Culture and Cognition

Brian Boyd’s Evolutionary Account Of Art: Fiction Or Future?

by Jan Verpooten

published in Biological Theory

There has been a recent surge of evolutionary explanations of art. In this article I evaluate one currently... more There has been a recent surge of evolutionary explanations of art. In this article I evaluate one currently influential example, Brian Boyd’s recent book On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (2009). The book offers a stimulating collection of findings, ideas and hypotheses borrowed from a wide range of research disciplines (philosophy of art and art criticism, anthropology, evolutionary and developmental psychology, neurobiology, ethology, etc.), brought together under the umbrella of evolution. However, in so doing Boyd lumps together issues that need to be separated, most importantly, organic and cultural evolution. In addition, he fails to consider alternative explanations to art as adaptation such as exaptation and constraint. Moreover, the neurobiological literature suggests current evidence of biological adaptation for most of the arts is weak at best. Given these considerations, I conclude by proposing to regard the arts instead as culturally evolved practices building on pre-existing biological traits.

Hints of Beauty in Social Cognition: Broken Symmetries in Mental Dynamics

by John Bolender

The cognitive appeal of the cosmological argument

by Helen De Cruz

Co-authored with Johan De Smedt, published in Method & Theory in the Study of Religion

The cosmological argument has enjoyed and still enjoys substantial popularity in various traditions of natural... more The cosmological argument has enjoyed and still enjoys substantial popularity in various traditions of natural theology. We propose that its enduring appeal is due at least in part to its concurrence with human cognitive predispositions, in particular intuitions about causality and agency. These intuitions seem to be a stable part of human cognition. We will consider implications for the justification of the cosmological argument from externalist and internalist perspectives.

The Burning Saints: Cognition and Culture in the Fire-walking Rituals of the Anastenaria

by Dimitris Xygalatas

forthcoming by Equinox Press, London.

The Burning Saints is an anthropological account of the fascinating tradition of fire-walking rituals performed by the... more The Burning Saints is an anthropological account of the fascinating tradition of fire-walking rituals performed by the communities of the Anastenaria in Northern Greece in honour of Saints Constantine and Helen.

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and insights from various disciplines across the humanities and the natural sciences, this book offers a multi-level approach of the Anastenaria. It examines the historical development and sociocultural context of the Greek fire-walking tradition, while at the same time placing it within a wider framework of highly arousing rituals, discussing possible social, psychological and neurobiological factors that may be involved in their performance. Of particular interest is the role of emotional and physiological arousal involved in the performance of such rituals in motivating participation, mediating experience and providing meaning for it.

Social Class, Culture, and Cognition

by Igor Grossmann

Co-authored with M.E.W.Varnum, published in "Social Psychological, and Personality Science", 2010'

There are competing accounts of the relationship among social class, culture, and cognition. An interactive hypothesis... more There are competing accounts of the relationship among social class, culture, and cognition. An interactive hypothesis suggests the relationship between social class and cognitive tendencies varies inasmuch as societies differ in their endorsement of those cognitive tendencies. An alternative additive hypothesis suggests that class-related environments promote differences in cognition. The authors addressed the validity of these accounts by simultaneously examining the effects of class among Americans (an independent society) and Russians (an interdependent society). Consistent with the additive hypothesis, lower social class was associated with more holistic cognition and more interdependent self-views in both countries. In Study 1, people from lower social class backgrounds and Russians displayed less dispositional bias. In Study 2, people from lower social class backgrounds and Russians demonstrated more contextual attention, more nonlinear reasoning about change, and more interdependent self-views (less self-inflation). Furthermore, in Study 2 differences in self-views mediated country and class effects on cognitive tendencies.

Review: Denis Dutton (2008). The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution. Bloomsbury, New York, NY. $25.

by Ryan Nichols

Dutton, Denis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution (Bloomsbury, 2008) in Journal of Cognition and Culture 10 (2010): 404-407.

Last paragraph: To both the popular reader and the academic with developed interests in related fields, this book... more Last paragraph: To both the popular reader and the academic with developed interests in related fields, this book offers good food for thought, and, because Dutton is a truly talented writer with rich, provocative ideas, it is enjoyable to read. But to the academic with knowledge of the surrounding literature the book will also appear to be uninformed by knowledge of relevant literature in evolution, methodologically incoherent in important respects, and poorly argued on some points.

Is Linguistic Determinism an Empirically Testable Hypothesis?

by Helen De Cruz

published in 'Logique et Analyse', 2009, 208: 327-341

Unconscious mental processes and the racial achievement gap

by Brian Earp

Earp, B.D. (2010). Automaticity in the classroom: Unconscious mental processes and the racial achievement gap. Journal of Multiculturalism in Education, Vol 6 No 1, 1-22.

Theories of Embodied Knowledge: New Directions for Cultural and Cognitive Sociology?

by Gabe Ignatow

published in 2007 in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour

Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance... more Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be conceived of as fundamentally embodied, because sensory information is a fundamental component of experience as it is stored in long-term memory, and because bodily responses and intuitions often precede reflexive or strategic thought. I argue that the challenge of embodied knowledge for cultural sociology is threefold: to develop cultural theories of motivation; to specify the ways in which the body structures discourses endogenously; and to specify how embodied motivations and embodied discourses interact.

