Saletan writes "And if that culture glorifies intelligence to such a degree that it drives less intelligent people out of the community—or prevents them from attracting mates—it becomes an IQ machine. Cultural selection replaces natural selection."

A perfectly plausible conceptual exercise, and an interesting thought experiment. However, I have a problem with the use of "natural" and "cultural" selection as if they were mutually exclusive categories. (To be fair to Saletan, I have a beef with the concept of "artificial" and "sexual" selection being separate from "natural" selection, too, and for the same reasons.)

The success of a gene, which is the scorecard of natural selection, is now and always has been a product of that gene's interaction with its environment. "How many copies of this gene are made given that it's: 1) in a body with sundry other genes 2) in an environment with oxygen, 3) gravity, 4) a yellow sun, 5) malaria, and 6) another sex?" THAT is the question answered by natural selection. It's never "is this a good gene?" it's always "Is this gene a good fit with its environment?"

So, the fact that that environment might ALSO include other people doesn't change the fundamental mechanism of natural selection. A rabbit negotiates an environment that contains foxes, but adaptations for fox evasion are still known as products of "natural selection". A human navigates an environment that contains human competitors, cooperators, mates, and highly extractive children...mechanisms that form in response to these environmental factors are still the products of "natural selection", even if those factors are "cultural". It's not that cultural selection is replacing natural selection, it's that natural selection is responding to cultural selection pressures.

But this does not make it a different ballgame. "Culture" is still a natural, biological phenomenon. "Culture" is not a magical substance, even though people like to think of it as totally unconnected from the corporeal world...however you define it, it is still about the interaction of organisms designed by selection. It is fascinating, and perhaps unique in the biological world, but it's still a biological phenomenon. It has causes and constraints rooted in the physical, chemical, organic, biological world. It is not supernatural.

And that's my point in a nutshell. The only alternative to "natural selection" is "supernatural selection". That makes natural selection the only scientific game in town.

Don't forget about mating rituals among animals. They are more "cultural" by Saletan's use than natural.

I believe that he's using "natural selection" to refer to effects that are passed from parent to child biologically, as opposed to effects that are passed from parent to child via education.

Good post. The point I was trying to get at was that there's no inherent conflict between genetic and cultural transmission.

Somewhere around here I have Durkheim's book on elementary forms of religious life, where he says in the intro (if I recall it correctly) that natural and social are not opposites, and that when a phenomenon is universally social, that demonstrates that it's "in the nature of things."

Yes, "human universals" are always a nice first place to look for cognitive adaptations. If everybody's doing it, there's a good chance that it's being evoked by a biological design common to everyone (and therefore "genetic"...that is, the product of genes we all have in common and an environment that is at least universal enough to have allowed the expression of those genes in a functionally organized way.)

Most of the time when I think about the interaction of genes and culture, I'm harking back to Tooby and Cosmides "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" in The Adapted Mind.

For arguments about religion and adaptation I seem to have stopped with Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, though I probably shouldn't have. I'll pick up Durkheim's book.

Hi Tom,

No, I sincerely believe that is NOT the case. Saletan isn't making the argument that Jews are smarter because they have good education, but are basically the same as everyone else. The argument is that genes for higher intelligence (which "are passed from parent to child biologically") have actually increased in frequency in the Jewish population. This has been due to a history of selection for "intelligence" genes that was based on cultural values. That is, less intelligent people were denied the mating opportunities that the smarter folk enjoyed.

But this does not make it a different ballgame. "Culture" is still a natural, biological phenomenon. "Culture" is not a magical substance, even though people like to think of it as totally unconnected from the corporeal world...however you define it, it is still about the interaction of organisms designed by selection. It is fascinating, and perhaps unique in the biological world, but it's still a biological phenomenon. It has causes and constraints rooted in the physical, chemical, organic, biological world. It is not supernatural.

And that's my point in a nutshell. The only alternative to "natural selection" is "supernatural selection". That makes natural selection the only scientific game in town.

You seem to be relying on the following logic: culture is the interraction of humans, and humans are living biological creatures, therefore culture is a biological phenomenon. Problem is, we've already intervened conceptually and established an understanding of social phenomena as distinct from biological phenomena. Now, on the one hand, it may just be a distinction of utility since the cultural manifestations of biological process are exceedingly complex (ie, what is the biological basis for Mozart composing Don Giovanni?). On the other hand, the reduction of social behavior to biology eliminates all notions of agency, free will, ethics, morality, creativity. Even the concept of the idea means little as a biologically determined phenomenon, just the emergent pattern of neurons firing in the brain. Without ideas, there is nothing supporting the notion of intelligence itself. So, saying that intelligence is biologically determined is, conceptually speaking, internally inconsistent.

