Hugo Viciana

@article{viciana2021animal,

title = {Animal culture: But of which kind?},

author = {Hugo Viciana},

url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368121001680},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-01-01},

urldate = {2021-01-01},

journal = {Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A},

volume = {90},

pages = {208--218},

publisher = {Elsevier},

abstract = {Is animal culture a real entity or is it rather just in the eye of the beholder? The concept of culture began to be increasingly used in the context of animal behaviour research around the 1960s. Despite its success, it is not clear that it represents what philosophers have traditionally thought to be a natural kind. In this article I will show, however, how conceiving of animal culture in this fashion has played a role in the “culture wars”, and what lessons we can draw from this. First, an analysis of the epistemological landscape of author keywords related to the concept of animal cultures is presented, thus vindicating the centrality of the concept in describing a broad range of findings. A minimal definition that encompasses the multiple strands of research incorporating the notion of culture is proposed. I then systematically enumerate the ways in which culture thus conceived cannot be considered a natural kind in the study of animal behaviour. This is accomplished by reviewing the efforts and possibilities of anchoring the elusive idea in specific mechanisms, homologies, selection pressures, homeostatic property clusters, or alternatively, its reduction or elimination. Finally, a plausible interpretation of the scientific status of the animal culture concept is suggested that is compatible with both its well established use in animal behaviour research and its inferential limitations. Culture plays the role of a well-established epistemic kind, a node that connects different areas of research on common themes.},

keywords = {Animal behaviour, Definition of culture, Eliminativism, Natural kinds, Social learning, Text mining},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{loverdo2018cultural,

title = {Cultural transmission and biological markets},

author = {Claude Loverdo and Hugo Viciana},

url = {https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/15170/1/EvoTeaching_version_acccepted_before_typeset.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjQxrnPzYiKAxUMLPsDHSPPFCwQFnoECBsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0Vz9SH95PbEL7mych5edk0},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9649-8},

year  = {2018},

date = {2018-01-01},

urldate = {2018-01-01},

journal = {Biology & Philosophy},

volume = {33},

number = {5},

pages = {1--19},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {Active cultural transmission of fitness-enhancing behavior (sometimes called “teaching”) can be seen as a costly strategy: one for which its evolutionary stability poses a Darwinian puzzle. In this article, we offer a biological market model of cultural transmission that substitutes or complements existing kin selection-based proposals for the evolution of cultural capacities. We demonstrate how a biological market can account for the evolution of teaching when individual learners are the exclusive focus of social learning (such as in a fast-changing environment). We also show how this biological market can affect the dynamics of cumulative culture. The model works best when it is difficult to have access to the observation of the behavior without the help of the actor. However, in contrast to previous non-mathematical hypotheses for the evolution of teaching, we show how teaching evolves, even when innovations are insufficiently opaque and therefore vulnerable to acquisition by emulators via inadvertent transmission. Furthermore, teaching in a biological market is an important precondition for enhancing individual learning abilities.},

keywords = {Comparative advantage, Cumulative Culture, Partner choice, Pedagogy, Social learning, Status hierarchies, Teaching},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}