The notion of structure of evolution is proposed to capture what it means to say that two situations exhibit the same or similar constellations of factors affecting evolution. The key features of holobiont evolution and the hologenome theory are used to define a holobiont structure of evolution. Finally, Cultural Group Selection, a set of hypotheses regarding the evolution of human cognition, is shown to match the holobiont structure closely though not perfectly.

Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including cultural group selection and extensions of more general processes such as reciprocity, kin selection, and multi-level selection acting on genes. Evolutionary processes are consilient; they affect several different empirical domains, such as patterns of behavior and the proximal drivers of that behavior. In this target article, we sketch the evidence from (...) five domains that bear on the explanatory adequacy of cultural group selection and competing hypotheses to explain human cooperation. Does cultural transmission constitute an inheritance system that can evolve in a Darwinian fashion? Are the norms that underpin institutions among the cultural traits so transmitted? Do we observe sufficient variation at the level of groups of considerable size for group selection to be a plausible process? Do human groups compete, and do success and failure in competition depend upon cultural variation? Do we observe adaptations for cooperation in humans that most plausibly arose by cultural group selection? If the answer to one of these questions is “no,” then we must look to other hypotheses. We present evidence, including quantitative evidence, that the answer to all of the questions is “yes” and argue that we must take the cultural group selection hypothesis seriously. If culturally transmitted systems of rules that limit individual deviance organize cooperation in human societies, then it is not clear that any extant alternative to cultural group selection can be a complete explanation. (shrink)

© Cambridge University Press 2016.Richerson et al. propose cultural group selection as the basis for understanding the evolution of cultural systems. Their proposal does not take into account the nature of cultural idea systems as being constituted at an organizational rather than an individual level. The sealing partners of the Netsilik Inuit exemplify the problem with their account.

The cultural group selection hypothesis is supported by considerations of short-term and long-term behavioral patterns of group members, and the short-term and long-term consequences of that behavior. The key to understanding cooperation lies in understanding that the effect of an extended behavioral pattern does not equal – and might even be opposite to – the added effects of its parts.

The evidence compiled in the target article demonstrates that the assumptions of cultural group selection theory are often met, and it is therefore a useful framework for generating plausible hypotheses. However, more can be said about how we can test the predictions of CGS hypotheses against competing explanations using historical, archaeological, and anthropological data.

The application of phylogenetic methods to cultural variation raises questions about how cultural adaption works and how it is coupled to cultural transmission. Cultural group selection is of particular interest in this context because it depends on the same kinds of mechanisms that lead to tree-like patterns of cultural variation. Here, we review ideas about cultural group selection relevant to cultural phylogenetics. We discuss why group selection among (...) multiple equilibria is not subject to the usual criticisms directed at group selection, why multiple equilibria are a common phenomena, and why selection among multiple equilibria is not likely to be an important force in genetic evolution. We also discuss three forms of group competition and the processes that cause populations to shift from one equilibrium to another and create a mutation-like process at the group level. (shrink)

Cognitive gadgets puts forward an ambitious claim: language, mindreading, and imitation evolved by cultural group selection. Defending this claim requires more than Heyes' spirited and effective critique of nativist claims. The latest human “cognitive gadgets,” such as literacy, did not spread through cultural group selection. Why should social cognition be different? The book leaves this question pending. It also makes strong assumptions regarding cultural evolution: it is moved by selection rather than transformation; (...) it relies on high‐fidelity imitation; it requires specific cognitive adaptations to cultural learning. Each of these assumptions raises crucial yet unaddressed difficulties. (shrink)

The theory of cultural evolution proposed by economist Friedrich August von Hayek is without doubt the most harshly criticized component in his highly prolific intellectual corpus. Hayek depicted the emergence of the market order as the unintended consequence of an evolutionary process in which groups whose rules of behavior led to a comparative increase in population and wealth were favored over others. Key to Hayek’s theory was the claim that the rules of the market, on which modern civilization relies, (...) evolved at the meta-individual level and therefore surpass human reason. Hayek believed that his theory provided scientific explanation for the superiority of the market order over rational planning. In this article, I conduct a selective comparison between Hayek’s and Darwin’s theories of cultural group selection and analyze the role that demographic growth and reason play in their respective accounts. I first present Hayek’s theory of cultural group selection, its sources of inspiration, and its important place in his intellectual legacy. I then compare Hayek’s claims to Darwin’s views and highlight fundamental differences in their evaluation of the role of reason in moral evolution. Finally, I offer some comments concerning the place assigned to demographic growth in Hayek’s theory and his over-reliance on economics in explaining cultural evolution. (shrink)

