Singh argues for subjective selection as a key driver in cultural evolution. We applaud the target article’s rejection of purely adaptationist accounts of cultural evolution and its acknowledgment of the role of human agency. In these respects, Singh’s argument is consistent with a trend in the philosophy of biology for recognizing the agency of the organism in giving direction to phylogenetic change (Walsh, Reference Walsh2014). We disagree, however, with the assumption that acknowledging the role of agency implies that the mechanism of cultural evolution is primarily subjective. Rather than seeing agency as something located in the individual subject and expressed outward, we would argue that agency is better understood as an emergent feature of agent–environment dynamics (Malafouris, Reference Malafouris2013; Stewart, Reference Stewart2019). By describing agency as merely “subjective,” the target article, in our view, oversimplifies the cultural evolution story.
At the heart of Singh’s account is the claim that subjective selection retains those behaviors that are “evaluated as instrumentally useful for satisfying goals” (our emphasis). This implies a linear story: first, people formulate a goal, then they engage in trial-and-error behaviors aimed at fulfilling the goal, then the results are evaluated, and the behavior is either retained or rejected. This is an intuitively plausible story. There is, however, a rich tradition of studying human behavior that acknowledges a more interactive and substantive role for the environment in shaping goal states (e.g., Dewey, Reference Dewey1896). Singh’s organism-centered and static view of subjectivity, we believe, leads him to overlook several ways that the environment enables and constrains goals.
(1) The environment plays a role in constraining goal states. Cognitive ethnographers working in the distributed cognition tradition have described how goals are pursued within real-world tasks (Hutchins, Reference Hutchins1995, Reference Hutchins2014). For example, in maritime navigation, navigators must reliably be able to reach land and return to their starting point (Fernandez-Velasco & Spiers, Reference Fernandez-Velasco and Spiers2024). Those systems of navigation that fail this test will not reach the goal evaluation phase. They will be selected against not by the subjective evaluation of the navigators but by the objective constraints of the environment. To give an account of the evolution of navigation systems, then, one must give an account of the objective constraints at play. The same argument can be extended to goal-directed behavior in general: goals are typically not prior cognitive states but arise through moment-to-moment coupling with an environment that “breathes back” possibilities, resistances, and attractors (Stewart, Reference Stewart2019).
(2) The physical environment plays a role in discovering goal states. The target article portrays artistic practices as “technologies for pleasure,” that is, as instruments for fulfilling the hedonistic goals of agents. In research on creativity, however, goals and intentions are typically found to emerge, to a large degree, within the creative process. Bernini (Reference Bernini2014) suggests, for instance, that producing a literary text involves “material agency”: the paper and pen, and the material aspects of language and imagination interact with and change the intentions of the writer. Pearlman, McKay, and Sutton (Reference Pearlman, MacKay and Sutton2018) discuss the historical case of Elizaveta Svilova, the editor and wife of Russian film director Dziga Vertov. As Svilova works with the material, cutting and splicing the film, she surrounds herself with the different reels, carefully categorizing and organizing them in her workspace. This manipulation of the material should not be seen as merely “technical” but as an integral part of the creative process: “[E]ditors don’t think first and then act, they think through acting.” In other words, Svilova’s creative goals emerge through interaction with the material. Her creative agency is also deeply entwined with Vertov’s since the two worked closely together in the editing process, making it difficult to assign epistemic credit for the creative output to one or the other. This blending of Svilova’s intentions and goals with the “material agency” of the film and the agency of her partner is hard to square with a linear story of creativity as the fulfillment of pre-existing goals. The creative process is inherently interactive. Similar conclusions can be found in studies of many other creative practices, including architecture, music, or making comics (Haraldsen & Trasmundi, Reference Haraldsen and Trasmundi2025; Rietveld & Brouwers, Reference Rietveld and Brouwers2017; Wheeler, Reference Wheeler, Gaut and Kieran2018).
(3) Subjective goals are socially contested. The target article focuses on interesting “erroneous” systems of behavior, such as shamanism and witchcraft, and suggests that these, like spears and igloos, are “compelling solutions to instrumental ends.” This, however, overlooks an important question: compelling to whom? What Singh describes as “subjective benefits” can often be better understood as objective benefits to some powerful members of the social group. Singh’s lack of attention to social hierarchy leads him to disregard its shaping role for the goals of individual agents. In an ethnographic study of an emergency ward, Trasmundi and Steffensen (Reference Trasmundi and Steffensen2016) show how medical goals can emerge in social interaction. In their case study, a doctor and nurse jointly make a medical decision that departs from standard procedure. Crucially, the nurse’s initial goal is to follow procedure, but she ends up deferring to the doctor’s initial doubt. Such cases show that goal states can be affected by hierarchical social structures. In general, cultural patterns often emerge as stabilized power asymmetries (Stewart, Reference Stewart2019). Cultural selection, then, is not simply subjective endorsement, but the institutionalization of certain social trajectories over others. What we are suggesting is that cultural institutions survive over time not because they seem like the best system to everyone in the population, but because it is in the objective interests of certain members of the group to retain them, and that the power asymmetries inherent in them can have powerful effects on the goals of agents.
Taken together, these points reveal a blind spot in Singh’s account of subjective selection, which assumes a linear trajectory: goal → action → evaluation. In reality, the discovery, pursuit, and social contestation of goals is more complicated and interactive (Trasmundi et al., Reference Trasmundi, Baggs, Toro and Steffensen2024). A more complete account of cultural evolution will recognize the interplay between subjective states of the agent and objective constraints provided by material, social, and cultural features of the environment.
