Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Derex ◽  
Jean-François Bonnefon ◽  
Robert Boyd ◽  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
High Dimensionality ◽  
Noticeable Effect ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Reasoning Abilities ◽  
Downstream Effects ◽  
Salient Dimension ◽  
Causal Theories

Bows and arrows, houses, and kayaks are just a few examples of the highly-optimized tools that humans produced and used to colonize new environments. Because there is much evidence that humans’ cognitive abilities are unparalleled, many believe that such technologies resulted from our superior causal reasoning abilities. However, others have stressed that the high dimensionality of human technologies make them very hard to understand causally. Instead, they argue that optimized technologies emerge through the retention of small improvements across generations without requiring understanding of how these technologies work. Here, we show that a physical artifact becomes progressively optimized across generations of social learners in the absence of explicit causal understanding. Moreover, we find that the transmission of causal models across generations has no noticeable effect on the pace of cultural evolution. The reason is that participants do not spontaneously create multidimensional causal theories but instead mainly produce simplistic models related to a salient dimension. Finally, we show that the transmission of these inaccurate theories constrains learners’ exploration and has downstream effects on their understanding. These results indicate that complex technologies need not result from enhanced causal reasoning but instead can emerge from the accumulation of improvements made across generations.

scholarly journals Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1809) ◽  
pp. 20150229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Warneken ◽  
Alexandra G. Rosati
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Anticipatory Planning ◽  
Raw Foods ◽  
Important Shift

The transition to a cooked diet represents an important shift in human ecology and evolution. Cooking requires a set of sophisticated cognitive abilities, including causal reasoning, self-control and anticipatory planning. Do humans uniquely possess the cognitive capacities needed to cook food? We address whether one of humans' closest relatives, chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ), possess the domain-general cognitive skills needed to cook. Across nine studies, we show that chimpanzees: (i) prefer cooked foods; (ii) comprehend the transformation of raw food that occurs when cooking, and generalize this causal understanding to new contexts; (iii) will pay temporal costs to acquire cooked foods; (iv) are willing to actively give up possession of raw foods in order to transform them; and (v) can transport raw food as well as save their raw food in anticipation of future opportunities to cook. Together, our results indicate that several of the fundamental psychological abilities necessary to engage in cooking may have been shared with the last common ancestor of apes and humans, predating the control of fire.

scholarly journals Towards ending the animal cognition war: a three-dimensional model of causal cognition

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Benjamin Starzak ◽  
Russell David Gray
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Causal Cognition

AbstractDebates in animal cognition are frequently polarized between the romantic view that some species have human-like causal understanding and the killjoy view that human causal reasoning is unique. These apparently endless debates are often characterized by conceptual confusions and accusations of straw-men positions. What is needed is an account of causal understanding that enables researchers to investigate both similarities and differences in cognitive abilities in an incremental evolutionary framework. Here we outline the ways in which a three-dimensional model of causal understanding fulfills these criteria. We describe how this approach clarifies what is at stake, illuminates recent experiments on both physical and social cognition, and plots a path for productive future research that avoids the romantic/killjoy dichotomy.

Refining our understanding of the “elephant in the room”

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Technological Culture

Abstract The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.

Using domain-general principles to explain children's causal reasoning abilities

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. McClelland ◽  
Richard M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Reasoning Abilities

The Role of Causality in Young Children's Memory for Stories

1987 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Claire A. B. Freeland ◽  
Ellin Kofsky Scholnick
Keyword(s):  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Cognitive Styles ◽  
Story Recall ◽  
Locus Of Causality ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Children's Memory

This study investigates the conceptual development underlying story recall. Children's memory for stories was examined as a function of subjects' causal understanding and causal structure in stories. Kindergarteners (64 boys and 64 girls) who had scored either high or low on a causal reasoning pretest heard and recalled two stories representing one of four versions which varied in amount and locus of causality. The results supported a developmental view in which recall performance was a complex interaction between characteristics of the learner and characteristics of the story. Depending on the causal structure of the story, boys and girls high in causal reasoning responded differently in employing two alternative cognitive styles. Boys tended to elaborate more on unstructured material and girls tended to assimilate well-structured text more easily. In contrast, boys and girls low in causal reasoning did not respond differently from each other and were not influenced by the causal structure of the story.

scholarly journals Differences Between Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Wolf Singer
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Internal Model ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Cognitive Systems ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Restricted Environment ◽  
Neuronal Functions

AbstractThis chapter identifies the differences between natural and artifical cognitive systems. Benchmarking robots against brains may suggest that organisms and robots both need to possess an internal model of the restricted environment in which they act and both need to adjust their actions to the conditions of the respective environment in order to accomplish their tasks. However, computational strategies to cope with these challenges are different for natural and artificial systems. Many of the specific human qualities cannot be deduced from the neuronal functions of individual brains alone but owe their existence to cultural evolution. Social interactions between agents endowed with the cognitive abilities of humans generate immaterial realities, addressed as social or cultural realities. Intentionality, morality, responsibility and certain aspects of consciousness such as the qualia of subjective experience belong to the immaterial dimension of social realities. It is premature to enter discussions as to whether artificial systems can acquire functions that we consider as intentional and conscious or whether artificial agents can be considered as moral agents with responsibility for their actions.

scholarly journals Andrei Bely's Concept of the “Self-Conscious Soul”: Synthesis of his Early Reception of Kant with Steiner's Teachings and Esoteric Practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
A. Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Rudolf Steiner ◽  
Multi Stage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cognitive Principles ◽  
The Universe

