2017 menary gillett embodying culture integrated cognitive systems and cultural evolution

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Embodying Culture: Integrated Cognitive Systems and Cultural Evolution

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The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind

Julian Kiverstein

Embodying Culture

Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315530178.ch4 Richard Menary, Alexander James Gillett

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The Cognitive Integration (henceforth CI) framework posits the existence of integrated cogni-tive systems (henceforth ICS) In this chapter we outline the nature of ICS and their phylogenetic history We shall argue that phylogenetically earlier forms of cognition are built upon by more recent cultural innovations Many of the phylogenetically earlier components are forms of sen-sorimotor interactions with the environment (Menary 2007a, 2010a, 2016) These sensen-sorimotor interactions are redeployed (or retrained) to service more recent cultural innovations (Dehaene & Cohen 2007) Take, for example, a rudimentary ability for tool use, that is refined and then built upon by innovations over many generations The same refined sensorimotor skills for manipulat-ing tools can be redeployed to recent cultural innovations for writmanipulat-ing with stylus, brush or pencil (Menary 2015) Redeployment happens after a process of learning or training and the cultural innovations are inherited and spread out across groups.2 This process depends upon both high fidelity cultural inheritance and a high degree of plasticity (Sterelny 2012), which in humans is a specialised form of learning driven plasticity (Menary 2014) Learning driven plasticity (hence-forth LDP) is the capacity for functional changes that are acquired from (usually) scaffolded learning in a highly structured social niche This results in a multi-layered system with heteroge-neous components, dynamically interwoven into a complex arrangement of processes and states

in an integrated cognitive system The coordination dynamics of the system are, at least in part, understood in terms of the physical dynamics of brain–body–niche interactions in real-time One of the key ingredients of ICS is the social/cultural practices, which we call norma-tive patterned practices (henceforth NPP), that govern the dynamics of brain–body–niche interactions NPPs operate at both social levels and individual, even sub-personal, levels They originate as patterns of activity spread out over a population of agents (Roepstorff et al 2010); consequently they should be understood primarily as public systems of activity and/or rep-resentation that are susceptible to innovative alteration, expansion and even contraction over time They are transmitted horizontally across generational groups and vertically from one generation to the next At the individual level they are acquired most often by learning and training (hence the importance of LDP), and they manifest themselves as changes in the ways

in which individuals think, but also the ways in which they act (intentionally) and the ways in

EMBODYING CULTURE Integrated cognitive systems and cultural evolution

Richard Menary and Alexander James Gillett1

which they interact with other members of their social group(s) and the local environment NPPs, therefore, operate at different levels (groups and individuals) and over different timescales (intergenerationally and in the here-and-now)

The main aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the CI framework in terms of phy-logenetically ancient embodied interactions with the environment and the more recent cultur-ally evolved practices that redeploy our primitive capacities for sensorimotor interactions and manipulations of tools, objects and, in a very recent innovation, public systems of representa-tion In doing so, we provide a case for the enculturation of our bodies and brains

In the first section we outline the role of brain–body–niche interactions in ICS In the second section we place these interactions into the context of an inherited cognitive niche In the third section we lay out the fundamentals of the process of enculturation, and in the final section we outline the enculturation of our basic abilities for mathematical cognition as an example of the enculturation process

ICS and embodied engagements

The CI framework explains how we learn to be active cognitive agents who think by manip-ulating their environments and by interacting with one another in social groups One of the key theses of CI is that body and environment coordinate, such that the environment is a resource available to the organism for acting, thinking and communicating In particular we look at the role of body–environment coordination in the assembly of ICS The coordination dynamics of the system are understood in terms of the physical dynamics of brain–body– niche interactions in real-time.3 However, the interactions that matter are those that are governed by NPPs

The primary form of NPPs that we shall consider are cognitive practices (CPs) (Menary 2007a, 2010a) Cognitive practices are enacted by creating and manipulating informational structures in public space For example, by creating shared linguistic content and developing it through dialogue, inference and narrative; or it can be by actively creating and manipulating environmental structures, which might take the form of tools of public and shared representa-tions (or a combination of both)

