Cognition and Culture Reader
Welcome to the Cognition and Culture Reader! This reader intends to give an overview of the field of Cognition and Culture. All the papers are freely available on the Internet! (If some of the link below are broken, please tell us).
This is the beta version of our reader prepared by Nicolas Baumard. Of course, it needs improving and it will need regular updating. We would be grateful to members of the Institute for suggestions (keeping in mind that we are aiming at a useful short selection, not at exhaustivity, please contact us here if you have any suggestion).
Introduction
Domains
- Arts and artifacts
- Cooperation (morality, norms, sympathy)
- Cultural transmission
- Emotions (expression, recognition, variation)
- Family (kinship, sex, gender relationships)
- Language
- Living beings (taxonomy, teleology, physiology)
- Mathematics and Physics (number, space, object, causality)
- Minds (agency detection, theory of mind)
- Religion, ritual and magic
- Social life (social norms, reputation managment, coalition formation)
A primer on cognition
Basics
Barrett, C. & Kurzban R., (2006) Modularity in cognition: Framing the debate- Boyer, P. & Barrett, H. C., (2005). Evolved Intuitive Ontology: Integrating Neural, Behavioral and Developmental Aspects of Domain-Specificity
- Haselton, M.G. & Nettle, D., (2005) The Paranoid Optimist: An Integrative Evolutionary Model of Cognitive Biases
- Cosmides, L. & Tooby J. (1997) Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
- Sperber, D., (2005) Modularity and relevance: How can a massively modular mind be flexible and context-sensitive?
Books
Bloom, P. (2004) Descartes' baby: How the science of child development explains what makes us human?- Buss, D. (2000), Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind
- Hirschfeld L & Gelman S (2000), Mapping The Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture
- Keil, F. (1992) Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development
- Mithen, S., (2000) The prehistory of mind
- Pinker, S., (2000) How the minds works
- Sterelny, K. (2003), Thought in a hostile world
More
- Gigerenzer, G. & Todd, P., (1999) Simple heuristics that makes us smart
- Spelke, E. & Kinzler, K. (2007) Core knowledge
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
Evolutionary psychology under attack (Dan Sperber)- Altruistic adoption in chimpanzees? (Nicolas Baumard)
A primer on culture
Basics
- Gergely, G. & Csibra, G. (2006) Sylvia's recipe: The role of imitation and pedagogy in the transmission of cultural knowledge
- Sperber, D., (2001) Conceptual tools for a natural science of society and culture
- Sperber, D. & Hirschfeld, L. (2004) The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity
- Tomasello, M., (1999) The human adaptation to culture
- Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L., (1992) Psychological foundations of culture
Books
- Bloch, M. (1998) How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy
- Boyd, R. & Richerson P., (2005) Not by genes alone
- Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S.P.(2005) The innate mind
- Enfield, N.& Levinson, S., (2006) Roots of human sociality
- Pinker, S. (2003) The blank slate
More
- Bloch, M., (2005) Where did anthropology go? or The need for "human nature"
- Dehaene, S. & Cohen, L. (2007) Cultural recycling of cortical maps
- Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W.C., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama, Y., Tutin, C. E. G., Wrangham, R. W. & Boesch, C. (1999) Cultures in Chimpanzees
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Cumulative culture in the lab and chimpanzees (Helen de Cruz)
- Cultural attraction among birds (Hugo Viciana)
- Culture and perception (Simon Barthelmé)
- How much of a difference does culture make? (Olivier Morin)
- How cultural is cultural epidemiology? The case of enculturation (Christophe Heintz)
- In praise of neuroscience (for once) (Nicolas Baumard)
- Is language a replicator? (Nicolas Claidière)
Arts and artifacts
Basics
- Bloom, P. (1996) Intention, history, and artifact concepts
- Dehaene, S. & Cohen, L., (2007) Cultural Recycling of Cortical Maps
- Jackendoff, R., & Lerdahl, F., (2006) The Capacity for Music: What Is It, and What's Special About It?
