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.
Tag: featured
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…
Culture: A scientific idea “ready for retirement”?
Every year the website edge.org asks their panel a general question on science and/or society. The 2014 question was: “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?“ I did not read…
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….
Another look at the two-systems model of mindreading
Apperly and Butterfill (2009) and Butterfill and Apperly (2013) have proposed a two-systems model of mindreading. According to this model, humans make use of two distinct psychological syste…
[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…
Perspectives on Cultural Evolution, by Daniel C. Dennett
These are Daniel Dennett’s introductory remarks on the workshop on cultural evolution he conveyed in Santa Fe in May 2014. Click to see the summaries and comments by Blackmore, Boyd, Cl…
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…
Random choice among the Kantu, swidden agriculturalists of Kalimantan
An excellent post by Michael Schulson at Aeon magazine entitled “How to choose? When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the…
Alberto Acerbi on cultural evolution
Alberto Acerbi’s excellent blog hosts a noteworthy discussion of Claidière, Scott-Phillips and Sperber’s recent PTRS paper on cultural attraction. Alex Mesoudi, Thom Scott-Phillips and Dan Speber join…
Babies’ and birds’ causal understanding
A very interesting comparison between crows and humans in a new (free access) paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B entitled “Of babies and birds: complex tool…
Kinship, theology and deep grammar
One of the most salient paradoxes in the study of kinship systems is their sheer analytical complexity, from the point of view of an external observer, and simultaneously…
Deparmental Lectureship in Cognitive Anthropology, Oxford
Applications are invited for a Departmental Lectureship in Cognitive Anthropology, effective from 1 September 2014, tenable until 30 September 2015. The post is based at the School of…
Making! The Other Story: Robot#10, Twins Separated at Birth, and Hacker Mama
Silvia Lindtner Amelia Guimarin Editor’s Note: Silvia Lindtner (@yunnia) and Amelia Guimarin (@femhacktweets) round out the March-April theme on makers, hackers, and engineers with this post tha…
Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria?
Here is a challenge to standard views about the evolution of linguistic generativity: ““Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity” by Thomas…
Engineering obsolescence
Marisa Cohn Editor’s Note: Marisa Leavitt Cohn writes to us from Stockholm, where she is a postdoctoral scholar studying the politics of software systems and computing work practices. In…
Negatively-Biased Credulity and the Cultural Evolution of Beliefs
A new article by Dan Fessler, Anne Pisor,& David Navarrete, highly relevant to cultural epidemiology in PLoS ONE 9(4): e95167. doi:10.1371 Abstract: The functions of cultural beliefs are often…