The approach to the evolution of human culture and mind suggested in
this article represents transactional naturalism combined with methodological
relationalism. In transactions, the organism changes the environment and vice
versa. Transactional naturalism conceptualizes the human mind and awareness in
a relational vein, as coevolving with the human socio-cultural niche, much like
enactive and extensive theories of mind. The approach is in stark contrast with
gene-centered and psychologizing nativist naturalism which views consciousness
and language faculty as innate. The origin of the concept of transaction is in
classical American pragmatism, in particular in Dewey’s theory of action according
to which one can learn only in action and in action one cannot but learn. Apprentice
learning setup, emphasized by Kim Sterelny in particular, has been pivotal for
the development of human community since the Pleistocene era. Coevolving with social
institutions, human learning has played an exceptional role in cultural
innovations when useful knowing-how and skilled habits have been transferred
from generation to generation. Therefore humans deserve the epithet Homo discens, learning man.