Hey, it's hard out there for a materialist. The dualist siren calls to us, as the only way to make sense of our world. I understand the temptation, but dualism is as much of an empirical dead end as it always was.

Wait, let me start from the beginning. I think I should clarify that I don't think there's no such thing as culture, or even in a sense a "cultural selection"...on cultural objects. So, the fact that an automobile has progressed from the early Model T's to the fully electric Tesla Roadster could be a product of cultural selection. I think there's something to Tomasello's cultural ratchet (and for those who get the private joke, Rob Boyd's canoes). Saletan's point was that "cultural" had replaced "natural" selection in terms of determining gene frequencies. Nothing replaces natural selection for this, although the different ways that natural selection can respond to the environment are endlessly fascinating.

Yes, culture is a biological phenomenon because it is the interaction of biological creatures. It is also a chemical phenomenon as it involves the interaction of molecules, and a physical one as it involves the interaction of subatomic particles. I don't think culture can necessarily be REDUCED to biology, but it is certainly constrained by it and a product of it.

The fact that our "conceptual intervention" has led us to understand cultural phenomena as distinct from biological phenomena is an error of categorization, at least in its extreme form. It can be useful, until we forget that culture is a biological phenomenon. For example, the heart specialist might understand the heart as distinct from the rest of the body in a meaningful way, but does not believe that it is unconstrained by the forces that keep the other organs running.

Does the reduction of socil behavior to biology eliminate all notions of agency and free will? In the traditional sense, yes. That's where materialist philosophy inevitably leads us, and so I won't pussyfoot around the conclusion. Agency, intentionality, free will, blame, responsibility...everything associated with the idea that there's a little person inside the biology of an organisim is shorthand for something more complex. For example..."sunrise" doesn't ever actually happen, because the sun never actually does any rising. However, we can talk about it sensibly because it's a short cut for something more complex..."The point in time where the curvature of the earth no longer blocks a direct line between my position on the earth and the position of the sun". ("Time", "position", and "direct line" are probably also concepts that could further be unpacked by a physicist.) So, the fact that I hallucinate a little person in you is my brain's shorthand output...a neat little computational package that gives me some intuitions about the appropriate way to act towards you. Thinking in terms of agency and free will is extremely useful and I wouldn't want to do with out it. The shorthand keeps things from looking crushingly complex. However, it is not necessary that they actually exist in the real world.

So thankfully...no, ethics, morality, and creativity DON'T rely on agency and free will. They have their own logic that does not depend on the existence of humonculous. I wish I had time to go into the mechanics, so I'll have to ask you to trust me. Since you have no reason to trust me you probably won't believe me. However, in the end the punitive sentiments, anger, and moral disgust that we experience are the product of logically arranged (and phylogenetically fitness-enhancing) mechanisms designed to predict the future behavior of others and correct it if possible.

As for your argument the ideas are not ideas unless they are supernatural, and therefore intelligence is meaningless unless IT is supernatural...I find that to be a complete non-starter. Cognitive activity is a physical event, but that doesn't denature it as cognitive activity (be it an "idea" or act of "intelligence").

We were getting along so well until this:

As for your argument the ideas are not ideas unless they are supernatural, and therefore intelligence is meaningless unless IT is supernatural

That's not remotely what I argue (and I agree that it would be a non-starter). That assumption can only be made if one believes in the false dichotomous choice between biological and supernatural. There is, as we agree, the social. Please tell me you believe there is a biological model sufficiently parsimonious and efficient that it can adequately explain the importance of football (soccer) in Brazil. Better yet, tell me you believe such a model exists that can explain it better than some combination of anthropology, history, and economics (ie, the social sciences).

With some degree of precision, a socially meaningful "choice" event can be detected in the brainwaves of a subject (if properly monitored). Furthermore, you might find some correlation between blood chemistry and a specific behavior. But both are a far cry from proving that behavior is best described or explained in terms of biology. Fine, I agree that humans are biological organisms, and thereby that culture is somehow tenuously connected to biology; but that's not saying all that much. I can just as easily say that culture is all about organic chemistry (as you point out). The point is to choose the most appropriate level of observation and analysis, and make an argument supporting that choice. I can't see biology as having more explanatory power (in terms of parsimony and efficiency) than the various social sciences when it comes to culture.

That's the argument you would have to make to convince me. It's not a matter of trusting you, or believing you. It's a matter of agreeing with you (which, on this matter, I don't).

