
culture solely to "general purpose learning mechanisms or content-
independent cognitive processes" denies the relationship between
biology and psychology and suggests too strongly that human being
are instinctually 'underprepared'. Learning becomes too much of
a "window through which the culturally manufactured pre-existing
complex organization outside of the individual manages to climb
inside the individual" (Tooby en Cosmides,1992, p. 30). Content-specific
brain mechanisms are neglected.
Evolutionary
psychology's explanation of culture
If evolutionary psychologists
depart from the assumption that human beings have a brain which
consists of specialized modules from which the content of their
behavior derives, how then do the evolutionary psychologists look
at culture? They claim that they can explain culture.
Culture
is quite important in the eyes of evolutionary psychologists. Humans
are the only species "that has an extra medium of design preservation
and design communication" (Dennett, 1991, p. 338). Culture "can
swamp many - but not all - of the earlier genetic pressures and
processes that created it and still coexist with it" (ibid.). The
way evolutionary psychologist try to deal with culture has two aspects.
One follows directly from the line of argument that starts with
a critique of the general purpose machine, the other is developed
as an analogue to genes. In the latter case, culture traits are
turned into 'memes' to which the concepts 'variation', 'replication'
and 'fitness' apply equally well as in genetic theory. Ideas of
people tend to survive by using the individual as a reproductive
device; a replica is made, sometimes with some variation, and once
the whole thing fits into a certain environment, the idea carries
on (Blackmore, 1999). Such is true for crucial inventions, a piece
of music, a moral imperative, playing chess, and material things
we cannot do without anymore (Dawkins, 1989). Memetics, as the science
of memes is called, tries to explain cultural patterns this way,
and tries to come to grips with persistent behaviors and ideologies.
Dennett (1991, p. 353 ff.) in his enthusiasm for memetics, has pointed
out that memes are conceptually useful and interesting, because
of the analogy with genes. 'Gene' as a concept for information,
does its work, irrespective of how it is materialized. What is important
is its syntax-like structure which can be read off in order to create
functional organs. The same holds for memes. They carry information
irrespective of how they are materialized. The individual is merely
the vehicle by means of which memes replicate themselves. In memetics
one wants to get rid of the acting person in the same way as in
evolutionary psychology in general, where algorithms and macro's
take over the role of a conscious agent in order to do away with
metaphysical categories like 'mind' and 'god'. Memes as cultural
traits are self-preserving, using the individual mind as bearer
of the traits. Memes are responsible for the persistence of certain
traits, even those that do not directly favor the group in which
those traits spread themselves around.
What
lies at the basis of this Darwinian view of culture? In applying
evolutionary psychological principles to culture, a distinction
is made in cultural phenomena. The primary set contains representations
or features which exist in a single brain. Next you have the set
of phenomena that come into being in other brains. These stem from
the interaction between features of the source and of the receiver.
What is brought about are "inferential mechanisms in the observer
to recreate the representations and elements in his or her own psychological
architecture" (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 118). This secondary class
is termed "reconstructed culture", "adopted culture" or "epidemiological
culture". Unlike the standard social science view, this emphasis
on inference implies that much learning is not the basis of transmission.
The central idea of evolutionary psychologists of culture is that
in this inferential process content-specific and evolutionary produced
psychological mechanisms in the brain do all the work and play a
crucial role. Memes are part of that. Culture thus is something
brought about in and by separate brains. On the one hand one has
the brain as the survival apparatus of memetic cultural traits,
on the other hand one has the brain as a set of specific modules
which determine the content of various cultural behavioral patterns.
The central
issue of cultural psychology
In an attempt to convince
us of an aimless, mindless, and purposeless cosmos full of macro's
and algorithms, memes and modules, evolutionary psychologists tend
to forget that the brain is not a mere controlling system, but exist
in an embodied form and is not singular but plural. For a good understanding
of culture, not just one single brain is crucial; crucial are the
mutually attuned and coordinated bodies of which the brain is a
part. Once it becomes clear in these days of raging wars between
cultural groups in Europe, Africa and Asia, that the civilizing
offensive of the West runs counter rather immutable cultural forms
of behaving and is, as a an enterprise of modern nations, itself
a source of strain, it is rather strange to reduce culture to modules
and memes of all sorts. Of course, the received definition of culture
as the system of meaning and the sum-total of humankind's higher
achievements, leads to the view that culture is a set of traits
or elements. Yet, culture is more than that. As a concept, coined
in the 19th century to delineate peoples' way of life, it is used
to pinpoint the forms of behavior that have certain characteristics,
which typify the individuals of a cultural group. Culture is not
just Beethoven and chess, the combustion engine or an airplane.
Culture is also the personal, individual behavior which is characterized
by an almost automatically produced pattern. How cultural forms
or patterns become desire and start to motivate people, that is
to say, how cultural patterns of behavior cease to be mere empty
form and empty conventions, and become a demonstration that something
really is at stake, is the central issue for a cultural psychology.
It can not be researched on the basis of the rather one-sided metaphors
of computations, modules and memes. How individual brains and bodies
coordinate their behavior with respect to one another and with respect
to the environment, requires a conceptual apparatus to be designed
for that purpose in order to guide our empirical research. A few
bits and pieces of our biological heritage and animal nature are
not enough. We hope to show that brain in the singular with hardly
a real body- and solely in that form to be considered of evolutionary
importance - is one of the great misconceptions of our time. This
preconceived idea puts biology out of play in the attempt to understand
human motivation and ideation. What we nee to understand is foremost
how people produce - among themselves, in mutual relations - ideas
and strivings, in which they firmly believe and which motivate them
with almost the power of a physical process.
The
conception of culture of the evolutionary psychologists bears the
traces of this wrong emphasis on the isolated brain. The problem
of culture to which we so badly need to address ourselves, is to
understand how the bodily conditioned exchange with the environment
and other people is psychologically involved in the production of
culture. That problem is hardly dealt with in the proposed psychological
alternative of the SSSM, the so called Integrated Causal Model (Cosmides
& Toby, 1997), for two reasons which we will elaborate subsequently:
- The defense
of the Integrated Causal Model (ICM) against the SSSM blocks the
study of the causes of behavior by limiting causality to a rather
narrow version of it.
- In an attempt
to put human beings on a par with the higher primates, it is insufficiently
made clear what is specific about the animal side of the human
species. In a final section we hope to show that postulating human's
possession of a rather specialized brain, which is designed for
the solution of adaptive problems from a remote past and which
consists of autonomously operating build-in circuits or modules,
does not help much our understanding of culturally informed behavior,
especially not if the emphasis is on an isolated brain only. We
are in need for a more cooperative stance on these matters from
biologist and psychologists together.
The narrow
view of causality
Let us now try to answer
the question, why causal relationships and causal mechanisms are
emphasized so much in publications of evolutionary psychologists
(See, for instance, a 'Primer' on evolutionary psychology by Cosmides
& Tooby, Internet). It is quite understandable that causal-analytical
procedures, which had been so successful in advancing secularized
solutions to problems of food, shelter and health, were seen as
possibly equally useful for the advancement of rational solutions
to problems associated with politics and policy.
Yet,
the evolutionary psychologists oppose those social scientists who
refuse to apply the laws of biology. What rankles the evolutionary
psychologists in particular is the claim of social scientists that
'environmentalism' and being 'biophobe', that is, considering biological
explanations as something fearful to the extend that such explanations
need to be avoided at all costs, has moral appeal in that it is
easier to fight against sexism and racism from an environmentalist'
perspective. Therefore, biological determinism is declared wrong
at the outset. The evolutionary psychologists believe that the nasty
things that set one cultural group against another do not come from
human nature. On the contrary, we are invited to replace the plasticity
of human nature with an universally shared species-typical and species-specific
architecture in which a variety of causal mechanisms do the work.
This universal architecture harbors all kinds of nice devices, one
for language, one for mating, one that triggers a jealous reaction,
one for the detection of cheating, one for violence directed at
out-groups and so on and so forth. All kinds of species-specific
configurations are involved in the patterning of social behaviors
and evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) have done the filtering
work by causing viable strategies to be preserved and non-viable
ones to become extinct. Such processes take care of the transmission
of certain genetic features. There simply is one class of causes
that is preferred by evolutionary psychologists. These causes are
represented by a rather odd metaphor: 'the selfish gene'. Genes
take care of everything. Yet, it is quite astonishing how little
is said, for example, about the entire process that makes foster
fathers more aggressive towards kids compared to the biological
fathers. I have to admit that the writing about this type of aggression
in the opposite camp of the SSSM is quite disappointing as well.
