Douglass North has passed away
The Nobel Prize winner and economic historian Douglass North, has passed away this Monday (November 23rd, 2015) at age 95. In addition to being a founding father of…
Author: International Cognition and Culture Institute
Joint PhD in the Cognitive Science of Religion (2016-17 Studentship)
The Institute of Cognition and Culture (ICC) is offering a DEL Studentship for the Doctoral programme in the Cognitive the Science of Religion that has been established by…
PhD studentships in Cognitive Science at Central European University, Budapest
The Department of Cognitive Science at CEU invites applications for doctoral student positions starting in September 2016. This is a research-based training program in human cognition with social…
Cambridge Moral Psychology Interdisciplinary Conference
The one-day Cambridge Moral Psychology Interdisciplinary Conference will take place on Friday 9 October 2015. Programme and registration: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26237. The Moral Psychology…
Call for two post-doctoral researchers in cultural evolution
The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena (Germany) are seeking to employ two full-time postdoctoral researchers in the field of cultural evolution. The…
State of the art research on social behavior
In Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2015, 3, a really useful open access collection of review papers on state of the art research on social behavior edited by…
Alignments across disciplines
By Ira Noveck & Tiffany Morisseau (This post forms part of our “book club” discussing Thom Scott-Phillip’s latest book with its author. This précis introduced the discussion.) This book …
A few comments on ‘Speaking Our Minds’
By Paulo Sousa and Karolina Prochownik We would like first to thank the ICCI team for the invitation to participate in the book club around Thom Scott-Phillips’ Speaking…
‘Speaking Our Minds’ Book Club: A précis of the book by Thom Scott-Phillips
We are thrilled to open our second book club, devoted to Thom Scott-Phillips’ book, Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it…
An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching
A new article or obvious cognition-and-culture relevance by Michelle Ann Kline on “How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and…
Budapest Conference on Cognitive Development
The Cognitive Development Center at the Central European University is pleased to announce the fifth annual Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development in Budapest, Hungary (J…
Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases
A very interesting new article: “Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases” by Brent Strickland, Carl…
Scott Atran’s address to the UN security council
It is not everyday that an anthropologist is asked to speak before the security council: Scott Atran did, on the 23d of April. See video here.
Astuti and Bloch on “Incest, intentionality, and morality”
A thought-provoking article by Rita Astuti and Maurice Bloch, “The causal cognition of wrong doing: incest, intentionality and morality,” in Frontiers in Psychology, 18 February 2015. From the…
Should preferences based on authoritarianism and social dominance be treated as moral?
An interesting critical discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s apprach to morality from a social psychology and political science point of view: “Another Look at Moral Foundations Theory: Do Authori…
Why reading minds is not like reading words
Written by Brent Strickland and Pierre Jacob In a recent review paper in Science (2014. 344-6190) entitled “The cultural evolution of mind reading,” Cecilia Heyes and Chris Frith argue…
What Explains the Emergence of Moralizing Religions?
An ambitious article: “Increased Affluence Explains the Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms and Moralizing Religions”, by Nicolas Baumard, Alexandre Hyafil, Ian Morris, and Pascal Bo…
A Cognitive Science of Theology?
A new, interesting, and original book by Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt: A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. MIT…
Applications for PhD studentships in Cognitive Science at CEU, Budapest
PhD studentships are available for the doctoral program in Cognitive Science at Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary. Application deadline: February 1, 2015. The Department of Cogn…
Is probabilistic cognition universal?
An interesting paper by Laura Fontanari, Michel Gonzalez, Giorgio Vallortigara, and Vittorio Girotto: “Probabilistic cognition in two indigenous Mayan groups“, forthcoming in PNAS….
[extended deadline] Berlin Symposium on Reciprocity and Social Cognition
The deadline for submissions to this symposium has been extended to November the 1st. A symposium on ‘Reciprocity and social cognition’ organized by Anna Strasser, Stephen Butterfill, Richard Moor…
Cultural Evolution at the Santa Fe Institute
Last May, Daniel Dennett gathered, at the Santa Fe Institute, a handful of people who have written about cultural evolution. The general impression was that (as he tweeted…
Call for posters: Reciprocity and Social Cognition
The Berlin School of Mind and Brain organizes a symposium on “Reciprocity and Social Cognition”, from the 23rd to the 25th of March, 2015. Keynote speakers will be…
Has a decimal point error misled millions into believing that spinach is a good source of iron?
A great cultural epidemiology story by Ole Bjørn Rekdal, “Academic urban legends,” in Social Studies of Science (2014, 44(4)) freely available here Abstract: Many of the me…