- McDermott, J. & Hauser, M., (2005) The innateness of Music: Innateness, Uniqueness and Evolution
Books
- Dehaene, S., (1997) The number sense
- Dehaene, S., (2009) Reading in the brain
- Hutchins, E., (1996) Cognition in the wild
- Small, J. P. (1997), Wax Tablets of the Mind: cognitive studies of memory and litteracy in classical antiquity
More
- Changizi,M., Zhang, Q., Ye, H. & Shimojo, S., (2006) The Structures of Letters and Symbols throughout Human History Are Selected to Match Those Found in Objects in Natural Scenes
- Goody, J., (1977) The domestication of the savage mind
- Interdisciplines (2005) Art and cognition workshop
- Miller, G., (2001) The mating mind How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
- Peretz, I. (2006) The nature of music from a biological perspective
- Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (2008) A deflationary account of metaphors
- Yates, F. (1975), The Art of Memory
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Astounding! Readers use their imagination when reading (Olivier Morin)
- Book review: The art instinct by Denis Dutton (Roberto Casati)
- Cartoon faces (Olivier Morin)
- Paleolithic art: awesome - but not religious (Pascal Boyer)
- The universality of music: Cross-cultural comparison, the recognition of emotions, and the influence of the the Backstreet Boys on a Cockatoo (Nicolas Baumard)
- Cognition under the high brow (Pascal Boyer)
Cooperation (morality, norms, sympathy)
Basics
- Haidt, J. (2001) The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment
- Henrich, J. et al. (2005) "Economic man" in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies
- Robinson, P., Kurzban, R., and Jones, O. (2007) The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice
- West, S. A., Griffin, A. S. & Gardner A. (2007) Social semantics: altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection
Books
- Turiel, E. (1998) The culture of morality
- Waal, F. de (1996) Good natured
- Frank, R., (2004) What price the moral high ground?: ethical dilemmas in competitive environments
- Ridley, M., (1997)The origins of virtue: human instincts and the evolution of cooperation/li>
More
- Baron, J. (1994) Non consequentialist decisions
- Gurven, M. & Winking, J., (2008) Collective Action in Action: Prosocial Behavior in and out of the Laboratory
- Haidt, J. & Joseph, C. (2004) Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues
- Hauser, M., Cushman, F., Young, L., Kang-Xing Jin, R. and Mikhail, J. (2006) A Dissociation Between Moral Judgments and Justifications
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Are dogs (and chimps) really inequity-averse? (Nicolas Baumard)
- Elinor Ostrom: Nobel Prize in Anthropology! (Nicolas Baumard)
- Experimental demonstration of cultural attitudes to punishment? (Nicolas Baumard)
- Is culture what makes us cooperate? (Jean-Baptiste André)
- Simian Oeconomicus (Nicolas Baumard)
- Simian Oeconomicus II (Nicolas Baumard)
Cultural transmission
Basics
- Claidière, N. & Sperber, C. (2009). Imitation explains the propagation, not the stability of animal culture
- Gergely, C. & Csibra, G. (2009) Natural pedagogy
- Mascaro, M. & Sperber, D. (2009) The Moral, Epistemic, and Mindreading Components of Children's Vigilance towards Deception
- Sperber, D. & Mercier, H. (2009) Reasoning as a Social Competence
- Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, Behne, T. and Moll, H., (2005) Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition
More
- Harris, P. & Koenig, M., (2006) Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn about Science and Religion
- Horner, V. & Whiten, A., (2005) Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens)
- Southgate, V., Chevallier, C. and Csibra, G. (2009) Sensitivity to Communicative Relevance Tells Young Children What to Imitate
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- The scope of natural pedagogy theory (I): babies (Pierre Jacob)
Emotions (expression, recognition, variation)
Basics
- Fessler, D. & Haley, K., (2003) The strategy of affect: Emotions in human cooperation
- Haidt, J., Rozin, P., McCauley, C., Imada, S. (1997) Body, psyche, and culture: The relationship between disgust and morality
- Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2000) Evolutionary psychology and the emotions
- Tracy, J.S. & Matsumoto, D., (2008) The spontaneous expression of pride and shame: Evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays
Books
- Frank, R., (1988) Passions within reasons
- Eckman, P., (2003) Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
More
- Breugelmans, S. M. & Poortinga, Y. H. (2006) Emotion without a word: Shame and guilt among Rarámuri Indians and rural Javanese
- Fessler, D.M.T. & Navarrete, C.D. (2003) Meat is good to taboo: Dietary proscriptions as a product of the interaction of psychological mechanisms and social processes
- Keltner, D., & Anderson, C., (2000) Saving Face for Darwin: The Functions and Uses of Embarrassment
- Matsumoto, D., Willingham, B. and Olide, A. (2009) Sequential dynamics of culturally moderated facial expressions of emotion
