Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T22:54:57.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Enculturation without TTOM and Bayesianism without FEP: Another Bayesian theory of culture is needed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2020

Martin Fortier-Davy*
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Studies, Institut Jean Nicod, EHESS/ENS/PSL University, 75005Paris, France. martin.fortier@ens.fr https://sites.google.com/site/martineliefortier/

Abstract

First, I discuss cross-cultural evidence showing that a good deal of enculturation takes place outside of thinking through other minds. Second, I review evidence challenging the claim that humans seek to minimize entropy. Finally, I argue that optimality claims should be avoided, and that descriptive Bayesianism offers a more promising avenue for the development of a Bayesian theory of culture.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berlyne, D. E. (1966) Curiosity and exploration. Science 153(3731):2533. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.153.3731.25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chetverikov, A. & Kristjánsson, Á. (2016) On the joys of perceiving: Affect as feedback for perceptual predictions. Acta Psychologica 169:110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.05.005.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chmiel, A. & Schubert, E. (2017) Back to the inverted-U for music preference: A review of the literature. Psychology of Music 45(6):886909. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735617697507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, A. (2013b) Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(3):181253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delplanque, J., De Loof, E., Janssens, C. & Verguts, T. (2019) The sound of beauty: How complexity determines aesthetic preference. Acta Psychologica 192:146–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.11.011.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fortier, M. & Kim, S. (2017) From the impossible to the improbable: A probabilistic account of magical beliefs and practices across development and cultures. In: The science of lay theories: How beliefs shape our cognition, behavior, and health, eds. Zedelius, C., Müller, B. & Schooler, J., pp. 265315. Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, M. C. (2013) Throwing out the Bayesian baby with the optimal bathwater: Response to Endress (2013). Cognition 128(3):417–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.04.010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friston, K. J. (2010) The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11(2):127–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friston, K. J., Fortier, M. & Friedman, D. A. (2018) Of woodlice and men: A Bayesian account of cognition, life and consciousness. An interview with Karl Friston. ALIUS Bulletin 2:1743.Google Scholar
Gopnik, A. & Wellman, H. M. (2012) Reconstructing constructivism: Causal models, Bayesian learning mechanisms, and the theory theory. Psychological Bulletin 138(6):10851108. doi:10.1037/a0028044.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Griffiths, T., Chater, N., Kemp, C., Perfors, A. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2010) Probabilistic models of cognition: Exploring representations and inductive biases. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(8):357–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.05.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Güçlütürk, Y., Jacobs, R. H. A. H. & van Lier, R. (2016) Liking versus complexity: Decomposing the inverted U-curve. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 10:112. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Güçlütürk, Y. & van Lier, R. (2019) Decomposing complexity preferences for music. Frontiers in Psychology 10:674. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00674.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howe, C. Q. & Purves, D. (2002) Range image statistics can explain the anomalous perception of length. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99(20):13184–88. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.162474299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howe, C. Q., Yang, Z. & Purves, D. (2005) The Poggendorff illusion explained by natural scene geometry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 102(21):7707–12. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0502893102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kao, C.-T. & Wang, M.-Y. (2013) The right level of complexity in a Banner Ad: Roles of construal level and fluency. In: Human interface and the management of information. Information and interaction design, ed. Yamamoto, S., pp. 604–13. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39209-2_67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miyamoto, Y., Nisbett, R. E. & Masuda, T. (2006) Culture and the physical environment: Holistic versus analytic perceptual affordances. Psychological Science 17(2):113–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01673.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Segall, M., Campbell, D. & Herskovits, M. (1966) The influence of culture on visual perception. Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Shipp, S. (2016) Neural elements for predictive coding. Frontiers in Psychology 7:1792. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01792.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tauber, S., Navarro, D. J., Perfors, A. & Steyvers, M. (2017) Bayesian models of cognition revisited: Setting optimality aside and letting data drive psychological theory. Psychological Review 124(4):410–41. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000052.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tenenbaum, J., Kemp, C., Griffiths, T. & Goodman, N. (2011) How to grow a mind: Statistics, structure, and abstraction. Science 331(6022):1279–85. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192788.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uskul, A. K., Kitayama, S. & Nisbett, R. E. (2008) Ecocultural basis of cognition: Farmers and fishermen are more holistic than herders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(25):8552–56. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803874105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, F. (2007) Rational statistical inference and cognitive development. In: The innate mind. Volume 3: Foundations and the future, eds. Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S., pp. 199215. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar