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Afterword: Tough Questions; Hard Problems; Incremental Progress
Author(s) -
Sterelny Kim
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12427
Subject(s) - coevolution , loom , cognition , cognitive science , computer science , field (mathematics) , epistemology , character (mathematics) , artificial intelligence , psychology , cognitive psychology , sociology , philosophy , ecology , mathematics , biology , neuroscience , pure mathematics , geometry
The papers in this issue have specific and focused targets that are essential for making incremental progress on the very difficult problem of identifying the coevolutionary interactions of cognition and culture. The purpose of this paper is to discern the shape of a few of the large problems that loom over these more narrowly focussed papers, and to explain and assess the ways these papers contribute to their solution. The background problems described are (a) the character of the selective interactions between the evolution of culture and of cognition; (b) the special features of cumulative cultural evolution; and (c) the place of language in an account of cognition–culture coevolution. The paper ends with some reflections on the extraordinarily difficult challenge of testing scenarios in this field.