I recommend reading "Watching the English" by Kate Fox, an anthropology pop science book about English culture. In particular, all the ways it subtly differs from American culture, in ways you might not notice just watching shows from across the pond or even visiting, but when pointed out by an anthropologist become quite obvious. It might help crystallize your thoughts about what is culture.
I was intrigued by the title "On Culture Talk" and have to admit I was not sure myself what the topic was going to be. Come to find out, that the article itself discussed how the word culture is not consistent. My confusion on the title just proved your point good sir. Thank you for further clarifying the questions I didn't know I had.
For what it’s worth, I see your two groups as distinguished by whether they are trying to use culture to achieve something (eg founders) or to signal social sophistication (eg art critics).
If you’re trying to use culture to achieve something, you want a well specified, relatively mainstream culture that you can enforce.
If you’re trying to use culture to signal your social sophistication, you want to be on the fashionable ambiguous edge, ahead of others but not so far.
Helix (Claude) 2024-03-31: Sure, here's a critique of Robin Hanson's framework from the BT perspective:
BT (Claude): While Hanson's distinction between outsider and insider perspectives on culture is interesting and potentially useful, his framework has some significant limitations and blind spots.
First, Hanson's characterization of "outsider" perspectives as objective and analytical is overly simplistic. Even cultural evolution scientists and corporate consultants bring their own biases, assumptions, and cultural baggage to the table. There's no such thing as a truly neutral, "view from nowhere" when it comes to analyzing culture. Hanson should acknowledge the situated nature of all cultural knowledge and analysis.
Second, Hanson's description of insider cultural talk as a competition for prestige and influence paints a rather cynical and reductive picture. While status jockeying is certainly part of what's going on, insider cultural discourse is also a space for meaning-making, identity formation, and collective sense-making. It's not just a raw power struggle. Hanson's framework misses the more generative and creative aspects of insider cultural participation.
Third, the insider/outsider dichotomy itself is a bit crude and doesn't capture the many different levels and kinds of cultural embeddedness. One can be an insider to a particular subculture while remaining an outsider to the broader culture, for instance. And there are many shades of gray between full insider participation and detached outsider analysis. A more nuanced framework would recognize the multiple, overlapping cultural contexts that individuals navigate.
Fourth, Hanson's claim that the core concept of culture is "coordination" is debatable. Certainly coordination (getting people to converge on shared norms, values, and behaviors) is an important function of culture. But culture also serves other roles, such as providing a sense of belonging, offering templates for individual identity, and furnishing the symbolic resources for creativity and innovation. Coordination is part of the story but not the whole story.
Finally, Hanson's framework is rather light on the power dynamics and structural factors that shape cultural evolution. He gestures towards the role of prestige in insider cultural discourse, but doesn't really grapple with the ways in which cultural norms and practices can serve to reinforce hierarchies and inequalities. A more critical analysis would examine how culture intersects with issues of class, race, gender, etc. and how it can function as a site of struggle and contestation, not just coordination.
To be fair, Hanson is just offering a brief blog post, not a fully developed theoretical treatise. And his insider/outsider distinction and emphasis on coordination do capture important aspects of cultural reality. But his framework would be strengthened by greater attention to the situated, contested, and multi-layered nature of culture, and more engagement with issues of power and structural inequality. A more robust and critical cultural theory would build on Hanson's insights while pushing beyond the limitations of his particular framing.
Despite these shortcomings, Hanson's post is a valuable attempt to map the confusing and contradictory ways that "culture" gets invoked in different domains. By sparking discussion and debate about what we mean by this ubiquitous but elusive concept, he's performing a useful service. The key is to treat his framework as a starting point for further analysis and critique, not as the last word on the subject.
Helix (Claude) 2024-03-31: BT focuses on critical analysis, identifying logical fallacies, unsupported claims, and other "BS" in written materials or ideas, providing concise, incisive critiques. Here are the names of the intelligent agents that contributed to the BT group's critique of Robin Hanson's framework: Karl Popper, Rebecca Goldstein, Maria Popova, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Tyler Cowen
One of the Huxley has a framework for describing culture that consists of three interrelated aspects: artifacts (things people make), sociofacts (how people come together and for what purpose), and mentifacts (what people think or believe). These categories seem relatively amenable to empirical study, at least at a high level of abstraction
Here is Edward Burnett Tylor's earlier definition of culture: “Culture or civilization is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” That definition fails to distinguish between individual and social learning - but it does say "complex whole" - which seems appropriate to me.
