Assessor Teaching and the Evolution of Human Morality

Castro, Laureano; Castro-Nogueira, Miguel Ángel; Villarroel, Morris; Toro, Miguel Á

doi:10.1007/s13752-020-00362-7

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…5 Lastly, I should note the differences between my account and that of Castro et al's work on the role of approval in cultural evolution (2010,2022). I agree with these authors that approval and disapproval constitute a cultural inheritance system, that reinforcement is the framework to understand how approval and disapproval function in cultural evolution, and that such account helps explain the origins of normativity (Castro and Toro 2022;Castro et al 2021). 6 But here provide distinct arguments for these claims.…”

Section: A Brief Discussion On Cultural Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 67%

The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution

Cadenas

2023

Biol Philos

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Work on cultural evolution, especially that of Boyd, Richerson, and Henrich, has said little about the role of reinforcement in cultural learning. This is surprising, for reinforcement is an old system, it is found across a diverse array of organisms, and it is a successful concept in various scientific disciplines. The main claim of this paper is that social forms of reinforcement play a role in cultural evolution. More specifically, I argue that starting early in human history, social approval and disapproval of behavior function as reinforcers and punishers; approval and disapproval thereby start a process whereby norms are transmitted. After giving arguments for these claims, I discuss work on social learning strategies—cultural rules specifying who to learn from and how to learn from them (Heyes in Philos Trans R Soc 371(1693):1–8, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0369). I suggest that the account I develop here can help explain the connection between these learning rules and cultural evolution. I illustrate this point with recent work on divination practices (Hong and Henrich in Hum Nat 32:622–651, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09408-6). My account proposes that forms of social reinforcement can explain the spread and persistence of divination practices. Besides addressing the central question (a role for reinforcement in cultural evolution), my account indirectly touches on developing themes in cultural evolution, namely, normative psychology (Heyes in Perspect Psychol Sci, 2023; Birch Biol Philos 36:4, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09777-9).

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Section: A Brief Discussion On Cultural Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 67%

The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution

Cadenas

2023

Biol Philos

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“…In this way, children perceive the social emotions derived from performing a behaviour as objective signals of the intrinsic value of such behaviours. The consequence from this process can be summarised as follows: if a behaviour is approved of, then it is good; if it is disapproved of, then it is bad (Castro et al, 2021).…”

Section: «Rules Facilitate Coordination In Cooperative Activities And...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Los orígenes de la normatividad: La enseñanza 'assessor' y la aparición de las normas

Castro

Toro

2022

Metode SSJ

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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.

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“… 5 Other approaches such as the assessor teaching model see normative though as an adaptation for cultural transmission but without linking it to model-based control (Castro et al, 2019 , 2021 ; Castro & Toro, 2004 ). To my knowledge, this was the first approach linking the explicit transmission of complex cultural skills to normative thought.…”

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confidence: 99%

A lineage explanation of human normative guidance: the coadaptive model of instrumental rationality and shared intentionality

Gonzalez-Cabrera

2022

Synthese

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This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on normative cognition by providing a lineage explanation of human social norm psychology. This approach builds upon theories of goal-directed behavioral control in the reinforcement learning and control literature, arguing that this form of control defines an important class of intentional normative mental states that are instrumental in nature. I defend the view that great ape capacities for instrumental reasoning and our capacity (or family of capacities) for shared intentionality coadapted to each other and argue that the evolution of this capacity has allowed the representation of social norms and the emergence of our capacity for normative guidance.

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Assessor Teaching and the Evolution of Human Morality

Cited by 4 publications

References 83 publications

The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution

The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution

Los orígenes de la normatividad: La enseñanza 'assessor' y la aparición de las normas

A lineage explanation of human normative guidance: the coadaptive model of instrumental rationality and shared intentionality

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