Mètode Science Studies Journal: Annual Review, Jun 14, 2022
Norms govern many aspects of human behaviour and facilitate coordination in cooperative activitie... more Norms govern many aspects of human behaviour and facilitate coordination in cooperative activities. Regarding the origin of normativity, the most widely accepted hypothesis holds that it was shaped by processes of cultural selection between human groups with different rules on how to organise social life. However, in our opinion, we still lack an evolutionary explanation that would allow us to trace the origins of this incipient normativity in early humans. In this text we suggest that normativity appeared early in the development of our hominin ancestors as a consequence of the development of elementary teaching skills, understood not only as the ability to show others how to do something, but also as the ability to point out what one may and may not do.
La interpretación de los fenómenos sociales en clave evolutiva (lo que en la literatura anglosajo... more La interpretación de los fenómenos sociales en clave evolutiva (lo que en la literatura anglosajona se denomina evolutionary social sciences) está proporcionando una literatura académica floreciente acompañada en muchos casos por una literatura de divulgación y popularización igualmente abundante. El punto de partida lo podríamos situar, mediados los años setenta, en el nacimiento de la sociobiología, que recogía las importantes contribuciones teóricas que autores como William D. Hamilton, John Maynard Smith o George C. Williams efectuaron sobre la evolución del comportamiento en la década precedente. Hoy en día, estudios con un enfoque evolutivo aparecen en antropología, filosofía, economía, sociología, psicología, derecho, medicina y política. Y no es extraño que vayan asociados a una literatura para un público más amplio, ya que abarcan temas que van desde la xenofobia y la guerra hasta el lenguaje y la moralidad. De todos éstos, el de la sexualidad humana considerada bajo el pri...
Cultural transmission in our species is a cumulative inheritance system that leads to a cultural ... more Cultural transmission in our species is a cumulative inheritance system that leads to a cultural evolution process with a great adaptive value. Our genes have promoted a social learning system very effective for the transmission of learned behaviours. The ability to accumulate knowledge based on an efficient transmission process is what distinguishes human culture from other kinds of social learning present in nonhuman primates. Human behaviour is a product of two different and interacting processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Much variation in human behaviour cannot be understood without accounting for beliefs, values and other socially acquired determinants of behaviour. Thus, culture is crucial for understanding human behaviour and coevolves with biology. On the one hand, the psychobiological capacities guiding cultural processes are the product of evolution. On the other hand, culture modifies the environment in which we live and therefore determine future action of natural selection. Key Concepts: Human culture is a system of inheritance, in which people acquire skills, techniques, beliefs, values, norms, desires and so on, by imitation and teaching. Cultural transmission arises from genetically evolved psychological adaptations for acquiring cultural traits from other individuals by observation and inference. Cultural transmission differs from nonhuman primate social learning in that it is cumulative. Cumulative cultural transmission led to a cultural evolution process with a great adaptive value. Evolved psychobiological mechanisms guide the preference among different cultural variants. Culture created social environments, in which specific adaptations were selected for by natural selection. Keywords: culture; cultural evolution; dual inheritance theory; sociobiology; meme; evolutionary psychology; assessor hominids; social learning
Cooperation based in mutual benefit provides a perfect scenario to start selfish behaviors aimed ... more Cooperation based in mutual benefit provides a perfect scenario to start selfish behaviors aimed to obtain greater benefit at the expense of the partner. Here we investigate if mutual benefit cooperation can be stable between individuals that cooperate with kindness (good partners) or if they will be displaced by other individuals that try to obtain more benefit with less cost (bad partners). Our model assumes an asymmetry between partners in such a way that one of them (actor) proposes the cooperation whereas the other (receiver) always accepts the offer. It also assumes that actors can choose the partner on the basis of their past experiences with the potential partners. With the help of a simple two-locus mathematical model we show that not only the gene that conditions the actor preference to choose good partners can increase in frequency but also the gene responsible of the good partner behavior.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2004
Cultural transmission in our species works most of the time as a cumulative inheritance system al... more Cultural transmission in our species works most of the time as a cumulative inheritance system allowing members of a group to incorporate behavioral features not only with a positive biological value but sometimes also with a neutral, or even negative, biological value. Most of models of dual inheritance theory and gene-culture coevolution suggest that an increase, either qualitative or quantitative, in the efficiency of imitation is the key factor to explain the transformation of primate social learning in a cumulative cultural system of inheritance as it happens during hominization. We contend that more efficient imitation is necessary but not enough for this transformation to occur and that the key factor enabling such a transformation is that some hominids developed the capacity to approve or disapprove their offspring's learned behavior. This capacity to approve or disapprove offspring's behavior makes learning both less costly and more accurate, and it transformed the ...
