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EDITOR’S FOREWORD TO SPECIAL ISSUE Author(s): Source: American Philosophical Quarterly , JANUARY 2021, Vol. 58, No. 1, SPECIAL ISSUE: and Generalized Darwinism: Theory and Applications (JANUARY 2021), pp. 1-6 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American Philosophical Publications Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48600681

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This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Editor’s Foreword to special issue

CULTURAL EVOLUTION AND GENERALIZED DARWINISM: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS

Daniel Dennett

Natura non facit saltum —Leibniz, Linnaeus, and others

Evolutionary theory has been a magnet than the desire not to pick a fight with our for revolutionaries since Darwin’s “strange many colleagues in the humanities and social inversion of reasoning” (Beverley 1867) over- sciences who unaccountably find evolution- turned the idea of Intelligent Design in 1859. ary thinking to be philistine, reductionist, And hence it has also been home over the and somehow disrespectful of the glories of decades to redoubtable champions of the day’s human civilization. Are there better reasons? orthodoxy, intent on squelching whatever William Paley (1802) was right about one upstart iconoclasts were currently mounting thing: mechanisms as intricate as watches do the barricades with their manifestos. It has not coalesce by coincidence, and neither do all been thrilling, with ringing denunciations exquisitely designed ribosomes or motor pro- of heresy from the defenders of echt (neo-)­ teins. These are all the products of substantial Darwinism and equally ringing declarations histories of R&D, research and development, of the impending death of neo-Darwinism,­ and one way or another all that design work whether by the “hardening of the modern must be accounted for, as a series of gradual synthesis” (Gould 1983), or by evo-devo­ or or not so gradual transits away from chaos by epigenetics, or whatever other “revolu- to more ordered structures, preserving gains tionary” idea is in the limelight. Those who by some sort of ratchet. Before Darwin all would prefer to stay out of battle have often design was seen to trickle down, directly taken the reasonable precaution of avoiding or indirectly, from the Intelligent Designer: anything that smacked of heresy, denying God designed the eagle’s eye and the hum- themselves the dangerous luxury of anything mingbird’s wings, and if Leonardo da Vinci that looked remotely “Lamarckian” (e.g., the or Jane Austen or John Harrison (inventor Baldwin Effect) or “saltationist” or, shall we of the chronometer) were able to produce say, imperialist: the greedy application of Dar- intelligent designs, it was because they were winian theory beyond its “proper” limits. The blessed with God-given­ talents. As Alexander widespread reluctance to extend Darwinism Pope proclaimed in a charming couplet: to account for features of human culture is, Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: I suspect, in large part due to nothing deeper God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. ©2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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Since Darwin, we have come to appreciate invented language, not even a succession of the tremendous power of gradual bubble-­up dedicated would-be­ language-inventors,­ and processes of non-­intelligent design, com- for that matter, even in the modern cases of petence without comprehension (Dennett quite sudden giant steps in technology, no 2017). Why, then, should researchers who single author or inventor deserves all the wholeheartedly endorse natural selection as credit—not Tim Berners Lee or Al Gore! the central mechanism that illuminates the Edison’s oft-­quoted line about genius should origins of the sub-­cellular nanomachinery actually be amended: 99 percent perspiration, of biology, as well as the macro-machinery­ 0.01 percent inspiration and 0.99 percent of eyes, wings and circulatory systems built luck. out of those brilliantly designed pieces, shrink Today we all—even the least “creative” from extending these powerful evolutionary of us—engage in the recursive construction ideas to the many excellent products of hu- activity of intelligent design so naturally that man culture? It is unlikely that they agree we can hardly imagine any other way things with Freeman Dyson, who has opined: might come to be designed. Whether writing a letter or painting a picture or inventing a Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life machine, we fix on a (revisable) goal, take it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. stock of the necessary ingredients, and set about trying to make something. When we If not God’s gift, then whose? The tradi- notice a novelty of some interest or potential tional answer has been that technology—and utility, we ask what it’s called or give it a culture more generally—is the gift of human name, and thereby add a new ingredient to geniuses, intelligent designers. Most of them our capacious cultural storehouse. “Hmm, if are anonymous, like the unknown inventors of I were to attach one of these thingamajigs to the spear, the plow, the wheel, and the sail, but a couple of those gizmos just so, I’d have a a few of them are celebrated as heroes, from whatchamacallit that might be able to do X.” Archimedes to Thomas Edison and Tim Bern- Recipes, drafts, blueprints, plans, scale mod- ers Lee. Did all these geniuses have language, els, analyses, brainstorming sessions, explicit or were some of their innovations produced predictions, deliberate trial and error explora- and propagated by pre-­linguistic hominins? tion of variations—all the conscious activi- Language, the chief enabler of cumulative ties of an intelligent human designer seem culture, is a “communication technology” to depend at least indirectly on language, (Dor 2014), and so it, too, is not a gift of God even when the designer works wordlessly but something that had to evolve. It is tempt- with diagrams and silent manipulations of ing to suppose that without language, there materials. It is the designer’s ability to explain would be no mechanism, no memory ratchet what she is doing (and why) that persuades system (like DNA), for preserving cultural us of her comprehension, and satisfies our innovations long enough to build further inno- curiosity about her intelligence, about her vations on top of them. So it is also tempting authorship of whatever she produces. But are to see all the well-­functioning elements of all the design innovations of human culture culture as the result of conscious, intellec- such brainchildren of intelligent designers, tually explicit processes. We should resist inhabitants of the cognitive niche (Pinker these temptations, since they lead to awkward 2003; 2010)? Why would that be, and would conclusions about early giant steps in Design it even be possible? Space that are as improbable as the “hopeful When we turn to the capabilities of other monsters” of Goldschmidt (1944). Nobody species, we see a rich variety of talents,

