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Seminars on Culture and Cognition

Michaelmas Term 2008

Wednesday 4:00 - 6:00pm, Seligman Library A607, Old Building, LSE

15 October	Rebecca Sear (LSE) How much does family matter? The evidence for a cooperative breeding strategy in humans, and its implications for human evolution Abstract: Human mothers have a problem. The extended period of childhood dependency and short interbirth intervals of our species mean that human mothers have to care for several dependent children simultaneously. This is too much of an energetic burden for mothers to manage alone. This paper presents cross-cultural evidence that the solution to this problem is cooperative breeding: mothers enlist help from other relatives to share the costs of raising children. The importance of this reproductive strategy for the evolution of human bodies and brains is discussed.
29 October	Jamshid Tehrani (Durham) Missing links and curious parallels: a phylogenetic approach to cultural transmission Abstract: Early anthropologists believed that a direct analogy could be made between processes of cultural and biological evolution. Like organisms, social institutions, craft traditions, religious beliefs etc. were seen as products of ‘descent with modification’ whose relationships to one another could be traced back to original ‘root forms’. However, subsequent generations of anthropologists came to reject this project, and emphasized instead the differences between culture and biology. Thus, cultural forms were increasingly seen as the product of 'intelligent design' rather than of blind Darwinian processes. Even cognitive anthropologists like Sperber have argued vigorously against biological models of cultural transmission on the basis that ideas and skills are not replicated in the way that genes are. In his view, similarities among cultural forms are more likely to reflect genetically hard-wired cognitive biases than shared history. In this talk I will address these issues in relation to recent attempts to reconstruct cultural origins using biological techniques of phylogenetic analysis. This work provides useful insights into the similarities and differences between cultural and biological evolution, and suggests that the ambitions of those pioneering anthropologists in the nineteenth century may yet be fulfilled.
12 November	Annette Karmiloff-Smith (Birkbeck) Modules, Genes and Evolution: A Neurocontructivist Perspective
26 November	Fulvia Castelli (UCL) A Multilayered view of Theory of Mind
10 December	Stafana Broadbent The evolution of mediated communicatio

Past Programmes of the Seminar Series on Culture and Cognition

Summer Term 2008

Monday 9 June
4:00 - 6:00
Seligman Library, Room A607, Old Building, LSE.

Geoffrey Gowlland (LSE)
Emotion, cognition and authority in a Chinese craft community

Abstract: In an effort to make sense of Chinese ceramic artisans' assertions that a 'correct' pot is one that is pleasing to the eye, this paper proposes that one reexamine the cognitive bases of theories of art in anthropology. In particular, the notion of emotion as cognition, put forward by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, is brought in to explore the relation between creativity and authority in art production.

Lent Term 2008

16 January	Nick Humphrey (LSE, CPNSS) The Necessity of Consciousness: Why Human Zombies would be an Evolutionary Dead-End
30 January	John Skoyles (LSE, CPNSS) Darwin's “blank slate”: Two million years of the culture brain
13 February	Mary Morgan (LSE, Economic History) How well do “facts” travel?
27 February	Paulo Sousa (Queen’s University, Institute of Cognition and Culture) The Folk Concept of Moral Responsibility – A Cognitive Exploration
12 March	Trevor Marchand (SOAS, Anthropology) Embodied Cognition and Communication: studies with British fine woodworkers

Michaelmas Term 2007

17 October	Maurice Bloch (LSE) Religion and the ubiquity of the counter-intuitive
31 October	Robert Seyfarth & Dorothy Cheney (University of Pennsylvania) Baboon metaphysics: the evolution of a social mind
14 November	Coralie Chevallier (Institut des Sciences Cognitives, Lyon) Beyond Theory of Mind: Autism as a failure to see others as partners for interaction
28 November CANCELLED	Steve Nugent (Goldsmiths) CANCELLED
12 December	Nicolas Argenti (Brunel) ‘Children’s medicine’ - for children or for parents? child-focused rites and child fosterage in the Cameroon Grassfields

