Intelligent Learning, Culture, and Anthropology: Key Concepts
Intelligent Learning
Intelligent learning refers to an individual’s ability to solve problems through complex and innovative solutions, or even to pose new problems.
Limitations of Intelligent Animal Learning
Intelligent animal learning has some limitations:
- Animal discoveries are always oriented towards solving specific problems. They do not discover techniques, but solutions to individual cases.
- Discoveries by animals can only be transmitted by imitation.
- Animals are incapable of thinking about solutions to problems in the absence of concrete things with which to operate.
Four Ways Culture is Used
Culture is used in four ways:
- In the broadest sense, to refer to culture in general.
- To refer to a given culture.
- To refer to the education or training of an individual.
- To refer to certain hobbies of prestige.
Culture, According to Edward B. Tylor
Culture, according to Edward B. Tylor, is a complex reality carried by all animals, not directly given by natural predispositions, that plays a role in their life and is transmitted through learning within the community.
Acculturation
Acculturation is the process by which, when two cultures are in contact, one assimilates the other’s cultural elements. Finally, the most primitive and simple culture is assimilated with elements of the other.
Enculturation
Enculturation is the process of acculturation of an individual within their own culture. It is a process of assimilation of the culture itself.
Culture and Cultures
Culture can be compared to a language, such as Spanish. Cultures depend on their environment.
Adequate Training Culture
Adequate training culture is the set of values and knowledge that an individual possesses.
Anthropology
Anthropology is a discipline that studies humans as a whole, attending to their physical-biological and cultural aspects.
Evolutionist School
The evolutionist school focuses on the dynamic aspects of cultures, defending evolution and therefore, that there are more advanced cultures.
Functionalist and Structuralist School
The functionalist and structuralist school focuses on the static aspects of culture, tending to defend that all cultures are equivalent since they all have their own internal logic.
Phylogenetic Trees
Phylogenetic trees are a schematic representation of the evolution of living things, showing the different species that have originated from a common ancestor. The classification is: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to consider one’s own culture as the reference system from which others are judged. Consequently, other cultures are seen as inferior and negligible.
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism: The contributions of social sciences, and especially anthropology, have enabled us to discover the functions played by ideas, instruments, or other customs of different cultures, however bizarre or strange they may seem to us.
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is a variant of relativism. It is a very recently emerged attitude, mainly as a result of the fact that in modern societies many different cultures coexist as a result of immigration from less developed or politically unstable countries.
Cultural Universalism
Cultural universalism can be understood in two ways:
- The assertion that there are elements common to all cultures, elements that arise as a consequence of the existence of a basic human nature shared by all human beings. These are called cultural universals.
- The assumption of values valid by and for themselves if desired, regardless of whether or not they are part of specific cultures. These values might be, for example, those contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Interculturalism
Interculturalism is an attempt to overcome objections to cultural relativism and universalism. It advocates a dialogue between cultures based on mutual respect. This dialogue presupposes:
- Appreciating cultural diversity.
- Rejecting the relativistic conception of culture understood as self-enclosed worldviews.
- Only accepting as valid a priori those universal values that are necessary for the very existence of intercultural dialogue.