1 NATURE & CULTURE: How Culture is Essential

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1NATURE CULTUREHow Culture is
Essential
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• E.g. Fact/data. USA. The South is more violent
  than the North.
• In the South men are more likely to kill an
  acquaintance than in the North. Yet the chance to
  be killed in a robbery doesnt differ.
• Why?
• Because Southerners have acquired beliefs about
  personal honor that are different from
  Northerners, i.e. personal reputation is
  important and worth defending even at great
  danger.

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• Biological differences.
• Variations of levels of cortisol and
  testosterone hormones. Cortisol level increases
  in response to stress while testosterone level
  increases in preparation of violence.
• When insulted Southerners show much more increase
  in cortisol and testosterone than Northerners.
• Difference in beliefs between southern and
  northern people can be understood in terms of a
  difference in their culture and economic
  histories.

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• The difference cannot be explained in terms of
  contemporary socio-economic differences.
• It rests on an acquired difference in the set of
  beliefs transmitted from one generation to the
  other.
• Culture is part of biology
• We have an evolved psychology that shapes what
  we learn and how we think. This in turn
  influences the kind of beliefs and attitudes that
  spread and persist.

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• Fact Why people dont have sex in public?
• A penchant for sexual privacy seems to be part
  of human nature, not culture. Why?
• Mindreading
• Enable people to see themselves as others
  would see them. Perspective taking capacity.
• Self-awareness
• Exploited by culture. Its detrimental to sex.

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• Human sex has become culturalized
• Culture shaped nature.
• Similarities between humans and animals
• Similarities reflect the input of nature while
  differences reflect the input of culture.
• Culture shaped our innate psychology

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• Culture (df.)
• Is information capable of affecting individuals
  behavior that they acquire from other members of
  their species trough teaching, imitation, and
  other forms of social transmission.
• It is information-based importance of knowledge
  and meaning in culture.
• Importance of the use of language.

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• Culture is in part a category or aspect of social
  life.
• Learned and transmission of behavior.
• In its essence culture is a world of sharable
  and transmissible meanings. It encompasses ideas
  and activities.
• Division of labor.

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• It doesnt make sense to ask whether behavior is
  determined by genes or environment.
• Every organism is the result of interaction
  between genetic information and the properties of
  the environment. Genes are like a recipe, but the
  ingredients (temperature, cocking time, .) are
  set by the environment.
• Culture is neither nature nor nurture, but some
  of both.

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• Not all processes shaping culture do arise from
  our innate psychology
• Culture itself is subject to natural selection.
• Culturally acquired ideas, values etc. affect
  what happens to people during their lives and in
  turn affect what gets transmitted from one
  generation to the other.
• Culture of honor arises (at least partly)
  because in lawless societies men who are not
  aggressive in protecting their herd and family
  tends to fall victim to ruthless predators.

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• Three different worlds in which we live
• 1. Physical environment all organism need it in
  order to survive and reproduce.
• 2. Social world superimposed on the physical
  world. It offers a better way to deal with the
  physical environment (joint action / cooperation
  e.g. wolfs hunting). Hence the need of some inner
  psychological mechanism.
• 3. Cultural world Culture is a better way of
  being social and a better way for survival and
  reproduction.

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• Evolution and Culture
• Since culture became such an evolutionary
  advantage it must be present in other species.
• Evolution doesnt produce something out of
  nothing.
• Hence culture must have existed in our
  ancestors. Learned patterns of behavior passed
  down form one generation to the other (e.g.
  potato washing pattern among Japanese monkeys).

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• The beginning of culture can be found in other
  species
• It is thus plausible that it appeared before
  humankind did.
• The brain evolved to take advantage of society
  and culture.

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• There is a mixture of nature and culture
• The brain and culture developed together
• The brain must be powerful enough to manipulate
  language and it wouldnt have evolved the way it
  did if it didnt had to manipulate language. This
  offers a huge evolutionary advantage.