How do individuals embody CPs? They do so by a process of transformation of body sche-mas or motor programmes (Menary 2007a, 2010b; Farne et al 2007) Motor programmes are acquired through learning and training, but existing programmes may also be extended during training Learning to catch, write, type, or flake a hand axe are examples of acquired motor programmes Cognition or thought is accomplished through the coordination of body and environment and is, therefore, governed both by body schemas and by biological and cultural norms The latter will draw on many learned skills

A clear way to understand the nature of the CPs at work is the manipulation thesis The manipulation thesis (Rowlands 1999, 2010; Menary 2007a, 2010a) concerns our embodied engagements with the world, but it is not simply a causal relation Bodily manipulations are also normative – they are embodied practices developed through learning and training (in ontogeny) We outline six different classes of bodily manipulation of the environment, with the general label of Cognitive Practices.4 They are:

1 Biological Interactions

2 Corrective Practices

3 Epistemic Practices

4 Epistemic Tools and Representational Systems

a Epistemic Tools

b Representational Systems

5 Blended Practices

1 Biological interactions are direct sensorimotor interactions with the environment An

obvi-ous example are sensorimotor contingencies (O’Regan and Noë 2001), a direct example of low-level, embodied interactions with the environment One might think of simple perception- action cycles, where direct perceptual input from the environment reciprocally causes action, which then directly feeds into further behaviour For example, Ballard and colleagues’ (1995) study details how participants in a memory-taxing pattern-copying task offload these cognitive demands through exploratory saccadic eye movements Dewey anticipated such a model in his discussion of the reflex arc (see Menary 2016).5

2 Corrective practices are a form of exploratory inference and are clearly present early in early

cognitive development The main feature of this form of practice is action looping through the environment to correct future action (e.g instructional nudges (Sutton 2007)) This might

be done verbally, or it might be done by a form of epistemic updating, testing a hypothesis through action A classic example from Vygotsky helps to illustrate: A four-and-a-half-year-old girl was asked to get candy from a cupboard with a stool and a stick as tools The experiment was described by Levina in the following way (his descriptions are in parentheses, the girl’s speech is in quotation marks):

(Stands on a stool, quietly looking, feeling along a shelf with stick) “On the stool.” (Glances at experimenter Puts stick in other hand) “Is that really the candy?” (Hesi-tates) “I can get it from that other stool, stand and get it.” (Gets second stool) “No that doesn’t get it I could use the stick.” (Takes stick, knocks at the candy) “It will move now.” (Knocks candy) “It moved, I couldn’t get it with the stool, but the, but the stick worked.”

(Vygotsky 1978, p 25) The child uses speech as a corrective tool: “That didn’t work, so I’ll try this.” Speech as a corrective tool is a medium through which the child can correct her activity in the process

of achieving the desired result It may be that hypothesis formulation and test through action

is developing early in children Indeed, there is good developmental evidence for exploratory behaviour in neonates (Menary 2016) However, the dialogical nature of the self-corrective practice in this example is likely to have been developed via verbal interactions with caregivers (and possibly peers).6

3 Epistemic practices: A classic example is Kirsch and Maglio’s (1994) example of epistemic

action in expert Tetris players Experts would often perform actions that did not directly result

in a pragmatic goal.7 The actions were designed to simplify cognitive processing Other exam-ples include the epistemic probing of an environment and epistemic diligence – maintaining the quality of information stored in the environment (Menary 2012) Epistemic diligence can take quite sophisticated forms: a simple form would be keeping the physical environment organised in such a way that it simplifies visual search (Kirsh 1995, Heersmink 2013) How-ever, more complicated forms of epistemic diligence include updating written information

in a notebook or computer file, organising it and adding information as it becomes available

