Kim Sterelny Research Articles

Culture, Cooperation, and Communication: The Co-evolution of Hominin Cognition, Sociality, and Musicality

Abstract Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture.

How we got stuck: The origins of hierarchy and inequality

Kim Sterelny's bookThe Pleistocene social contractprovides an exceptionally well‐informed and credible narrative explanation of the origins of inequality and hierarchy. In this essay review, we reflect on the role of rational choice theory in Sterelny's project, before turning to Sterelny's reasons for doubting the importance of cultural group selection. In the final section, we compare Sterelny's big picture with an alternative from David Wengrow and David Graeber.

The qua-Problem, Meaning Scepticism, and the Life-World

Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny (Language and reality: An introduction to the philosophy of language. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999) argue that the pure causal theory of reference faces a problem, which they call the qua-problem. They propose to invoke intentional states to cope with it. Martin Kusch (A sceptical guide to meaning and rules. Acumen, Chesham, 2006), however, argues that, because Devitt and Stereleny invoke intentional states to solve the problem, their causal-hybrid theory of reference is susceptible to Kripke’s sceptical attack. Kusch thinks that intentional states are what allows the sceptic to get a foothold and thus interpret words in a weird way. In his view, Kripke is therefore correct in not regarding a causal theory as a solution to the problem. I think, however, that there is room to defend a causal-hybrid theory of reference. Drawing on Husserl’s notion of the life-world, I argue that this notion is helpful for overcoming some aspects of the qua-problem and the meaning scepticism which Devitt and Sterelny’s causal-hybrid theory of reference faces.

Usefulness Drives Representations to Truth

An important objection to signaling approaches to representation is that, if signaling behavior is driven by the maximization of usefulness (as is arguably the case for cognitive systems evolved under regimes of natural selection), then signals will typically carry much more information about agent-dependent usefulness than about objective features of the world. This sort of considerations are sometimes taken to provide support for an anti-realist stance on representation itself. The author examines the game-theoretic version of this skeptical line of argument developed by Donald Hoffman and his colleagues. It is shown that their argument only works under an extremely impoverished picture of the informational connections that hold between agent and world. In particular, it only works for cue-driven agents, in Kim Sterelny’s sense. In cases in which the agents’ understanding of what is useful results from combining pieces of information that reach them in different ways, and that complement one another (i.e., that are synergistic), maximizing usefulness involves construing first a picture of agent-independent, objective matters of fact.

Evolutionary understanding of the human mind and learning - in accordance with transactional naturalism and methodological relationalism.

The approach to the evolution of human culture and mind suggested in this article represents transactional naturalism combined with methodological relationalism. In transactions, the organism changes the environment and vice versa. Transactional naturalism conceptualizes the human mind and awareness in a relational vein, as coevolving with the human socio-cultural niche, much like enactive and extensive theories of mind. The approach is in stark contrast with gene-centered and psychologizing nativist naturalism which views consciousness and language faculty as innate. The origin of the concept of transaction is in classical American pragmatism, in particular in Dewey's theory of action according to which one can learn only in action and in action one cannot but learn. Apprentice learning setup, emphasized by Kim Sterelny in particular, has been pivotal for the development of human community since the Pleistocene era. Coevolving with social institutions, human learning has played an exceptional role in cultural innovations when useful knowing-how and skilled habits have been transferred from generation to generation. Therefore humans deserve the epithet Homo discens, learning man.

Moral Nativism: Some Controversies

This paper scrutinizes two research programs that advocate respectively for the existence of a universal moral grammar and a predisposition to moralize behaviours with certain contents. It focuses on how the arguments commonly used to ground each program fare at relevant contemporary research in cognitive science and how well they meet constructivist arguments proposed by Jesse Prinz and Kim Sterelny, among others. We argue that there is little evidence that our moral judgements follow the model of principles and parameters. At the same time, ‘ease of learning’ suggests that the human brain is somehow prepared to learn moral rules.

Do No Harm: the Extended Mind Model and the Problem of Delayed Damage

I argue in this essay that there can be harm due to philosophy that is not directly expressed in violent imagery. The harm is instead a concealed and delayed detrimental effect of an assumption of non-violence in a working model, defined as a picture of a field of enquiry and the methods required to approach it. Theses for the extended mind, as developed by Andy Clark and others, lead to a form of harm that follows from the models they work with. These engineering, tool and function-based models seek smooth interactions and transparency. Following points made by Kim Sterelny in the philosophy of biology, I argue that claims for smoothness and transparency conceal underlying conflict in the situations they seek to describe and explain. This concealment leads to harm, defined as a diminishing of our capacities to flourish in a given environment.

