The role of cultural practices in the emergence of modern human intelligence.

Full Abstract

Innate cognitive capacities are orchestrated by cultural practices to produce high-level cognitive processes. In human activities, examples of this phenomenon range from everyday inferences about space and time to the most sophisticated reasoning in scientific laboratories. A case is examined in which chimpanzees enter into cultural practices with humans (in experiments) in ways that appear to enable them to engage in symbol-mediated thought. Combining the cultural practices perspective with the theories of embodied cognition and enactment suggests that the chimpanzees' behaviour is actually mediated by non-symbolic representations. The possibility that non-human primates can engage in cultural practices that give them the appearance of symbol-mediated thought opens new avenues for thinking about the coevolution of human culture and human brains.

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Author information

Author/s: Hutchins, Edwin (E);

Affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0515, USA. ehutchins(-atsign-)ucsd.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Review

Journal: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences (Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jun; vol 363 (issue 1499) : pp 2011-9

Dates: Created 2008/04/30; Completed 2008/08/11;

PMID: 18292065, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Cognition
Culture
Evolution

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