4 Epistemic tools and representational systems

4a Epistemic tools: Many tools aid in the completion of cognitive tasks, from rulers to

cal-culators, from pen and paper to computers Manipulating the tools as part of our completion

of cognitive tasks is something that we learn, often as part of a problem-solving task So, more complicated forms of tool use are built upon simpler forms of sensorimotor interactions with the environment, and innovations allow for continual improvement of technique Some tools are more obviously designed to produce physical ends; however, other tools are designed to measure, observe, record and extend our senses (Humphreys 2004) These are more obviously epistemic tools and the way that we manipulate these tools is distinct from how we deploy, for example, the hammer Yet, the same sensorimotor programmes for physical tool use can be redeployed as the biological basis for epistemic tool use However, without sophisticated cogni-tive practices and public systems of representation, epistemic tools would be as useless to us as they are to cats

4b Representational systems: Behaviourally modern humans display an incredible facility

for innovating new forms of representational systems They also display a general capacity for learning how to create, maintain and deploy representations Alphabets, numerals, diagrams and many other forms of representation are often deployed as part of the processing cycle that leads directly to the completion of a cognitive task (Menary 2015) Without public systems

of representation, cognitive practices of the most sophisticated kind would be impossible Therefore, it is important to have an account of what the nature of these public systems of representations are.8

5 Blended interactions: Complex cognitive tasks may involve combinations of practices in

cycles of cognitive processing This seems likely given the hierarchical nature of ICS, where more recent practices are built upon the more ancient All levels of processing can be deployed

at once depending upon the nature of the task As we shall see in the third section, mathemati-cal cognition may mathemati-call upon the manipulation of tools in conjunction with mastery of public numeral systems and algorithms for manipulating those numerals

Learning driven plasticity and cognitive practices

The acquisition of CPs depends upon our capacity to learn, and a capacity to learn is in turn dependent upon neural plasticity (Menary 2014) We can think of neural plasticity in three broad ways: the first is structural plasticity – actual changes to the structure of the brain; the second is functional plasticity – actual changes to the function of the brain; and the third is learning driven plasticity (Menary 2014, pp 293–294) The important thing to note about LDP

is that it is not a matter of competitive learning in a neural network with randomised initial weights Whilst the brain may be constrained or biased to producing certain kinds of functions

in ontogeny, the learning environment of humans is highly structured and controlled and not simply the location of undifferentiated input Even when learning is exploratory it still takes place in a highly structured and informationally rich environment The scaffolding of culture and education makes an important contribution to the way that the brain develops in children Learning is a situated activity immersed within a suite of patterned practices It results in trans-formational effects on developmentally plastic brains, in the sense that our brains get sculpted

by the patterns of practices in our niche The niche in question is the cultural niche and it contains practices, representations, tools, artefacts, experts, teaching methods and so on As we shall see in the third section, neural circuitry can be redeployed via LDP such that phyloge-netically older circuitry can be redeployed for new cultural functions (such as learning to read, learning to recognise Arabic numerals and so on (see Dehaene & Cohen 2007) We turn next

to the evolution of plasticity and the cultural inheritance of structured developmental niches

ICS and niche construction

We are all familiar with the idea of natural selection, derived from the modern synthesis, of environmental selection pressures that influence populations of phenotypes and the inherit-ance of genetic material from the previous generation The relationship between environment and organism is asymmetric in the modern synthesis An extension of the modern synthesis (it should be noted that this is not a replacement) involves not seeing evolution as an asym-metric relationship of selective pressures from environments to organisms, but as a symasym-metrical relationship (Godfrey-Smith 1996) where organisms (and phenotypic traits) and environments co-evolve

The traditional model of evolution only recognises one line of inheritance of traits from genes More recently, biologists interested in niche construction (Odling-Smee, Laland &

Feld-man 2003) have proposed that there is another line of inheritance: ecological inheritance Niche

construction involves modifications to the ancestral environment that are bequeathed to the next generation This encompasses physical alterations, such as living in mounds or construct-ing hives, as well as cultural artefacts, practices and institutions Niche construction is a pro-cess by which organisms modify the selective environment such that there are new selection pressures acting on generations over long periods of time The modifications change selective pressures which in turn modify traits This occurs over long periods of evolutionary time (potentially millions of years).9

