Is culture what makes us cooperate?
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- Jean-Baptiste André
- Sunday, 23 November 2008
- Blog Jean-Baptiste's blog
This post by evolutionary biologist Jean-Baptiste André is part of a small series of posts on social learning and cooperation.
A recent series of papers by Laurent Lehmann and colleagues (including Marcus Feldman) shed new lights on the cultural evolution of social behaviors, at least on a theoretical perspective. Here, I mainly review the first paper of the series, published in The American Naturalist. This paper evaluates, with the tools of modern population genetics, the hypothesis of cultural group selection, originally formulated by Boyd and Richerson. The paper is very pedagogic and clear, and most admirably, it does not hide anything to the reader. Overall, these results are not surprising, and they somehow correspond to what Boyd and Richerson originally proposed. However, they are quite helpful and refreshing. Over the years, and because of the careless way Boyd and Richerson’s work is referred to, it seemed sometimes that cultural group selection was a robust population process, favoring altruism automatically as soon as culture comes in. Well, it is not. It involves strong assumptions concerning the way culture is transmitted...
A recent series of papers by Laurent Lehmann and colleagues (including Marcus Feldman) shed new lights on the cultural evolution of social behaviors, at least on a theoretical perspective. Here, I mainly review the first paper of the series, published in The American Naturalist. This paper evaluates, with the tools of modern population genetics, the hypothesis of cultural group selection, originally formulated by Boyd and Richerson. The paper is very pedagogic and clear, and most admirably, it does not hide anything to the reader. Overall, these results are not surprising, and they somehow correspond to what Boyd and Richerson originally proposed. However, they are quite helpful and refreshing. Over the years, and because of the careless way Boyd and Richerson’s work is referred to, it seemed sometimes that cultural group selection was a robust population process, favoring altruism automatically as soon as culture comes in. Well, it is not. It involves strong assumptions concerning the way culture is transmitted...
Blindly adopted social norms and inter-group competition: is that all there is to human altruism? V for Vendetta, by James McTeigue. Alan Moore wrote the Comics, the slogan is from Orwell (editor's note and choice of picture).
Another possible alternative explanation for IFT
What's wrong with "intentional stance"?
Possible alternative explanation for IFT
Crushing a dispute with a smile (ahem, a bared-teeth display)
Impartial intervention, or pragmatic intervention?
Not fairness, not mutual interest ... cognitive dissonance maybe
A couple of references
Emotions as regulators of social behavior
Women are not allowed by social group to own their bodies
"Rigtheous" women and "promiscuous" men