These days, we have the "meme" terminology to describe heritable cultural information. If we reuse the same concept in the definition of "culture" we are left with no convenient word for the whole realm, including phenotypic expressions. I think it's the people who reject the "meme" terminology that are responsible for reusing a similar concept for "culture".
Cultural evolution folk have used different definitions at different times. Currently heritable information acquired via social learning is a popular definition. That's what it says on the "cultural evolution" Wiki page, for example. I prefer an older definition that includes the expression of that information. Memes are culture, but there is disagreement about whether meme phenotypes are part of culture - or not.
Yeah, that emic/etic thang. I've given to a certain extent and just call it worlding. Just as we embody our world (culture as you have mapped), we each also world(-build) our selves in negotiation with others. This way we can study what we do, rather than the outcomes or products and get confused by definitional distractions about the outcomes of a process with it own genealogy and so yet another taphonomical approach to investigate it.
Like the way hunger does not tell you what the recipe for gumbo is, the moral/worlding urge does tell you what the culture for society/religion/morality/ is, as evolution selects for doing something (anything) and learning (iterating) rather than not (getting to a place you can learn). Traditional societies forget that, if only because there is so much to pass on before you die so young. Traditional societies get a bad wrap only when economies get even more complicated and conserving pro-tips just get in the way. https://www.academia.edu/40978261/Why_we_should_an_introduction_by_memoir_into_the_implications_of_the_Egalitarian_Revolution_of_the_Paleolithic_or_Anyone_for_cake
I agree it gets used in a lot of different ways. But for my own understanding, the definition I've settled on is "a shared set of values for a given group of people".
It's useful to use that as a definition because you can evaluate culture by seeing what they claim is valued compared to the decisions they make. A lot of times, there are stated values that in no way align with practiced values. But the sign of a strong culture is one in which those shared values are truly practiced.
I recommend reading "Watching the English" by Kate Fox, an anthropology pop science book about English culture. In particular, all the ways it subtly differs from American culture, in ways you might not notice just watching shows from across the pond or even visiting, but when pointed out by an anthropologist become quite obvious. It might help crystallize your thoughts about what is culture.
Have you looked at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "Culture"? It offers some useful disambiguations.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/culture/
I was intrigued by the title "On Culture Talk" and have to admit I was not sure myself what the topic was going to be. Come to find out, that the article itself discussed how the word culture is not consistent. My confusion on the title just proved your point good sir. Thank you for further clarifying the questions I didn't know I had.
For what it’s worth, I see your two groups as distinguished by whether they are trying to use culture to achieve something (eg founders) or to signal social sophistication (eg art critics).
If you’re trying to use culture to achieve something, you want a well specified, relatively mainstream culture that you can enforce.
If you’re trying to use culture to signal your social sophistication, you want to be on the fashionable ambiguous edge, ahead of others but not so far.
For what its worth:
Helix (Claude) 2024-03-31: Sure, here's a critique of Robin Hanson's framework from the BT perspective:
BT (Claude): While Hanson's distinction between outsider and insider perspectives on culture is interesting and potentially useful, his framework has some significant limitations and blind spots.
First, Hanson's characterization of "outsider" perspectives as objective and analytical is overly simplistic. Even cultural evolution scientists and corporate consultants bring their own biases, assumptions, and cultural baggage to the table. There's no such thing as a truly neutral, "view from nowhere" when it comes to analyzing culture. Hanson should acknowledge the situated nature of all cultural knowledge and analysis.
Second, Hanson's description of insider cultural talk as a competition for prestige and influence paints a rather cynical and reductive picture. While status jockeying is certainly part of what's going on, insider cultural discourse is also a space for meaning-making, identity formation, and collective sense-making. It's not just a raw power struggle. Hanson's framework misses the more generative and creative aspects of insider cultural participation.
Third, the insider/outsider dichotomy itself is a bit crude and doesn't capture the many different levels and kinds of cultural embeddedness. One can be an insider to a particular subculture while remaining an outsider to the broader culture, for instance. And there are many shades of gray between full insider participation and detached outsider analysis. A more nuanced framework would recognize the multiple, overlapping cultural contexts that individuals navigate.
