Our commentary aims to enrich Singh’s subjective selection framework in two fundamental ways. First, language is necessary for coordinating on shared instrumental goals. Without it, the explanatory burden rests largely on evolved psychology. Second, goals themselves are culturally constructed, socially transmitted and cumulatively evolving over time. This co-evolutionary dynamic between problems and solutions exceeds what fixed psychological hierarchies can explain.

Humans stand alone in terms of their potential to collectively and cumulatively change their culture in an open-ended manner. This open-endedness provides societies with the ability to continually expand their resources and to increase their capacity to store, transmit and process information at a collective level. Here, we propose that the production of resources arises from the interaction between cultural systems (a society's repertoire of interdependent techniques, artefacts, norms and knowledge) and search spaces (an ensemble of needs, problems and goals facing a society). Starting from this premise, we develop a macro-level model wherein both cultural systems and search spaces are subject to evolutionary dynamics. By manipulating the extent to which these dynamics are characterized by stochastic or selection-like processes, we demonstrate that open-ended growth is extremely rare, historically contingent and only possible when cultural systems and search spaces co-evolve. Here, stochastic factors must be strong enough to continually perturb the dynamics into a far-from-equilibrium state, whereas selection-like factors help maintain effectiveness and ensure the sustained production of resources. Only when this co-evolutionary dynamic maintains effective cultural systems, supports the ongoing expansion of the search space and leads to an increased provision of resources do we observe open-ended cultural evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolution of collective intelligence'.

Group membership and our beliefs about the groups we belong to are the building blocks of our social and cultural identity. Here, we investigated whether transmission of information about how often different personality traits occur in a minimal ingroup and outgroup results in distinct patterns of cultural evolution. Participants transmitted information about the occurrence of positive, negative and neutral traits to other participants in linear transmission chains. First, we found a general tendency for occurrence of all traits to decrease across generations. However, our control experiment revealed that this general decrease was not specific to transmission of information about traits but represented a low-level response bias. Critically, this decrease across generations was smaller when participants were transmitting information about ingroup than outgroup traits, but only for positive and neutral traits. No significant difference emerged for negative traits. Together, these results show that minimal group membership can selectively bias transmission of information about ingroup and outgroup. We propose that this results from two processes: an ingroup-positivity bias and higher accuracy when transmitting ingroup-related information. Overall, our study provides an example of how examining mechanisms of cultural transmission can elucidate our understanding of processes of formation and evolution of social-cultural identity.

The cumulative evolution of technology has proven central to our species' ecological success, allowing for cultural rather than biological adaptation to environmental challenges. While cumulative improvement explains how specific technological traditions can get increasingly better at solving pre-existing adaptive problems, it remains fundamentally an optimization process, one which halts when an optimal solution is found. Yet, humans are also capable of open-ended or evolvable technological change, that is, we have the capacity for generating novel and useful technological solutions for an ever-expanding set of increasingly complex problems. How novel problems of increasing complexity are accessed, however, remains an open issue. Here, I argue that human open-ended technological evolution emerges from the cultural evolutionary bootstrapping of our inventive capabilities through cognitive technologies. By inventing technologies that enhance our cognitive capabilities, we become able to invent technologies that would have been impossible to design using only our core (noncultural) cognitive abilities. These inventions include further empowering cognitive technologies, creating a feedback loop through which inventors become increasingly capable of making themselves even more capable inventors. I propose a model for how the cultural evolution of increasingly sophisticated cognitive technologies enables access to previously unreachable invention problems, driving open-ended technological change. This process differs from cumulative optimization as it involves expanding the range of problems that can be solved (evolvability) rather than optimizing solutions to existing problems (adaptation). This paper contributes to our understanding of human technological uniqueness by identifying a mechanism enabling open-ended cultural evolution.

The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks 'knowledge synthesis', is poorly supported by 'theory', has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. 'culture', 'social learning', 'cumulative culture') in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize its empirical findings, the field's theoretical challenges receive less critical attention even though challenges of a theoretical or conceptual nature underlie most of the problems identified by Cultural Evolution Society members. Guided by the heterogeneous 'grand challenges' emergent in this survey, this paper restates those challenges and adopts an organizational style requisite to discussion of them. The paper's goal is to contribute to increasing conceptual clarity and theoretical discernment around the most pressing challenges facing the field of cultural evolutionary science. It will be of most interest to cultural evolutionary scientists, theoreticians, philosophers of science and interdisciplinary researchers.

Cognitive technologies enhance and expand our problem-solving capabilities beyond what we can do on our own, unaided. This means that as new cognitive technologies are invented and used, and as these new technologies form traditions specific to those populations that harbor them, our species increases its cognitive capabilities through time. Human cognition is, in this sense, a historically moving target. Cognitive technologies also played and continue to play a role in the invention, development, and improvement of new technologies, including further, more empowering cognitive technologies. This means that as cognitive technologies are developed, they expand our inventive capabilities. This dynamic process generates a positive feedback loop, wherein earlier cognitive technologies enable the invention and advancement of more powerful cognitive technologies in an iterative, open-ended manner. In this paper, I argue that the process of cumulative cultural evolution is at pains of explaining the evolvability of human technologies, describe how cognitive technologies make us ever smarter at invention, and clarify how cognitive technologies enable a bootstrapping dynamic leading to evolvable, open-ended technological change.

