3 - The item/system problem

Summary

This chapter proposes that the ideas of cultural item and cultural system are reconciled by something that they have in common: Neither idea exists without the simpler idea of a functional relation. Functional relations are the interface that joins items and systems together, and one can look to them for a solution to the item/system problem. Culture and language hinge on shared meaning, and so the chapter focuses on semiotic systems. The idea of a semiotic system is well illustrated in Darwin's account of the expression of emotion in animals. The chapter also proposes a minimal causal scheme for biased transmission which has four functionally defined loci at which any transmission bias may contribute to regulating the cumulative transmission of culture. In language, items are structured into conceptual frames, systems of categorization, semplates, conceptual metaphors, structural paradigms, and syntagms.