tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post6152265201022398615..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Is cultural evolution a Darwinian process?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger99125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-91283283898251938592013-11-03T11:13:11.366-05:002013-11-03T11:13:11.366-05:00Re: "And why is it, exactly, that people are ...Re: "And why is it, exactly, that people are so bent on using “Darwinism” for all sorts of things, stretching the concept almost beyond recognition?"<br /><br />Why is it, exactly, that people want to keep Darwin's beautiful and general principles of selection and copying-with variation confined to biology, and out of social sciences, psychology, and physics - thereby crippling Darwin's intellectual legacy, and stunting our understanding of phenomena in these fields?<br /><br />Note that Darwin himself applied natural selection to culture. Cultural evolution was Darwin's idea. I think that he deserves credit for doing so.<br />Tim Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06623536372084468307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1224249778417130862013-04-29T16:52:11.508-04:002013-04-29T16:52:11.508-04:00It now appears that all living creatures communica...It now appears that all living creatures communicate, and all meaningful communication occurs in a cultural learning context. Life form have not evolved without communicating. Cultural communication is not supplementary to what you've presented as alternate evolutionary processes, if in fact these other processes have required it. And if that's at all true, then you're asking the wrong question to begin with. The real thing is always faster than the unreal.<br />Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-81801026208582549962013-04-29T16:12:19.799-04:002013-04-29T16:12:19.799-04:00I´m not telling, that culture-e can´t be faster th...I´m not telling, that culture-e can´t be faster than human-e, but you can´t say, that it is in general faster than biological evolution itself (because it have many „speeds“).Tomáš Mihulkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05178810665557196093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-79576371346489328082013-04-29T12:10:20.725-04:002013-04-29T12:10:20.725-04:00It happens faster than it would without it. Except...It happens faster than it would without it. Except that without it, it probably never would have happened at all.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-10814873621268598522013-04-29T10:28:47.668-04:002013-04-29T10:28:47.668-04:00Hi,
I would like to disagree with your claim, tha...Hi,<br /><br />I would like to disagree with your claim, that „cultural evolution is so much more dynamic (it happens much faster)“. What do you mean by word faster? How can we measure that? We know that within biological evolution, there are many of speeds of evolution change - virus genotype changes are generally much higher per unit of time, than changes in human genotype (as so in culture - internet news mutate much more than Dostoyevsky´s novels), so there is no main speed of single evolution.Tomáš Mihulkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05178810665557196093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-25795682110686709322013-04-28T15:52:54.132-04:002013-04-28T15:52:54.132-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-66741839792028818292013-04-28T13:54:08.571-04:002013-04-28T13:54:08.571-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Tomáš Mihulkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05178810665557196093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-9266117688399011792013-04-28T13:39:21.937-04:002013-04-28T13:39:21.937-04:00Can you precise, what do you mean by: genes are pr...Can you precise, what do you mean by: genes are precisely defined and understood? I think that definition is much better than before 40 years, but still. We dont have correct definition of this kind of entity.Tomáš Mihulkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05178810665557196093noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-82507800653184693602013-04-14T12:48:55.490-04:002013-04-14T12:48:55.490-04:00Re: It makes just as little sense to talk of "...Re: It makes just as little sense to talk of "Darwinism" in modern science as it does to talk about Mendelism or Newtonianism. The current theory of biological evolution is the Modern Synthesis, and if one wants to make the point that cultural evolution works in the same way, one needs to take on board the most refined version available of the theory, not its earliest draft.<br /><br />...but the modern synthesis is toast. Building on an outdated, vague and incorrect theory of evolution makes little sense. Calling that "Darwinism denigrates Darwin's insights. Also, this is not what anyone else in the field is talking about - and most make that abundantly clear.