Two Modes of Transgenerational Information Transmission

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Abstract

The explosion of scientific results about epigenetic and other parental effects appears bewilderingly diverse. An important distinction helps to bring order to the data. Firstly, parents can detect adaptively-relevant information and transmit it to their offspring who rely on it to set a plastic phenotype adaptively. Secondly, adaptively-relevant information may be generated by a process of selection on a reliably transmitted parental effect. The distinction is particularly valuable in revealing two quite different ways in which human cultural transmission may operate.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCooperation and Its Evolution
EditorsKim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott, Ben Fraser
Place of PublicationCambridge, Mass.
PublisherMIT Press
Pages289-312
Number of pages24
ISBN (Print)9780262018531
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Publication series

NameLife and mind: philosophical issues in biology and psychology
PublisherMIT Press

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