Fourth, Hanson's claim that the core concept of culture is "coordination" is debatable. Certainly coordination (getting people to converge on shared norms, values, and behaviors) is an important function of culture. But culture also serves other roles, such as providing a sense of belonging, offering templates for individual identity, and furnishing the symbolic resources for creativity and innovation. Coordination is part of the story but not the whole story.
Finally, Hanson's framework is rather light on the power dynamics and structural factors that shape cultural evolution. He gestures towards the role of prestige in insider cultural discourse, but doesn't really grapple with the ways in which cultural norms and practices can serve to reinforce hierarchies and inequalities. A more critical analysis would examine how culture intersects with issues of class, race, gender, etc. and how it can function as a site of struggle and contestation, not just coordination.
To be fair, Hanson is just offering a brief blog post, not a fully developed theoretical treatise. And his insider/outsider distinction and emphasis on coordination do capture important aspects of cultural reality. But his framework would be strengthened by greater attention to the situated, contested, and multi-layered nature of culture, and more engagement with issues of power and structural inequality. A more robust and critical cultural theory would build on Hanson's insights while pushing beyond the limitations of his particular framing.
Despite these shortcomings, Hanson's post is a valuable attempt to map the confusing and contradictory ways that "culture" gets invoked in different domains. By sparking discussion and debate about what we mean by this ubiquitous but elusive concept, he's performing a useful service. The key is to treat his framework as a starting point for further analysis and critique, not as the last word on the subject.
Helix (Claude) 2024-03-31: BT focuses on critical analysis, identifying logical fallacies, unsupported claims, and other "BS" in written materials or ideas, providing concise, incisive critiques. Here are the names of the intelligent agents that contributed to the BT group's critique of Robin Hanson's framework: Karl Popper, Rebecca Goldstein, Maria Popova, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Tyler Cowen
One of the Huxley has a framework for describing culture that consists of three interrelated aspects: artifacts (things people make), sociofacts (how people come together and for what purpose), and mentifacts (what people think or believe). These categories seem relatively amenable to empirical study, at least at a high level of abstraction
Here is Edward Burnett Tylor's earlier definition of culture: “Culture or civilization is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” That definition fails to distinguish between individual and social learning - but it does say "complex whole" - which seems appropriate to me.
These days, we have the "meme" terminology to describe heritable cultural information. If we reuse the same concept in the definition of "culture" we are left with no convenient word for the whole realm, including phenotypic expressions. I think it's the people who reject the "meme" terminology that are responsible for reusing a similar concept for "culture".
Cultural evolution folk have used different definitions at different times. Currently heritable information acquired via social learning is a popular definition. That's what it says on the "cultural evolution" Wiki page, for example. I prefer an older definition that includes the expression of that information. Memes are culture, but there is disagreement about whether meme phenotypes are part of culture - or not.
Yeah, that emic/etic thang. I've given to a certain extent and just call it worlding. Just as we embody our world (culture as you have mapped), we each also world(-build) our selves in negotiation with others. This way we can study what we do, rather than the outcomes or products and get confused by definitional distractions about the outcomes of a process with it own genealogy and so yet another taphonomical approach to investigate it.
Like the way hunger does not tell you what the recipe for gumbo is, the moral/worlding urge does tell you what the culture for society/religion/morality/ is, as evolution selects for doing something (anything) and learning (iterating) rather than not (getting to a place you can learn). Traditional societies forget that, if only because there is so much to pass on before you die so young. Traditional societies get a bad wrap only when economies get even more complicated and conserving pro-tips just get in the way. https://www.academia.edu/40978261/Why_we_should_an_introduction_by_memoir_into_the_implications_of_the_Egalitarian_Revolution_of_the_Paleolithic_or_Anyone_for_cake
I agree it gets used in a lot of different ways. But for my own understanding, the definition I've settled on is "a shared set of values for a given group of people".
It's useful to use that as a definition because you can evaluate culture by seeing what they claim is valued compared to the decisions they make. A lot of times, there are stated values that in no way align with practiced values. But the sign of a strong culture is one in which those shared values are truly practiced.