The cultural transmission of technical know-how has proven vital to the success of our species. The broad diversity of learning contexts and social configurations, as well as the various kinds of coordinated interactions they involve, speaks to our capacity to flexibly adapt to and succeed in transmitting vital knowledge in various learning contexts. Although often recognized by ethnographers, the flexibility of cultural learning has so far received little attention in terms of cognitive mechanisms. We argue that a key feature of the flexibility of cultural learning is that both the models and learners recruit cognitive mechanisms of action coordination to modulate their behavior contingently on the behavior of their partner, generating a process of mutual adaptation supporting the successful transmission of technical skills in diverse and fluctuating learning environments. We propose that the study of cultural learning would benefit from the experimental methods, results, and insights of joint-action research and, complementarily, that the field of joint-action research could expand its scope by integrating a learning and cultural dimension. Bringing these two fields of research together promises to enrich our understanding of cultural learning, its contextual flexibility, and joint action coordination.

Copying has been a productive paradigm for the study of cultural learning. Copying is about information transmission, the success of which is measured by the similarity of knowledge between models and learners. In this paper, we identify some shortcom-ings in the use of copying mechanisms (e.g., imitation, emulation) as explanations of cultural learning, emphasizing their focus on the flow of information (from expert to novice) instead of on the specific interactions involved during episodes of learn-ing. We argue that the micro-interactions between models and learners and how they coordinate with one another better explain how knowledge is passed on between individuals. We propose to understand cultural learning as a form of interpersonal coordination, i.e., as the result of dynamic interactions involving mutual behavioral alignment between two interacting agents. We sketch how a coordination framework provides a richer picture of cultural learning, with more explanatory power than the copying paradigm.

The bifocal stance theory posits two stances - the ritual and the instrumental - each a learning strategy with different fidelity outcomes. These differences in turn have long-term consequences for cultural stability. Yet we suggest the key concept of "fidelity" is insufficiently explicated. Pointing to counter-examples and gaps in the theory, we suggest that explicating "fidelity" reveals the stances to be heuristic explanatory strategies: first-pass explanatory glosses of learning and its consequences, not descriptions of the inner machinery of agents.

The question of whether cultural transmission is faithful has attracted significant debate over the last 30 years. The degree of fidelity with which an object is transmitted depends on 1) the features chosen to be relevant, and 2) the quantity of details given about those features. Once these choices have been made, an object is described at a particular grain. In the absence of conventions between different researchers and across different fields about which grain to use, transmission fidelity cannot be evaluated because it is relative to the choice of grain. In biology, because a genotype-to-phenotype mapping exists and transmission occurs from genotype to genotype, a privileged grain of description exists that circumvents this ‘grain problem.’ In contrast, in cultural evolution, the genotype–phenotype distinction cannot be drawn, rendering claims about fidelity dependent upon researchers’ choices. Thus, due to a lack of unified conventions, claims about fidelity transmission are difficult to evaluate.

Typical examples of cultural phenomena all exhibit a degree of similarity across time and space at the level of the population. As such, a fundamental question for any science of culture is, what ensures this stability in the first place? Here we focus on the evolutionary and stabilising role of `convergent transformation', in which one item causes the production of another item whose form tends to deviate from the original in a directed, non-random way. We present a series of stochastic models of cultural evolution investigating its effects. The results show that cultural stability can emerge and be maintained by virtue of convergent transformation alone, in the absence of any form of copying or selection process. We show how high-fidelity copying and convergent transformation need not be opposing forces, and can jointly contribute to cultural stability. We finally analyse how non-random transformation and high-fidelity copying can have different evolutionary signatures at population level, and hence how their distinct effects can be distinguished in empirical records. Collectively, these results supplement existing approaches to cultural evolution based on the Darwinian analogy, while also providing formal support for other frameworks such as Cultural Attraction Theory - that entail its further loosening. Social media summary:. Culture can be produced and maintained by convergent transformation, without copying or selection involved.

High-fidelity cultural transmission, rather than brute intelligence, is the secret of our species' success, or so many cultural evolutionists claim. It has been selected because it ensures the spread, stability and longevity of beneficial cultural traditions, and it supports cumulative cultural change. To play these roles, however, fidelity must be a causally-efficient property of cultural transmission. This is where the grain problem comes in and challenges the explanatory potency of fidelity. Assessing the degree of fidelity of any episode or mechanism of cultural transmission always depends upon an investigator's choice of grain of description at which cultural traditions are being studied. The fidelity of cultural transmission then appears to be relative to the granularity at which one approaches cultural variation, and since there is a multiplicity of grains of description by which the same tradition can be studied, there results a multiplicity of measures of fidelity for a same event or mechanism of cultural transmission. If this is correct, because fidelity is always relative to the grain of description dictated by the local and specific research interests of the investigator, then there seems to be no fact of the matter as to whether cultural transmission is faithful or not, independently from a researcher's framework of analysis. The aims of this paper are to offer a conceptual clarification of the grain problem in cultural evolution, to assess its causes, to unpack its epistemological implications, and to examine its reach and consequences for a science of cultural evolution.

