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Latest blog posts

What explains foxhole theism?
Helen De Cruz 04/04/2012
Policing friendships. Lessons from the equine world
Denis Tatone 15/03/2012
What it is about women?
Pascal Boyer 20/02/2012
What's the point of talking to your child?
Alex Cristia 11/02/2012
Incredible! Listening to ‘When I’m 64’ makes you forget your age
Olivier Morin 30/01/2012
Are humans innately bad social scientists?
Nicolas Baumard 26/01/2012
Twelve Lessons (Most of Which I Learned the Hard Way) for Evolutionary Psychologists
Dan Fessler 20/01/2012
Blogs from ICCI contributors
Olivier Morin 11/01/2012
Why are some languages more regular than others?
Dan Sperber 01/01/2012
The scope-severity paradox
Anikó Sebestény 30/10/2011
Atheist clergymen and belief in belief
Helen De Cruz 22/10/2011
An epidemiology-of-representations solution to a WWII shipwreck mystery
Dan Sperber 16/10/2011
Why are human beings so interested in explaining misfortune?
Pascal Boyer 12/08/2011
Epistemic vigilance... and epistemic recklessness
Pascal Boyer 07/08/2011
Snipe hunters of preys with low epistemic vigilance
Radu Umbres 02/07/2011
Mèng Zǐ (372 – 289 BCE) on the moral organ
Nicolas Baumard 24/06/2011
Adam Smith (1723-1790) on mirror neurons and empathy
Nicolas Baumard 23/06/2011
Smith (1723-1790) on innateness and cultural variability
Nicolas Baumard 22/06/2011
Adam Smith (1723-1790) on ultimate and proximate causes in psychology
Nicolas Baumard 21/06/2011
Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) on intuitive and reflective processes
Nicolas Baumard 20/06/2011

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"Times Higher Ed", stop muddying the waters

Details: Michael Stewart; Sunday, 30 November 2008; Blog Michael's blog

I don’t want to turn myself into a blogger obsessed with sloppy scientific coverage in the media, but I feel someone ought to note, if only for the record, the absurd and misleading comments by Hannah Fearn in the British Times Higher Education Supplement – the trade journal of UK academics. In one of the lead articles in the 20th November issue she claims that ‘anthropology is at war with itself’ having “split firmly into two factions – social anthropologists and evolutionary anthropologists.” (See here).

Compared to the 1970’s when the AAA infamously debated (and defeated) a resolution denouncing EO Wilson’ s 1975 ‘Sociobiology’ textbook as "an attempt to justify genetically the sexist, racist and elitist status quo in human society,” signs of brutal conflict today are, in reality, conspicuous by their absence...

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Your brain needs a British headmistress

Details: Michael Stewart; Wednesday, 19 November 2008; Blog Michael's blog

(Editor's note) Anthropologist Michael Stewart considers the unexpected impact of pop-cognitive science on British schoolgirls.

I was struck this week how easily work in the field of cognition and culture is acquired and transposed by others with strange agendas – as is always the case with an academic discipline that is making waves.

life_cheltenham_classroom_gothic

The Girls’ neural architecture will be well protected by Cheltenham Ladies' College educational architecture (Cheltenham Ladies' college in the 50s).

Time was when tribal justifications were all the rage. In the late 1960s it was anthropologists whose writings set the printing presses churning. Mary Douglas, Edmund Leach and even Colin Turnbull became household names in educated families. More recently, evolutionary explanations seem to been the mode at the millennium and now it is the turn of ‘cognitive science.’ With Nature running a new, occasional series on ‘what it is to be human’ kicked off recently by Pascal Boyer and followed up by Eors Szathmary (on language origins) it is clear that ‘culture and cognition’ is the tune of the moment.

And while the field should make the most of its fifteen minutes of fame, there is a downside...

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Another possible alternative explanation for IFT

Martin Stehberger 24/04/2012

Imagine a hypothetical participant in these studies who, for some reason, never feels any anxiety of any kind. The death-priming won't cause this person any anxiety, but it may divert attention away from the small practical issues, such as "what do I…

What's wrong with "intentional stance"?

José-Luis Guijarro 16/04/2012

Maybe, Daniel Dennett is out of fashion. maybe he was never in fashion, I don't really know. To me his idea about the intentional stance that people seem to adopt when unable to understand a given system which in one way or anther bothers them, seems…

Possible alternative explanation for IFT

Martin Stehberger 05/04/2012

Maybe an alternative solution to the IFT puzzle can emerge if we distinguish between, on the one hand, an eventual death after a fulfilled life and, on the other, an immediate, premature death. In contrast to the second, the first kind of death is no…

Crushing a dispute with a smile (ahem, a bared-teeth display)

Denis Tatone 17/03/2012

Dear Nicolas, Thanks for your comment. While re-reading Thierry's reply to Boehm, I realized how many times I read about infanticide or cannibalism (mostly) by males in primate societies without ever thinking how the tolerance showed toward the infan…

Impartial intervention, or pragmatic intervention?

Nicolas Baumard 16/03/2012

Thank you Denis for this very interesting discussion and for pointing out that the result, albeit new, is not that surprising since the same behavior is also observed in others species. This reminds me of Berndard Thierry's own observation of policin…

Not fairness, not mutual interest ... cognitive dissonance maybe

Christophe Heintz 07/03/2012

Fairness? Nicolas: I do not understand why attacking a woman because of her clothes is fair. It does not look fair to me at all, I must admit, and I don’t see what are the payoffs that would make it fair to anybody. If a woman display any sign of imm…

A couple of references

Brent Strickland 25/02/2012

Thank you for the interesting original post and comments. I've enjoyed reading this discussion. I did a bit of research on this and think there could be a few references to add. (1) Ingram., D. (1989) First language acquisition: Method, descri…

Emotions as regulators of social behavior

Kovács András Bálint 24/02/2012

Since there is a large variety of social reactions to female body display, the explanation of the most excessive reactions described in the question must cover all other versions too. The explanation of the ultra-orthodox or islam extremists’ respons…

Women are not allowed by social group to own their bodies

José-Luis Guijarro 22/02/2012

Maybe I am being banal, but as some feminist say, the problem here, it seems to me, is the social idea that reproduction is too important to accord reproductive individuals the possession of their bodies. I am talking about biological (i.e., giving b…

"Rigtheous" women and "promiscuous" men

Radu Umbres 21/02/2012

I agree with Nicolas that "committed" women are often upholding patriarchical ideologies and this is highly relevant for the phenomenon. And this would support the hypothesis of protecting the "common good" with mutual benefits for participating wome…

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Latest blog posts

What explains foxhole theism?

Policing friendships. Lessons from the equine world

What it is about women?

What's the point of talking to your child?

Incredible! Listening to ‘When I’m 64’ makes you forget your age

Are humans innately bad social scientists?

Twelve Lessons (Most of Which I Learned the Hard Way) for Evolutionary Psychologists

Blogs from ICCI contributors

Why are some languages more regular than others?

The scope-severity paradox

Atheist clergymen and belief in belief

An epidemiology-of-representations solution to a WWII shipwreck mystery

Why are human beings so interested in explaining misfortune?

Epistemic vigilance... and epistemic recklessness

Snipe hunters of preys with low epistemic vigilance

Mèng Zǐ (372 – 289 BCE) on the moral organ

Adam Smith (1723-1790) on mirror neurons and empathy

Smith (1723-1790) on innateness and cultural variability

Adam Smith (1723-1790) on ultimate and proximate causes in psychology

Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) on intuitive and reflective processes