Enigmatic Human Behaviors Cannot Be Explained by Byproduct Theory

Metarepresentation is a better way to think about human cognition

In my previous Medium article, I make a case that the use of byproduct theory to account for religion, art, music and similar human predilections is based on faulty premises. The thrust of the article was that the evolutionary science to support cognitive byproducts is lacking (as opposed to morphological or structural byproducts, which have a strong scientific basis). But that approach leans towards the theoretical and doesn’t address the actual complexity of human behavior.

It’s understandable that byproducts are an easy and convenient way to think about human activities. Humans have culture, which enables us to have contingent or conditional behaviors. The knowledge and requirements for people living in the tundra are very different than for people living near the Equator. The cultural adaptations people make in order to survive in these disparate environments are not instinctual. People are (mostly) capable of moving from one environment to another and are able to learn and modify their behavior to adapt to their new location.

Of course most cultural activities make perfect utilitarian sense. Humans have learned to build shelter, make clothing, process (cook, ferment, detoxify) food, and many other practices that have clear benefit. In evolutionary terms, however, these culture-specific variants are not selected for at the genetic level. They can be perceived as byproducts of other, more comprehensive evolved cognitive adaptations. A liberal interpretation allows for a wide range of human behaviors to be labeled as byproducts. Consider that evolutionary biologist Steven J. Gould (1991) identifies reading, writing, commerce, and war to be examples of behavioral byproducts of other evolved human mental processes. Before resorting to byproduct theory to describe aspects of human behavior, I first want to consider how we’ve arrived at our cognitive malleability, how to explain our extreme behavioral flexibility.

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