Las tradiciones que configuran el cuerpo central de teoría en las ciencias sociales comparten la ... more Las tradiciones que configuran el cuerpo central de teoría en las ciencias sociales comparten la convicción de que las culturas constituyen sistemas que pueden ser interpretados sin tener en cuenta las características psicobiológicas de la naturaleza humana. Frente a esto, desde hace unos años, distintas aproximaciones naturalistas, como la psicología evolucionista y la teoría de la herencia dual, han logrado construir modelos bastante sólidos en el análisis de la cultura. Aquí se revisan brevemente los elementos básicos de esos modelos y, en la parte final del artículo, se presenta una propuesta alternativa basada en lo que denominamos el aprendizaje social asesor.
Page 1. LAUREANO CASTRO | CARLOS LÓPEZ-FANJUL MIGUEL ÁNGEL TORO A la sombra de Darwin Las aproxim... more Page 1. LAUREANO CASTRO | CARLOS LÓPEZ-FANJUL MIGUEL ÁNGEL TORO A la sombra de Darwin Las aproximaciones evolucionistas al comportamiento humano SIGLO VEINTIUNO DE ESPAÑA EDITORES CIENCIA TÉCNICA Page 2. Page 3. Ciencia Page 4. Page 5. ...
os seres humanos somos primates sociales dotados de una excepcional aptitud para la cultura graci... more os seres humanos somos primates sociales dotados de una excepcional aptitud para la cultura gracias a nuestra capacidad para imitar la conducta que observamos en nuestros semejantes y, sobre todo, para aprender aquello que nos ensefian. El trdnsito de las sociedades primates a las sociedades humanas esta intimamente ligado a la aparici6n del lenguaje como un sistema eficaz de transmitir informaci6n y constituye un acontecimiento evolutivo fundamental que ha sido de-
Mètode Science Studies Journal: Annual Review, Jun 14, 2022
Norms govern many aspects of human behaviour and facilitate coordination in cooperative activitie... more Norms govern many aspects of human behaviour and facilitate coordination in cooperative activities. Regarding the origin of normativity, the most widely accepted hypothesis holds that it was shaped by processes of cultural selection between human groups with different rules on how to organise social life. However, in our opinion, we still lack an evolutionary explanation that would allow us to trace the origins of this incipient normativity in early humans. In this text we suggest that normativity appeared early in the development of our hominin ancestors as a consequence of the development of elementary teaching skills, understood not only as the ability to show others how to do something, but also as the ability to point out what one may and may not do.
La interpretación de los fenómenos sociales en clave evolutiva (lo que en la literatura anglosajo... more La interpretación de los fenómenos sociales en clave evolutiva (lo que en la literatura anglosajona se denomina evolutionary social sciences) está proporcionando una literatura académica floreciente acompañada en muchos casos por una literatura de divulgación y popularización igualmente abundante. El punto de partida lo podríamos situar, mediados los años setenta, en el nacimiento de la sociobiología, que recogía las importantes contribuciones teóricas que autores como William D. Hamilton, John Maynard Smith o George C. Williams efectuaron sobre la evolución del comportamiento en la década precedente. Hoy en día, estudios con un enfoque evolutivo aparecen en antropología, filosofía, economía, sociología, psicología, derecho, medicina y política. Y no es extraño que vayan asociados a una literatura para un público más amplio, ya que abarcan temas que van desde la xenofobia y la guerra hasta el lenguaje y la moralidad. De todos éstos, el de la sexualidad humana considerada bajo el pri...