Humans are cultural “niche constructors par excellence”; however, they don’t just physi-cally alter the environment, they also epistemiphysi-cally or cognitively engineer the environment (Sterelny 2003, 2012) Humans are born into a highly structured cognitive niche that contains not only physical artefacts, but also representational systems that embody knowledge (writ-ing systems, number systems, etc.), and skills and methods for train(writ-ing and teach(writ-ing new skills (Menary and Kirchhoff 2014) Following Sterelny (2012) we term this “cognitive capital” These highly structured socio-cultural niches have had profound evolutionary consequences in the hominin lineage The primary consequence is phenotypic and developmental plasticity We have evolved to be a very behaviourally plastic species (Sterelny 2012) Rather than thinking

of humans as adapted for Pleistocene hunting and gathering environments, we should think

of human behavioural and developmental plasticity as an adaptive response to the variability and contingency of the local environment (Finlayson 2009; Potts 2012; Sterelny 2003, 2012) Modern humans are capable of developing a wide range of skills that allow them to cope with

a wide variety of environments This cognitive flexibility requires an extended period of cogni-tive development, much more so even than that of our nearest relacogni-tives, such as the different species of great apes

What’s the importance of the cognitive niche? The main innovations are to add an extra line

of inheritance to the single genetic line of inheritance whereby an ecological niche, as well as genetic material, are inherited by the next generation (Odling-Smee, Laland & Feldman 2003) Organisms are born into niches that they inherit from the previous generation These niches have been acted upon by previous generations often structuring and organising it in ways that would not otherwise occur The constructed niche places selective pressure onto phenotypes, which in turn results in further modifications of the niche, leading to a reciprocal relationship between organism and niche Over time the reciprocal relationship can result in evolutionary cascades, which can have profound effects on phenotypes, including morphological and behav-ioural changes (Sterelny 2005)

“Humans are niche constructors par excellence” (Sterelny 2012, p 145) To understand the nature of human niche construction, we must introduce a third line of inheritance: cultural

inheritance.10 Cultural inheritance includes tools, artefacts and so on, but also more intangible products of human cultures such as knowledge, narratives, skills and representational systems, systems of pedagogy and a large variety of practices The cultural niche is a rich milieu in which human children learn and develop The crucial change for behaviourally modern humans is the capacity for cumulative cultural inheritance, “which was ultimately to transform Homo sapiens into the richly cultural species we are today” (Whiten et al 2011, p 942)

The standard interpretation of the archaeological record indicates that there was a revolu-tion approximately 60,000–40,000 years ago – the Upper Palaeolithic revolurevolu-tion – in which there was a real explosion of novelty and the advent of behaviourally modern humans How-ever, there is evidence that many of these traits, including symbolic activity, could precede the Upper Palaeolithic revolution and could have appeared and vanished irregularly over the last 150,000 years or so (see Sterelny 2012 for an overview) For instance d’Errico and colleagues (2001) propose that there is evidence of symbolic activity on bone fragments 70,000 years ago Sterelny argues that this transient appearance of precursors of behavioural modernity implies that behavioural modernity is a cultural achievement premised on multiple factors rather than

a single genetic change or cultural innovation This suggests that establishing the successful retention of cultural innovations is difficult, but once it can be transmitted in a stable manner that cultural niche construction escalates – what Tomasello (1999) calls the “cultural ratchet effect”.11

This fits nicely with the emphasis on cognitive niche construction proposed by the CI position The explosion of cultural and behavioural diversity that accelerates from the Upper Palaeolithic is dependent on a range of factors coming together: inherited cultural capital, phe-notypic and learning driven plasticity, complex social relations and language In this period we see increasing genuine novelty in tool production and use; art, including jewellery, paintings, sculpture and musical activity; fishing and a wider range of cooperative hunting and foraging; burial practices; cultural diversification; and the first signs of proto-numerical and writing sys-tems as novel representational innovations such as tally notch syssys-tems (see Conard 2006 for an overview) These could have been for keeping track of economic exchanges, lunar calendars or hunting tallies (d’Errico & Caucho 1994)