This article deals with the connection between the anthroposophical practice of meditation and the concept of self-conscious soul, which is developed in the main theoretical work of Andrei Bely, “The History of the Becoming of Self-conscious Soul.” After a brief review of the esoteric practice, in which Bely was introduced by Rudolf Steiner in the years 1912-1914, it examines the topography of the meditative space, according to the descriptions given by Bely in the “Krizisy”. Relevant sources of Steiner on the higher stages of knowledge are involved, from which the concept of Bely differs in a few points. It is considered, how the inner experience of Bely is reflected in the cognitive principles of the self-conscious soul, which he understands as a reflection of the higher cognitive abilities at the lower level of the soul. It is shown, that the cognitive principles of the self-conscious soul, which Bely names “composition of space”, “theme in the variations of time” and “symbol”, are a synthesis of the esoteric practice of Bely with his early reception of the critical philosophy of Kant. He fuses them into a gradational model of multi-stage deepening of knowledge into the construction of the universe and the human cultural evolution. This process is carried out with the creative participation of the cognizing subject and culminates in his deification.

scholarly journals PERBEDAAN KEMAMPUAN PENALARAN MATEMATIKA SISWA ANTARA TEKNIK PEMBELAJARAN PROBING PROMPTING DENGAN METODE PEMBELAJARAN KONVENSIONAL DI KELAS VII SMP 17 AGUSTUS 1945 SURABAYA

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
Edy Widayat ◽  
Devita Murniati
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
Reasoning Abilities ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Conventional Teaching ◽  
Mathematical Problems ◽  
The Right

Orientation mathematics are mathematical reasoning abilities. Reasoning is a process or activity is thought to draw the right conclusions based on some of the statements that have been proven or assumed to be true. Students require reasoning ability in solving mathematical problems that involve critical thinking, systematic, logical, and creative. Through the mathematical reasoning students can apply for the alleged then compile evidence, manipulation, and draw conclusions correctly and precisely of the problem or a math problem. Mathematical reasoning skills students are low is one of the fundamental problems in mathematics today. The low student learning outcomes are influenced by many factors, one of which is the use of teaching methods that are less effective and efficient cause unbalance cognitive abilities, affective, and psychomotor student. Learning methods commonly used by mathematics teachers are conventional teaching methods that rely on lectures and main tools blackboard so that students tend to be passive and less involved in the classroom. Conventional teaching methods do not provide the opportunity for students to think and can hamper students' mathematical reasoning abilities. One of the techniques taught are considered accommodative can attract students and increase the activity of thinking students are learning techniques probing prompting. Which is a technique of learning by the teacher presents a series of questions that are guiding and dug so that a process of thinking that links students' knowledge and experience with new knowledge that is being studied.

scholarly journals The development of causal reasoning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Muentener ◽  
Elizabeth Bonawitz
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Object Motion ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Reasoning Abilities ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Early Childhood Research ◽  
Specific Object

This chapter in M. Waldmann (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, explores the development of causal reasoning in early childhood. We review research on the development of causal reasoning in infancy, toddlerhood, and the preschool years with the broad goals of (1) understanding the origin of our mature causal reasoning abilities and (2) discussing how the process of causal reasoning and discovery may change throughout early childhood. Research on causal reasoning in infancy and toddlerhood provides evidence for both domain-specific (object motion, agent action) as well as domain-general (covariation information) roots to causal reasoning. More recent research suggests that representations of agent’s actions may play a particularly important role in the development of causal reasoning. However, independent from the precise origin of causal reasoning, our review on studies with preschool-aged children leads to the conclusion that by about four-years of age children are integrating domain-general covariation information with domain-specific prior knowledge, as well as with causal inductive constraints and more general inductive biases, to rapidly and effectively represent causal structure.

scholarly journals Which Cognitive Abilities Make the Difference? Predicting Academic Achievements in Advanced STEM Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Berkowitz ◽  
Elsbeth Stern
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Ability ◽  
Stem Education ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Stem Learning ◽  
Ability Test ◽  
Reasoning Abilities ◽  
The Difference

Previous research has shown that psychometrically assessed cognitive abilities are predictive of achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) even in highly selected samples. Spatial ability, in particular, has been found to be crucial for success in STEM, though its role relative to other abilities has been shown mostly when assessed years before entering higher STEM education. Furthermore, the role of spatial ability for mathematics in higher STEM education has been markedly understudied, although math is central across STEM domains. We investigated whether ability differences among students who entered higher STEM education were predictive of achievements during the first undergraduate year. We assessed 317 undergraduate students in Switzerland (150 from mechanical engineering and 167 from math-physics) on multiple measures of spatial, verbal and numerical abilities. In a structural equation model, we estimated the effects of latent ability factors on students’ achievements on a range of first year courses. Although ability-test scores were mostly at the upper scale range, differential effects on achievements were found: spatial ability accounted for achievements in an engineering design course beyond numerical, verbal and general reasoning abilities, but not for math and physics achievements. Math and physics achievements were best predicted by numerical, verbal and general reasoning abilities. Broadly, the results provide evidence for the predictive power of individual differences in cognitive abilities even within highly competent groups. More specifically, the results suggest that spatial ability’s role in advanced STEM learning, at least in math-intensive subjects, is less critical than numerical and verbal reasoning abilities.

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