This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Foreword / 3 roughly placed on a gradual scale from in- gaps between the world of wild animals and nate “instincts” that genetic evolution pro- the world of civilization and culture. Why, vides “hard-wired”­ at birth, through readily then, do so many thoughtful researchers on learned, or triggered, adaptive responses, human culture largely ignore the Darwin- through quite mindless trial-and-­ error­ ian processes that one would think could conditioning, through stimulus-­enhanced explain this accumulation of talent? Perhaps (attention-­directing) learning with help from because they think that once such processes parents to a few remarkable instances where have designed human brains, the activities parents adopt methods or systems of instruc- of those intelligent brains suffice to explain tion (in flying, hunting, hiding, . . .), but, of all the further design work that has gone course, no explicit instruction (Dor 2014). into culture. Mesoudi (this issue) shows that How much comprehension should we at- there is a better idea: a transition from blind tribute to the participants in these various trial-and-­ error­ to intelligent trial-and-­ error.­ instances of learning or design-enhancement?­ Cultural evolution has itself evolved, as its How much do corvids understand when they accumulated products have enabled ever observe their conspecifics solving a novel more directed (and disruptive) innovations problem? How much do lionesses understand (Dennett 2017). when they lead their cubs through what seem Heyes’ (2018) suggests that meta-cognition,­ to be hunting drills? We should be wary of our capacity to reflect on our own thinking, over-­attributing comprehension in these cases is a strongly distinguishing talent, and Distin of highly appropriate behavior. The stotting (this issue) analyzes the explosion of cogni- gazelles who thereby advertise their vigor to tive ability that is engendered by metarep- the lions who thereupon elect to chase other, resentation and its offspring, “artefactual non-­stotting gazelles need not appreciate languages” that are at least often the result the tactical explanation of this ploy in order of deliberate intelligent design. (See also to benefit from it, nor do the lions need to Karmiloff-­Smith 1979; Sperber 2000; Dor understand why they are not attracted to 2014). Is “going meta” a distinctively human stotting prey (Dennett 2017). How much do talent? And would it mark a giant evolution- birds understand when they build species-­ ary step? Many regularities in animal behav- typical nests, never having seen one built? ior traditionally seen as instincts, genetically Their construction techniques tend to improve inherited, turn out to be animal “traditions” over several seasons, so there is some impres- passed on perceptually, typically from parent sive subtlety to the imperatives somehow to offspring (Avital and Jablonka 2000). This laid down by their genes. And, whatever the opens up a broad and rich field in which to ultimately structural and mechanical details search for a gradual emergence of what might of these algorithms may be, we can be sure be called cultural appreciation, the adop- that they have been shaped, mindlessly, by tion of culturally transmitted behaviors for the incessant selective forces of natural selec- recognized reasons, not merely as the result tion which by blind trial and error gradually of some transmission bias. Suppose, then, uncover the free-­floating rationales of good that while animal traditions are in general nest engineering for each species. as mindlessly evolved as instincts, differ- Setting aside as obsolete any dichotomy be- ing only in availing themselves of a second, tween mere automata—“thoughtless brutes” perceptual-­social information highway in in Descartes’s phrase—and beings with a addition to the genetic highway (Boyd and res cogitans, a thinking thing or soul, it is Richerson 1985), human culture evolves not too hard to accept a gradualism to fill the (in the neutral sense of changing over time,

