The Cognitive Foundations of Cultural Stability and Diversity
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"An evolved cognitive module—for instance a snake detector, a face-recognition device … is an adaptation to a range of phenomena that presented problems or opportunities in the ancestral environment of the species. Its function is to process a given type of stimuli or inputs—for instance snakes [or] human faces." --"The Cognitive Foundations of Cultural Stability and Diversity " (2004) by Dan Sperber and L. A. Hirschfeld |
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“The Cognitive Foundations of Cultural Stability and Diversity” (2004) is a paper by Dan Sperber and L. A. Hirschfeld published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (8:40–46).
Abstract:
- "The existence and diversity of human cultures are made possible by our species-specific cognitive capacities.But how? Do cultures emerge and diverge as a result of the deployment, over generations and in different populations, of general abilities to learn, imitate and communicate? What role if any do domain-specific evolved cognitive abilities play in the emergence and evolution of cultures? These questions have been approached from different vantage points in different disciplines.Here we present a view that is currently developing out of the converging work of developmental psychologists,evolutionary psychologists and cognitive anthropologists."
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