DETECTOR-INDICATOR SYSTEMS, CULTURE AND TRANS-INDIVIDUAL MODULARITY - A PROPOSAL

Abstract

Drawing on findings that many forms of animal learning are genetically programmed to exploit regularly occurring situational cues, that evolutionarily developed detector-indicator systems appear as cultural domains, and that social interaction and interdependence is more the rule than the exception as a vehicle in the evolution of social species, it is argued that it may be worth to extend the modularity concept to include trans-individual phenomena. Such trans-individual modularity appears as cultural domains on the collective level where the cultural organization of societies regularly provides opportunities for children and adolescents to tune their detector-indicator modules and mechanisms to the relatively rapidly changing fashions, traits and behaviors promising biological fitness. This would be an additional argument for assigning an evolutionary role to culturally organized domains.