There is little concern with sub-personal processes and if such
processes are considered at all, they hardly are analyzed in a plausible
or viable way. By sub-personal or sub-symbolic processes we mean
those behavior generating mechanisms that take care of automatically
produced behavioral forms. In the SSSM explicit verbal accounts
are often preferred, which makes the type of explanations in which
no causes but 'reasons' or 'goals' are involved, look rather silly.
Such a state of affairs adds to a strong emphasis on causes by evolutionary
psychologists. Yet, solid biological determinism requires some idea
about the nature of the process behind sub-personal or sub-symbolic
factors.
What
is most discomfiting about the ICM, is a truly misdirected research
into the ideational basis of the production and styling of behavior.
In the ICM approach there is no room for notions like motive, means,
ends, reasons, affective structuring, desire, personal style etc.
Instead, one encounters a wide-ranging fear that together with a
concern for these matters, "mind first" and maybe even God creep
in again. Moreover, as Kitcher (1985) has pointed out, evidence
which shows that the narrowing down of causes to a few hard-nosed
concepts is fruitful, is almost non-existent. One of the things
that need a much more refined approach is the nature-side or animal
side of the animal rationale, the human species. That is our second
point. The 'adaptation-causalism' of the evolutionary psychologists
needs refinement by showing what is specific for the human species
as a natural kind.
The human
species
Humans somehow unite
within themselves animal and reason. One would expect that evolutionary
psychologists would give a clear exposé about what type of animal
is involved and how reason comes about. In order to turn psychology
into a branch of biology, one would expect rather exact information
on the way our animal inheritance contributed to the 'design' of
specialized circuits in the brain. Evolutionary psychology offers
at the same time too little and too much. Too much because of the
things that are in a broad gesture linked up with locating the human
mind in the stone age. We all still possess a stone-age mind. A
brain that took shape in an environment full of adaptive problems,
whose influences have no bearing any more on the modern requirements
for a well-functioning brain. Too little, since it is quite astonishing
how much evidence with regard to biological contributions to the
symbolic evolution of the human species is left unused by the evolutionary
psychologists. No details are given about the habitat in which 'the
brain' developed. It is not the case that evolutionary psychologists
just forget about the details, they pass over vital species-specific
features of the human species as animal. We list a few.
One brain
is no brain
Fossil remains found
near Laetoli in Tanzania testify to the fact that the hominid life
form dates back about 4 million years. The first as homo classified
fossil dates back 2 million years. The homo sapiens-sapiens lived
200.000 years ago in Africa. Form and size of the skull and DNA
point toward a very specific type of animal. In a period of about
3 to 4 million years the size of the brain increased from 400 ml
to 1400-1500 ml, while the body size did not change much (Holloway,
1996). There are quite a few indications that manipulative skills,
acted out in concert with other members of the species who carried
out comparable movements, contribute probably to the specification
of neural structures, ontogenetically, but phylogenetically as well
(Lock & Peters, 1996). We are not suggesting that psychologists
should become paleontologists, but these indications contradict
the evolutionary psychologists' focus on quantitative increases
in the size of isolated brains in order to explain cognitive skills.
They rather point to the fact that the operations and the evolution
of a distinctively human brain are probably best understood in terms
of a mutual coordination between brains (Singer, 1997, 1999). There
are some indications that the manipulative skills of the species
Homo have played an important part in the specification of the neural
circuitry. These skill were laid down in the brain structures, as
a consequence of their development in the human group. The production
of functional and skillful movements involves not just the eye-hand
coordination, but also the mutual coordination of actions in the
human group. Let us call these coordinations, that are bound to
the community, 'first order consensual coordinations' (the eye-hand
movement being merely a coordination). Such first order consensual
coordinations of action can be found among all kinds of social animals.
A very particular, and much more complex situation arises, however,
when those consensual coordinations of action become themselves
consensually coordinated. Elsewhere
(this site) we argue that second order consensual coordinations
of action can be found in "as-if" behavior, like play, or threat,
or deceit, and also in symbolic behavior. These second-order consensual
coordinations one finds among animals as well. They characterize
fights for dominance among animals, for example. But they clearly
evolved to a very sophisticated extend in the human group. They
often have a ritual, rather than a linguistic or symbolic form.