In the scientific literature on religious evolution, two competing theories appeal to group selection to explain the relationship between religious belief and altruism, or costly, prosocial behavior. Both theories agree that group selection plays an important role in cultural evolution, affecting psychological traits that individuals acquire through social learning. They disagree, however, about whether group selection has also played a role in genetic evolution, affecting traits that are inherited genetically. Recently, Jonathan Haidt has (...) defended the most fully developed account based on genetic group selection, and I argue here that problems with this account reveal good reasons to doubt that genetic group selection has played any important role in human evolution at all. Thus, considering the role of group selection in religious evolution is important not just because of what it reveals about religious psychology and religious evolution, but also because of what it reveals about the role of group selection in human evolution more generally. (shrink)

The reproduction of cultural systems in cases where cultural group selection may occur is typically incomplete, with only certain cultural traits being adopted by less successful cultural groups. Why a particular trait and not another is transmitted might not be explained by cultural group selection. We explore this issue through the case of religious syncretism.

As scholars have rushed to either prove or refute cultural group selection, the debate lacks sufficient consideration of CGS's potential moderators. We argue that pressures for CGS are particularly strong when groups face ecological and human-made threat. Field, experimental, computational, and genetic evidence are presented to substantiate this claim.

I outline key empirical evidence from my research and that of other scholars, testing the role of cultural group selection in the evolution of human cooperation, which Richerson et al. failed to mention and which fails to support the CGS hypothesis.

Driven by intergroup competition, social norms, beliefs, and practices can evolve in ways that more effectively tap into a wide variety of evolved psychological mechanisms to foster group-beneficial behavior. The more powerful such evolved mechanisms are, the more effectively culture can potentially harness and manipulate them to generate greater phenotypic variation across groups, thereby fueling cultural group selection.

In this article I summarize Friedrich Hayek’s cultural group selection theory and describe the evidence gathered by current cultural group selection theorists within the behavioral and social sciences supporting Hayek’s main assertions. I conclude with a few comments on Hayek and libertarianism.

The origin of human cooperation poses an evolutionary puzzle. In order for cooperation to evolve, our Pleistocene ancestors must have overcome the free rider problem, in which noncooperators reap the benefits of cooperation without paying the costs. Cultural group selection accounts offer a potential solution to this problem. In this article, I evaluate Boyd and Richerson’s influential account. I argue that it cannot explain the evolutionary origins of human cooperation because it presupposes cooperative behaviors among our Pleistocene (...) ancestors. Although Boyd and Richerson’s account may explain the expansion of cooperation in hominin evolution, it cannot explain how cooperative behaviors first emerged. (shrink)

We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the (...) institutional environments of cultural studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (shrink)

Group selection, as advocated by Sober and Wilson, is theoretically plausible, although it remains an open question as to what extent it occurs in nature. If group selection has operated in hominids, it is likely to have selected cultural not genetic variation. A focus on niche construction helps delineate the conditions under which cooperation is favoured. Group selection may favour between-group conflict as well as within-group cooperation.

The debate over group selection shows no signs of abating. If existent, group selection is likely to have significantly reinforced prosocial and altruistic behavior. This article is theoretical and argues that there have been some major lacunae in the debate as concerns humans. The traits that are most uniquely and universally human—such as prolonged rearing of dependent offspring, the family, large-scale, tribal networks, and cultural-linguistic diversity and exclusivity—have been largely overlooked. These most salient and mutually (...) reinforcing human specifics vastly increased individuals' stake in and commitment to ancestral tribal groups. Tribal members were in the same boat, and risked massive fitness loss if it were sunk. This suggests that group selection existed and was much stronger among humans than among any other animal species. (shrink)

The capacity to engage with art is a human universal present in all cultures and just about every individual human. This indicates that this capacity is evolved. In this Critical Notice of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct, I discuss various evolutionary scenarios and their consequences. Dutton and I both reject the "spandrel" approach that originates from the work of Gould and Lewontin. Dutton proposes, following work of Geoffrey Miller, that art is sexually selected--that art-production is a sign of a fit (...) genome in males. I argue that while assortative mating may well have had a role in the evolution of "the art instinct", group selection is a better explanation. I also take issue with Dutton's "cluster concept" approach to defining art, and argue that it is a universal and essential characteristic of art that it is appreciated both for what it expresses and for the way that it expresses. It thus requires a reflexive capacity that is not operative in the appreciation of sport spectacles and pornography. (shrink)

Evolutionary anthropology has focused on the origins of war, or rather ethnocentricity, because it epitomizes the problem of group selection, and because war may itself have been the main agent of group selection. The neo-Darwinian synthesis in biology has explained how ethnocentricity might evolve by group selection, and the distinction between evoked culture and adopted culture, suggested by the emerging synthesis in evolutionary psychology, has explained how it might be transmitted. Ethnocentric mechanisms could have (...) evolved by genetic selection in ancestral hominids, or through the interaction of genetic and cultural selection in modern humans, or both. The existence of similar behaviors in chimpanzees and the parallel development of early human societies around the globe are arguments for such inherited mechanisms. There may have been some adaptive breakthroughs in purely cultural evolution, but this process does not seem likely to produce long-term Darwinian adaptations because of the prolificity of cultural traits. Warfare may once have been a major agent of group selection, but the rates of extinction among human groups are so slow as to render this improbable since the rise of state-level societies, whose warfare tends to become a cyclical balance-of-power situation. Perhaps the most serious implication of current evolutionary thought is that the individualistic model of culture common in the social sciences and humanities is outmoded, and should be replaced by a new model that recognizes the organismic nature of human societies. (shrink)

Many of the most important properties of human groups – including properties that may give one group an evolutionary advantage over another – are properly defined only at the level of group organization. Yet at present, most work on the evolution of culture has focused solely on the transmission of individual-level traits. I propose a conceptual extension of the theory of cultural evolution, particularly related to the evolutionary competition between cultural groups. The key concept in this (...) extension is the emergent group-level trait. This type of trait is characterized by the structured organization of differentiated individuals and constitutes a unit of selection that is qualitatively different from selection on groups as defined by traditional multilevel selection theory. As a corollary, I argue that the traditional focus on cooperation as the defining feature of human societies has missed an essential feature of cooperative groups. Traditional models of cooperation assume that interacting with one cooperator is equivalent to interacting with any other. However, human groups involve differential roles, meaning that receiving aid from one individual is often preferred to receiving aid from another. In this target article, I discuss the emergence and evolution of group-level traits and the implications for the theory of cultural evolution, including ramifications for the evolution of human cooperation, technology, and cultural institutions, and for the equivalency of multilevel selection and inclusive fitness approaches. (shrink)

A cross-cultural analysis of trust and cooperation networks in Northern Ghana (NGHA) and Oaxaca (OAX) was carried out by means of ego networks and interviews. These regions were chosen because both are inhabited by several ethnic groups, thus providing a good opportunity to test the cultural group selection hypothesis. Against the predictions of this approach, we found that in both regions cooperation is grounded in personal trust groups, and that social cohesion depends on these emotional bonds. (...) Moreover, in agreement with Fiske's notion of “evolved proclivities”, we also found two distinct kinds of trust networks, one for each region, which vary in terms of the degree of ethnic interrelation. This pattern suggests that social cohesion increases when environmental resources are scarce. (shrink)

En 1983, un groupe de femmes japonaises francophiles, très intéressées par le féminisme français et les changements rapides de la vie des femmes en France depuis les années 1970, créent la Société Franco-japonaise des Études sur les Femmes. Le but est de promouvoir une meilleure compréhension entre les deux cultures et de développer des liens avec les Françaises sur un grand nombre de questions féminines. Le projet se révéla vite être un succès. Parmi les études entreprises par la Société, l’analyse (...) comparée de l’histoire des Françaises et des Japonaises, domaine très peu exploré alors, a suscité un vif intérêt chez les participantes. Cet article revient sur vingt années de réflexion, de recherche, et d’échange par un groupe d’historiennes non-professionnelles sur les relations entre histoire et expériences de vie personnelles. Il nous montre comment l’étude de l’histoire des femmes dans un contexte international peut être fructueuse et bénéfique, et combien une libre discussion collective, sans tabous, sur ce sujet peut éveiller ou approfondir la conscience féministe. (shrink)

This set collects together a vital selection of works on Existentialism, including the key Introduction to the New Existentialism by Colin Wilson. Some of the titles were early works written as this new philosophy spread into the English language, while others are more recent examinations.

