By: Jon Minton

Jon Minton — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:57:00 +0000

The ‘genetic differences’ argument appears utterly unnecessary: all one needs to accept is a universal (‘thin’) conception of people as capable of behaving according to cultural norms and transmitting such norms intergenerationally. (Not necessarily from parent-to-child directly, but, as J. R. Harris suggested, indirectly from parent’s peer group to child’s peer group.) Given this, it follows that peoples with more adaptive (in a strict evolutionary sense) cultural values will out-reproduce those with less adaptive cultural values, and thus that a larger proportion of the overall population will be adherents to the ‘fitter’ culture. Though these people may differ genetically from other groups (as people are often reticent to adopt other groups’ cultures, and so the growth of culture-adherents will be due to growth in population size of that cultural groups), their adaptive advantage results not from genetic difference, but cultural differences coterminous with the genetic differences.

Comments on: When’s the last time you dug through 19th century English mortuary records

By: Jon Minton