Cultural transmission in our species is a cumulative inheritance system that leads to a cultural ... more Cultural transmission in our species is a cumulative inheritance system that leads to a cultural evolution process with a great adaptive value. Our genes have promoted a social learning system very effective for the transmission of learned behaviours. The ability to accumulate knowledge based on an efficient transmission process is what distinguishes human culture from other kinds of social learning present in nonhuman primates. Human behaviour is a product of two different and interacting processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Much variation in human behaviour cannot be understood without accounting for beliefs, values and other socially acquired determinants of behaviour. Thus, culture is crucial for understanding human behaviour and coevolves with biology. On the one hand, the psychobiological capacities guiding cultural processes are the product of evolution. On the other hand, culture modifies the environment in which we live and therefore determine future action of natural selection. Key Concepts: Human culture is a system of inheritance, in which people acquire skills, techniques, beliefs, values, norms, desires and so on, by imitation and teaching. Cultural transmission arises from genetically evolved psychological adaptations for acquiring cultural traits from other individuals by observation and inference. Cultural transmission differs from nonhuman primate social learning in that it is cumulative. Cumulative cultural transmission led to a cultural evolution process with a great adaptive value. Evolved psychobiological mechanisms guide the preference among different cultural variants. Culture created social environments, in which specific adaptations were selected for by natural selection. Keywords: culture; cultural evolution; dual inheritance theory; sociobiology; meme; evolutionary psychology; assessor hominids; social learning
Cooperation based in mutual benefit provides a perfect scenario to start selfish behaviors aimed ... more Cooperation based in mutual benefit provides a perfect scenario to start selfish behaviors aimed to obtain greater benefit at the expense of the partner. Here we investigate if mutual benefit cooperation can be stable between individuals that cooperate with kindness (good partners) or if they will be displaced by other individuals that try to obtain more benefit with less cost (bad partners). Our model assumes an asymmetry between partners in such a way that one of them (actor) proposes the cooperation whereas the other (receiver) always accepts the offer. It also assumes that actors can choose the partner on the basis of their past experiences with the potential partners. With the help of a simple two-locus mathematical model we show that not only the gene that conditions the actor preference to choose good partners can increase in frequency but also the gene responsible of the good partner behavior.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2004
Cultural transmission in our species works most of the time as a cumulative inheritance system al... more Cultural transmission in our species works most of the time as a cumulative inheritance system allowing members of a group to incorporate behavioral features not only with a positive biological value but sometimes also with a neutral, or even negative, biological value. Most of models of dual inheritance theory and gene-culture coevolution suggest that an increase, either qualitative or quantitative, in the efficiency of imitation is the key factor to explain the transformation of primate social learning in a cumulative cultural system of inheritance as it happens during hominization. We contend that more efficient imitation is necessary but not enough for this transformation to occur and that the key factor enabling such a transformation is that some hominids developed the capacity to approve or disapprove their offspring's learned behavior. This capacity to approve or disapprove offspring's behavior makes learning both less costly and more accurate, and it transformed the ...
Las tradiciones que configuran el cuerpo central de teoría en las ciencias sociales comparten la ... more Las tradiciones que configuran el cuerpo central de teoría en las ciencias sociales comparten la convicción de que las culturas constituyen sistemas que pueden ser interpretados sin tener en cuenta las características psicobiológicas de la naturaleza humana. Frente a esto, desde hace unos años, distintas aproximaciones naturalistas, como la psicología evolucionista y la teoría de la herencia dual, han logrado construir modelos bastante sólidos en el análisis de la cultura. Aquí se revisan brevemente los elementos básicos de esos modelos y, en la parte final del artículo, se presenta una propuesta alternativa basada en lo que denominamos el aprendizaje social asesor.
Page 1. LAUREANO CASTRO | CARLOS LÓPEZ-FANJUL MIGUEL ÁNGEL TORO A la sombra de Darwin Las aproxim... more Page 1. LAUREANO CASTRO | CARLOS LÓPEZ-FANJUL MIGUEL ÁNGEL TORO A la sombra de Darwin Las aproximaciones evolucionistas al comportamiento humano SIGLO VEINTIUNO DE ESPAÑA EDITORES CIENCIA TÉCNICA Page 2. Page 3. Ciencia Page 4. Page 5. ...
os seres humanos somos primates sociales dotados de una excepcional aptitud para la cultura graci... more os seres humanos somos primates sociales dotados de una excepcional aptitud para la cultura gracias a nuestra capacidad para imitar la conducta que observamos en nuestros semejantes y, sobre todo, para aprender aquello que nos ensefian. El trdnsito de las sociedades primates a las sociedades humanas esta intimamente ligado a la aparici6n del lenguaje como un sistema eficaz de transmitir informaci6n y constituye un acontecimiento evolutivo fundamental que ha sido de-
Uploads
Papers by Laureano Castro