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01-11-2014

On cognition and cultural evolution

Author: Shinji Teraji

Published in: Mind & Society | Issue 2/2014

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Abstract

This paper examines two paths by which F. A. Hayek’s work has influenced the cognitive theory of institutions: cognition and cultural evolution. It argues that there is a relationship between the sensory order and the social order. The explanation of social order begins with the human mind. This is illustrated with ideas relating to understanding culture from a cognitive viewpoint. Human cognition makes cultural evolution an endogenous process. The paper draws on ideas of co-evolution of individuals’ mental models and their actions. Mental models can be modified by feedback from altered perceived reality as a consequence of peoples’ altered actions. A key to understanding cultural evolution is an understanding of how individuals modify their mental models.

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Some researchers (Butos and Koppl 1993; Caldwell 2000, 2004; Horwitz 2000; Rizzello 1999; Streit 1993) argue that Hayek’s cognitive theory spilled over to his later work on political and social theory.

In the early 1950s, Hayek was led to investigate an ever-broadening range of fields, from biology and evolutionary theory, to systems theory, to cybernetics and theories of communication, all of which offered explanations of the principles underlying the complex phenomena with which they dealt (Caldwell 2000).

For further discussions of Hayek’s cognitive theory, see his essays “Rules, Perception and Intelligibility” (Hayek 1967, pp. 43–65) and “The Primacy of the Abstract” (Hayek 1978, pp. 35–49).

According to Gintis (2007), anthropology treats culture as an expressive totality defining the life space of individuals, including symbols, language, beliefs, rituals, and values.

Lewis (1969) provides a definition of ‘common knowledge’ to investigate what mechanisms produce such expectations. It indicates the epistemic state in which all agents in a group G know that p (p being a proposition), all agents in G know that all agents in G know that p, all agents in G know all agents in G know that all agents in G know that p, and so on.

This is about what kind of game the players wish to play with each other (Vanberg 2007). It is not the question of whether they can play a given game, but the question of how they, together with other players, may come to play a better game.

Vromen (1995) presents a reinterpretation of Hayek’s statements on cultural evolution in individualistic terms. When Hayek uses the term ‘group,’ it should really be read as ‘order.’ This reinterpretation allows for individual processes of not only between-group migration but also between-group imitation and within-group imitation.

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Title: On cognition and cultural evolution
Author: Shinji Teraji
Publication date: 01-11-2014
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: Mind & Society / Issue 2/2014
Print ISSN: 1593-7879
Electronic ISSN: 1860-1839
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-013-0133-5

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