Summer Term 2007

2 May	Jules Davidoff (Goldsmiths) Language and Culture in Perceptual Judgments
16 May	(No PCC seminar) 6:30-8:00, Old Theatre, LSE Psychology as a Social Science Public Lecture Michael Cole (University of California San Diego) Re-searching the Potential of Cultural-Historical Psychology
30 May	Harvey Whitehouse (Oxford) Explaining religion
13 June	Peggy Froerer (Brunel) Anthropological perspectives on the construction of social group identity in a central Indian tribal community
27 June	Gergely Csibra (Birbeck) Pedagogy as a human-specific tool for cultural transmission

Lent Term 2007

17 January	Andreas Roepstorff (University of Aarhus) The neuroturn: challenging anthropology or anthropological challenge?
31 January	Andy Wells (LSE) Metronomic Irregularity: Natural Computation in New Guises
14 February Room S50	Dan Sperber (CNRS) Understanding and believing others: An evolutionary and developmental perspective
28 February	Emma Cohen (Oxford) Minds, bodies and persons: A cognitive account of the transmission of spirit possession concepts
Postponed to 13 June	Peggy Froerer (Brunel) Anthropological perspectives on the construction of social group identity in a central Indian tribal community

Michaelmas Term 2006

11 October	Sandra Jovchelovitch (LSE) Knowledge in context: Representation, community and culture
25 October	Rita Astuti (LSE) The morality of conventions: ancestral taboos in Madagascar
8 November	Robert Aunger (LSHTM) Explaining the persistence of 'maladaptive' beliefs: The case of food taboos in the Democratic Republic of Congo
22 November D702	Justin Barrett (Oxford) The Cognitive Science of Religion: Present Directions and Needs
6 December	Brian Butterworth (UCL) The relation between numerical concepts and language: Whorf or Locke?

Past Events

Programme in Culture and Cognition: Institute of Social Psychology and Department of Anthropology joint lecture

Why is it always 'us' and 'them'? On the Natural History of Thinking Through Groups

Thursday 6 December 2007, 6.30-8pm
Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

SPEAKER: Professor Lawrence Hirschfeld
CHAIR: Dr Rita Astuti

For over a century anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology have had a fitful and often uneasy relationship. This event presents recent findings about representations of social categories that have potential relevance for all three disciplines.

Lawrence Hirschfeld is Professor of Psychology and Anthropology at the New School for Social Research, New York.

Institute of Social Psychology ‘Psychology as a Social Science’ public lecture

The Human Adaptation for Culture

Thursday 8 November 2007, 6.30-8pm
Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

SPEAKER: Professor Michael Tomasello
CHAIR: Dr Sandra Jovchelovitch

Human beings are biologically adapted for cultural life in ways that other primates are not. This lecture explores humans’ unique motivations and cognitive skills.

Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.

Consciousness, Self and Society Lent Term 2007 Research Seminars

In the Lent Term I shall be giving five classes, on the subject of Consciousness. These will alternate with the Culture and Cognition seminar, 4.00 - 6.00 on Wednesdays, in the CPNSS Seminar Room, T 206. The first class will be on 10 January 2007.

I shall be addressing the issue of what consciousness IS and why it MATTERS. The discussion will take off from my book "Seeing Red: a Study of Consciousness" (HUP, 2006), but will go further. I shall be seeking feedback from the class as to how to the develop the ideas about Consciousness and Selfhood in this book.

This class is officially listed as Research Seminar for the LSE Anthropology Department. But other graduate students - especially in Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology - are welcome to attend.

Students' participation in this class will not be graded. The class is meant more as an intellectual treat.

Nicholas Humphrey
LSE School Professor
Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science

Viewing of Nicholas Humphrey’s film
THE FAMILY THAT WALKS ON ALL FOURS

November 15 2006

With an introduction by Nick Humphrey and discussion of the film

Press release (March 2006):

Millions of years ago, our distant ancestors stood up and never walked on all fours again. For many, it is the moment we made the leap from ape to man. But, last year scientists discovered a family that never made this leap and is alive today. With exclusive access to the family, this film tells their extraordinary story and examines the controversy their discovery has caused in the scientific community.

