In TiCS: Space, Time and Number
Trends in Cognitive Sciences is publishing a special issue on space, time and number with articles by Brian Butterworth, Manuela Piazza, Daniel B.M. Haun and collaborators, and Dori Derdikman and
New book: Human evolution and the origin of hierarchies
Philosopher Benoît Dubreuil just published a book at Cambridge University Press: Human evolution and the origins of hierarchies: the state of nature. [1] Based on his dissertation, the book promises
Special issue of Mind and Society on experimental economics
Note the Special issue of Mind and Society on "Experimental economics and the social embedding of economic behavior and cognition".
Here is the abstract of the introductory article, "The implication
Which network structures favor the rapid spread of new ideas, behaviors, or technologies?
Forthcoming in PNAS, an article entitled "The spread of innovations in social networks" by Andrea Montanari and Amin Saberi (full text available here).
Abstract : Which network structures favor the
Why the West Rules–For Now
Ian Morris, a Stanford historian, has just published a new sweeping history of humanity. In Why the West Rules--For Now, he builds a theory of the evolution of human societies and tries to explain
Social interaction in utero?
Fascinating findings by Umberto Castiello, Cristina Becchio, Stefania Zoia,Cristian Nelini, Luisa Sartori, Laura Blason, Giuseppina D'Ottavio, Maria Bulgheroni, and Vittorio Gallese in an article
Poetic rhyme reflects cross-linguistic differences in information structure
An interesting article in the last issue of Cognition suggesting how cognitive differences in language processsing can influence literary tradition. Michael Wagner (McGill) and Katherine McCurdy
Is philosophy universal?
Justin Erik Halldor Smith has won this year's 3 Quarks Daily 2010 top philosophy prize with a post on his blog [jehsmith.com] entitled "More on Non-Western Philosophy (the Very Idea)". This provoca
Nick Enfield reviews Searle and Runciman
In the Times Literary Suppement, September 3, 2010, 3-4, an interesting review (available here) by Nick Enfield of Making the social world by John Searle and The theory of social and cultural
Scott Atran on religion and political violence
Scott Atran gave a lecture entitled "For Friends and Faith: Understanding the Paths and Barriers to Political Violence" at Hampshire College in the lecture series on science and religion.
The
Distress, culture and gene expression
An interesting paper forthcoming in PNAS showing how cultures may favour different expressions of the same gene: "Culture, distress, and oxytocin receptor polymorphism (OXTR) interact to influence
The Zeus Problem
Forthcoming in the Journal of Cognition and Culture and available here, an article by Will M. Gervais and Joseph Henrich, "The Zeus Problem: Why Representational Content Biases Cannot Explain Faith
Evolved dispositions and cultural norms. A discussion in Science
In March, Science published a research article by Joe Henrich et al. ("Market, Religion, Community Size and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment") showing that market integration and participat
Moral camouflage or moral monkeys?
An interesting short essay by Peter Railton on the authenticity of morality from an evolutionary point of view available here and open to discussion here with already some interesting contributions
The Price of Altruism
A new biography of the theorical biologist George Price by Oren Harman that situates Price's contribution in the history of biological ideas about altruism from Darwin and Kropotkin to Hamilton and
The weirdest people in the world?
In a forthcoming issue of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, anthropologist Joe Henrich, and psychologists Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan review the available database of comparative social and
A psychological theory of human tool use
An interesting and ambitious article by François Osiurak, Christophe Jarry,and Didier Le Gall: "Grasping the affordances, understanding the reasoning: toward a dialectical theory of human tool use"
The self in ‘face’ and ‘dignity’ cultures
Two interesting articles by Young-Hoon Kim and Dov Cohen: "Information, Perspective, and Judgement about the Self in Face and Dignity Cultures" in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2010 36:
Pinker on Mind and Media
In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Mind over Mass Media", Steven Pinker (June, 10, 2010) challenges persistent clichés. It begins:
"New forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing
Learning and prestige among chimpanzees
An interesting article by Victoria Horner, Darby Proctor, Kristin Bonnie, Andrew Whiten, Frans de Waal: "Prestige Affects Cultural Learning in Chimpanzees" in PLoS ONE, 2010, 5(5) freely available
A deflationary approach to economic games
Forthcoming in PNAS, an important paper by Rolf Kümmerli, Maxwell Burton-Chellew, Adin Ross-Gillespie and Stuart West: “Resistance to extreme strategies, rather thanprosocial preferences, can
Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman: Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition
An interesting paper by Mark Nielsen and Keyan Tomaselli “Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition” in Psychological Science,May 2010, 21: 729-736.
Do not confound homophily and contagion!
At arXiv.org, a relevant paper by Cosma Shalizi and Andrew C. Thomas “Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies” (available here).
Abstract:
We
The Moral Life of Babies
In Today's New York Times Magazine, Paul Bloom has a long interesting and easy-read piece (freely available here) on "The Moral Life of Babies" that concludes:
"Morality, then, is a synthesis of the