PPIG: Philosophy, Psychology, and Informatics Group

Speaker: Andrew Buskell (University of Cambridge)

Title: Cumulative Culture and Cognitive Novelties

Abstract: A key interest of cognitive science is to understand what makes humans cognitively distinct. This interest often takes the form of researchers identifying putatively unique traits—cognitive novelties—not shared with other species. For a long time, accounts of cognitive novelties were dominated by those appealing almost solely to processes of biological evolution and adaptation. More recently, a new family of accounts has highlighted the importance of cultural evolution. On this latter family of accounts, human cognition is replete with culturally evolved cognitive novelties. But how does cultural evolution explain such novelties? Much of the work in this area appeals to cumulative cultural evolution as a central explanatory concept. Drawing together a few strands of my research, I’ll be identifying a number of concerns with the contemporary use of the concept to explain culturally evolved cognitive novelties. As I’ll suggest, the concept lumps together a number of distinct explanatory patterns and elements that should be distinguished. Doing so allows one to clarify what is at stake in explanations of culturally evolved cognitive novelties and what type of explanatory pattern should be used in any given case.