Introduction: Social Ontology, Culture and Institutions

In this issue, six authors discuss, from various perspectives, the interaction between culture, evolution and institutions. Kim Sterelny’s topic is language evolution, with its challenge being to develop an incremental model of change that takes us by small improvements from the baseline communicative capacities of great apes to those of contemporary humans, which, Sterelny argues with Jackendoff, are characterized by expressive richness, i.e. the capacity to freely innovate at the semantic level. A theory about language evolution must be nested within an overall conception of the evolution of social life (Tomasello 2008). Communication is one form of cooperation, and the evolution of social life is characterized by the expanding role of the economic basis of cooperation. Sterelny argues that, at a first stage, signals are meaningful without users’ being aware that they are meaningful (Skyrms 2010). Signals, on the Lewis–Skyrms model, depend on asymmetries between signaler and receiver: one has access to information that the other lacks, and there must

On the Free-Rider Identification Problem

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have argued that individual-selection accounts of human cooperation flounder in the face of the free-rider identification problem. Kim Sterelny has responded to this line of argument for group selection, arguing that the free-rider identification problem in fact poses no theoretical difficulty for individual-selection accounts. In this article, I set out to clarify Bowles and Gintis’ argument. As I see matters, the real crux of their argument is this: solving the free-rider identification problem, even in modestly sized social groups, requires that group members are disposed to share social information with one another. The difficulty for individual-selection accounts, according to Bowles and Gintis, is that these accounts have no explanation for why individuals should be disposed to behave in this way. Having clarified their argument, I then turn to Sterelny’s criticism, and argue that Sterelny underestimates the challenge being raised by Bowles and Gintis. More specifically, I argue that it is unclear whether the expected benefits of having a disposition to share social information would have outweighed the expected costs for an individual belonging to a Pleistocene social group. Importantly, this is not to say that I am persuaded by Bowles and Gintis’ argument; on the contrary, what I claim is that more theoretical (and in particular) empirical work is necessary before the issues under discussion can be settled. I formulate some specific questions which I think future research in this area should aim to address.

Cooperation and Its Evolution. Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology. Edited by Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser. A Bradford Book. Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press. $55.00. vii + 577 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-262-01853-1. 2013.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviews and Brief NoticesCooperation and Its Evolution. Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology. Edited by Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, and Ben Fraser. A Bradford Book. Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press. $55.00. vii + 577 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-262-01853-1. 2013.Guido CanigliaGuido CanigliaCenter for Biology & Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 89, Number 2June 2014 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/676108 Views: 36Total views on this site Copyright © 2014 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott and Ben Fraser (eds): Cooperation and Its Evolution

Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott and Ben Fraser (eds): Cooperation and Its Evolution

The benefits of rule following: A new account of the evolution of desires

A key component of much current research in behavioral ecology, cognitive science, and economics is a model of the mind at least partly based on beliefs and desires. However, despite this prevalence, there are still many open questions concerning both the structure and the applicability of this model. This is especially so when it comes to its ‘desire’ part: in particular, it is not yet entirely clear when and why we should expect organisms to be desire-based—understood so as to imply that they consult explicit tokenings of what they ought to do—as opposed to being drive-based—understood so as to imply that they react to the world using behavioral reflexes. In this paper, I present the beginnings of an answer to this question. To do this, I start by showing that an influential recent attempt to address these issues—due to Kim Sterelny—fails to be fully successful, as it does not make sufficiently clear what the relative benefits and disadvantages of drive-based and desire-based cognitive architectures are. I then present an alternative account of this matter based on the idea that organisms that can follow explicit behavioral rules (i.e. which have desires) avoid having to memorize a large set of state of the world–action connections—which can (though need not) be adaptive. Finally, I apply this account to the question of what the cognitive value of mental representations should be seen to be; here, I conclude that—contrary to some recent claims—relying on mental representations can make decision making easier, not harder, but also that—in line with these recent claims—whether it does so depends on the details of the case.

Imitation, Mind Reading, and Social Learning

Imitation has been understood in different ways: as a cognitive adaptation subtended by genetically specified cognitive mechanisms; as an aspect of domain general human cognition. The second option has been advanced by Cecilia Heyes who treats imitation as an instance of associative learning. Her argument is part of a deflationary treatment of the “mirror neuron” phenomenon. I agree with Heyes about mirror neurons but argue that Kim Sterelny has provided the tools to provide a better account of the nature and role of human imitation. What we call imitative learning is an instance of social learning. It has little to do with empathy, emotional contagion, or mind reading.

