Since cognitive science took an ecological turn it has been casting around for new frameworks in which to conduct its main business: experimental research. Those who have taken the ecological turn are convinced that classical and brain-bound frameworks don’t provide the necessary conceptual and experimental tools required to make sense of cognition in the wild (Hutchins 1995). A number of alternative frameworks have been proposed, with embodied cognition the most frequently adopted. The theoretical framework one uses to understand cognition has profound empirical consequences for scientific practice. For example, it influences what we consider to be the relevant phenomena of interest, what questions we ask about them, how we design and perform experiments, and how we interpret results (Beer 2000). The theoretical framework of classical computation, for example, approaches cognitive processing as a matter of input represented symbolically, which is then syntactically processed according to stored knowledge that the system has. It proposes a single “sandwich style” layer of cognitive processing, involving input, computation, and output (Hurley 2010).
The theoretical framework of CI (cognitive integration; Menary 2007) proposes something altogether different: multiple cognitive layers where neural, bodily, and environmental processes all conspire to complete cognitive tasks. Although the framework is unified by a dynamical systems description of the evolution of processing in the hybrid and multi-layered system, it recognises the novel contributions of the distinct processing profiles of the brain, body, and environment. Furthermore, the CI framework explains our cognitive capabilities for abstract symbolic thought by giving an evolutionary and developmental case for the plasticity of the brain in redeploying older neural circuits to new, culturally specific functions—such as reading, writing, and mathematics (Menary 2014). I call this a process of enculturation.
This paper seeks to outline the phylogenetic and ontogenetic conditions for the process of enculturation. It will take mathematical cognition, particularly the evolutionary basis for mathematical cognition, as a core example of enculturation. In so doing, I hope to have given an account of why enculturation exists, how it happens, and in what ways it can be defended against objections. In the first section I will explore the relationship of CI to cognition embodied, embedded, enacted, extended (4E) cognition and then explain why social and cultural practices are important to the process of enculturation. In the second section I will outline the core concepts required to make sense of enculturation: continuity, transformation, novelty, and uniqueness. The third section will introduce the example of mathematical cognition, moving from the evolutionary basis for numerosity and numerical cognition to the precise operations of mathematics. The fourth section will give an account of mathematical cognition as a case of enculturation. In the final section I outline two possible objections and respond to them.