Cumulative cultural evolution is often claimed to be distinctive of human culture. Such claims are typically supported with examples of complex and historically late-appearing technologies. Yet by taking these as paradigm cases, researchers unhelpfully lump together different ways that culture accumulates. This article has two aims: (a) to distinguish four types of cultural accumulation: adaptiveness, complexity, efficiency, and disparity and (b) to highlight the epistemic implications of taking complex hominin technologies as paradigmatic instances of cumulative culture. Addressing these issues both (...) clarifies the cumulative culture concept and demonstrates the importance of further cumulative culture research into non-human animals and ancestral hominins. (shrink)

Standard Type Theory, STT, tells us that b^n(a^m) is well-formed iff n=m+1. However, Linnebo and Rayo have advocated the use of Cumulative Type Theory, CTT, has more relaxed type-restrictions: according to CTT, b^β(a^α) is well-formed iff β > α. In this paper, we set ourselves against CTT. We begin our case by arguing against Linnebo and Rayo’s claim that CTT sheds new philosophical light on set theory. We then argue that, while CTT ’s type-restrictions are unjustifiable, the type-restrictions imposed by (...) STT are justified by a Fregean semantics. What is more, this Fregean semantics provides us with a principled way to resist Linnebo and Rayo’s Semantic Argument for CTT. We end by examining an alternative approach to cumulative types due to Florio and Jones; we argue that their theory is best seen as a misleadingly formulated version of STT. (shrink)

In this article, I present a substantive proposal about the timing and nature of the final stage of the evolution of full human language, the transition from so-called “protolanguage” to language, and on the origins of a simple protolanguage with structure and displaced reference; a proposal that depends on the idea that the initial expansion of communicative powers in our lineage involved a much expanded role for gesture and mime. But though it defends a substantive proposal, the article also defends (...) and illustrates a methodological proposal too. I argue that language is a special case of a more general phenomenon—cumulative cultural evolution—and while we rarely have direct information about communication, we have more direct information about the cumulative cultural evolution of technical skill, ecological strategies, and social complexity. These same factors also enable us to make a reasonable estimate of the intergenerational social learning capacities of these communities and of the communicative demands these communities face. For example, we can, at least tentatively, identify forms of cooperation that are stable only if third party information is transmitted widely, cheaply, and accurately. So we can use these more direct markers of information accumulation to locate, in broad terms, the period in our evolutionary history during which we became lingual. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the credit incentive to engage in questionable research practices interacts with cumulative advantage, the process whereby high-status academics more easily increase their status than low-status academics. I use a mathematical model to highlight two dynamics that have not yet received much attention. First, due to cumulative advantage, questionable research practices may pay off over the course of an academic career even if they are not attractive at the level of individual publications. Second, because of the role (...) of bottleneck moments in academic careers, questionable research practices may be selected for even if they do not provide a benefit in expectation. I also observe that, within the model, the most successful academics are the most likely to have benefited from fraud. (shrink)

I present a cumulative case for the thesis that we only know propositions that are certain for us. I argue that this thesis can easily explain the truth of eight plausible claims about knowledge: -/- (1) There is a qualitative difference between knowledge and non-knowledge. (2) Knowledge is valuable in a way that non-knowledge is not. (3) Subjects in Gettier cases do not have knowledge. (4) If S knows that P, P is part of S’s evidence. (5) If S knows (...) that P, ~P is epistemically impossible for S. (6) If S knows that P, S can rationally act as if P. (7) If S knows that P, S can rationally stop inquiring whether P. (8) If S knows each of {P1, P2, … Pn}, and competently deduces Q from these propositions, S knows that Q. -/- I then argue that the skeptical costs of this thesis are outweighed by its explanatory power. (shrink)

The systems Kα of transfinite cumulative types up to α are extended to systems K∞α that include a natural infinitary inference rule, the so-called limit rule. For countable α a semantic completeness theorem for K∞α is proved by the method of reduction trees, and it is shown that every model of K∞α is equivalent to a cumulative hierarchy of sets. This is used to show that several axiomatic first-order set theories can be interpreted in K∞α, for suitable α.