No Magic Bullet Explains the Evolution of Unique Human Traits

Here I outline the argument in Kim Sterelny’s book The Evolved Apprentice. I present some worries for Sterelny from the perspective of modelers in behavioral ecology. I go on to discuss Sterelny’s approach to moral psychology and finally introduce some potential new applications for his evolved apprentice view.

The Transition into Major Transitions: A Conceptual and Methodological Initiative VindicatedA review of The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology. Edited by Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny. Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press. $50.00. x + 319 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-262-01524-0. 2011.

The Transition into Major Transitions: A Conceptual and Methodological Initiative VindicatedA review of <i>The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited</i>. Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology. Edited by Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny. Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press. $50.00. x + 319 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-262-01524-0. 2011.

The evolved apprentice: how evolution made humans unique

A new theory of the evolution of human cognition and human social life that emphasizes the role of information sharing across generations.Over the last three million years or so, our lineage has diverged sharply from those of our great ape relatives. Change has been rapid (in evolutionary terms) and pervasive. Morphology, life history, social life, sexual behavior, and foraging patterns have all shifted sharply away from those of the other great apes. In The Evolved Apprentice, Kim Sterelny argues that the divergence stems from the fact that humans gradually came to enrich the learning environment of the next generation. Humans came to cooperate in sharing information, and to cooperate ecologically and reproductively as well, and these changes initiated positive feedback loops that drove us further from other great apes. Sterelny develops a new theory of the evolution of human cognition and human social life that emphasizes the gradual evolution of information-sharing practices across generations and how these practices transformed human minds and social lives. Sterelny proposes that humans developed a new form of ecological interaction with their environment, cooperative foraging. The ability to cope with the immense variety of human ancestral environments and social forms, he argues, depended not just on adapted minds but also on adapted developmental environments.

EVOLUTION AND ITS MAJOR TRANSITIONS

Review of The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, edited by Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny, Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology, MIT Press, 2011 (ISBN 978-0-262-01524-0). Theoretical biology has been going through both a Renaissance and an expansion over the past several years, and some of the most intriguing contributions have come from the Vienna Series published by MIT Press. Although the classical view is that population genetics theory is the centerpiece of any theoretical biology (e.g., Lynch 2007), an expanded concept of what it means to do theory in biology has been proposed (Pigliucci 2008), of which population and quantitative genetics represent but a small (if very important) component. The volume recently edited by Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny interestingly, both philosophers of science picks up where the now classic volume on transitions by MaynardSmith and Szathmary (1997) left off and attempts to see where we are when it comes to the really big picture in theory. As it is typically the case with such edited volumes, the goals the editors set up to accomplish are necessarily only partially achieved, because each contributor is more or less free to roam afar from the main topic of discussion, sometimes in areas whose logical link with the topic at hand is tenuous at best. Nonetheless, there is much food for thought in this book, which would make for an extraordinarily interesting graduate-level seminar, especially if accompanied by the original Smith-Szathmary volume. (Ironically, one of the farthest afield excursions is due to Szathmary himself, who was called to comment at the end on the entire volume and instead chose to pursue with his coauthor, Chrisantha Fernando an only very partially related line of inquiry having to do with applying principles to the functioning of the human brain.) I must admit of never having been too fond of the idea of transitions, understood as a somewhat coherent set of phenomena that in some meaningful way admit similar underlying explanations. The editors of this volume write that Among the major transitions are episodes of the creation of new kinds of agent: eukaryotic cells; multicelled animals; social insects (p. 3). Well, perhaps, but this opens up the Pandora box of what counts as an evolutionary agent, and why some transitions do not seem to create new kinds of agents (the origin of language for instance). Perhaps more appropriately, Calcott and Sterelny focus on three themes that do seem to underlie the Smith-Szathmary volume, and that get major booking in this new collection: the expansion of hereditary mechanisms; the evolution of new levels of biological individuality; and the generation of variation. These are arguably some of the major issues in biology, and they have received only partial and largely unsatisfactory treatment within the now more than half century old framework of the Modern Synthesis (Pigliucci and Muller 2010). Although much debate is still going on about all three issues highlighted by Calcott and Sterelny, it seems beyond reasonable question at this point that: (1) hereditary mechanisms have been evolving and expanding, from the relative simplicity of the RNA world to the modern panoply of genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and cultural inheritance (Jabloňka and Lamb 2005); (2) we cannot do theory without a serious understanding of multilevel selection, pace historical disagreements on old fashioned and new fangled group selection (Okasha 2006); and (c) the way in which variation is generated itself evolves in interesting ways, a concept captured under the general heading of evolvability (e.g., Woods et al. 201 1). The real challenge is to make sense of these and many other related ideas within a coherent conceptual framework.

The Three Musketeers: What do We Still Need to Know About Our Passage Through Prehistory?

Any author is lucky to have readers, but to have three readers as subtle, attentive, and generous as Geoff Brennan (GB), Ben Fraser (BF), and Kim Sterelny (KS) is a privilege indeed. I have learned much from all three of them, both from these pieces and more generally from their other writings and the discussions we have had. I am grateful to them for the many generous things they say about The Company of Strangers (hereafter TCOS), and in particular for agreeing that the ease with which we citizens of prosperous modern societies interact with strangers is a puzzle given our prehistoric origins. But all three chide me, diplomatically though firmly, for imprecision about some crucial aspects of the transition of humankind from hunting and gathering to modern society, for appealing to metaphors (such as ‘‘tunnel vision’’ and ‘‘honorary friends’’) instead of mechanisms. I think there is much truth in this criticism, and I would like to take this opportunity to say more about what we know—and, crucially, about what we still don’t know—about how this transition happened. To do this I propose not to answer the questions and criticisms of the three commentators point by point. Instead I shall set out six broad questions about the transition, each of which is posed explicitly or implicitly by one or more of these commentators and about which they are right to point out that TCOS does not have enough to say. In some cases this is because the state of our collective knowledge is inadequate, in others because TCOS does not clearly enough reflect that collective knowledge. These are the questions: (1) Was Pleistocene life transparent enough for prudent calculation based on self-regarding preferences to support cooperation via mutual monitoring, punishment of defectors, and incentives for reputation building? (2) How violent was the Pleistocene? And how much of this violence was intra-group rather than inter-group? (3) Was interaction with strangers frequent or rare? (4) What exactly would have been necessary for a psychology adapted to the Pleistocene to make sense of a much more frequent exposure to strangers in the Holocene? Was it just a matter of adjusting to a higher frequency of stranger contact or was it a qualitative shift? (5) What ensured that when agriculture arrived the social contract did not either (a) collapse, or (b) remain sufficiently robust to resist substantial increases in inequality? (6) In what sense, precisely, does the psychology we inherited from the Pleistocene continue to shape (either in the sense of enabling, or in the sense of constraining) the way we interact with strangers in modern societies?

The adaptive importance of cognitive efficiency: an alternative theory of why we have beliefs and desires

Finding out why we have beliefs and desires is important for a thorough understanding of the nature of our minds (and those of other animals). It is therefore unsurprising that several accounts have been presented that are meant to answer this question. At least in the philosophical literature, the most widely accepted of these are due to Kim Sterelny and Peter Godfrey-Smith, who argue that beliefs and desires evolved due to their enabling us to be behaviourally flexible in a way that reflexes do not—which, they claim, is beneficial in epistemically complex environments. However, as I try to make clear in this paper, upon closer consideration, this kind of account turns out to be theoretically implausible. In the main, this is because it fails to give due credit to the powers of reflex-driven organisms, which can in fact be just as flexible in their behaviour as ones that are belief/desire-driven. In order to improve on this account, I therefore propose that beliefs and desires evolved, not due to their enabling us to do something completely different from what reflexive organisms can do, but rather due to their enabling us to do the same things better. Specifically, I argue that beliefs and desires evolved for making the generation of behaviour more efficient, since they can simplify the necessary cognitive labour considerably. I end by considering various implications of this account.

A Consumer-Based Teleosemantics for Animal Signals

Ethological theory standardly attributes representational content to animal signals. In this article I first assess whether Ruth Millikan's teleosemantic theory accounts for the content of animal signals. I conclude that it does not, because many signals do not exhibit the required sort of cooperation between signal-producing and signal-consuming devices. It is then argued that Kim Sterelny's proposal, while not requiring cooperation, sometimes yields the wrong content. Finally, I outline an alternative view, according to which consumers alone are responsible for conferring representational status and determining content. I suggest that consumer-based teleosemantics reconstruct the content of both cooperative and noncooperative signals and explain how a given trait can mean different things to different consumers.