The role of categorization as a way of fidelity preservation in cultural transmission

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of identifying cultural replicators and providing a plausible replication model for culture. Depending on what kind of information is considered to be replicated, the different evolutionary models of cultural transmission are clustered into three main groups which are referred to as externalism, internalism and multi-substratism. From these, internalism is argued to be the most plausible position, but it fails in explaining how cultural information can be faithfully replicated in our species despite essentially depending on individual processes of intentional inference. It is concluded that no author seems to have fittingly adopted a categorization model stemmed from a usage-based perspective, and such a model would entail a feedback dynamic in category formation which could allow for an a posteriori purification of the input information flow. This way, categorization would partially equate the role of DNA in genetic transmission cycles.