One of the scientists leading the research into the family is LSE evolutionary psychologist, Professor Nicholas Humphrey. He says: "This could be hugely important – a living example of how our ancestors walked before they became bipedal.”

The documentary features interviews with scientists from across the world and their response has been mixed. American palaeoanthropologists think the family's skeletons could hold vital clues about the origin of man. A Turkish neurophysiologist believes they are wholesale genetic throwbacks – a living 'missing link'. Whilst German geneticists believe that they hold the key to a breakthrough gene for bipedality. UK researchers, however, contend that no single faulty gene could produce the first human quadrupeds the modern world has ever seen.

Producer Jemima Harrison, says: "The family raises profound questions about what it is to be human. They walk like animals and that's very disturbing at first. "But we were also very moved by this family's tremendous warmth and humanity."

The family is very poor, has had little medical help and lives in a small village in Turkey. The parents, who are closely related, have had 19 children. Most were normal, but six were born with what looks like brain damage. Five of these, aged between 18 and 34, walk quadrupedally. The family are treated as outcasts by many of the villagers. The programme is an intimate portrait of their everyday life. It asks what should be done to help the family and whether it is possible for the quadrupeds to learn to walk.

International Workshop funded by the ESRC

Bringing together anthropological and psychological methods in the study of cognitive development and cultural transmission

6 and 7 January 2006
London School of Economics and Political Science

PARTICIPANTS

Catherine Allerton, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Rita Astuti, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Clark Barrett, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
Nicolas Baumard, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS
Maurice Bloch, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Russ Burnett, Department of Psychology, Hebrew University
Susan Carey, Department of Psychology, Harvard University
Fabrice Clement, Faculté des sciences sociales et politiques, Lausanne University
Gergely Csibra, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College
Jules Davidoff, Centre for Cognition, Computation & Culture, Goldsmiths College
Daniel Fessler, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
Bradley Franks, Social Psychology Institute, LSE
Peggy Froerer, Department of Anthropology, Brunel University
Rochel Gelman, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science
Paul Harris, Graduate School of Education, Harvard
Nicholas Humphrey, CPNSS, LSE
Nicola Knight, Culture & Cognition, Michigan University & CPNSS, LSE
Elena Lieven, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Hugo Mercier, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS
Aude Michelet, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Eleonora Montuschi, CPNSS, LSE
Stephen Nugent, Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College
Denis Regnier, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Paulo Sousa, Culture & Cognition, Michigan University & ICC, Belfast
Dan Sperber, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS
Charles Stafford, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Jamie Tehrani, Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Diversity, UCL
Christina Toren, Department of Anthropology, Brunel University
Robert, Turner, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, UCL
Chih-yuan Wang, Department of Anthropology, LSE
Sandra Waxman, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University
Andrew Wells, Social Psychology Institute, LSE
Harvey Whitehouse, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford

PAPERS

Rita Astuti
Interdisciplinary collaborations: The view from anthropology

Sandra Waxman
Core folkbiological concepts from a developmental and cross-cultural perspective: why is the concept 'alive' so elusive?

Peggy Froerer
Understanding illness causality in a rural Indian tribal community

Elena Lieven
Researching in teams: anthropology, developmental psychology and linguistics

Nicola Knight
Cognitive origins of cultural order: the impact of psychological theory on anthropological concerns

Paul Harris
The child's construction of reality - via testimony

Maurice Bloch
Interpreting the false belief task: Malagasy villagers and psychologists compared

Dan Fessler
Blending methods and making trade-offs: Investigating shame in two disparate cultures

Charles Stafford
Linguistic and cultural variables in the psychology of numeracy

Rochel Gelman
Are developmental psychologists that different from anthropologists?