In this paper I examine the nature of Russell's ramified type theory resolution of paradoxes. In particular, I consider the effect of construing the types in Church's cumulative sense, that is, the range of a variable of a given type includes the range of every variable of directly lower type. Contrary to what seems to be generally assumed, I show that the decision to make the levels cumulative and allow this to be reflected in the semantics is not neutral with (...) respect to the solution of the paradoxes. I introduce a distinction between syntactical and semantical cumulativeness. It turns out that noncumulative type theories (in either sense) are equally capable of dealing with the paradoxes. Furthermore, whether cumulativeness is appropriate appears to be context dependent. (shrink)

Two strong arguments have been given in favor of the claim that no selection process can play a role in explaining adaptations. According to the first argument, selection is a negative force; it may explain why the eliminated individuals are eliminated, but it does not explain why the ones that survived (or their offspring) have the traits they have. The second argument points out that the explanandum and the explanans are phenomena at different levels: selection is a population-level phenomenon, whereas (...) adaptation occurs on the individual level. Thus, selection can explain why individuals in a certain population have a certain trait, but it cannot explain why a certain indi- vidual has this trait. After pointing out that both arguments ignore the significance of the limitation of environmental resources, I will construe a positive argument for the claim that cumulative selection processes can, indeed, play a role in explaining adaptations. (shrink)

Capitalizing on a 15-year longitudinal dataset of 9–12 years old children in rural China, this study adopts a life course perspective and analyzes cumulative childhood adversity and its associations with mental health problems from childhood to adulthood. Four domains of childhood life are selected to construct cumulative childhood adversity: socioeconomic hardship, family disruption, physical issue, and academic setback. Overall, cumulative childhood adversity significantly associates with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems as well as adults’ depression and self-esteem. However, cumulative childhood adversity (...) has no significant relationship with internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence. Furthermore, different domains of childhood adversity matter differently for mental health problems in different life stages. Physical issue and academic setback have the strongest association with internalizing and externalizing problems in childhood, while only socioeconomic hardship has a significant relationship with depression and self-esteem in adulthood. The relationship between cumulative childhood adversity and adult mental health problems is fully mediated by educational attainment. Finally, there is no gender difference in either the occurrence of cumulative childhood adversity or the association between cumulative childhood adversity and mental health problems. (shrink)

What explains the unique features of human culture? Culture is not uniquely human, but human culture is uniquely cumulative. Cumulative culture is a product of our collective intelligence and is supported by cognitive processes and learning strategies that enable people to acquire, transform, and transmit information and technologies within and across generations. Technological and social innovations are currently driving unprecedented changes in cultural complexity and diversity. Innovation is a cognitively and socially complex, multistep process that typically requires (cumulative) cultural learning (...) to achieve. I argue that the technological solutions that characterize twenty-first-century innovation can only be explained by understanding both the capacity to learn from and build upon the insights of others and the transmission systems that store the knowledge and technologies of previous generations. Human uniqueness is a product of cumulative cultural learning, transmission, and innovation. (shrink)

: This paper seeks to contribute to the development of a sociological understanding of scientific change. It first presents a conceptual framework for defining and understanding the conditions that give rise to episodes of cumulative change (both as the selective reconstruction of events and as the patterned structuring of innovations over time and across different settings). It argues that one of the most powerful structuring mechanisms is the existence of standardized research technologies. Then, the development of electroencephalography (EEG) is presented (...) as an illustrative case study. The EEG supported a dramatic episode of development in brain science, and did so primarily through technological standardization and reliability. The case shows how standard and manipulable technologies provide a framework for orderly change both in retrospective accounts and in specific historical periods of scientific practice. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that most objections to deductive analyses of a priori analogies are incorrect, often involve basic misinterpretations of what the deductive reconstruction of those arguments are saying, and sometimes also betray a confusion about what part of the reasoning corresponds to the analogical inference. In particular, I will be focusing on a raft of objections made by Juthe in [2015] and subject his alternative views to criticism. -/- I will then argue that Juthe does implicitly (...) have a good argument against deductivism: adding further analogues seems to have a cumulative force that they would not have on a deductivist analysis. This is so not only in ordinary analogical arguments but, perhaps surprisingly, with a priori analogical arguments. I will then argue that this does not favor a sui generis view of the analogical argument over inductivist views, and attempt to show that a confirmation-theoretic approach to analogical inference makes the best sense of our intuitions about the strength of analogical arguments. (shrink)

Family income is associated with gray matter morphometry in children, but little is known about the relationship between family income and white matter structure. In this paper, using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS), a whole brain, voxel-wise approach, we examined the relationship between family income (assessed by income-to-needs ratio) and white matter organization in middle childhood (N = 27, M = 8.66 years). Results from a nonparametric, voxel-wise, multiple regression (threshold-free cluster enhancement, p < 0.05, FWE corrected) indicated that lower family (...) income was associated with lower white matter organization (assessed by fractional anisotropy) for several clusters in white matter tracts involved in cognitive and emotional functions including fronto-limbic circuitry (uncinate fasciculus and cingulum bundle), association fibers (inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus), and corticospinal tracts. Further, we examined the possibility that cumulative risk exposure might function as one of the potential pathways by which family income influences neural outcomes. Using multiple regressions, we found lower fractional anisotropy in portions of these tracts, including those found in the left cingulum bundle and left superior longitudinal fasciculus, was significantly related to greater exposure to cumulative risk (β = -0.47, p < 0.05 and β = -0.45, p < 0.05). (shrink)