Hi Vanya!

Well, if I can just say, I hope you are enjoying talking with me as much as I'm enjoying talking with you. I get the feeling that you're extremely intelligent, and you took my most provocative and inflammatory stuff (sorry) in admirable rhetorical stride.

The fact that we were "getting along" until I hit the neuroscience stuff is amazing. We have extremely quickly honed our differences down to the disagreement that now separates the evolutionary psych folk (me) from the traditional social scientists.

As for reducability...no, I do NOT think there is a biological model which could predict football. However, this is not to say that biology doesn't have a lot of work to do in understanding football. Brazilian football is still a biological phenomenon, and subject to biological laws. Let me draw a parallel between two less contentious branches of science...chemistry and biology. When DNA replicates, it's amazingly complex. The particular PATTERN of base pairs replicating is the product of billions of years of natural selection. However, it is still in essence a chemical event. It does not violate the laws of chemistry, even though no chemical theory could hope to predict the DNA sequence. You don't get to create matter, shove more than 2 electrons in the "s" shell, or destroy energy during DNA synthesis because it's biological, not chemical. Nevertheless, you need biology to make sense of this chemical event, explain its nature, or predict it.

So, yes, the study of culture is necessary to help us wrap our limited brains around cultural phenomena. However, people have taken on the notion (strange when you think about it hard enough) that culture ISN'T just another level of understanding natural phenomenon, but is totally separate and unconstrained by the sciences underwriting it. People don't articulate this assumption very often, becuase it sounds silly. Yet a lot of things that cultural anthropologists and social scientists say are the logical consequences of that very assumption.

So...why are younger women attractive? The cultural anthropologist might say it's a cultural phenomenon and leave it at that, or try to look for slight differences from culture to culture about what the most attractive age is. The evolutionary psychologist understands that there is going to be a (biological) cognitive mechanism designed by natural selection relevant to mate choice, and this mechanism is attuned to the cues which reliably picked out the mates with the highest reproductive values. For men, that means young women. "Culture", then, isn't the end of the story...the cultural phenomena themselves have a biological logic.

So, that's where I'm coming from. As for the "ideas as biological phenomena", I'm glad you weren't saying what I thought you were saying. However, look at your original post and maybe you won't blame me for reading it that way...

Even the concept of the idea means little as a biologically determined phenomenon, just the emergent pattern of neurons firing in the brain. Without ideas, there is nothing supporting the notion of intelligence itself. So, saying that intelligence is biologically determined is, conceptually speaking, internally inconsistent.

I DO believe an idea is an emergent pattern of neurons firing, even if no theory of neuroscience will ever be able to predict every idea. So, I thought we really WERE in disagreement there...if ideas were physical events (and therefore natural) I thought you were saying that I wasn't allowed to believe in intelligence. I thought you were saying that the concept of ideas (and therefore intelligence?) was only possible if ideas were NOT physical, natural events (and therefore supernatural).

Cheers to you, too.

Okay, let's assume that an individual's ideas and social actions might someday be efficiently explained by observing biological processes. We seem to agree that it would be a rather complex model. Now, let's imagine the interraction between two individuals. How does the model expand now that it's the conjunction of two models? Now ten individuals. Now several hundred. That's a fair minimum scale of interraction we see in "cultural" phenomena. How complex is the model now?

If we don't blow ourselves up first (or drain the oceans, or get wiped out by a meteor), we (or our distant descendants) might very well have the tools to navigate such complexity. But for now, the social neuroscience work I've seen generally observes biology in the individual in relation to "traditional social science" variables in the wider environment. So even a biological explanation relies heavily on notions of the social to describe the interraction environment.

They've just barely scratched the surface of deriving any analytic purchase over a single individual's social behavior through observing biologic processes, which is pretty much what I meant when I said ideas mean little (note revised emphasis) as biological phenomena. Sure, they are physical events, but their physicality explains very little of their significance.

This is no longer evolutionary biology being discussed. Its Divine fate and destiny. its cosmology, epistemology, metaphysics. You've made some kind of "evolution" into a religious dogma, pondering whether every sexual encounter is a grandiose advancement of some human subsection, or a deevolution. You look at people's freewill as if it cosmically channels 'evolutionary godship' to some greater end.

Maybe the formation of Israel was an evolutionary advancement of the people of Israel. While the Palestinian people are evolutionary rejects, deserving of destruction and oppression because they are biologically lesser, inferior, destined for extinction.

And you wonder why people disbelieve in evolution? Please.

