We humans have created not just physical machines—such as pulleys, traps, carts, and internal combustion engines—but also mental machines; mechanisms of thought, embodied in our nervous systems, that enable our minds to go further, faster, and in different directions than the minds of any other animals. (Page 6)
Teoría sociocultural
They are “gadgets,” rather than “instincts” (Pinker, 1994), because, like many physical devices, they are products of cultural rather than genetic evolution. 1 New cognitive mechanisms—different ways of thinking—have emerged, not by genetic mutation, but by innovations in cognitive development. These novelties have been passed on to subsequent generations, not via genes, but through social learning; people with a new cognitive mechanism passed it on to others through social interaction. (Page 6)
far from being “blank slates,” or just like the minds of chimpanzees, the minds of newborn human babies are equipped with high capacity mechanisms of learning and memory, species-specific attentional mechanisms, and a tendency to find social cues especially rewarding. (Page 8)
In common with many evolutionary psychologists, I believe some of the most effective abstractions come not from folk psychology (“ seeing” and “knowing”) but from cognitive science. “Folk psychology” refers to the blend of wisdom and old wives’ tales that we use to talk about the mind in everyday life. It explains behavior with reference to the thoughts and feelings, beliefs and desires, of whole agents. For example: “Nebeela nodded her head because she wanted to bid for the Miro, and believed the auctioneer would understand her head movement to be a bid.” The term “cognitive science” has been used since the early 1970s to refer to interdisciplinary scientific research on the mind. The disciplinary mix includes experimental psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind. Many of the explanations offered by cognitive science liken the mind to a computer, cast thinking as “information processing,” and are pitched at a “sub-personal” level (Dennett, 1969; 1987). That is, in contrast with folk psychology, which takes mental states of the whole person (for example, beliefs and desires) to be the drivers of behavior, cognitive science often explains behavior as deriving from the activities of parts of the mind, and of the interactions among these parts. For example: “Nebeela said ‘blue’ when she saw BLUE written in green ink because two parts of her mind—one responsible for naming colors, and the other for reading words—competed for control of Nebeela’s speech mechanisms, and the reading part won the contest.” The sub-personal explanations offered by cognitive science are not familiar or intuitive, but they burrow deeper into the mind than folk psychology, and many have survived rigorous experimental tests. (Page 15)
The cognitive gadgets answer is at one with evolutionary psychology in focusing on the mind and emphasizing the importance of cognitive science in explaining human distinctiveness. However, the cognitive gadgets answer is completely at odds with evolutionary psychology—or at least with the part known as “High Church evolutionary psychology”—in its claims about the forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, the human mind. Most evolutionary psychologists argue, assert, or merely assume that genetic evolution is the architect of the human mind. According to this “cognitive instincts” view, distinctively human ways of thinking are “in our genes.” A newborn human baby does not enter the world understanding causality, with a full supply of mental maps, and talking in complete sentences, but she contains in her genes very specific programs for the development of these capacities; programs that are capable of building distinctively human cognitive mechanisms—such as causal understanding, mental mapping, and language—with minimal help from learning. The environment in which a child grows up is seen as “triggering” or “evoking” cognitive development; not, as it is in the cognitive gadgets theory, as forging or constructing distinctively human ways of thinking. (Page 17)
Cultural evolutionists are united in believing that evolution—defined as a change in the distribution of characteristics within a population over time—can be powered not only by genetic inheritance but by cultural inheritance. Characteristics, or “traits,” can increase or decrease in frequency, not only as they become more or less likely to be passed on to biological descendants via genetic mechanisms, but also as they become more or less likely to be passed on to cultural descendants, who may or may not be genetically related to their cultural parents, through social interaction. (Page 18)
