Origin of Culture: PSYCOLOQUY Call for Commentators
Stevan Harnad
harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk
Mon Jan 4 07:14:37 EST 1999
Gabora: ORIGIN OF CULTURE
The target article whose abstract appears below has just appeared
in PSYCOLOQUY, a refereed journal of Open Peer Commentary sponsored
by the American Psychological Association. Qualified professional
biobehavioral, neural or cognitive scientists are hereby invited to
submit Open Peer Commentary on it. Please email for Instructions if
you are not familiar with format or acceptance criteria for
PSYCOLOQUY commentaries (all submissions are refereed).
To submit articles and commentaries or to seek information:
EMAIL: psyc at pucc.princeton.edu
URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc
RATIONALE FOR SOLICITING COMMENTARY: This target article presents a
model of cognitive origins to explain the transition from episodic
to mimetic/memetic culture (as outlined by Merlin Donald in
"Origins of the Modern Mind," 1991) using Stuart Kauffman's ideas
about how an information-evolving system can emerge through
autocatalysis ("Origins of Order," 1993). I would like to invite
commentary from cognitive anthropologists and archeologists on the
plausibility of the proposal, from neuroscientists on the
neurobiological aspects of this model, and from cognitive
psychologists on its compatibility with other dynamic models memory
(i.e. models of how one thought evokes another in a train of
associations.) I also invite discussion of the memetic perspective
of culture as an information-evolving system.
Full text of article available at:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?9.67
or
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/
psyc.98.9.67.origin-culture.1.gabora
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AUTOCATALYTIC CLOSURE IN A COGNITIVE SYSTEM:
A TENTATIVE SCENARIO FOR THE ORIGIN OF CULTURE
Liane Gabora
Center Leo Apostel
Brussels Free University
Krijgskundestraat 33
1160 Brussels
Belgium
lgabora at vub.ac.be
http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/liane/
ABSTRACT: This target article presents a speculative model of the
cognitive mechanisms underlying the transition from episodic to
mimetic (or memetic) culture with the arrival of Homo Erectus,
which Donald (1991) claims paved the way for the unique features of
human culture. The model draws on Kauffman's (1993) theory of how
an information-evolving system emerges through the formation of an
autocatalytic network. Though originally formulated to explain the
origin of life, Kauffman's theory also provides a plausible account
of how discrete episodic memories become woven into an internal
model of the world, or world-view, that both structures, and is
structured by, self-triggered streams of thought. Social
interaction plays a role in (and may be critical to) this process.
Implications for cognitive development are explored.
KEYWORDS: abstraction, animal cognition, autocatalysis, cognitive
development, cognitive origins, consciousness, cultural evolution,
memory, meme, mimetic culture, representational redescription,
world-view.
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INSTRUCTIONS FOR PSYCOLOQUY COMMENTATORS
PSYCOLOQUY is a refereed electronic journal (ISSN 1055-0143) sponsored
on an experimental basis by the American Psychological Association
and currently estimated to reach a readership of 50,000. PSYCOLOQUY
publishes brief reports of new ideas and findings on which the author
wishes to solicit rapid peer feedback, international and
interdisciplinary ("Scholarly Skywriting"), in all areas of psychology
and its related fields (biobehavioral science, cognitive science,
neuroscience, social science, etc.). All contributions are refereed.
Accepted PSYCOLOQUY target articles have been judged by 5-8 referees to
be appropriate for Open Peer Commentary, the special service provided
by PSYCOLOQUY to investigators in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral
biology, cognitive sciences and philosophy who wish to solicit multiple
responses from an international group of fellow specialists within and
across these disciplines to a particularly significant and
controversial piece of work.
If you feel that you can contribute substantive criticism,
interpretation, elaboration or pertinent complementary or supplementary
material on a PSYCOLOQUY target article, you are invited to submit a
formal electronic commentary.
1. Before preparing your commentary, please examine recent
numbers of PSYCOLOQUY if not familiar with the journal.
2. Commentaries should preferably be up to ~200 lines (~1800 words)
3. Please provide a title for your commentary. As many
commentators will address the same general topic, your
title should be a distinctive one that reflects the gist
of your specific contribution and is suitable for the
kind of keyword indexing used in modern bibliographic
retrieval systems. Each commentary should also have a brief
(~100 word) abstract
4. All paragraphs should be numbered consecutively. Line length
should not exceed 72 characters. The commentary should begin with
the title, your name and full institutional address (including zip
code) and email address. References must be prepared in accordance
with the examples given in the Instructions. Please read the
sections of the Instruction for Authors concerning style,
preparation and editing. Please include URL wherever available.
Target article length should preferably be up to 1200 lines [c. 10,000
words]. All target articles, commentaries and responses must have (1) a
short abstract (up to 200 words for target articles, shorter for
commentaries and responses), (2) an indexable title, (3) the authors'
full name(s) and institutional address(es), (4) email addresses,
(5) Home-page URLs.
In addition, for target articles only: (4) 6-8 indexable keywords,
(5) a separate statement of the authors' rationale for soliciting
commentary (e.g., why would commentary be useful and of interest to the
field? what kind of commentary do you expect to elicit?) and
(6) a list of potential commentators (with their email addresses).
All paragraphs should be numbered in articles, commentaries and
responses (see format of already published articles in the PSYCOLOQUY
archive; line length should be < 80 characters, no hyphenation).
Figures should be Web-ready gifs, jpegs or equivalent. Captions should
be in separate html file that links to the gifs.
PSYCOLOQUY also publishes multiple reviews of books in any of the above
fields; these should normally be the same length as commentaries, but
longer reviews will be considered as well. Book authors should submit a
500-line self-contained Precis of their book, in the format of a target
article; if accepted, this will be published in PSYCOLOQUY together
with a formal Call for Reviews (of the book, not the Precis). The
author's publisher must agree in advance to furnish review copies to the
reviewers selected.
Authors of accepted manuscripts assign to PSYCOLOQUY the right to
publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and
make it permanently retrievable electronically, but they retain the
copyright, and after it has appeared in PSYCOLOQUY authors may
republish their text in any way they wish -- electronic or print -- as
long as they clearly acknowledge PSYCOLOQUY as its original locus of
publication. However, except in very special cases, agreed upon in
advance, contributions that have already been published or are being
considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered
for publication in PSYCOLOQUY,
Please submit all material to psyc at pucc.bitnet or psyc at pucc.princeton.edu
URLs for retrieving full texts of target articles:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy
ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy
news:sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy
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