BTW, this type of thinking it is not new. Malthus was deeply engrossed in this strain of thought when he proposed doing away with the poor and weak. How many other likeminded generations have acted upon such diabolical thoughts to advance some notion of evolutionary superiority?

I'm not sure to whom you're responding, me or Mangar. Either way, I can't really see where you get divinity, destiny, and cosmology out of our discussion (especially at the point where you jumped in). Epistemology, sure, but that's hardly of a class with religious dogma. Metaphysics, maybe, but it's a stretch. Either way, you've inserted a rather rude and harsh tone into a heretofore polite and (for me) productive disagreement. I certainly welcome another entrant into the conversation, but please let's keep a civil tongue. Care to explain how you come to your conclusions about this particular thread? Or is this simply spillover from some other experience you've had?

:) Now you know why I was so pleased you stopped by...discourse on the Fray is so often unmanageable and irrational.

I understand your objection that neuroscience is an unweildy way to address social interaction. I think you're right, even if social interaction is ultimately the firing of neurons. In order to grasp it, we need another level of analysis in our toolbox, and the cognitive level is that level. And, from my position at least, the tool which allows us to make predictions about the nature of cognitive processes is...natural selection.

That is to say...everything that happens in culture is the product of inviduals in an environment (individuals surrounded by OTHER individuals, surely, but individuals nonetheless) and more specifically, the brains of those individuals. The design of that brain, then, has tremendous importance to the kind of things we can expect to observe in culture.

So, what is the nature of cognition? Well, the traditional social scienctists usually implies (though hardly ever articulates) the Blank Slate. Causes for the nature of cognition are sought in the experiences of an individual person, and the brain somehow figures out: what to attend to, what good goals are, what information is relevant to those goals, when to start generalizing, when to stop generalizing, etc. Now, from a computational standpoint (as Pinker has been grousing about for decades) this is a totally unworkable model. Instead, the brain has to come pre-loaded with a lot of inferential software/hardware to allow it to do what it does. Where does this organization come from? Well, where does ANY nonrandom organization come from in the biological world? The answer is natural selection. Basically, there is NOTHING in all of biology that is complex and functional which is not the product of natural selection. It would neither have arisen in the first place, nor would it be maintained unless there was some selection pressure associated with the function.

So, what do we have when it comes to the brain? A collection of information-processing functions, each of which was designed to take certain information and do a certain thing with it, and EACH of which was designed and maintained by selection pressures.

How does this explain football? Well, in specific, it can't. However, I would posit that there is nothing in the social sciences that CAN. Interactions that idiosyncratic and complex are not predicted and understood by scientists in ANY field. However, if we understand that everyone in a culture is carrying around the same brain-design, we can ask broader questions about: coalition membership, inter-group competition, anger, dominance, etc. These are all aspects that make the phenomeno "football" tick, even if they don't predict specific sociological occurence.

I will grant you, also, that a look at the neuroscience literature will not be terribly productive in yeilding findings which link brain activity to everyday functioning and events. That is a shame, but it's not because neuroscience is (by definition) uninformative. I think it's mostly because the cognitive neuroscientists have yet to themselves latch on to the idea that natural selection is useful tool for figuring out what brain systems do, what they are for, and how they should work. They seem to be (largely) doing what the social sciences have (largely) always done...collect large amounts of data describing phenomena without any particularly compelling central narrative. (Freudian ideas, Piagetian stages, and Skinnerian/Pavlovian conditioning have all been candidate central narratives, but all have failed.)

Where's the good stuff, then? Well, there are many many interesting findings if you know how to interpret them but in explicit evolutionary terms we have the work of : Deb Lieberman, who demonstrated that sibling incest disgust was the product of a mechanism which uses ancestrally available cues to calculate the likelihood of siblingship; Rob Kurzban, who demonstrated that "race" encoding/recall was a function of coalitional cognition and not "race" per se; Josh New, who has demonstrated that visual attention is well designed to monitor the animals in our environment, not necessarily the things that have been moving/dangerous in the course of our lifetimes; and Josh again (with Max Krasnow, Danielle Truxaw and Steve Gaulin) who recently demonstrated that females have an advantage in the (usually male dominated) spatial orientation task IF the content of the task was food items...a prediction made only by a theory which takes into account an ancestral environment where gathering was a female-dominated task.

So, as much as it seems completely disparate from sociology, biology has a lot of oomph when it comes to predicting how brains should operate and what kind of behaviors they should generate. However, a science of cognition and an understanding of how that science interlocks with natural selection turn out to be a necessary part of understanding the connection between biology and social phenomena.