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Cognitive Tracks of Cultural Inheritance: How Evolved Intuitive Ontology Governs Cultural Transmission
Author(s) -
Boyer Pascal
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1998.100.4.876
Subject(s) - cultural transmission in animals , ontology , inheritance (genetic algorithm) , salient , cognition , set (abstract data type) , domain (mathematical analysis) , cognitive science , cultural psychology , cognitive development , cognitive psychology , epistemology , psychology , computer science , sociology , social psychology , artificial intelligence , chemistry , mathematical analysis , philosophy , biochemistry , genetics , mathematics , neuroscience , biology , gene , programming language
“Acquired culture” depends on social transmission and displays salient cross‐cultural variability. It seems unconnected to adaptive fitness. It is, however, constrained by evolved properties of the mind. Recurrent—not necessarily universal—features of acquired culture can be explained by taking into account the early development and constraining power of intuitive ontology , a set of principled domain‐specific inferential capacities. These allow us to predict recurrent trends in domains as diverse as folk‐psychology, representations of natural kinds, the uses of literacy, the acquisition of scientific beliefs, and even the limiting‐case of religious ontologies. In all these domains the notion of cultural transmission along domainspecific cognitive tracks governed by intuitive ontology is supported by independent psychological evidence and provides testable explanations for recurrent features in the anthropological record, [ evolution, culture, cultural universal, cognitive development, evolutionary psychology ]