Samuel P. L. Veissière, Axel Constant, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Karl J. Friston & Laurence J. Kirmayer
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43:1-97 (2020)
Authors | |
Abstract |
The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism.
|
Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) |
Categories |
No categories specified (categorize this paper) |
DOI | 10.1017/s0140525x19001213 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science.Andy Clark - 2013 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (3):181-204.
Exograms and Interdisciplinarity: History, the Extended Mind, and the Civilizing Process.John Sutton - 2010 - In Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 189-225.
The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity.Charles Taylor - 2016 - Harvard University Press.
View all 47 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Representation Wars: Enacting an Armistice Through Active Inference.Axel Constant, Andy Clark & Karl J. Friston - 2021 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
A World Unto Itself: Human Communication as Active Inference.Jared Vasil, Paul B. Badcock, Axel Constant, Karl Friston & Maxwell J. D. Ramstead - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
How to Count Biological Minds: Symbiosis, the Free Energy Principle, and Reciprocal Multiscale Integration.Matthew Sims - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2157-2179.
When Affective Relation Weighs More Than the Mug Handle: Investigating Affective Affordances.Marta Caravà & Claudia Scorolli - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
Inflating the social aspects of cognitive structural realism.Majid D. Beni - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-18.
View all 17 citations / Add more citations
Similar books and articles
A Variational Approach to Niche Construction.Axel Constant, Maxwell Ramstead, Samuel Veissière, John Campbell & Karl Friston - 2018 - Journals of the Royal Society Interface 15:1-14.
Regimes of Expectations: An Active Inference Model of Social Conformity and Human Decision Making.Axel Constant, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Samuel P. L. Veissière & Karl Friston - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
Multiscale Integration: Beyond Internalism and Externalism.Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Michael D. Kirchhoff, Axel Constant & Karl J. Friston - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 1):41-70.
On the Buddha’s Cognition of Other Minds in the Bahirarthaparīkṣā of the Tattvasaṅgraha.Hiroko Matsuoka - 2014 - Journal of Indian Philosophy 42 (2-3):297-307.
The Mystery Behind Schroedinger's First Communication: A Non-Historical Study on the Variational Approach and its Implications.Pui Him Ip - unknown
Group Cognition & Explanatory Simplicity.David Statham - 2012 - Dissertation, University of Edinburgh
A Multi-Scale View of the Emergent Complexity of Life: A Free-Energy Proposal.Casper Hesp, Maxwell Ramstead, Axel Constant, Paul Badcock, Michael David Kirchhoff & Karl Friston - forthcoming - In Michael Price & John Campbell (eds.), Evolution, Development, and Complexity: Multiscale Models in Complex Adaptive Systems.
Social Perception and “Spectator Theories” of Other Minds.Søren Overgaard & Joel Krueger - 2013 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (4):434 - 435.
Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content.Daniel D. Hutto & Erik Myin - 2013 - Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness. [REVIEW]L. Kemmerer - 2001 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 22 (4):475-478.
Interactive Cognition: Exploring the Potential of Electronic Quote/Commenting.Stevan Harnad - unknown
Distribution of Cognition Between Minds and Artifacts: Augmentation of Mediation? [REVIEW]Victor Kaptelinin - 1996 - AI and Society 10 (1):15-25.
The Virtues of Reason and the Problem of Other Minds: Reflections on Argumentation in a New Century.G. Thomas Goodnight - 2013 - Informal Logic 33 (4):510-530.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2019-05-31
Total views
51 ( #220,125 of 2,497,976 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
2 ( #283,501 of 2,497,976 )
2019-05-31
Total views
51 ( #220,125 of 2,497,976 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
2 ( #283,501 of 2,497,976 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads