Abstract:

Culture appears to be subject to a Darwinian evolutionary process: culture varies, is inherited, and some cultural variants fare better than others. But things become challenging when we try to elaborate the precise details of cultural evolutionary theory. This talk will address two questions foundational to any cultural evolutionary theory: What is culture? And what is cultural fitness? I will answer these questions by proposing a way of articulating what culture is (and how it can be distinguished from related phenomena) as well as what it might mean for one cultural variant to be fitter than another. 

Speaker:

Grant Ramsey is a BOFZAP Research Professor in the Institute of Philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium. His work centers on the philosophical problems at the foundation of evolutionary biology. He has published widely in this area as well as the philosophy of animal behavior, human nature, and the moral emotions. Frequently quoted is his paper “Is Cultured Fitness Hopelessly Confused?”, BJPS, 2015.

He runs the Ramsey Lab www.theramseylab.org, a highly collaborative research group focused on issues in the philosophy of the life sciences.