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• Culture vs. Cultural Differences
• It explains why culture can influence nature. It
  is a fallacy to equate the two (as many social
  scientists do).
• Cultural differences are not rooted in
  biological differences.
• The main difference is between culture and
  no-culture, not between cultural differences,
  i.e. between e.g. the Canadian and the French
  populations (cf. language).

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• When nature recognized the value of speaking,
  humans appeared
• There are some form of language in other
  species and it must have been there among our
  ancestors.
• Human have been designed to capitalize on it.

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• Four classical views about the relationship
  between the individual and society
• 1. Conflicts and struggles
• Culture is inimical to human nature (e.g. wars).
• Why war?
• Freuds answer
• People continue to develop culture because they
  are looking for ways of life which are bad for
  them (people have an innate death drive).

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• Freuds view doesnt match the facts of history.
• People are better of when they live in a
  cultural environment than when they live isolated
  or alone
• The cultural animal theory contrasts Freuds
  theory inasmuch as it suggests that culture is
  what we are precisely suited for.

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• 2. Culture as a Defense Mechanism
• Human are beasts like other species but with a
  superior intelligence.
• Intelligence produced the knowledge that we are
  mortal which is profoundly upsetting and the
  source of existential terror.
• Culture is the antidote
• We can live beyond our individual bodies and
  achieve a sense of immortality.

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• But people know theyre mortal in virtue of
  cultural learning.
• Thus there must be some amount of culture in
  place before the knowledge of death.
• Furthermore, existential terror doesnt suffice
  to explain the whole of culture since people
  produce culture even when they dont think about
  death.
• Hence the fear of death is not the only mechanism
  generating culture.

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• 3. Culture and the Tabula Rasa
• Culture shape the individual people qua product
  of culture and socialization (vs. nativisme).
• But cultural differences conceals profound
  similarities (remember culture vs. cultural
  differences).

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• E.g. gender differences.
• The feminist movement of the 1960s suggested
  that gender identity is culturally shaped. This
  runs against the facts a boy raised as a girl
  after a circumcision went wrong (even with the
  help of hormones) didnt developed a desire
  toward men.
• E.g. communism.
• Even if it got all the tools (propaganda, media
  control, education, ) it didnt succeed to
  create ideal communist individuals.
• Culture only succeeds insofar as it can
  accommodate the innate tendencies built into
  human nature.

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• 4. Culture qua By-Product of Intelligence
• Brains evolved to deal with the physical
  environment. As a side effect human became smart
  enough to generate culture by copying each
  others innovations.
• For what exactly are big brains designed?

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• If brains evolved to solve problems, then larger
  brains should deal better with those problems.
  This runs against the facts. Species with larger
  brain do not necessarily solve problems better.
• Bigger brains go with more complex social worlds
  this show that the brain evolved mainly for
  enabling animals to deal with their conspecifics.
• The longer the animal spends in social learning
  the larger the brain is. This suggests that the
  purpose of the large brain is to maximize social
  learning.

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• Evolution made us for culture
• Are people better suited for any other form of
  life?
• No
• Our psyches are innately programmed by nature
  specifically to participate in culture and
  society, i.e. the human psyche emerged because
  natural selection redesigned the primate psyche
  to make it more suitable for living in a cultural
  society.

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• The Biological Advantage of Culture
• The human brain accounts for only the 2 of the
  body mass. Yet it consumes 20 of the calories
  that an average person takes in.
• Since the brain
• (i) is such an expensive organ to have and
  maintain, and
• (ii) it co-evolved with culture,
• culture must offer substantial advantages over
  other mechanisms.

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• Culture must ultimately be measured in biological
  terms, i.e. survival and reproduction
• (i) People have been extremely successful at
  reproducing.
• (ii) People success of survival dramatically
  improved in industrialized nations.

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• The Advantages of Culture
• 1. Progress it can be accumulated across
  generations.
• Merely social animals dont accumulate
  knowledge.
• Big difference between human and other species
  (e.g. highly social species like wolfs didnt
  progress in the last 10000 or 100000 years, while
  we did).

