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The Evolution of Adaptations for Decoupling and Metarepresentation

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The Evolution of Adaptations for Decoupling and Metarepresentation In: Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Dan Sperber, ed., NY: Oxford, 2000 Chapter 4 Consider the Source: The Evolution of Adaptations for Decou pling and Metarepresentation Leda Cosrnides and John Tooby The Cognitive Niche and Local Information Humans are often considered to be so distinct a species that they are placed outside of the natural order entirely, to be approached and ana- lyzed independently of the rest of the living world. However, all species have unusual or differentiatingcharacteristics and it is the task of an evo- lutionarily informed natural science to provide a causal account of the nature, organization, origin, and function, if any, of such characteristics without exaggerating, mystifying, or minimizing them. Yet, even when placed within the context of the extraordinary di- versity of the living world, humans continue to stand out, exhibiting a remarkable array of strange and unprecedented behaviors - from space travel to theology - that are not found in other species. What is at the core of these differences? Arguably, one central and distinguishing in- novation in human evolution has been the dramatic increase in the use of contingent information for the regulation of improvised behavior that is successfully tailored to local conditions - an adaptive mode that has been labeled the cognitive niche (Tooby & DeVore, 1987). If you contrast, for example, the food acquisition practices of a Thompson's gazefie with that of a !Kung San hunter, you will immediately note a marked differ- ence. To the gazelle, what looks to you like relatively undifferentiated grasslands is undoubtedly a rich tapestry of differentiatedfood patches and cues; nevertheless, the gazelle's decisions are made for it by evolved, neural specializations designed for psand forage identification and evaluation -adaptations that are universal to the species, and that op- erate with relative uniformity across the species range. In contrast, the !Kung hunter uses, among many other means and methods that are not species-typical, arrows that are tipped with a poison found on only one 54 Leda Cosmides and John Tooby The Evolution of Decoupling 55 local species of chrysomelid beetle, toxic only during the larval stage mation manipulation and that are supported by a series of novel or (Lee, 1993).Whatever the neural adaptations that underlie this behavior, greatly elaborated cognitive adaptations. This zoologically unique con- they were not designed specifically for beetles and arrows, but exploit stellation of behaviors includes locally improvised subsistence prac- these local, contingent facts as part of a computational structure that tices; extensive context-sensitive manipulation of the physical and social treats them as instances of a more general class. environment; "culture," defined as the serial reconstruction and adop- Indeed, most species are locked in co-evolutionary, antagonistic re- tion of representations and regulatory variables found in others' minds lationships with prey, rivals, parasites, and predators, in which move through inferential specializations evolved for the task; language as a and countermove take place slowly, over evolutionary time. Improvisa- system for dramatically lowering the cost of communicating proposi- tion puts humans at a great advantage: instead of being constrained to tional information; tool use adapted to a diverse range of local problems; innovate only in phylogenetic time, they engage in ontogenetic context-specific skill acquisition; multi-individual coordinated action; ambushes1 against their antagonists - innovations that are too rapid and other information-intensive and information-dependent activities with respect to evolutionary time for their antagonists to evolve defenses (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). Although social interactions may have by natural selection. Armed with this advantage, hominids have ex- played a role, we do not believe that social competition was the sole driv- ploded into new habitats, developed an astonishing diversity of subsis- ing force behind the evolution of human intelligence (as in the Macliia- tence and resource extraction methods, caused the extinctions of many vellian hypothesis; Humphrey, 1992; Whitten & Byrne,1997). We cer- prey species in whatever environments they have penetrated, and gen- tainly do believe that humans have evolved sophisticated adaptations erated an array of social systems far more extensive than that found in specialized for social life and social cognition (e.g., Cosmides, 1989; any other single species. Cosmides & Tooby, 1989; 1992), but what is truly distinctive about hu- This contrast - between local, contingent facts and relationships man life encompasses far more than the social. For example, the causal that hold over the species' range - is at the heart of what makes humans intelligence expressed in hunter-gatherer subsistence practices appears so different. To evolve, species-typical behavioral rules must correspond to be as divergent from other species as human social intelligence. to features of the species' ancestral world that were both globally true The benefits of successful improvisation are clear: the ability to re- (i.e., that held statistically across a preponderance of the species' range) alize goals through exploiting the unique opportunities that are inherent and stably true (i.e., that remained in effect over enough generations that in a singular local situation yields an advantage over a system that is lim- they selected for adaptations in the species). These constraints narrowly ited to applying only those solutions that work across a more general limit the kinds of information that such adaptations can be designed to class of situation. What ten years of ordinary battle on the plains of Troy use: the set of properties that had a predictable relationship to features could not accomplish, one Trojan Horse could. The improvisational ex- of the species' world that held widely in space and time is a very re- ploitation of unique opportunities also fits our folk intuitions about stricted one. In contrast, for situation-specific, appropriately tailored im- what counts as intelligence. As members of the human species, instances provisation, the organism only needs information to be applicable or of intelligence excite our admiration precisely to the extent that the be- "true" temporarily, locally, or contingently. If information only needs to havior (or insight) involved is novel and not the result of the "mindless" be true temporarily, locally, and situationally to be useful, then a vastly application of fixed rules. Indeed, it would seem that every organism enlarged universe of context-dependent information becomes poten- would be benefitted by having a faculty that caused it to perform behav- tially available to be employed in the successful regulation of behavior. iors adapted to each individual situation. This raises a question: Why This tremendously enlarged universe of information can be used to fuel haven't all organisms evolved this form of intelligence? Indeed, how is the identification of an immensely more varied set of advantageous be- this form of intelligence possible at all? haviors than other species employ, giving human life its distinctive com- Elsewhere, we have written at length about the trade-offs between plexity, variety, and relative success. Hominids entered the cognitive problem-solving power and specialization: general-purpose problem- niche, with all its attendant benefits and dangers, by evolving a new solving architectures are very weak but broad in application, whereas suite of cognitive adaptations that are evolutionarily designed to exploit special-purpose problem-solving designs are very efficient and infer- this broadened universe of information, as well as the older universe of entially powerful but limited in their domain of application (Cosmides species-extensive true relationships. & Tooby, 1987; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). Thus, on first inspection, The hominid occupation of the cognitive niche is characterized by there appear to be only two biologically possible choices for evolved a constellation of interrelated behaviors that depend on intensive infor- minds: either general ineptitude or narrow competences. This choice 56 Leda Cosmides and John Tooby The Evolution of Decoupling 57 rules out general intelligence. Traditionally, many scholars have as- A second difficulty is that, from evolutionary and computational sumed that because human intelligence appears unprecedentedly perspectives, it is far from clear how local improvisation could evolve, broad in application, the human cognitive architecture's core problem- operate, or even be a non-magical, genuine cognitive possibility. A com- solving engines must themselves be general-purpose. This has led to putational system, by its nature, can only apply rules or procedures to a fruitless insistence that viable candidate models of this architecture problems, and must do so based on its rule-based categorization of in- be largely free of special-purpose machinery. This insistence has, in our dividual problems into more general classes, so that it knows which pro- view, obstructed progress toward an accurate model of the human psy- cedures to activate in a given sit~ation.~Moreover, natural selection is a chological architecture. Because general-purpose problem-solvers are statistical process that tested alternative computational designs against too weak to supply the problem-solving power evolved organisms each other,
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