The tools themselves, but also the skills necessary to make, maintain and deploy the tools, must be inherited from the previous generation Tool creation and use requires very refined sensorimotor skills (Stout et al 2008),12 which must be learned Basic sensorimotor skills are being retrained and extended during the acquisition process Here is where LDP really makes

a difference; without LDP the acquisition of the skills required for creating, maintaining and manipulating tools would be very difficult

Social learning in highly scaffolded niches and LDP are co-constraining Without a suffi-cient degree of neural plasticity social learning is attenuated, but without structured and stable learning environments functional redeployment of neural circuitry cannot happen through learning This construction accounts for the structuring of the environment and its inheritance

by future generations LDP accounts for how our brains can acquire novel culturally derived cognitive functions Putting the two together explains how we have evolved to be the cultural creatures that we are The next section explores the process of enculturation

Enculturation

Tomasello (1999, 2009) has pointed out that although other animals have culture, in humans

it is both quantitatively and qualitatively unique Human culture is quantitatively unique due

to the extraordinary amount of techniques and tools and accompanying NPPs which novices

must necessarily learn in order to survive But Tomasello also identifies two senses in which human culture is qualitatively unique: cultural ratcheting (accumulative downstream niche construction), and social institutions (“sets of behavioural practices governed by various kinds

of mutually recognised norms and rules” (2009, p xi)) – what we have termed NPPs Both of these profoundly change the nature of human cognition Learning NPPs in a developmental niche transforms a human agent’s cognitive capacities so that they can tackle cognitive tasks that were previously impossible or inconceivable

A broad range of theorists have advanced enculturated cognitive positions (see Hutchins 2011; Lende & Downey 2012; Nisbet et al 2001; Roepstorff et al 2010; Tomasello 1999; Vygotsky 1978) Here we develop the position advanced by Menary (2007a, b, 2010a, b, 2012,

2013, 2014, 2015) which argues that humans construct and inhabit cognitive niches in which our minds become enculturated and transformed through the learning and mastering of NPPs that govern the manipulation of environmental resources and interactions of social groups The key factors of the enculturated cognitive position of CI can be summarised as follows: [1] NPPs governing the embodied manipulations of physical tools; which operate in [2] highly structured and cooperative shared cognitive niches, importantly including a developmental component with implicit and explicit teaching through which NPPs are acquired; and this process is in turn dependent on [3] general phenotypic plasticity – especially neural plastic-ity – that allows for the transformative effects of the learning and enculturating processes to take place This transformation relies on the recycling or redeploying of older cortical structures

to newer cultural acquisitions (Anderson 2010, Dehaene & Cohen 2007) As Tomasello (1999,

p 7) puts it:

enculturation processes do not create new cognitive skills out of nothing, but rather they took existing individually based cognitive skills – such as those possessed

by most primates for dealing with space, objects, tools, quantities, categories, social

relationships, communication, and social learning – and transformed them into new,

culturally based cognitive skills with a social-collective dimension

(emphasis added) Importantly, this quote highlights that enculturation is the exaptation or redeployment of pre-existing cortical structures to newer culturally generated functions But Tomasello also points out that enculturation is both an ancient and ongoing process occurring at three distinct

timescales (Tomasello 1999) Firstly, over phylogenetic timescales – the evolution of the human

primate; Laland et al (2010) have collected a wide range of evidence that cultural practices

have affected the human genome Secondly, over historical timescales – this is the accumulation of

cognitive capital with the high fidelity transmission of skilled practices and cultural knowledge both horizontally and vertically and downstream epistemic engineering in a specific cognitive-cultural niche (Sterelny 2003, 2012) The veridicality of communication and learning chan-nels within the niche allows for the retention of improvements – what Tomasello (1999) calls

“cultural ratcheting” Hutchins (2001) refers to this process as the distribution of cognition across time, whereby cognitive tasks are successfully tackled intergenerationally through the collaborative and distributed effort of multiple agents building and refining shared mediums and tools that are accumulated and refined to manage recurring everyday cognitive tasks This changes the informational profile of the epistemic niche over time and alters the nature of the cognitive tasks as well

