Language, Memetics, & Gene-Culture Coevolution

1. Language, Memetics, & Gene-Culture Coevolution Understanding Culture from a Selectionist View

2. The Language Debate • Darwin thought human language was instinctual • Behaviourist perspective • Skinner & operant conditioning • Cognitivist perspective • Chomsky & Language Acquisition Device

3. 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

4. The Origins of Human Language • 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

5. 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.”

6. Memetics (2) • 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

7. Issues with Memetics • 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Future Directions • 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

11. The Wrap-Up • Debate over the acquisition of language • Origins of language • Memetics • Gene-culture coevolution

12. Things to Come • Sexual Orientation • The debate over sexual orientation • Neurological evidence • Genetic Factors • Elder brother effect