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Singh argues for subjective selection as a key driver in cultural evolution. We applaud the target article’s rejection of purely adaptationist accounts of cultural evolution and its acknowledgment of the role of human agency. In these respects, Singh’s argument is consistent with a trend in the philosophy of biology for recognizing the agency of the organism in giving direction to phylogenetic change (Walsh, Reference Walsh2014). We disagree, however, with the assumption that acknowledging the role of agency implies that the mechanism of cultural evolution is primarily subjective. Rather than seeing agency as something located in the individual subject and expressed outward, we would argue that agency is better understood as an emergent feature of agent–environment dynamics (Malafouris, Reference Malafouris2013; Stewart, Reference Stewart2019). By describing agency as merely “subjective,” the target article, in our view, oversimplifies the cultural evolution story.
At the heart of Singh’s account is the claim that subjective selection retains those behaviors that are “evaluated as instrumentally useful for satisfying goals” (our emphasis). This implies a linear story: first, people formulate a goal, then they engage in trial-and-error behaviors aimed at fulfilling the goal, then the results are evaluated, and the behavior is either retained or rejected. This is an intuitively plausible story. There is, however, a rich tradition of studying human behavior that acknowledges a more interactive and substantive role for the environment in shaping goal states (e.g., Dewey, Reference Dewey1896). Singh’s organism-centered and static view of subjectivity, we believe, leads him to overlook several ways that the environment enables and constrains goals.
(1) The environment plays a role in constraining goal states. Cognitive ethnographers working in the distributed cognition tradition have described how goals are pursued within real-world tasks (Hutchins, Reference Hutchins1995, Reference Hutchins2014). For example, in maritime navigation, navigators must reliably be able to reach land and return to their starting point (Fernandez-Velasco & Spiers, Reference Fernandez-Velasco and Spiers2024). Those systems of navigation that fail this test will not reach the goal evaluation phase. They will be selected against not by the subjective evaluation of the navigators but by the objective constraints of the environment. To give an account of the evolution of navigation systems, then, one must give an account of the objective constraints at play. The same argument can be extended to goal-directed behavior in general: goals are typically not prior cognitive states but arise through moment-to-moment coupling with an environment that “breathes back” possibilities, resistances, and attractors (Stewart, Reference Stewart2019).
(2) The physical environment plays a role in discovering goal states. The target article portrays artistic practices as “technologies for pleasure,” that is, as instruments for fulfilling the hedonistic goals of agents. In research on creativity, however, goals and intentions are typically found to emerge, to a large degree, within the creative process. Bernini (Reference Bernini2014) suggests, for instance, that producing a literary text involves “material agency”: the paper and pen, and the material aspects of language and imagination interact with and change the intentions of the writer. Pearlman, McKay, and Sutton (Reference Pearlman, MacKay and Sutton2018) discuss the historical case of Elizaveta Svilova, the editor and wife of Russian film director Dziga Vertov. As Svilova works with the material, cutting and splicing the film, she surrounds herself with the different reels, carefully categorizing and organizing them in her workspace. This manipulation of the material should not be seen as merely “technical” but as an integral part of the creative process: “[E]ditors don’t think first and then act, they think through acting.” In other words, Svilova’s creative goals emerge through interaction with the material. Her creative agency is also deeply entwined with Vertov’s since the two worked closely together in the editing process, making it difficult to assign epistemic credit for the creative output to one or the other. This blending of Svilova’s intentions and goals with the “material agency” of the film and the agency of her partner is hard to square with a linear story of creativity as the fulfillment of pre-existing goals. The creative process is inherently interactive. Similar conclusions can be found in studies of many other creative practices, including architecture, music, or making comics (Haraldsen & Trasmundi, Reference Haraldsen and Trasmundi2025; Rietveld & Brouwers, Reference Rietveld and Brouwers2017; Wheeler, Reference Wheeler, Gaut and Kieran2018).
(3) Subjective goals are socially contested. The target article focuses on interesting “erroneous” systems of behavior, such as shamanism and witchcraft, and suggests that these, like spears and igloos, are “compelling solutions to instrumental ends.” This, however, overlooks an important question: compelling to whom? What Singh describes as “subjective benefits” can often be better understood as objective benefits to some powerful members of the social group. Singh’s lack of attention to social hierarchy leads him to disregard its shaping role for the goals of individual agents. In an ethnographic study of an emergency ward, Trasmundi and Steffensen (Reference Trasmundi and Steffensen2016) show how medical goals can emerge in social interaction. In their case study, a doctor and nurse jointly make a medical decision that departs from standard procedure. Crucially, the nurse’s initial goal is to follow procedure, but she ends up deferring to the doctor’s initial doubt. Such cases show that goal states can be affected by hierarchical social structures. In general, cultural patterns often emerge as stabilized power asymmetries (Stewart, Reference Stewart2019). Cultural selection, then, is not simply subjective endorsement, but the institutionalization of certain social trajectories over others. What we are suggesting is that cultural institutions survive over time not because they seem like the best system to everyone in the population, but because it is in the objective interests of certain members of the group to retain them, and that the power asymmetries inherent in them can have powerful effects on the goals of agents.
Taken together, these points reveal a blind spot in Singh’s account of subjective selection, which assumes a linear trajectory: goal → action → evaluation. In reality, the discovery, pursuit, and social contestation of goals is more complicated and interactive (Trasmundi et al., Reference Trasmundi, Baggs, Toro and Steffensen2024). A more complete account of cultural evolution will recognize the interplay between subjective states of the agent and objective constraints provided by material, social, and cultural features of the environment.
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The authors declare no competing interests.