Embodying culture: integrated cognitive systems and cultural evolution

One of the key ingredients of ICS is the social/cultural practices, which we call normative patterned practices (henceforth NPP), that govern the dynamics of brain-body-niche interactions. NPPs operate at both social levels and individual, even sub-personal, levels. They originate as patterns of activity spread out over a population of agents (Roepstorff et al. 2010); consequently they should be understood primarily as public systems of activity and/or representation that are susceptible to innovative alteration, expansion and even contraction over time. They are transmitted horizontally across generational groups and vertically from one generation to the next. At the individual level they are acquired most often by learning and training (hence the importance of LDP), and they manifest themselves as changes in the ways in which individuals think, but also the ways in which they act (intentionally) and the ways in which they interact with other members of their social group(s) and the local environment. NPPs, therefore, operate at different levels (groups and individuals) and over different timescales (intergenerationally and in the here-and-now).