Lastly, enculturation takes place over ontogenetic timescales – this is the inculcation of

spe-cific agents in developmental niches (Stotz 2010) Humans have an incredibly high propensity

for teaching and learning (Dean et al 2012; Keil 2011) A key element of human learning is the functionally correct deployment of tools and perceiving of task-salient affordances of the environment (see Vaesen 2012, p 206) By learning to master NPPs that govern the cognitive resources that have been accumulated by previous generations, agents are able to engage in cognitive tasks that would otherwise be incredibly difficult, impossible or potentially incon-ceivable This is the transformative aspect of enculturation (Menary 2007a).13 LDP and the high degree of plasticity make humans highly susceptible to enculturation processes and acquiring cultural practices and skills Older cortical structures are redeployed into newer diverse cultural functions which have transformative effects on both neuronal architecture and physiological structure of the body It also enhances the functional performance of cognitive tasks, enabling agents to tackle novel cognitive tasks This is supported by an abundance of empirical evidence

in a range of experimental paradigms to support enculturation: in cognitive domains such as attention (Ketay et al 2009), perception and motor processes (Nisbet et al 2001; Draganski

et al 2004); music (Gaser & Schlaug 2003); literacy and language (Castro-Caldas et al 1999); moral reasoning, social cognition and emotions (Henrich et al 2010); categorisation, judgment, reasoning, problem solving and decision making (Henrich et al 2005, 2010; Nisbet et al 2001); memory and navigation (Maguire et al 2000); and tool use (Farne et al 2007) Downey and Lende (2012) provide a very useful overview of this evidence (and for more critical assessments

of some of this research, see Roepstorff et al 2010; Reynolds Losin et al 2010) In the next section we will outline the practice of mathematics as a case of the transformative effects of enculturation, and also as partially constitutive of cognitive processes in hybrid ICS encompass-ing brain–body–niche interactions

Before we do so, it is important to clarify a few key aspects of the transformation thesis Firstly, to recap: Menary (2014) argues that the convergent evidence of a late-developing cor-tex; an extended developmental stage in humans; evidence of continuing plasticity in adults; diverse and hostile environments in our hominin evolutionary history; and complex social situations all drive the need for LDP In developmental niches this allows for the transformation

of the agent’s functional capacities through the redeployment of neural circuits to enable the bodily manipulation of external representational vehicles and thus the acquisition of new skills (Menary 2015, p 9) In turn, this allows the scaffolded agent to both [a] tackle cognitive tasks

in new ways and [b] tackle cognitive tasks that could have been previously inconceivable (also see De Cruz & De Smedt 2013; Kirsh 2010; and Nieder & Dehaene 2009)

Menary (2015) goes further in clarifying this He postulates that external material symbols and tools provide “novel” functions (p 10) – i.e functional aspects that could not be done merely in the head – and it was these novel factors that lead to their proliferation As such, Menary argues that a wide range of human cognitive abilities are partially constituted by the learnt NPPs that agents must master in order to tackle novel cognitive problems using shared public symbols and other cognitive resources (also see Dutilh Novaes 2012, 2013) These environmental resources and the NPPs that govern their usage are part of particular cultural-cognitive niches that are definitive of human cognition as ICS As Nersessian puts it: culture is not something additional to human cognition, “culture is what makes human cognition what

it is” (2005, pp 31–32)

It is also important to clarify that the transformative effects of deploying cognitive artefacts

is often misconstrued as simply “amplifying” or “augmenting” the cognitive capacities of the agent (for example, see Bruner et al 1966) Cole and Griffin (1980) have rightly observed that the use of epistemic tools does not straightforwardly amplify cognition in the way that a physi-cal tool amplifies our physiphysi-cal prowess For instance, a spade may improve an agent’s digging abilities and a loudhailer amplifies the volume of someone’s voice, but it is not strictly true