The General Theory of Capital: Self-Reproduction of Humans Through Increasing Meanings. А. Куприн
identifies three rungs on the ladder leading to knowledge of causes: “seeing,” “doing,” and “imagining.” On the first rung are animals and computers, which learn through association (Ivan Pavlov spoke of conditioned reflexes here). On the second rung are early humans who intervene in events, use tools, and act according to a plan rather than simply imitating, and children who experiment and learn from experience. Finally, on the top rung are “counterfactual learners” who “can imagine worlds that do not exist and infer reasons for observed phenomena” (Pearl and Mackenzie 2018, p. 28).
The evolution of meanings began as mixed selection but continued as choice (cultural election, to use a Latin term). Unlike cultural selection, cultural choice is an evolutionary variation of meanings, achieved by the alternation of generations not of humans, but of meanings. At this stage, the development of meanings gets independence from the development of the human body. Meanings cease to be an extension of the human organism and become a substance external to it. From the object of biocultural co-evolution, man transforms to its subject, taking on the function of denying facts, generating counterfacts and accelerating their selection. The evolving ability to deny the facts raised human understanding to reason. Nikita Moiseev called this the transition “from the strategy of nature to the strategy of reason” (Moiseev 1990, p. 223). If mixed selection was a joint action of the forces of nature and culture, then choice is a purposeful human action. Choice is both an action and a result of an action, that is, the choice between counterfacts is itself a (counter)meaning.
In his lecture course Understanding Complexity (2009), Scott Page makes a fourfold distinction between systems in which diversity is the result of selection and systems in which diversity is the result of choice (Page 2009, p. 14):
● The size of the jumps: selection proceeds in small jumps; choice can occur in large jumps: in the evolution of living things, an elephant and a tiger cannot be crossbred, but in the evolution of meanings they can;
● Viability of intermediate states: in selection, all intermediate stages must be independently viable; in choice, intermediate stages may not be able to function independently: the main thing is that the final state is viable;
● Method of representation: selection is “tied” to a single coding method—for example, genetic—and choice can be made in various symbolic systems;
● Continuity: selection is continuous and is carried out by a random search through all possible options; choice is discrete and bound to a finite set of options.
As Jean-Luc Nancy said, the subject is “what (or the one who) dissolves all substance—every instance already given,” “the subject is what it does, it is its act, and its doing is the experience of the consciousness of the negativity of substance” (Nancy 2002, p. 5). Man, considered from the perspective of his agency or active power, is the (counter)meaning that denies culture as given, creates something new and is itself this new. Election is an accelerated selection. With its transition to the choice of meanings, the evolution of culture accelerated in relation to the evolution of the human body. The evolution of culture-society proceeded from this point on faster than the evolution of the human body and psyche. To which section of the Henrich-Popov bridge can the emergence of counterfacts and choice be attributed? To the emergence of modern man about 200,000 years ago? Or much earlier? Or much later? We just do not know.
Traditional society and the accumulation of experience
Both natural and cultural selection (the latter arising from the former) occur in two steps: the first step is mutation, that is, a random change in genes/meanings, and the second step is inheritance, that is, the transmission of genes/meanings that ensure successful adaptation to the environment. The difference between selection and choice is that choice essentially occurs in one step, combining ideas about possible actions (counterfacts) and the action itself (meaning). In this one step, the chosen action is carried out. With the advent of choice, the evolution of meanings followed Lamarck, not Darwin: people began to select meanings purposefully, while retaining the meaning features they needed. Now the figurative “giraffe” actually began to grow a neck as it reached up for leaves, because people kept the offspring of just such a “giraffe.”
“Biological evolution is a bad analogue for cultural change because the two systems are so different for three major reasons that could hardly be more fundamental. First, cultural evolution can be faster by orders of magnitude than biological change at its maximal Darwinian rate—and questions of timing are of the essence in evolutionary arguments. Second, cultural evolution is direct and Lamarckian in form: The achievements of one generation are passed by education and publication directly to descendants, thus producing the great potential speed of cultural change. Biological evolution is indirect and Darwinian, as favorable traits do not descend to the next generation unless, by good fortune, they arise as products of genetic change. Third, the basic topologies of biological and cultural change are completely different. Biological evolution is a system of constant divergence without subsequent joining of branches. Lineages, once distinct, are separate forever. In human history, transmission across lineages is, perhaps, the major source of cultural change. Europeans learned about corn and potatoes from Native Americans and gave them smallpox in return” (Gould 1992, p. 65).
Biological evolution is based on the variability and inheritance of genes and the natural selection of organisms with a genotype that promotes adaptation to the environment. Man as a living being is the basis of society and culture. Therefore, in primitive communities, the mechanism of natural selection continues to operate, influencing the instinctive behavior of people. People are still guided by instincts and emotions, which are to some extent restricted by cultural norms: traditions and prejudices relayed through learning overlay instincts and override them. Cultural evolution is based on the inheritance of meanings, their variation and the selection of people with meaning types that contribute to adaptation to the environment:
“Here’s the idea, broken down into its simplest form. We’ve established that from a very young age, humans focus on and learn from more skilled, competent, successful, and prestigious members of their communities and broader social networks. This means that the new and improved techniques, skills, or methods that emerge will often begin spreading through the population, as the less successful or younger members copy them. Improvements may arise through intentional invention as well as from lucky errors and the novel recombinations of elements copied from different people” (Henrich 2016, pp. 212-213).
While cultural selection was the selection of facts based on implicit norms, traditional choice is the choice of counterfacts based on explicit norms. Traditional choice was still heavily dependent on norms and relied on practices transmitted through cultural learning. But even this traditional choice, based on the random drift of meanings and a deliberate retention of chance, eventually allowed humans to move to artificial selection, that is, the choice of animals and plants. About 30,000 years ago, the supposed domestication of the dog began the transition from hunting and gathering to herding and farming.
The rise of traditional choice as a driving force of social change did not lead to any “primitive revolutions.” We prefer to call the domestication of animals and plants agricultural evolution because this process took thousands and tens of thousands of years. Early human inventions and discoveries were happy accidents that were able to persist through the selection of the populations that made those discoveries and inventions. In a traditional society, intelligence and purposeful choices of individuals contributed to cultural evolution but did not yet play a prominent role. Human practices and prejudices dominated traditional society and ensured its survival.
It is hard for modern humans to accept the idea that developed intelligence is not a competitive advantage. However, this was well understood by members of traditional societies who relied not on intelligence but on practices in order to adapt to their environment. Joseph Henrich illustrates this with the example of Franklin’s expedition frozen in the Arctic ice in the 1840s:
“…Inuit snow houses look designed and are clearly functionally well fit to life in the Arctic. In fact, they appear to call for a team of engineers with knowledge of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, material science, and structural mechanics. Not surprisingly, facing the real threat of freezing to death