Why do we need a genotype-phenotype distinction for cultural evolution? Because minds are built from the inside.

When I first published about the process of cultural evolution a quarter of a century ago, in Culture as an Evolutionary Arena [1], I insisted on distinguishing between a cultural analog to the gene and genotype and a cultural analog to the phenotypic trait and phenotype, but didn’t have a well-thought out way of characterizing either. I made the distinction because, well, it was there in biology so it ought to be there in culture, no? And it made a kind of sense, having one context in which selection is made and a different one in which variation is made.

Since then I’ve devoted a fair amount of effort to clarifying the distinction [2], though it’s not clear to me that things have settled down. I like the notion of coordinator for the genetic element, but I’m still not sure about the phenotypic element, but it seems that cultural being is the term I’ve provisionally settled on. No matter, not do I intend to settle that now.

Rather, I remain interested in the issue of why make the distinction at all. Sure, there’s the parallel with biology, but as culture is otherwise so very different, is that a sufficient reason? Is the logical structure of the mechanism all that important? Well, if it is causal, then yes it is.

The issue is one of empirical method. We have many studies of cultural evolution in which things are counted and measured. As far as I can tell, these things are never characterized as either genetic elements of phenotypic elements. They’re simply the stuff of culture. If the distinction is without empirical consequences, then what’s the point?

Good question. And I’m not sure of the empirical consequences. But I do think there is a reason to maintain the distinction.

It is because minds are built from the inside [3]. From that it follows that cultural beings must be built from the inside as well. Cultural beings are constructed over coordinators, which are physical phenomena in the external world. Those phenomena trigger cascades of neural activity which then coalesce into cultural beings.

The Kuhnian notion of the paradigm is relevant here, where paradigms are collections of coordinators and cultural beings. Paradigms are more or less impervious to one another because of, on account of, those coordinators. What functions as a coordinator in one paradigm doesn’t necessarily function as a coordinator in another.

But what are the observable consequences? What forces us to treat a countable ‘thing’ as a coordinator rather than as a phenotypic element, or even as a Dawkinsian meme? 

Note: I seem to have made this argument back in 2014 as well.*

References

[1] William Benzon, Culture as an Evolutionary Arena, Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 19(4), 1996, 321-362, https://www.academia.edu/235113/Culture_as_an_Evolutionary_Arena.

[2] Here, in reverse chronological order, are some steps in that process.

William Benzon, Cultural Evolution: Literary History, Popular Music, Cultural Beings, Temporality, and the Mesh, Working Paper, 2015, https://www.academia.edu/10263479/William Benzon, Cultural_Evolution_Literary_History_Popular_Music_Cultural_Beings_Temporality_and_the_Mesh.

See section 7, The Construction of Cultural Beings, pp. 46-54.

William Benzon, Cultural Beings Evolving in the Mesh, blog post, New Savanna, Jan 5, 2015 https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2015/01/cultural-beings-evolving-in-mesh.html.

William Benzon, Cultural Beings & Intertextuality: Information, blog post, New Savanna, Jan 28, 2015 https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2015/01/cultural-beings-intertextuality.html.

William Benzon, Cultural Beings, the Ontology of Culture, and a Return to Books and Blues, blog post, New Savanna, December 15, 2014, https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/12/cultural-beings-ontology-of-culture-and.html.

*William Benzon, Why Cultural Evolution Needs a Distinction Between “Genes” and “Phenotypes”, blog post, New Savanna, November 21, 2014 https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-cultural-evolution-needs.html.

William Benzon, Terminology for Cultural Evolution: Coordinators and Phantasms, blog post, New Savanna, November 8, 2014 https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/11/terminology-for-cultural-evolution.html.

William Benzon, Cultural Evolution, Memes, and the Trouble with Dan Dennett, Working Paper, August 2013, 67 pp., https://www.academia.edu/4204175/Cultural_Evolution_Memes_and_the_Trouble_with_Dan_Dennett.

In particular, see the section, Memes as Data: Targets, Couplets, and Designators, pp. 44-46.

[3] As I’ve argued most recently in this post, Minds are built from the inside [evolution, development], blog post, New Savanna, Sept. 15, 2020, https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2020/09/minds-are-built-from-inside-evolution.html.