Action-Perception Matching in Human Cultural Evolution: Updates from the Cognitive Science Debate
Issue: • Author/s: Antonella Tramacere, Fabrizio Mafessoni
Topics: Cognitive science, Epistemology, Philosophy of action, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of science, Theoretical philosophy
Analyses of action-perception matching mechanisms, such as the Mirror Neuron System (MNS), have been prominent in evolutionary accounts of human cognition. Some scholars have interpreted data on the MNS to suggest that the human capacity to acquire and transmit cultural information is a learned product of cultural evolution (the Culture not Biology Account of cultural learning). Others have interpreted results related to the MNS to suggest that cultural learning in humans result from both cultural and biological evolution (the Culture per biology Account of cultural learning). In this paper, we…