<br />Tim Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06623536372084468307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-1403950624617756652013-04-14T12:37:19.116-04:002013-04-14T12:37:19.116-04:00Memes are "gene-like" - at least in so f...Memes are "gene-like" - at least in so far that they carry small sections of inherited information down the generations. Darwinian theories of cultural evolution since the 1970s have all featured memes - or some closely-synonymous concept. That includes the theories of those who eschew the "meme" terminology.<br /><br />Darwinism doesn't forbid "conscious choices", though. If it did, much sexual selection would go out of the window too.<br />Tim Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06623536372084468307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-48524572159941084972013-03-20T16:13:38.096-04:002013-03-20T16:13:38.096-04:00Hi Massimo,
I really would like to better underst...Hi Massimo,<br /><br />I really would like to better understand why you think memes are incoherent rather than merely vague.<br /><br />Let me again acknowledge that "memetics" is not a promising research program - in my view this is because memes are a vague concept.<br /><br />Let us also keep in mind that since memetic evolution is so different from biological evolution (for the reasons in your post), it is not useful to consider memetics in comparison to the modern synthesis. As put by Matt Zimmerman above, Darwin suggested that "selective retention of heritable variation" (let's call this "Darwinian evolution") was the engine that drove biological evolution. Distilled to this simple essence, it is the contention of memeticists that Darwinian evolution affects the development of memes and so culture as a whole.<br /><br />Let me also suggest that it is unfortunate that memes are so often compared directly to genes. Genes are in many ways quite unlike memes. They are rather precisely defined and understood. They are often passed on without ever being expressed. Genetic reproduction can be precisely measured and described.<br /><br />The original idea of the "meme" was not really to be so directly analogous to genes but to be a different type of replicator with different characteristics to which Darwinian evolution (as defined above) might also apply. A typical meme, perhaps even the most basic, is a complex collection of associations between different concepts, so it is not really that helpful to model them as indivisible units. If we need a biological analogy, I prefer viruses.<br /><br />To extend this, we could model "meme complexes" (bundles of associated memes that are often transmitted together and reinforce each other) as symbiotic viruses (they may not exist in nature but at least the concept seems sound). You could model cultures as the set of viruses in a given ecosystem. As with viruses, memes can recombine and split in ways quite different to the reproduction of complex organisms.<br /><br />I'm sure there are other descriptions of memes which may fall prey to one or other of your usual criticisms. I am interested to know whether you find memes as represented in this comment to be incoherent.<br /><br />You might help me out by answering a few questions.<br /><br />If we consider ideas to be examples of memes, and memetic reproduction to be the communication of an idea from mind to mind, then:<br /><br />1) Is an idea an entity that exists?<br />2) If I share an idea with you, do you now have a copy of that idea in your mind? If so, is this not reproduction of that idea?<br />2a) If you answered no to (2) because the idea in your mind is the same idea (identical) as I have in my mind (and so no reproduction has occurred), would you allow that you at least have a different reference to that idea? If so, perhaps memetic reproduction is the reproduction of idea-references.<br />2b) If you answered no to (2) because you now have a different idea that only resembles my idea superficially, then why do you not consider this to be analogous to reproduction with mutation?<br /><br />Memes are vague because the concept of an "idea" is vague and because it is impossible to quantify how precisely an idea has been communicated.<br /><br />It seems clear to me, however, that memes, defined as ideas which reproduce by communication from mind to mind, are no more incoherent than the concepts of "idea", "reproduction", "communication" and "mind".<br /><br />The analogy to viruses also seems perfectly reasonable to me, and I'd love to hear why you would reject it.Disagreeable Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15258557849869963650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-83128017524599812052013-03-20T14:25:53.508-04:002013-03-20T14:25:53.508-04:00Exactly my feeling, Matt.
