01:185:253 Lecture 13: human nature lecture 13- How Cultural Learning Changed our Genes and Redesigned Our Bodies

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Cognitive Science
• Course: 01:185:253
• Professor: Stephen Stich

Document Summary

Henrich also claims explains much of the extraordinary diversity we have noted in religion, clothing, diet, initiation practices, body alteration etc. First focus on how cultural learning explains our success. Then how cultural learning explains some aspects of our diversity. Cultural learning has altered our genes and bodies in the process of gene-culture coevolution. Some knowledge and skills are acquired by individual learning: trial and error, conditioning, observation and reasoning about the environment. Henrich argues that innate knowledge and individual learning alone can"t explain the enormous success of humans. That success required our extraordinary capacity for cultural learning. Often make inferences about beliefs, preferences and goals of the person from whom they are acquiring information. Often copy their actions and motor patterns. To an extent that is unprecedented in other species, we acquire beliefs, skills, desires, preferences, emotion elicitors, other information rich mental states that are similar in content to the mental states of the people around us.