The ability to transmit information between individuals through social learning is a foundational component of cultural evolution. However, how this transmission occurs is still debated. On the one hand, the copying account draws parallels with biological mechanisms for genetic inheritance, arguing that learners copy what they observe and novel variations occur through random copying errors. On the other hand, the reconstruction account claims that, rather than directly copying behaviour, learners reconstruct the information that they believe to be most relevant on the basis of pragmatic inference, environmental and contextual cues. Distinguishing these two accounts empirically is difficult based on data from typical transmission chain studies because the predictions they generate frequently overlap. In this study we present a methodological approach that generates different predictions of these accounts by manipulating the task context between model and learner in a transmission episode. We then report an empirical proof-of-concept that applies this approach. The results show that, when a model introduces context-dependent embedded signals to their actions that are not intended to be transmitted, it is possible to empirically distinguish between competing predictions made by these two accounts. Our approach can therefore serve to understand the underlying cognitive mechanisms at play in cultural transmission and can make important contributions to the debate between preservative and reconstructive schools of thought.

A leading idea of cultural evolutionary theory is that for human cultures to undergo evolutionary change, cultural transmission must generally serve as a high-fidelity copying process. In analogy to genetic inheritance, the high fidelity of human cultural transmission would act as a safeguard against the transformation and loss of cultural information, thus ensuring both the stability and longevity of cultural traditions. Cultural fidelity would also serve as the key difference-maker between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, explaining why only us humans, with our uniquely high-fidelity transmission capabilities, are capable of evolving and sustaining complex traditions. But what does it mean for cultural transmission to be more or less faithful? This article has two objectives. The first is to clarify the meaning and uses of the concept of cultural fidelity and to evaluate their explanatory import. I argue that cultural evolutionists use several fidelity concepts (episodic, propensity, and generalized fidelity), concepts that I will define and clarify. The second objective is to challenge the explanatory significance of a general notion of fidelity (generalized fidelity) as being both explanatorily meaningful and operationalizable. I conclude that if fidelity is to serve as an explanation of the key differences between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, then the concept will have to be redesigned and rely on different assumptions.

Information transmission between individuals through social learning is a foundational component of cultural evolution. However, how this transmission occurs is still debated. The copying account draws parallels with biological mechanisms for genetic inheritance, arguing that learners copy what they observe as they see it. On the other hand, the reconstruction account argues that learners recreate only what is relevant and reconstruct it using pragmatic inference, environmental and contextual cues. Distinguishing these two accounts empirically using typical transmission chain studies is difficult because they generate overlapping predictions. In this study we present an innovative methodological approach that generates different predictions of these accounts by manipulating the task context between model and learner in a transmission episode. We provide an empirical proof-of-concept showing that, when a model introduces embedded signals to their actions that are not intended to be transmitted, learners’ reproductions are more consistent with a process of reconstruction than copying.

Heintz, Charbonneau, and Fogelman present plurality as a hallmark of the social sciences. Taking investigations on crowd formation and dissipation as relevant case studies, they argue for methodological pluralism, claiming that an integrative stance encompassing a range of di ff erent approaches is the best strategy to address the multiplicity of causes and varied aspects of social phenomena. Pluralistic views have met with growing consent in recent philosophy of science, largely concomitant with an increasing interest in the special sciences, their speci fi c methodologies and conceptual tools, and in scienti fi c practice. By highlighting a few di ff erences in possible ways of being pluralists, this contribution aims to provide some epistemological tools to further detail the authors’ discourse on pluralism, and to question if it can qualify as a permanent stance for the social sciences.

What causes cultural stability? Culture can be studied as an evolving system, and the comparison between biological and cultural evolution has inspired a productive research agenda in which cultural stability is commonly attributed to the existence of mechanisms of high-fidelity cultural transmission. Other researchers have argued that no such copying processes are necessary to explain cultural stability, and that stability can also emerge as a by-product of convergent transformation (in which an item causes the production of another item whose form tends to deviate from that of the original item in a non random way). To investigate this issue, we present a series of stochastic simulation models of cultural evolution that make no prior assumptions about the type of processes by which cultural units propagate through a population. Results show that cultural stability can emerge and be maintained by convergent transformation alone, even in the absence of any form of copying or selection process. We also show that high-fidelity copying and convergent transformation are, contrary to some previous arguments, not opposing forces, and can in fact jointly contribute to cultural stability. Finally, we analyse how convergent transformation and high-fidelity copying can have different evolutionary signatures at the level of the population, and hence how their differing effects can be distinguished in the empirical record. Our models can be read as formalisations of Cultural Attraction Theory.