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• The ratchet effect (Tomasello)
• comparison with the tool permitting forward
  movements while preventing backward ones.
• For progress to succeed two things are needed
• (i) innovation (one must come out with some
  novel and better solution to a common problem),
  and
• (ii) preservation (the solution has to be
  transmitted and remembered).

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• Progress Apes vs. Humans
• Apes are quite good in finding new solutions,
  but they are incapable of preserving and
  transmitting them.
• Cultural knowledge is stored in the collective
  rather than in the individual minds. Without
  progress the new generation would have to
  reinvent everything (e.g. how to make fire, how
  to build tools, ).
• A natural disaster (e.g. the Black Death in
  Europe) can kill most of the people. Yet the
  cultures stock of information survived merely
  because few people did.

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• Division of Labor
• Nonsocial animals cannot profit from the
  division of labor.
• Social animals which are not cultural can divide
  up labor in some ways.
• Cultural animals can divide up labor extensively
  (e.g. assembly line of the industrialized
  society) so that every one becomes an expert in
  what s/he does.
• With specialization we have better performances.
• Concerning the division of labor human
  uniqueness is a matter of degree, not of kind.

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• Culture is a System
• Insofar as nature designed us for culture, it
  prepared us to be part of a system.
• Systems connect multiple individual points
  (nodes).
• Thus the total is more than the sum of its
  parts. If all the nodes were the same, doing the
  very same thing, we would not have much of a
  system. We would have a mere collectivity of
  identical nodes.

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• Systems linking together nodes doing different
  things can be extremely powerful and produce huge
  gains in productivity.
• group vs. individual
• biological altruism vs. biological egoism
• psychological altruism vs. psychological
  individualism (cf. Sober Wilsons Unto Others).

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• Language/Meaning and Culture
• Language is not a private activity (cf.
  Wittgensteins private language argument).
• For one to be capable of using language one must
  be part of a culture.
• Just as language is only possible via a culture,
  a culture always involve language. For culture
  relies on meaning and language is the principal
  tool for meaning.
• Language and culture are just two sides of the
  same coin.

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• The importance of language
• Language allows the storage and transmission of
  information
• Disputes can be solved in talking rather than
  fighting
• Language permits to live in time (to have a time
  perspective, to distinguish the past from the
  future)

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• Animals dont import the past into the present
• E.g. rats can only connect the past with the
  present for few second they are thus prevented
  of learning and undertake great deal of tasks.
• In contrast a human beings can make choices
  based on past information and event which
  occurred before ones birth. This also allows to
  evaluate short term benefits vis-à-vis long terms
  ones (e.g. agriculture would be impossible
  without that).

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• Abstract reasoning (e.g. logics and mathematics)
  would be impossible without language.
• Without the cultural use of meaning via language,
  rationality could not be imposed on systems (e.g.
  division of labor in factories).
• Planning would be impossible without language.

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• Cultural Apes
• How did Nature designed cultural apes?
• Success and failure is judged in terms of the
  survival of the species.
• Because of survival, Why are we not immortal?

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• Nature choose reproduction over immortality
  because aging and death are inevitable.
• Hence the choice of reproduction for the
  survival of the species.
• Biology has its limits.
• It is thus in the need of finding a good balance
  (e.g. an unlimited intelligence would require an
  unlimited brain which would consume an unlimited
  quantity of energy to the detriment of other
  biological organs).

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• Cultural animals
• Must be capable of mindreading.
• Without it the sharing of knowledge and the
  transmission of culture would be impossible.
• Must have a cultural brain, i.e. a brain capable
  of storing a good amount of information.

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• Must have a lengthy socialization process
  enabling them to learn the cultures knowledge
  and the rules for behavior in the society.
• Must have an extended childhood permitting the
  transference of culture by education.
• Hence there must be a behavioral plasticity
  trough life and in particular trough the juvenile
  period.

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• Must have a sophisticated decision-making
  process.
• Must have free will. Nature must create a gap
  between causes and effects (controlled
  processes).
• For noncultural animals and organisms automatic
  processes may be sufficient to guide behavior.
  For us the behavioral outcome must be chosen.
• Must be capable of self-control.