Transcript Lecture 2 - Organic Origins Debate

Language, Memetics, &
Gene-Culture Coevolution
Understanding Culture from
a Selectionist View
The Language Debate
Darwin thought human language was
instinctual
 Behaviourist perspective
 Skinner & operant conditioning
 Cognitivist perspective
 Chomsky & Language Acquisition Device
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Importance & Acquisition
Why study human language at all?
 Cognitive revolution
 “Go-ed” vs. “went”
 Culturalist vs. nativist extremism
 How many words does the “Eskimo”
language have for snow?
 2, 9, 48, 100, or 200?
 Pidgins & creoles
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The Origins of Human Language
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Noam Chomsky
 Innate but not necessarily adaptive
Steven Pinker
 Adapted for sharing information
Merlin Donald
 Outcome of “mimesis” & neural plasticity
Geoffrey Miller
 Verbal courtship as a sexual display
Memetics (1)

Dawkins introduced the concept in the final
chapter of his text The Selfish Gene:
“We need a name for the new replicator, a
noun that conveys the idea of a unit of
cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.
‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek
root, but I want a monosyllable that
sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my
classicist friends will forgive me if I
abbreviate mimeme to meme.”
Memetics (2)
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What is a meme?
 Analogous to a gene, a meme is a
replicator subject to selection
 Information or instructions for behaviour
 Living structure (not metaphorically)
Longevity, fecundity, and copying fidelity
May spread “parasitically” by a variety of
processes, particularly imitation
Issues with Memetics
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Memes have fuzzy boundaries
 So do genes
Memes often merge together
 So do genes (through introgression or
horizontal transfer via viruses)
Memetic selection is nonrandom
 So is artificial selection (e.g., research on
Drosophila)
Little empirical work has been performed
Gene-Culture Coevolution (1)
Classic memetic theory assumes
independence of the meme from the host
 Hence, memes do not need to have a
relationship with the fitness of the host
 However, extending the meme analogy to
viruses (infectiousness, host susceptibility,
and social environment) converges on the
same position as gene-culture coevolutionists

Gene-Culture Coevolution (2)
Coevolutionary theory is highly mathematical
in nature, based on theoretical population
genetics
 From this perspective, genetical and cultural
evolution have mutual effects on each other
 Mode of cultural transmission may be
vertical, oblique, or horizontal
 Moreover, transmission is nonrandom: pay-off
biased or conformist
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Future Directions
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The evolution and adaptive significance of
language is still being hotly debated
Memetics and gene-culture coevolutionary
theory may provide new avenues for research
 Human diversity
 Unique place of humans in the animal
kingdom
The Wrap-Up
Debate over the acquisition of language
 Origins of language
 Memetics
 Gene-culture coevolution
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Things to Come
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Sexual Orientation
 The debate over sexual orientation
 Neurological evidence
 Genetic Factors
 Elder brother effect