We conduct a standardized survey on risk preferences in 53 countries worldwide and estimate cumulative prospect theory parameters from the data. The parameter estimates show that significant differences on the cross-country level are to some extent robust and related to economic and cultural differences. In particular, a closer look on probability weighting underlines gender differences, economic effects, and cultural impact on probability weighting. The data set is a useful starting point for future research that investigates the impact of risk preferences (...) on the market level. (shrink)

For nonmonotonic logics, Cumulativity is an important logical rule. We show here that Cumulativity fans out into an infinity of different conditions, if the domain is not closed under finite unions.

This is a critique of J. H. Sobel’s ’Logic and Theism’, defending the use of cumulative arguments, and the coherence of theistic metaphysics.

The final volume (XXVI) of Princeton's Kierkegaard's Writings series, the Cumulative Index provides wide-ranging navigation to the preceding twenty-five volumes in the series. Composed of over 90,000 entries, the Cumulative Index offers access to Kierkegaard's complex authorship and the extraordinary range of subjects he addressed in his writing. Covering the series' historical introductions, primary works, supplementary material (journal entries), and footnotes, the Cumulative Index provides a comprehensive entryway to the series' more than 11,000 pages of text. Readers are able to (...) survey via extended entries Kierkegaard's dual authorship(pseudonymous and signed), his frequent biblical references and allusions, his references to Christianity, God, and love, and his frequent use of analogies. A cumulative collation of the extensive supplementary material (over 4,000 journal entries) is also included, giving researchers and avid readers the opportunity to correlate and examine items from the current series, Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers , and the original Danish Søren Kierkegaards Papirer. (shrink)

Cumulative cultural knowledge [CCK], the knowledge we acquire via social learning and has been refined by previous generations, is of central importance to our species’ flourishing. Considering its importance, we should expect that our best epistemological theories can account for how this happens. Perhaps surprisingly, CCK and how we acquire it via cultural learning has only received little attention from social epistemologists. Here, I focus on how we should epistemically evaluate how agents acquire CCK. After sampling some reasons why extant (...) theories cannot account for CCK, I suggest that things aren’t as bleak as they might look. I explain how agents deserve epistemic credit for how CCK is transmitted in cultural learning by promoting a central need of their social group: The efficient and safe transmission of CCK. A good initial fit exists between this observation and Greco’s knowledge-economy framework. Ultimately, however, Greco’s account doesn’t straightforwardly account for CCK because of its strict focus on testimony. I point out two issues in the framework due to this focus. The resulting view advocates giving epistemic credit to agents when they act to promote their communities’ epistemic needs in the right way and highlights the various ways in which agents come to do this. (shrink)

The debate on cumulative technological culture is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

This paper tries to explain why racial profiling involves a serious injustice and to do so in a way that avoids the problems of existing philosophical accounts. An initially plausible view maintains that racial profiling is pro tanto wrong in and of itself by violating a constraint on fair treatment that is generally violated by acts of statistical discrimination based on ascribed characteristics. However, consideration of other cases involving statistical discrimination suggests that violating a constraint of this kind may not (...) be an especially serious wrong in and of itself. To fully capture the significant wrong that occurs when racial profiling is targeted at black Americans or other similarly situated groups, it is argued that we should appeal to the idea that this basic injustice is exacerbated when it forms part of a larger pattern of similar actions that collectively realize a state of cumulative injustice. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Microaggressions are a new moral category that refers to the subtle yet harmful forms of discriminatory behavior experienced by members of oppressed groups. Such behavior often results from implicit bias, leaving individual perpetrators unaware of the harm they have caused. Moreover, microaggressions are often dismissed on the grounds that they do not constitute a real or morally significant harm. My goal is therefore to explain why microaggressions are morally significant and argue that we are responsible for their harms. I offer (...) a conceptual framework for microaggressions, exploring the central mechanisms used for identification and the empirical research concerning their harm. The cumulative harm of microaggressions presents a unique case for understanding disaggregation models for contributed harms, blame allocation, and individual responsibility within structural oppression. Our standard moral model for addressing cumulative harm is to hold all individual contributors blameworthy for their particular contributions. However, if we aim to hold people responsible for their unconscious microaggressions and address cumulative harm holistically, this model is inadequate. Drawing on Iris Marion Young's social connection model, I argue that we, as individual perpetrators of microaggressions, have a responsibility to respond to the cumulative harm to which we have individually contributed. (shrink)