This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY adding and losing and revising elements) Rosenberg points out that the beneficiaries because of the conscious comprehension of of some cultural innovations are the institu- human initiators and transmitters of culture. tions themselves, and advances Malinowski’s In between these two extremes lie all the distinction between manifest and latent func- varieties of biased transmission and meta-­ tions to propose that people may be just as cognitive evaluation that can be observed in oblivious to the utility of their institutions as both human and animal cultural transmission. butterflies are to the utility of their protective The evidence for at least functionally meta-­ coloration. Mesoudi (this issue) arrives at the cognitive processes in animals (for instance in same observation by a different route, as does monkeys that can opt out of low-confidence­ Henrich (2015). trials) suggests that even in the case of meta-­ Schurz (this issue) sees cultural evolution cognition there is no bright line separating us as “brain-­based” in contrast with genetic from languageless beasts (see Rathkopf and evolution which is “germ-cell-­ based,”­ but Dennett forthcoming). also notes that memes are “software,” and Another explanation for the reluctance of none the worse for that. This largely obvi- theorists to take Darwinian gradualism seri- ates Aunger’s (2002) concern about imag- ously in their accounts of culture is simply ined difficulties with identifying memes a failure of imagination about the resources across brains. (Some simple examples: PCs available to Darwinian thinking. Baraghith and Macs are quite different at the level of and Feldbacher-Escamilla­ (this issue) explore computational architecture, but there is no the space of possible generalizations of evo- problem identifying Microsoft Word across lutionary theory. Rosenberg (this issue) calls these different platforms. Queen Elizabeth for a Gestalt switch, pivoting on a key ques- and I both harbor the bifocals meme, and tion of Darwinian theory: Cui bono? Who we couldn’t if we didn’t both have brains, benefits? (Dennett 1995). The successful but there is no strong reason to suppose the spread of a new style of ax may well depend patterns in our brains responsible for this on its enhancement of the genetic fitness of software sharing are neuroanatomical twins.) forest-dwelling­ ax-handlers,­ but other cul- Schurz explores the population dynamics of tural innovations may spread simply because memes by counting “the number of persons they can, not because they raise the fitness of that adopt the meme,” a good start but only as their hosts. They may even spread in spite of a drastic oversimplification or toy model. For depressing the genetic fitness of their hosts, one thing, we need to distinguish adoption the way diseases spread. Dawkins’ (1976) from, say, harboring. Just about everybody insight that cultural items—memes—can has—harbors—the terrorism meme, but few have their own fitness, just like viruses and of us adopt terrorism. A reflection for further other parasites that influence behavior, opens consideration: the phenomenon of heterozy- up a large and important theoretical space gote superiority, as famously instantiated in left unexplored by many would-be­ Darwin- the survival of sickle-­cell anemia, raises a ian theorists of culture. (For an analysis of host of questions about parallel possibilities fitness concepts see Huttegger, et al. this among memes. Might a “single copy” of the issue.) This idea is finally getting a foothold kidnapping meme protect your child from among theorists, and several of the essays in kidnapping, while a “double dose” would this issue explore aspects of this important incline your child towards adopting kidnap- idea seriously, though there are reservations ping as an available choice? Memes aren’t expressed that it might be a mere “heuristic stored as paired copies like genes, of course, for future research” (Reydon this issue). and measuring the influence of a meme on a

This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Foreword / 5 host is not likely to yield good answers in any hosts, may clarify some of these contentious simple mathematical formula, but differences issues. of opinion about such questions motivate a Those are the points that prompted my re- substantial amount of social activism, encour- sponses here, but there are a bounty of other aging what might be called cultural hygiene. insights in these essays, which suggest that Recognizing that memes have their own a generalized Darwinism is, if not yet clearly fitness, independent of their effects on their in focus, a realistic goal for future research.

REFERENCES

Aunger, Robert. 2002. The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think (New York: Simon & Schuster). Avital, Eytan, and Eva Jablonka. 2000. Animal Traditions: Behavioural inheritance in evolution (Cam- bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press) Beverley, Robert Mackenzie. 1867. The Darwinian Theory of the Transmutation of Species (London: J. Nisbet). Boyd, Robert, and Peter Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago: Press). Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press). Dennett, Daniel. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon & Schuster). ———. 2017. From Bacteria to Bach and Back: the Evolution of Minds (New York: Norton). Dor, Daniel. 2015. The Instruction of Imagination (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press). Goldschmidt, Richard. 1944. The Material Basis of Evolution (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Gould, Stephen Jay. 1983. “The hardening of the modern synthesis,” in Dimensions of Darwinism, ed. Marjorie Grene, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 71–93. Henrich, Joseph. 2015. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domes- ticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Heyes, Cecilia. 2018. Cognitive Gadgets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Karmiloff-­Smith, Annette. 1979. A Functional Approach to Child Language (Cambridge, UK: Cam- bridge University Press) Paley, William. 1802. Natural Theology, or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Col- lected from the Appearances of Nature (London: Faulder). Pinker, Steven, 2003. “Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche,” in Language Evolution, ed. Morten H. Christiansen and Simon Kirby (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), pp. 16–37. ———. 2010, “The Cognitive Niche: Coevolution of Intelligence, Sociality, and Language,” Proceed- ings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 2, pp. 8993–8999. Rathkopf, Charles, and Daniel Dennett. 2019. “Mending Wall,” commentary on Cecilia Heyes “Cog- nitive Gadgets,” target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Oxford University Press). https:// doi-­org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/10.1017/S0140525X19001110. Sperber, Dan. 2000, Metarepresentation (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).

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