Including contingencies and metacontingencies into a co-evolutionary approach to cultural evolution

First extensively used by Darwin, the theory of natural selection describes how the interplay between a population’s traits and environmental events drives the evolution of species. The capability of learning new behavioral repertories during our life-span (ontogenesis) also has great adaptive value. Thus, learning capability is historically inseparable from evolution by natural selection. Humans inherit behavioral predispositions and have the ability to incrementally acquire new behavioral repertoires during ontogenesis; furthermore, learning is greatly connected to an evolving cultural environment. In this presentation, cultural evolution will be analyzed from a selectionist perspective, as a co-evolutionary process involving learning and natural selection.