Rituals are sub-symbolic processes, which create order without the
use of any symbolic or propositional system. Rituals can be fully
automatic (Voestermans, 1999). Their impact on cognition and the
evolution of brain structures is something to be studied in its
own right, on a par with perception and the motor actions. That
should be done in relation to the attempt to delineate its impact
on the ideational processes that create motives of all sorts. Maybe
language has its origin in the way those second, and higher order
consensual coordinations of action is achieved (Baerveldt, 1998;
Baerveldt, Voestermans & Verheggen,
this site). We will return to that. Psychologists have a clear role
here in elucidating paleontological findings. How crucial was the
fact that the production of cultural artifacts was a group process?
By stressing merely the adaptive problems that created the stone
age mind, evolutionary psychologists miss the point.
Our primate
past
Human chromosomes resemble
those of the higher primates, particularly, the bonobos, chimpanzees,
and gorillas. It is tempting to conclude that the human animal is
the "third chimpanzee"(Diamond, 1992). In making such comparisons,
one often hastens to add that this 'third chimp' has a much more
elaborate culture. Yet, to turn culture into something all the chimps,
including the 'third' one, have in common, should be done cautiously
and in a conceptually and empirically adequate way. One of the things
evolutionary psychologist hardly do, however, is demonstrating the
role of sub-symbolic processes in so called culturally informed
behaviors, that is to say, in behaviors of a distinct pattern in
which certain objects (tools) or means (signs etc.) are used in
a characteristic ways. The genesis of life forms in general throughout
the animal kingdom of primates, including the human animal, is something
to be quite precise about. The shadow of culture in the animal world
(Bonner, 1980) is nothing compared to what humans derive from their
culture. But one cannot make culture into something humans and animals
simply share. Bonobos are worth it to be compared to humans, that
is for sure. One can demonstrate, for example, that behavioral change
does not require explicit instruction, whereas there does not exists
a strict genotypical determinism either. Maybe this is the same
among humans. But one can hardly object against a bit more attention
to the variety and distinctiveness of sub-symbolic processes among
animals and humans as well. That should be done in a rather precise
way.
Skill and
language
The human hand has
the special feature of being able to place the thumb opposite every
other finger. Humans walk upright also and have white finger nails.
One can go on like that. To prevent getting lost in a sea of differences,
some should be marked. The manual skill and upright position are
important for the development of a skillful manipulation of weaponry,
but also of all other kinds of manipulation. One would like to know
what the implications are of these skills for the development of
symbolic forms of behavior among humans and animals. There are some
indications that the human brain evolved in connection with the
bringing to perfection of two things: the extremely complicated
coordination of the eye and the hand, which is necessary for throwing
and slinging (e.g. Calvin, 1986) and the development of second-order
coordinations in the band of animals which fostered the coming into
being of communicative skills (e.g. Deacon, 1997). The influence
of these coordinations on the construction of artifacts and particularly
on communication are an issue in its own right, to be dealt with
carefully. Here one-sided evolutionism and biological reductionism
are of no help. On the contrary, 'biologizing' psychology leads
to evading the issue: how the hardware is involved not so much in
behavioral dictates, but in providing bodily structures that can
become part of the software so to speak. Here language enters in
a rather special way.
Language
is much older and more wide-spread than initially believed; it was
already present in human groups who did not evolve further, as fossils
of the place of tongue-bone in the Neanderthals suggest. However,
the physical aspects of language production are not the most important,
since the deployment of language is fully present in the use of
manual signs, for example (Place, 2000). This implies that language
needs tot be viewed in the same respect as other consensual coordinations
of action, that is, in its important role in the human group. Language
is a form of second-order consensual coordination, a coordination
of coordinations. As such, it is not a matter of an isolated brain,
in the same way as first-order consensual coordinations are not.
It is quite probable that language originated in connection with
the skills we talked about earlier. Maybe it is more important to
look for those features than to emphasize the basis of language
in brain structures of some sort. These structures can be the consequence
of the way language has been developed from coordinative skills.