Even Massimo's own ...Exactly my feeling, Matt.<br /><br />Even Massimo's own example of "Newtonianism" is commonly used in the form "Newtonian" to refer to physics as understood by Newton, which is incorrect through often a useful approximation to everyday life. I don't see any problem with this usage nor why there should be any confusion or difficulty in applying the term "Darwinian" to the kinds of ideas Darwin discovered (as understood by Darwin).Disagreeable Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15258557849869963650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-9965160337996940022013-03-19T22:56:00.819-04:002013-03-19T22:56:00.819-04:00"I am arguing that for a Darwinian theory of ..."I am arguing that for a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution to work one has to have gene-like entities that actually do replicate, with something like a definable inheritance system. And that the selection that occurs is not guided by (at least partially) conscious choices."<br /><br />Three for five! (at least to my reading.)<br /><br />http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/HenrichBoydRichersonHuman%20Nature%202008.pdfMatt Zeffermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05587664485047624221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-10741677762474960962013-03-19T22:53:30.166-04:002013-03-19T22:53:30.166-04:00Massimo,
Yes, this is my point. Gene-culture coev...Massimo,<br /><br />Yes, this is my point. Gene-culture coevolution informs a wide variety of disciplines and studies. It is no longer just people sitting in smoke-filled rooms writing down equations. Just as the study of genetic evolution is no longer bearded men going on extended voyages. Healthy research programs expand. <br /><br />It is interesting, to me, that you are willing to expand a term "Darwinism" to include ideas and concepts that were not understood to well after the man's death, but you limit "gene-culture coevolution" to the methods people used 40 years ago.<br /><br />Of course the are differences. See what I wrote above. Why even bother with all this expensive culture business if we could just use genes. I suspect that many people, like me, use the term "Darwinism" to refer to ideas that belonged to Darwin. This seems reasonable, again to me, based on the word's root - which is "Darwin." <br /><br />Darwin's key insight was the selective retention of heritable variation - which is about as short as you can say it in somewhat normal words. I find the terms "Darwinism" and "Darwinian" as useful shortcuts for that idea. Thus I can write a "Darwinian process" instead of "A process which involves selective retention of heritable variation." This is a fairly common way to use the word.<br /><br />Things that were not part of Darwin's ideas: "gene-like entities that actually do replicate, with something like a definable inheritance system." These are also not required to have selective retention of heritable variation.<br /><br />I find the term "Darwinism" and "Darwinian" less usefull if they are taken to mean "exactly like genes" or "almost exactly like genes." I have useful words for those already. I can write "Mendelian inheritence" or "genetic transmission" for example.Matt Zeffermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05587664485047624221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-43181650596518392842013-03-19T18:31:17.929-04:002013-03-19T18:31:17.929-04:00Hi Massimo,
>Not, that isn’t my position at al...Hi Massimo,<br /><br />>Not, that isn’t my position at all.<<br /><br />Ok, sorry for misrepresenting you. I'm a little unclear however on how my representation of your position disagrees with your actual position. I'm trying to draw a clear distinction between your position and mine which does not depend only on semantic matters such as whether the word "Darwinism" is appropriate.<br /><br />Your clarification here centres on the reasons why you reject "Darwinism" (whatever that is) as a framework for understanding cultural evolution. Does this rejection also entail a rejection of selection effects as significant shapers of culture or does it not? If it does, then that's the distinction I'm trying to draw. If not, then I have misunderstood you.<br /><br />>That talk to me is memetic in type, and therefore incoherent. Whose propagation? What defines such entities, ontologically?<<br /><br />I still don't think memetics is incoherent. Do you actually have an interest in debating this further or do you think we have exhausted that line of conversation? I suppose if we were to continue I would like to discuss the angles of "memes as phenotypes" and whether Darwin's original argument was justified given his ignorance of genes etc.Disagreeable Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15258557849869963650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-29597034317222190672013-03-19T12:51:05.035-04:002013-03-19T12:51:05.035-04:00Disagreeable,