This article proposes a new logical framework for NL quantification. The framework is based on Generalized Quantifiers, Skolem-like functional dependencies, and Maximality of the involved sets of entities. Among the readings available for NL sentences, those where two or more sets of entities are independent of one another are particularly challenging. In the literature, examples of those readings are known as Collective and Cumulative readings. This article briefly analyzes previous approaches to Cumulativity and Collectivity, and indicates (Schwarzschild in Pluralities. (...) Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1996) as the best proposal so far to deal with these readings. Then, it incorporates its insights in the logical framework defined in Robaldo (J Philos Log 39(1):23–58, 2009a), leading to a scalable logical account for NL quantification. (shrink)

Several theories, which attempt to give an account of cumulative culture, emphasize the importance of high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms as central to human learning. These high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms are thought to account for the ratchet effect, that is, the capacity to inherit modified or improved knowledge and skills rather than having to develop one's skills from the ground up via individual learning. In this capacity, imitation and teaching have been thought to occupy a special place in the explanation of cumulative culture (...) because they are both thought to function as high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms. In contrast to this standard view, I will argue that imitation and teaching are not both best construed as primarily high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms. Rather, I will argue that though both can contribute to the high‐fidelity transmission of information, imitation and teaching make two distinct contributions to cumulative culture. I will claim that imitation functions primarily as a high‐fidelity transmission mechanism while teaching is primarily responsible for the innovation and creativity characteristic of cumulative culture. (shrink)

I investigate the consequences of interpreting Lehrer's account of system-relative justification as a theory of inductive inference. I discuss which assumptions about coherence would be sufficient to make the account of inductive inference derived from Lehrer's theory conform to a series of widely discussed general principles, including those constitutive of cumulative reasoning. I then discuss the epistemological significance of the resulting theory of inductive inference.

Although evidence of teaching behaviour has been identified in some nonhuman species, human teaching appears to be unique in terms of both the breadth of contexts within which it is observed, and in its responsiveness to needs of the learner. Similarly, cultural evolution is observable in other species, but human cultural evolution appears strikingly distinct. This has led to speculation that the evolutionary origins of these capacities may be causally linked. Here we provide an overview of contrasting perspectives on the (...) relationship between teaching and cultural evolution in humans, and briefly review previous research which suggests that cumulative culture can occur without teaching. We then report the results of a novel experimental study in which we investigated how the benefits of teaching may depend on the complexity of the skill to be acquired. Participants were asked to tie knots of varying complexity. In our Teaching condition, opportunities to interact with an experienced partner aided transmission of the most complex knots, but not simpler equivalents, relative to exposure to completed products alone, and also relative to information about the process of completion. We conclude by considering the plausibility of various accounts of the evolutionary relationship between teaching and cultural evolution in humans. (shrink)

Three indexes have been compiled: authors of main articles (including our special departments such as ‘Projects in progress’ and ‘Notes and discussions’); essay reviews; and book reviews. Co-author...

The von Neumann hierarchy of sets is heavily used as a basic tool in classical set theory, being an underlying ingredient in many proofs and concepts. In constructive set theories like without the powerset axiom however, it loses much of its potency by ceasing to be a hierarchy of sets as its single stages become only classes. This article proposes an alternative cumulative hierarchy which does not have this drawback and provides examples of how it can be used to prove (...) new theorems in. (shrink)

Until the middle of the present century it was a commonly accepted opinion that theory change in science was the expression of cumulative progress consisting in the acquisition of new truths and the elimination of old errors. Logical empiricists developed this idea through a deductive model, saying that a theory T superseding a theory T must be able logically to explain whatever T explained and something more as well. Popper too shared this model, but stressed that T explains the old (...) known facts in its own new way. The further pursual of this line quickly led to the thesis of the non-comparability or incommensurability of theories: if T and T are different, then the very concepts which have the same denomination in both actually have different meanings; in such a way any sentence whatever has different meanings in T and in T and cannot serve to compare them. owing to this, the deductive model was abandoned as a tool for understanding theory change and scientific progress, and other models were proposed by people such as Lakatos, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Sneed and Stegmüller. The common feature of all these new positions may be seen in the claim that no possibility exists of interpreting theory change in terms of the cumulative acquisition of truth. It seems to us that the older and the newer positions are one-sided, and, in order to eliminate their respective shortcomings, we propose to interpret theory change in a new way.The starting point consists in recognizing that every scientific discipline singles out its specific domain of objects by selecting a few specific predicates for its discourse. Some of these predicates must be operational and they determine the objects of the theory concerned. In the case of a transition from T to T, we must consider whether or not the operational predicates remain unchanged, in the sense of being still related to the same operations. If they do not change in their relation to operations, then T and T are comparable. If the operational predicates are not all identical in T and T, the two theories show a rather high degree of incommensurability, and this happens because they do not refer to the same objects. Theory change means in this case change of objects. But now we can see that even incommensurability is compatible with progress conceived as the accumulation of truth. Indeed, T and T remain true about their respective objects, and the global amount of truth acquired is increased. (shrink)

