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Maladaptive social norms, cultural progress, and the free-energy principle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2020

Matteo Colombo Open the ORCID record for Matteo Colombo [Opens in a new window]
Matteo Colombo*
Affiliation:
Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), Tilburg University, 5000LETilburg, The Netherlands. m.colombo@uvt.nl https://mteocolphi.wordpress.com/
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Abstract

Veissière and collaborators ground their account of culture and social norms in the free-energy principle, which postulates that the utility (or adaptive value) of an outcome is equivalent to its probability. This equivalence would mean that their account entails that complying with social norms has always adaptive value. But, this is false, because many social norms are obviously maladaptive.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 43 , 2020 , e100
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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