That is the reverse of Pinker's claim that these structures serve
as a point of departure in analyzing language as a tool (Pinker,
1994). Of course, without a brain there is no language, that is
for sure, but that is not the point. Language is a human tool for
getting attuned to one another, and for the mutual coordination
of actions (Baerveldt, 1998; Baerveldt,
Voestermans & Verheggen, this site). Such a tool needs to be
studied in an evolutionary psychological frame, starting from the
assumption that humans have in common with the animals certain sub-symbolic
processes. In the human species the development went much further,
in the direction of symbolic meaning (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Culture
should not be equated with higher mental functioning, or with this
symbolic superstructure alone, but foremost with the experiential
coordination of actions through which certain skills are produced.
Sub-symbolic processes in skill acquisition, involving everyday
automaticity and embodied affective structures, are important for
the way culture ticks (Voestermans, 1999). The processes involved
in these skills need specification in such a way that humans indeed
become what they are: evolved products of the way certain life forms
already developed in animals.
A viable
brain-approach to culture
Evolutionary psychology
is to be commended for trying to put culture on the psychological
agenda. Culture has been rather exclusively the research domain
of sociologists and anthropologists. There is nothing wrong with
that, except for a certain one-sidedness. Culture has been primarily
seen as context, as part of the environment in which behavior takes
place. From an enactive perspective (Baerveldt, 1998; Baerveldt
& Verheggen, 1999; Baerveldt, Voestermans
& Verheggen, this site) such a view of culture runs the risk
of evading the issue. Emphasizing context leads to a preoccupation
with cultural differences, using research tools to assess the effects
of culture on the individual or on the behavior of members of a
cultural group. Culture as a prefixed 'out-there' reality, as an
already given social world, wrongly becomes the source of the content
of the specific human mind. Meanings, in other words, are injected
into individual minds. Evolutionary psychologists rightly focus
on culture as something the mind produces. What, then, is a viable
brain approach to culture?
First,
it is important to allow for a central role for biology in constructing
meaning. It should be acknowledged that despite all the criticism,
evolutionary psychology is on the right track in emphasizing knowledge
of brain structures as vital to a proper understanding of culture.
Culture should not be put in opposition to biology. It is more fruitful
to devise a biologically informed theory of meaning. In that regard,
it is quite right to emphasize the so called cognitive unconscious.
Sub-symbolic processes are of prime importance in researching culture.
However, what the study of the cognitive unconscious reveals, is
quite a different view of biology's part in the constitution of
meaning than evolutionary psychologist make us believe. Evolutionary
psychologists often are satisfied once they have pointed to the
ingenious specialized circuitry of the brain. One circuit for the
detection of shape, one for motion, one for direction, one for judging
distance, one for color, facial recognition and so on. It is easy
to list them, it is easy to postulate that they are organized in
higher level circuits, but it is not easy to explain how minds get
attuned to other minds, and what the impact of such coordination
has actually been, and still is, on cognitive functioning up to
the level of conscious awareness.
What
needs further elucidation is how experience, locked away, so to
speak, in the cognitive unconscious, is involved in the creation
of domains of understanding and practice, the so called 'consensual
domains' (Baerveldt & Verheggen, 1999). A viable brain-approach
to culture necessitates the exchanging of an all too formal approach
to brain processes, including language, with an approach in which
one is concerned with the embodiment of a control structure - the
brain - in a 'community of experiencers', equipped with alike brains
and alike bodies. Cognition needs to be placed into the body and
the brain in such a way that beliefs and desires, needs and wants
are not merely seen as resulting form propositionally organized
thought in the isolated head, but from consensually coordinated
action.
No
actor - be it the human one or the animal one, although in this
latter case the matter is obvious- can have access to his/her or
its own experience apart from the way in which this experience is
recurrently brought to the attention of others by the way meaning
is co-constructed. These so called 'lived' meanings entail an area
of interlocked conduct of which the environment is part as the triggering
instance. Evolutionary psychologists refrained from observing and
conceptualizing body and brain in concert. They took recourse to
an abstract machinery of selective pressures and adaptive problems.
They did not reckon with the fact that socially coordinated actions
in a group of like brains and bodies can provide a starting point
for a viable reconstruction of how meanings get produced.
References
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Barkow, J.H., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1992). The adapted mind.
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Oxford.
Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford University
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Bonner, J. (1980). The evolution of culture in animals. Princeton,
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