Thompson Bill, Kirby Simon, Smith Kenny
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium; School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Apr 19;113(16):4530-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1523631113. Epub 2016 Apr 4.
A central debate in cognitive science concerns the nativist hypothesis, the proposal that universal features of behavior reflect a biologically determined cognitive substrate: For example, linguistic nativism proposes a domain-specific faculty of language that strongly constrains which languages can be learned. An evolutionary stance appears to provide support for linguistic nativism, because coordinated constraints on variation may facilitate communication and therefore be adaptive. However, language, like many other human behaviors, is underpinned by social learning and cultural transmission alongside biological evolution. We set out two models of these interactions, which show how culture can facilitate rapid biological adaptation yet rule out strong nativization. The amplifying effects of culture can allow weak cognitive biases to have significant population-level consequences, radically increasing the evolvability of weak, defeasible inductive biases; however, the emergence of a strong cultural universal does not imply, nor lead to, nor require, strong innate constraints. From this we must conclude, on evolutionary grounds, that the strong nativist hypothesis for language is false. More generally, because such reciprocal interactions between cultural and biological evolution are not limited to language, nativist explanations for many behaviors should be reconsidered: Evolutionary reasoning shows how we can have cognitively driven behavioral universals and yet extreme plasticity at the level of the individual-if, and only if, we account for the human capacity to transmit knowledge culturally. Wherever culture is involved, weak cognitive biases rather than strong innate constraints should be the default assumption.
认知科学中的一个核心争论涉及先天论假设，即行为的普遍特征反映了一种由生物学决定的认知基础的观点：例如，语言先天论提出一种特定领域的语言官能，它强烈限制了可以学习哪些语言。一种进化的立场似乎为语言先天论提供了支持，因为对变异的协同限制可能促进交流，因此具有适应性。然而，与许多其他人类行为一样，语言除了生物进化之外，还受到社会学习和文化传播的支撑。我们提出了两种这些相互作用的模型，它们展示了文化如何促进快速的生物适应，但排除了强烈的先天化。文化的放大效应可以使微弱的认知偏差产生重大的群体层面的后果，从根本上增加微弱的、可废止的归纳偏差的可进化性；然而，一种强大的文化普遍性的出现并不意味着、也不会导致、更不需要强烈的先天限制。由此我们必须基于进化的理由得出结论，即语言的强烈先天论假设是错误的。更一般地说，由于文化和生物进化之间的这种相互作用并不局限于语言，对于许多行为的先天论解释应该重新考虑：进化推理表明，如果而且只有当我们考虑到人类通过文化传播知识的能力时，我们如何能够在个体层面上既有认知驱动的行为普遍性又有极端的可塑性。无论何处涉及文化，默认假设都应该是微弱的认知偏差而不是强烈的先天限制。