Reissuing works originally published between 1949 and ‘79, this set presents a rich selection of renowned scholarship across the subject, touching also on ethics, religion, and psychology and other behavioural science. Classic previously out-of-print works are brought back into print here in this set of important discourse and theory.

This 20 volume Routledge Revivals collection brings together a selection of groundbreaking Philosophy titles, from the rich and diverse Routledge backlist. With titles published between 1933 and 1991, this is a truly wide-ranging selection, encompassing works by distinguished authors such as: Simone Weil, Hilary Putnam, Franz Brentano, Anthony Kenny, Karl Jaspers and Israel Scheffler. Dealing with everything from the notion of freewill, to concepts of time and space, to theories of morality, this set offers a collection of the (...) best of Routledge publishing in the field of Philosophy from across the Twentieth Century. Please note that all titles have been previously available for sale individually through the Routledge Revivals programme. (shrink)

_Routledge Library Editions: Psychoanalysis_ brings together as one set, or individual volumes, a series of 8 previously out-of-print titles, originally published between 1923 and 1993. Written by international authors from a variety of backgrounds, this set looks at psychoanalysis in a number of different areas including, culture, religion, sociology, postmodernism, literary criticism and others.

Richerson et al. argue that relatively large culturalFSTvalues provide evidence for group structure and therefore scope for group selection. However, recent research on spatial patterns of cultural variation demonstrates that, as in the genetic case, apparent group structure can be a consequence of geographic clines, not group barriers. Such a pattern limits the scope for cultural group selection.

Biology is seen not merely as a privileged oppressor of women but as a co-victim of masculinist social assumptions. We see feminist critique as one of the normative controls that any scientist must perform whenever analyzing data, and we seek to demonstrate what has happened when this control has not been utilized. Narratives of fertilization and sex determination traditionally have been modeled on the cultural patterns of male/female interaction, leading to gender associations being placed on cells and their components. (...) We also find that when gender biases are controlled, new perceptions of these intracellular and extracellular relationships emerge. (shrink)

We extend Smaldino’s approach to collaboration and social organization in cultural evolution to include cognition. By showing how recent work on emergent group-level cognition can be incorporated within Smaldino’s framework, we extend that framework’s scope to encompass collaborative memory, decision-making, and intelligent action. We argue that beneficial effects arise only in certain forms of cognitive interdependence, in surprisingly fragile conditions.

In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story (...) of how institutional religions have evolved. Their cultural evolutionary account of religion only looks at the cultural dynamics arising from competition between groups, not at the dynamics arising from within the group. Drawing from game-theoretic analyses of the emergence and cultural evolution of social institutions, I outline two sets of important ‘within-group’ dynamics that shape institutional religions. The first follow from the necessity to keep the interaction of the participants in an equilibrium state in order to maintain the social institution. The second arise from the competition of institutional features for traction within the group. Bringing these dynamics into account enables us to explain prominent features of institutional religions that cannot be satisfactorily explained by the current model of the cultural evolution of religions. (shrink)

An essential aspect of forming representations of social groups is to recognize socially relevant attributes licensed by the group membership. Because knowledge of cultural practices tends to be transmitted through social contact within social groups, it is one of the fundamental attributes shared among members of a social group. Two experiments explored whether 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds selectively attribute shared cultural knowledge on the basis of group membership of agents. Using novel social groups, children were introduced (...) to one target agent and two other agents, one of which belonged to the same group as the target and one belonged to a different group. Children were then asked who would know or like same things as the target agent. The results showed that children expect group members to know the same songs, whereas they do not necessarily expect them to like the same songs or know the same generic facts. These findings suggest that children are remarkably selective in the attributions they make based on social group membership and from early on, they expect social group membership and cultural knowledge to be closely linked. (shrink)