Within the logical geography of research on human distinctiveness, the theories that lie closest to the cognitive gadgets theory are those of Barrett (2017), Dennett (1991), Karmiloff-Smith (1995; 2015), and Tomasello (2009; 2014). Barrett’s “theory of constructed emotion” has a different focus—emotion rather than cognition—and does not invoke cultural evolution specifically, but, like cognitive gadgets, it is rooted in cognitive science and underlines the importance of social interaction in shaping human minds. Dennett’s “multiple drafts” account of consciousness implies, but does not state explicitly, that cultural evolution can shape cognitive mechanisms as well as cognitive products. Karmiloff-Smith’s theory of “representational re-description” makes no reference to cultural evolution but is a pioneering attempt to specify, within a cognitive science framework, how sociocultural experience could produce new cognitive mechanisms. Finally, like the cognitive gadgets theory, Tomasello’s “shared intentionality hypothesis” is a direct answer to the question “What makes us so peculiar?” focusing on the psychological processes involved in cultural inheritance, and emphasizing the importance in cognitive development of learning through social interaction. However, the shared intentionality hypothesis seeks a single psychological source of human distinctiveness (“ shared intentionality”), rather than a set of distinctively human cognitive processes (mental mapping, causal understanding, imitation, etc.); it is theoretically and empirically rooted in a Vygotskian psychology, rather than cognitive science; and it appears to assume that humans genetically inherit highly specific propensities for cultural learning. If this is correct, unlike cultural evolutionary psychology, the shared intentionality hypothesis implies that what we think depends on cultural learning, but the way we think depends on our genes. (Page 23)
At the heart of the cognitive gadgets theory, of cultural evolutionary psychology, is the idea that social interaction in infancy and childhood produces new cognitive mechanisms; it changes the way we think. (Page 24)
Reading, or literacy, was studied by cognitive psychologists long before the eruption of social cognitive neuroscience, but brain imaging has confirmed dramatically that training a person to read reconfigures his or her cognitive system. This transformation is a proof of principle for cultural evolutionary psychology: it demonstrates that new cognitive mechanisms, and, specifically, new mechanisms of cultural learning, can be produced by cultural evolution (Heyes, 2012a). First, reading is an immensely powerful and distinctively human form of cultural learning; a cognitive process that enables those who are literate to access a huge store of information acquired by previous generations. Second, it is clear that reading has been made possible by cultural evolution. Written language emerged only five to six thousand years ago, too recently in human history for the genetic evolution of cognitive mechanisms dedicated to reading. (Page 26)
Distinctively human ways of thinking are products of the same process—cultural evolution—as machines in the outside world; they are pieces of technology embodied in the brain. Genetic evolution has given humans more powerful general purpose mechanisms of learning and memory, tweaked our temperaments, and biased our attention so that it is focused on other people from birth. But—drawing on comparative and developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, behavioral economics, and theoretical biology—I argue in this book that it is the information we get from others, handled by general purpose mechanisms, that builds distinctively human ways of thinking. (Page 7)
lectura y reciclaje neuronal.
evolutionary psychologists and cultural evolutionists disagree about the origins of many cognitive characteristics, but both parties are convinced that the mechanisms of cultural learning are cognitive instincts, not cognitive gadgets. (Page 8)
a small proportion of social learning strategies, found only in adult humans, depend on explicit metacognition—on thinking about thinking. These, and only these, behavioral effects are genuinely “strategic,” and genuinely examples of cultural learning. The evidence suggests that, like other explicitly metacognitive rules, these metacognitive social learning strategies are learned through social interaction—culturally, rather than genetically, inherited. (Page 9)
metacognición.
Offering an original theory of the mechanisms mediating imitation, and a wide range of empirical evidence in support of that theory, I argue that the capacity to imitate is acquired through sociocultural experience. (Page 9)
Where does real mindreading come from? From the same kinds of conversation-based social interactions that support the development of print reading or literacy. It is culturally inherited. (Page 10)
mentalización como capacidad cognitiva superior, dependiente de mediación semiótica.
All of the case studies are unusual in bringing to the cultural-evolutionary table theory and evidence, not only from primatology and developmental psychology, but from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. (Page 11)
Sobre por qué no somos simios vestidos. Implicancias en términos de mecanismls que explican la subjetividad histórica.
Cultural evolutionary psychology implies that human minds are more agile, but also more fragile, than was previously thought. We are not stuck in the Pleistocene past with Stone Age minds, and well-targeted educational interventions have the potential to transform cognitive development, but we have more to lose. Wars and epidemics can wipe out not just know-how, but the means to acquire that know-how. (Page 11)
the origins of literacy provide a proof of principle for cognitive gadgets. (Page 12)
De acuerdo.
The patchiness of the fossil and archaeological records compels narrative theories to be speculative (they are often dismissed as “just-so stories”), and when detailed narrative is combined with analysis of forces, the resulting story can be intractably complex and untestable. (Page 14)
La mente es un elemento con identidad propia, irreductible en los otros niveles.
In agreement with what is known as “evolutionary psychology”—or, to distinguish it from other evolutionary approaches to the study of mind and behavior, as “High Church evolutionary psychology” (Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby, 1995; Pinker, 1994)—I am convinced that relationships between the brain, behavior and the world cannot be understood satisfactorily without a middleman—that is to say, without describing those relationships at an abstract, mental level. (Page 14)
(Page 16)
Cognitive gadgets is a “force theory” rather than a “narrative theory.” It is consistent with what is known about the chronology of human evolution (see Chapter 9), but it is primarily concerned with the processes that have shaped the human mind and regards learning—especially social learning—and cultural evolution as dominant among these processes. In emphasizing the importance of social learning and culture in explaining why humans live such peculiar lives, the cognitive gadgets theory is akin to “cultural evolutionary theory” (Lewens, 2015). (Page 18)
Cultural evolutionists are united in believing that evolution—defined as a change in the distribution of characteristics within a population over time—can be powered not only by genetic inheritance but by cultural inheritance. Characteristics, or “traits,” can increase or decrease in frequency, not only as they become more or less likely to be passed on to biological descendants via genetic mechanisms, but also as they become more or less likely to be passed on to cultural descendants, who may or may not be genetically related to their cultural parents, through social interaction. The crucial difference between contemporary cultural evolutionary theory and the cognitive gadgets theory concerns the traits they have in their sights. Until now, cultural evolutionary theory has been applied to observable behavior and artifacts. For example, it has been used to explain change over time in the frequency of people in a population who have a small family, or who use a particular kind of fish hook. In contrast, the cognitive gadgets theory applies cultural evolutionary theory to the mechanisms of thought—the mental processes that generate and control behavior. For example, it seeks to explain change over time in the frequency of people in a population who are capable of calculating a shortcut across unexplored territory (mental mapping), who can entertain a theory about how an instrument works (causal understanding), or who have cognitive equipment allowing them to copy facial expressions (imitation). The cognitive gadgets answer is concerned not with the grist of the mind—what we do and make—but with its mills, the way the mind works (Page 18)
the cognitive mechanisms that enable cultural inheritance—mechanisms known collectively as “social learning” or “cultural learning” (Page 21)
dispositivos cognitivos.
evidence suggests that the distinctively human cognitive mechanisms involved in social learning are not only processes but also products of cultural evolution. (Page 21)
the cognitive gadgets answer to the question “What makes us peculiar?” is like evolutionary psychology in targeting the mind and drawing on cognitive science, and like cultural evolutionary theory in emphasizing the importance of social learning as a force in human evolution. However, it is quite different from both of these approaches in suggesting that distinctively human cognitive mechanisms are gadgets rather than instincts; products of cultural rather than genetic evolution. (Page 21)
Other voices saying “Culture changes the way we think” come from “cross-cultural psychology.” In this field, where many researchers draw on cognitive science, experiments in which people from different cultures are given the same behavioral tasks reveal both species-typical human psychological characteristics and fascinating patterns of between-group variation (Page 23)
The field of “social cognitive neuroscience”—which combines social psychology, cognitive psychology, and developmental psychology, with lashings of brain imaging—is now one of the most vibrant and richly funded research enterprises in the natural sciences (Blakemore, Winston, and Frith, 2004; Lieberman, 2007). Social cognitive neuroscience makes it possible, for the first time, to take a really close look at the mechanisms responsible for online control of social interaction and, crucially, at the role of social interaction in their development. (Page 25)
neurociencia social.
learning to read has major, constructive effects on the neurocognitive system. It does not, of course, create a new system from scratch. Like other genetic and cultural processes of adaptation, learning to read takes old parts and remodels them into a new system. (Page 27)
en este sentido, evolución y desarrollo operan de la misma manera… ¿habrá un concepto que apunte a este fenómeno?