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The mutual relevance of teaching and cultural attraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

Thomas C. Scott-Phillips
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom. t.c.scott-phillips@durham.ac.ukthomscottphillips.wordpress.com
Dan Sperber
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science and Department of Philosophy, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary. Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS/EHESS/ENS, 75005 Paris, France. dan@sperber.frwww.dan.sperber.fr

Abstract

As Kline envisages, there is an important relationship between cultural attraction and teaching. The very function of teaching is to make the content taught an attractor. Teaching, moreover, typically fulfills its function by exploiting a variety of factors of cultural attraction that help make its content learnable and teachable.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

Claidière, N., Scott-Phillips, T. C. & Sperber, D. (2014) How Darwinian is cultural evolution? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 369(1642):20130368. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0368.Google ScholarPubMed
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Sperber, D. (1996) Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell.Google Scholar