Paley's iPod: The cognitive basis of the design argument within natural theology

by Helen De Cruz

Co-authored with Johan De Smedt, Published in Zygon, 2010, vol. 45

The argument from design stands as one of the most
intuitively compelling arguments for the existence of a... more The argument from design stands as one of the most
intuitively compelling arguments for the existence of a divine Creator. Yet, for many scientists and philosophers, Hume’s critique and Darwin’s theory of natural selection have definitely undermined the idea that we can draw any analogy from design in artefacts to design in nature. Here, we examine empirical studies from developmental and experimental psychology to investigate the cognitive basis of the design argument. From this it becomes clear that humans spontaneously discern purpose in nature. When constructed theologically and philosophically correctly, the design argument is not presented as conclusive evidence for God’s existence but rather as an abductive, probabilistic argument. We examine the cognitive basis of probabi-
listic judgments in relationship to natural theology. Placing emphasis on how people assess improbable events, we clarify the intuitive appeal of Paley’s watch analogy. We conclude that the reason why some scientists find the design argument compelling and others do not lies not in any intrinsic differences in assessing design in nature but rather in the prior probability they place on complexity being produced by
chance events or by a Creator. This difference provides atheists and theists with a rational basis for disagreement.

An Extended Mind Perspective on Natural Number Representation

by Helen De Cruz

Published in Philosophical Psychology, 2008, vol. 21

Experimental studies indicate that nonhuman animals and infants represent numerosities above three or four... more Experimental studies indicate that nonhuman animals and infants represent numerosities above three or four approximately and that their mental number line is logarithmic rather than linear. In contrast, human children from most cultures gradually acquire the capacity to denote exact cardinal values. To explain this difference, I take an extended mind perspective, arguing that the distinctly human ability to use external
representations as a complement for internal cognitive operations enables us to represent natural numbers. Reviewing neuroscientific, developmental, and anthropological evidence, I argue that the use of external media that represent natural numbers (like number words, body parts, tokens or numerals) influences the functional architecture of the brain, which suggests a two-way traffic between the brain and cultural public representations.

Toward an Integrative Approach of Cognitive Neuroscientific and Evolutionary Psychological Studies of Art

by Helen De Cruz

Co-authored with Johan De Smedt, published in Evolutionary Psychology, 2010, vol. 8, 695-719.

This paper examines explanations for human artistic behavior in two reductionist research programs, cognitive... more This paper examines explanations for human artistic behavior in two reductionist research programs, cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Despite their different methodological outlooks, both approaches converge on an explanation of art
production and appreciation as byproducts of normal perceptual and motivational cognitive skills that evolved in response to problems originally not related to art, such as the discrimination of salient visual stimuli and speech sounds. The explanatory power of this reductionist framework does not obviate the need for higher-level accounts of art from the humanities, such as aesthetics, art history or anthropology of art.

How Does Complex Mathematical Theory Arise? Phylogenetic and Cultural Origins of Algebra

by Helen De Cruz

published in "C. Gershenson, D. Aerts, & B. Edmonds (Eds.), Worldviews,  science and us: Philosophy and complexity (pp. 338–351).

Algebra has emergent properties that are neither found in the cultural context in which mathematicians work, nor in... more Algebra has emergent properties that are neither found in the cultural context in which mathematicians work, nor in the evolved cognitive abilities for mathematical thought that enable it. In this paper, I argue that an externalization of mathematical operations in a consistent symbolic notation system is a prerequisite
for these emergent properties. In particular, externalism allows mathematicians to perform operations that would be impossible in the mind alone. By comparing
the development of algebra in three distinct historical cultural settings—China,the medieval Islamic world and early modern Europe—I demonstrate that such
an active externalism requires specific cultural conditions, including a metaphysical view of the world compatible with science, a notation system that enables the symbolic notation of operations, and the ontological viewpoint that mathematics is a human endeavour. I discuss how extending mathematical operations from
the brain into the world gives algebra a degree of autonomy that is impossible to achieve were it performed in the mind alone.

Why are some numerical concepts more successful than others? An evolutionary perspective on the history of number concepts

by Helen De Cruz

Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 306-323

From the history of mathematics, it is clear that some numerical concepts are far more pervasive than others. In a... more From the history of mathematics, it is clear that some numerical concepts are far more pervasive than others. In a densely multimodular mind, evolved cognitive abilities lie at the basis of human culture and cognition. One possible way to explain the differential spread and survival of cultural concepts based on this assumption is the epidemiology of culture. This approach explains the relative success of cultural concepts as a function of their fit with intuitions provided by conceptual modules. A wealth of recent evidence from animal, infant, and neuroimaging studies suggests that human numerical competence is rooted in an evolved number module. In this study, I adopted an epidemiological perspective to examine the cultural transmission of numerical concepts in the history of mathematics. Drawing on historical and anthropological data on number concepts, I will
demonstrate that positive integers, zero, and negative numbers have divergent cultural evolutionary histories owing to a distinct relationship with the number module. These case studies provide evidence for the claim that science can be explained in terms of evolved cognitive abilities that are universal in Homo sapiens.