Recent field studies have broadened our view on cultural performances in animals. This has consequences for the concept of cumulative culture. Here, we deconstruct the common individualist and differential approaches to culture. Individualistic approaches to the study of cultural evolution are shown to be problematic, because culture cannot be reduced to factors on the micro level of individual behavior but possesses a dynamic that only occurs on the group level and profoundly affects the individuals. Naive individuals, as a prerequisite of (...) an atomistic perspective, do not exist. We address the construction of a social approach to culture by introducing an inevitable social embedding of the individual development of social beings. The sociological notion of “habitus” as embodied cultural capital permits us to understand social transmission of behavioral components on a very basic level, resulting in a cumulative effect. Bits of information, movement, handling of material, attitudes, and preferences below distinct functional units are acquired through transfer mechanisms simpler than emulation and imitation such as peering, participation, co-performance, or engagement with a material environment altered by group members. The search for a zero point of cumulative culture becomes as useless as the search for a zero point of culture. Culture is cumulative. (shrink)

Three types of cumulative cases for theism are examined: incremental cases (like Richard Swinburne's), distributive cases (like William Lane Craig's), and emergent cases (like Basil Mitchell's).

Much behavioral welfare economics assumes that expected utility theory does not accurately describe most human choice under risk. A substantial literature instead evaluates welfare consequences by taking cumulative prospect theory as the natural default alternative, at least where description is concerned. We present evidence, based on a review of previous literature and new experimental data, that the most empirically adequate hypothesis about human choice under risk is that it is heterogeneous, and that where EUT does not apply, more choice is (...) characterized by rank-dependent utility models than by CPT. Most of the apparently loss-averse choice behavior results from probability weighting rather than from direct disutility experienced when an outcome is framed as a loss against an idiosyncratic reference point. We then consider implications of this finding for methodological debates about how to model welfare effects of policies, and argue that abandonment of a dogmatic belief in CPT as the correct theory of risk human choice exposes a conceptual error that is widespread in behavioral welfare economics. We provide concluding reflections on second-order, philosophical issues around the grounding of normative commitments in policy-focused economics. (shrink)

Winter (2000) argues that so-called co-distributive or cumulative readings do not involve polyadic quantification (contra proposals by Krifka, Schwarzschild, Sternefeld, and others). Instead, he proposes that all such readings involve a hidden anaphoric dependency or a lexical mechanism. We show that Winter's proposal is insufficient for a number of cases of cumulative readings, and that Krifka's and Sternefeld's polyadic **-operator is needed in addition to dependent definites. Our arguments come from new observations concerning dependent plurals and clause-boundedness effects with cumulative (...) readings. (shrink)

Exploiting existing representations implies tapping an enormous domain, coextensive with human understanding and knowledge, and endowed with its own dynamics of piecewise and cumulative learning. The worth of Clark & Thornton's proposal depends on the relative importance of this dynamics and of the bottom-up mechanism they come to complement. Radical restructuring of theories and patterns of retrieval from long-term memory are discussed in the context of such an evaluation.

In this paper, we analyse higher-order risky choices by the representative cumulative prospect theory (CPT) decision maker from three alternative reference points. These are the status quo, average payout and maxmin. The choice tasks we consider in our analysis include binary risks, and are the ones employed in the experimental literature on higher order risk preferences. We demonstrate that the choices made by the representative subject depend on the reference point. If the reference point is the status quo and the (...) lottery choices exhibit symmetric risk, we demonstrate that there is no third order reflection effect of lottery choices but there is a fourth order reflection effect. When the average payout is the reference point, we demonstrate that any third or fourth order lottery choice is possible dependent upon the lottery payoffs. However, under the assumption of maxmin reference point, the risky choices are prudent and temperate. In addition to these results, our analysis reveals that the representative CPT subject can choose combinations of second with third and fourth order risky options that differ from those in other major models of decision under risk. We contrast our theoretical predictions with the empirical results reported in the literature on higher order risk preferences and are able to reconcile some conflicting experimental evidence. (shrink)