> Whether we call XPhi philosoph...Disagreeable,<br /><br />> Whether we call XPhi philosophy seems to me to be of this nature. <<br /><br />Well, then I failed to get my points across. Oh well. After all my explanations about what philosophy does and does not, and what XPhi does and does not, it is hard for me to imagine that you have come to the conclusion that we are talking about the same thing by different words. But I guess my imagination is limited... (Besides, let’s not continue this discussion here, it does belong to a separate thread.)<br /><br />> It seems to be the position of Massimo that selection effects have no (or negligible) effects on cultural evolution, and that we can only explain the features of culture in terms of biological evolution and the intelligent decisions of human beings. <<br /><br />Not, that isn’t my position at all. I am arguing that for a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution to work one has to have gene-like entities that actually do replicate, with something like a definable inheritance system. And that the selection that occurs is not guided by (at least partially) conscious choices. None of this seems to clearly occur in the case of cultural evolution. If it did, then memetics would actually be a serious field of study, instead of the flop that it has become.<br /><br />Even more broadly, my point is that even *if* we can talk of cultural evolution in something vaguely analogous to its biological counterpart, it doesn’t help to call everything “Darwinian” and ignore the huge differences between the two phenomena, vis-a-vis substrate, modes of transmission, source of variation, and mode of selection.<br /><br />> cultural features which are detrimental to their own propagation <<br /><br />That talk to me is memetic in type, and therefore incoherent. Whose propagation? What defines such entities, ontologically?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-2770938657638033602013-03-19T09:37:03.670-04:002013-03-19T09:37:03.670-04:00Matt,
thanks for the links, I was aware of some o...Matt,<br /><br />thanks for the links, I was aware of some of those papers, while others look interesting. However, you are expanding your concept of “gene-culture co-evolution” to the point were of course the field is viable. The links (several of which are redundant), lead to anything from actual c-e studies to philosophical analyses of cultural evolution, to straight psychology or anthropology papers (perhaps informed by an evolutionary perspective), to speculative models. Not exactly what I had in mind. Still, I will likely return to this topic soon, my reading list has a few entries on cultural evolution that I may want to comment on the blog.<br /><br />> I guess I am not too interested in the semantic debate. <<br /><br />See my comment above about “just semantics.” So, regardless of what term you prefer, you don’t think there are major differences between biological and cultural evolution, given the different substrate, mode of generating novelty, and mode of inheritance? If so, isn’t it worth it to use a different label? And why is it, exactly, that people are so bent on using “Darwinism” for all sorts of things, stretching the concept almost beyond recognition?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-12249493853111454232013-03-19T03:27:27.548-04:002013-03-19T03:27:27.548-04:00Oh, also. Since cultural evolution is biological (...Oh, also. Since cultural evolution is biological (http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Richerson/CultureIsBiology.pdf), the above chart would be more clear if it said "Genetic Evolution" on the left.<br /><br />Matt Zeffermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05587664485047624221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-61822724405842600602013-03-19T03:23:45.623-04:002013-03-19T03:23:45.623-04:00I am beginning to understand that this is a semant...I am beginning to understand that this is a semantic debate about what one wants to call "Darwinism."<br /><br />I want to call a process Darwinian when there is selective retention of heritable variation. This is Darwin's key insight and the process is substrate neutral - in the sense that Darwin had little idea (and was actually quite wrong) about the properties of the substrate. It is a fairly general sort of process. Cultural evolution is Darwinian in this sense - there is selective retention of inherited variation.<br /><br />Some want to call a Darwinian process something that works exactly like genetic inheritance - at least as it is currently understood - and will be understood in the future. Obviously, cultural inheritance is not exactly like genetic inheritance. So using this definition, culture is obviously not Darwinian.<br /><br />I guess I am not too interested in the semantic debate.Matt Zeffermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05587664485047624221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-58757566172360596762013-03-19T03:07:26.511-04:002013-03-19T03:07:26.511-04:00Gene-culture coevolution:
Boyd and Richerson'...Gene-culture coevolution:<br /><br />Boyd and Richerson's relatively recent (2005) paper collection "The Origin and Evolution of Cultures" is a decent place to start. Most of the papers are post-1980's. Also publications on the authors' websites.<br /><br />Also http://lalandlab.st-andrews.ac.uk/ <br /><br />Also https://sites.google.com/site/amesoudi2/publications<br /><br />Also: http://www.unil.ch/Jahia/site/dee/cache/offonce/pid/84973;jsessionid=BCBC184D151AD77C885E7B8239B69CD5.jvm1<br /><br />Also: Also: http://xcelab.net/rm/?page_id=12<br /><br />Also: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/Published.html<br /><br />Laland and Brown discuss recent work in the latest edition of "Sense and Nonsense" (they also dropped the chapters on memetics and human sociobiology if I recall correctly).<br /><br />Last month or so in my email (maybe some duplicates):<br /><br />http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519313000234<br /><br />http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2812%2900087-6/abstract<br /><br />http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-013-0257-5<br /><br />http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13752-013-0091-5<br /><br />http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1758/20123073.abstract<br /><br />http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2812%2900087-6/abstract<br /><br />http://xcelab.net/rmpubs/PNAS-2013-Schroeder-3955-60.pdf<br /><br />http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/PerreaultMoyaBoydEHB12Proofs.pdf<br /><br />http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/boyd/BoydRichersonHenrichPNAS11CulturalNichePubished.pdf<br /><br />http://pps.sagepub.com/content/8/1/56.short<br /><br />http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/13-01-003.pdf<br /><br />http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.12040/full<br /><br />http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12066/abstract<br /><br />http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/01/28/beheco.ars222.full (This is mostly about Human Behavioral Ecology, but has some words about how the dynamics are assumed to be gene-culture evolution.)<br /><br />http://my.unil.ch/serval/document/BIB_DBE6CFE06F99.pdf<br /><br />Ok. I'm getting pretty tired of going through my recent references, but you get the idea.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Matt Zeffermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05587664485047624221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-17102575867912480992013-03-18T21:42:03.728-04:002013-03-18T21:42:03.728-04:00"We still don't have the specific details..."We still don't have the specific details about cultural evolution (and likely won't - which is why memetics is dubious as a research programme)."<br />Memetics is dubious because it has nothing at all to do with how our cultures actually evolve, and Darwin did not argue that cultures and their learning processes were in any way responsible for natural selection.Baron Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04138430918331887648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-31090794209339920882013-03-18T18:08:37.889-04:002013-03-18T18:08:37.889-04:00Darwinism is outdated only in that we now have man...Darwinism is outdated only in that we now have many of the specific details Darwin was lacking. Darwin's argument was still broadly correct.<br /><br />We still don't have the specific details about cultural evolution (and likely won't - which is why memetics is dubious as a research programme). However, if Darwin's argument could work for biological evolution without those details then why do you rule out applying it to cultural evolution?Disagreeable Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15258557849869963650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-14724476432199357042013-03-18T11:11:41.810-04:002013-03-18T11:11:41.810-04:00Yes, a completely outdated one. Which should make ...Yes, a completely outdated one. Which should make you question the point of the author's analysis.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-18622986986071826162013-03-18T11:06:32.984-04:002013-03-18T11:06:32.984-04:00What if the author does not intend to make the poi...What if the author does not intend to make the point that cultural evolution works in precisely the same way as biological evolution? What if he's just comparing the two with respect to the broad concepts first introduced by Darwin? Would Darwinism not be an appropriate label for this?Disagreeable Mehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15258557849869963650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-7180425734734607892013-03-18T10:41:17.648-04:002013-03-18T10:41:17.648-04:00Disagreeable,
> the paper you criticise in the...Disagreeable,<br /><br />> the paper you criticise in the original post was not talking about the modern synthesis. By attacking it on the grounds of the differences it bears from the modern synthesis, I believe you to be unintentionally attacking a straw man. <<br /><br />I don't think so. It is the author that is either using sloppy language or the wrong reference. It makes just as little sense to talk of "Darwinism" in modern science as it does to talk about Mendelism or Newtonianism. The current theory of biological evolution is the Modern Synthesis, and if one wants to make the point that cultural evolution works in the same way, one needs to take on board the most refined version available of the theory, not its earliest draft.<br /><br />Incidentally, I think that's why we should avoid talk of Lamarckism as well as Darwinism altogether: they refer to murky (in the first instance) or outdated (in the second) ways of thinking about biology, and it doesn't help to resurrect them as if the last two centuries of science hadn't happened.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.com