Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture
Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture
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DOI：
10.1017/s0140525x19001213
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发表时间：
2020-01-01
影响因子：
29.3
通讯作者：
Kirmayer，Laurence J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Veissiere，Samuel P. L.;Constant，Axel;Kirmayer，Laurence J.
文化获取的过程仍然不清楚。在大规模的社会文化群体中，如何准确可靠地学习和保持共同的习惯、规范和期望？是否有一个统一的帐户的机制，涉及到文化的收购？诸如“共同期望”、“注意力和行为的选择性模式”、“文化进化”、“文化继承”和“内隐学习”等概念是支持认知和文化习得统一解释的主要候选概念;然而，它们之间的相互作用需要更详细的说明和澄清。在这篇文章中，我们整合这些候选人使用变分（自由能）的方法来人类认知和文化的理论神经科学。我们描述了人类对社会小生境的构建，这些小生境提供了称为文化启示的知识资源。我们认为，人类代理人通过沉浸式参与模式化的文化实践，选择性地模式化的注意力和行为，学习他们的文化的共同习惯，规范和期望。我们称这个过程为“通过他人的思想进行思考”（TTOM）--实际上，这是一个推断其他主体对世界的期望以及如何在社会环境中表现的过程。我们认为，对于人类来说，来自其他人的期望和关于其他人的期望的信息构成了人类用来预测和组织行为的统计学的主要领域。我们所提供的整合模式具有启示意义，可以推进认知，文化适应，适应和精神病理学的理论。至关重要的是，这种形式（变分）的处理方法旨在解决当前认知科学中的关键争论，例如内在主义者和外在主义者对心理理论能力的解释之间的区别，以及动态和表征性对能动性的解释之间更根本的区别。
The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” (TTOM) – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism.