ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the most distinctive characteristic of the human species: cultural knowledge. Cultural knowledge is always intentional knowledge, namely, information contained in an individual's mind. Non-adaptive genetic knowledge ends up disappearing because, by definition, it hinders the reproductive fitness of the organisms that have this knowledge, and genetic knowledge can only be transmitted through biological reproduction. Language is the instrument of culture almost by definition. This does not mean, however, that we always assimilate cultural knowledge by means of explicit verbal communication. For individual knowledge, information coming from the environment needs to be compared with previous experiences stored in the animal's memory. Behaviour as determined by our genetic knowledge is relatively compulsory. Like all animals, we feel impelled to behave according to our instinctual drives. Cultural behaviour is behaviour that makes sense among the people who share that cultural knowledge.
