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Natural Pedagogy| old_uid | 10375 |
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| title | Natural Pedagogy |
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| start_date | 2011/11/16 |
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| schedule | 14h-16h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle des Actes |
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| summary | Ostensive communication evolved as a species-unique form of epistemic cooperation in humans. Communication can induce epistemic gain both by means of ostensive reference to relevant episodic information about a particular referent (when the relevance applies to the ‘here-and-now’ only) or by manifesting relevant generic knowledge about referent kinds. In spite of this symmetry in functional use, we frequently find that non-verbal ostensive communication is assumed to make reference to, and manifest relevant knowledge about, kinds rather than particulars. We hypothesize that this built-in ‘genericity bias’ is a design feature of ostensive communication that is an evolutionary signature reflecting the specialized function that ostensive communication may have been selected for: the fast and direct (non-inductive) transfer of generic and socially shared cultural knowledge about kinds. It is argued that this cognitive adaptation was crucial for making cognitively opaque cultural knowledge easily learneable and efficiently transferable across generations. We propose that by having evolved specific cognitive biases, human infants are prepared to be at the receptive side of communicative knowledge transfer, which, together with adults' inclination to pass on their knowledge to the next generation, constitute a system of 'natural pedagogy' in humans. |
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| responsibles | Lesguillons |
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