The Cultural Evolution of Information Seeking

The mechanisms of selection, assimilation and transmission at work in cultural accumulation need to include evaluative processes for detecting informational lacunae and repair mechanisms. Novelty, interest, learnability of alternative concepts and practices need to be permanently monitored at the in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognition and culture
Main Author: Proust, Joëlle 1947- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2022
In: Journal of cognition and culture
Year: 2022, Volume: 22, Issue: 5, Pages: 467-484
Further subjects:B procedural metacognition
B epistemic deliberation
B cultural accumulation
B Curiosity
B inquisitive communication
B epistemic norms
B explicit metacognition
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Summary:The mechanisms of selection, assimilation and transmission at work in cultural accumulation need to include evaluative processes for detecting informational lacunae and repair mechanisms. Novelty, interest, learnability of alternative concepts and practices need to be permanently monitored at the individual and at the group level. It is proposed that the evaluative mechanisms that control cultural accumulation are themselves subject to cultural evolution. This article outlines a plausible sequence of evolutionary steps from curiosity-based exploration to inquisitive communication and to collective epistemic deliberation. Procedural metacognition, based on affective monitoring, regulates curiosity and early forms of inquisitive communication. Explicit metacognition, based on transmitted concepts, rules and practices regulates collective epistemic deliberation. It successively expands across cultures the epistemic sensitivity to a range of distinct norms such as evidentiality, consistency, explanatory power and consensuality.
ISSN:1568-5373
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of cognition and culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685373-12340146