Social cognition and human aesthetic niche—the evolving human cognition as a participant of human niche construction

Abstract

Aesthetic phenomena have been intertwined with the life of humans to a significant degree that is not observed in non-human animals. The complexity and subtlety of it have long been regarded as one symbol of human’s exceptional cognitive power. This power can sometimes be misrepresented by a view that regards human aesthetic behaviours as innate/encoded and automated settings that are brought along with the human brain. In scenarios like this, the naturally selected brain takes up a role as some super explanator—by appealing to the configurations of the neural connectivity as reasons/causations for observed phenotypic traits. Therefore, this line of thinking can sometimes obscure the role played by the sociocultural background in affecting those configurations. By drawing upon the notion of niche construction, I will propose a nature-nurture coevolving framework for understanding human cognitive evolution. It will be argued that the evolutionary trajectory of human cognition is heavily defined by and is, therefore, better understood through the lens of a human cultural niche and of contextualised/context-dependent expressions of human behavioural traits. This view will be delivered by highlighting the dynamics between selective pressures and the differential expression of human phenotypic traits and acknowledging the evolutionary causal role of human cultural behaviours and practices. Finally, I argue that a major evolution of social cognition was brought about through an aesthetic tradition of the Acheulean and conclude by briefly proposing a potential subject for future study. The basic research method applied in this article is theoretical deduction. Specifically, a restricted interdisciplinary investigation that concerns academic literature from relevant fields (centring on the topic of niche construction) of archaeology, evolutionary biology and human cognition was used. Furthermore, through a process of assessing and identifying of plausible evidence, the abovementioned arguments of this study are generated.