- Zhong, C.B., & Liljenquist, K., (2006) Washing away your sins: Threatened morality and physical cleansing
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Japanese smileys vs. Ekman faces (Olivier Morin)
Family (kinship, sex, gender relationships)
Basics
- Astuti, R. (1998) It's a boy, It's a girl!": Reflections on Sex and Gender in Madagascar and Beyond
- Bloch, M. & Sperber, D., (2002) Kinship and evolved psychological dispositions: The Mother's Brother controversy reconsidered
- Geary, D.C. & Flinn, M.V. (2001) Evolution of human parental behavior and the human family
- Hrdy, S.B., (2007) Evolutionary context of human development: The cooperative breeding model
- Lieberman, D., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2007) The architecture of human kin detection
- Wilson, M. & Daly, M. (1998) Lethal and Nonlethal Violence Against Wives and the Evolutionary Psychology of Male Sexual Proprietariness
Books
- Hrdy, S.B., (2009) Mothers and others
More
- Jones, D. (2004) The universal psychology of kinship: evidence from language
- Lieberman, D., Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. (2000) The evolution of human incest avoidance mechanisms: an evolutionary psychological approach
- Needham, R. (1973), Remarks on the Analysis of Kinship and Marriage
Relevant posts on the ICCI
- Book review: Mothers and others by Hrdy (Pierre Jacob)
Language
Basics
- Bloom, P., (1997) Intentionality and word learning
- Evans, N. & Levinson, S., (2009) The Myth of Language Universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science
- Majid, A., Bowerman, M., Kita, S., Haun, D. B. M., & Levinson S.C. (2004) Can language restructure cognition? The case for space
- Pinker, S. & Jackendoff, R., (2005) The faculty of language: what's special about it?
- Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2004) Relevance Theory
Books
- Bloom, P. (2005) How children learn the meanings of words. Learning, development, and conceptual change
- Enfield, N. (2009) The anatomy of meaning
- Gumperz, J. & Levinson, S. (1996) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity
- Pinker, S. (1994) The language instinct
- Tomasello, M., (2008) The origins of human communication (the introduction is here)
More
- Boroditsky, L., (2001) Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time
- Enfield, N. J. (2008). Transmission biases in linguistic epidemiology. Journal of Language Contact
- Kay, P. & Régier, T., (2006) Language, thought, and color: Recent developments
- Origgi, G. & Sperber, D. (2000) Evolution, communication and the proper function of language
- Tomasello, M., (2009) The usage-based theory of language acquisition
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- A role for dyslexia in language evolution? (Nicolas Claidière)
- Language faculty? Semiotic system? Or what? (Dan Sperber)
- Meaning in sounds? (Simon Barthelmé)
- Can you tell the language of the mother from her baby's cry? (Nicolas Claidière)
Living beings (taxonomy, teleology, physiology)
Basics
- Astuti, R, Solomon, G.E. & Carey, S. (2004) Constraints on conceptual development: a case study of the acquisition of folkbiological and folksociological knowledge in Madagascar
- Atran, S. (1998) Folk Biology and the Anthropology of Science: Cognitive Universals and Cultural Particulars
- Kelemen, D. (1999). Functions, goals and intentions: Children's teleological reasoning about objects
- Inagaki, K. & Hatano, G. (2006) Young children's conception of the biological world
Books
- Atran, S. & Medin, D., (2009) The native mind (see the introduction available here)
More
- Barrett, H.C. & Behne, T. (2004) Children's understanding of death as the cessation of agency: a test using sleep versus death
- Greif, M.L., Kemler Nelson, D.G., Keil, F.C. & Gutierrez, F., (2006) What Do Children Want to Know About Animals and Artifacts? Domain-Specific Requests for Information
- Evans, M. (2000) Why creationism is here to stay
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Book review: The native mind by Atran and Medin (Nick Enfield)
- How persistent are intuitive (erroneous) beliefs? (Helen de Cruz)
Mathematics and physics (number, space, objects, causality)
Basics
- Boroditsky, L., (2000) Metaphoric structuring: Understanding time through spatial metaphors
- Carey, S. (2004) Bootstrapping & the origin of concepts
- de Cruz, H. (2006) Why are some numerical concepts more successful than others? An evolutionary perspective on the history of number concepts
- Dehaene, S. (2001) Precis of the number sense
- Saxe, R. & Carey, S., (2006) The perception of causality in infancy
More
- Baillargeon, R. (1994) How do infants learn about the physical world?
- de Cruz, H. & Pica, P. (2008) Number as a Test Case for the Role of Language in Cognition
- Le Corre, M. & Carey, S., (2007) One, two, three, four, nothing more: An investigation of the conceptual sources of the verbal counting principles
- Smith, C. L., Solomon, G.E.A. and Carey, S. (2005) Never getting to zero: Elementary school students' understanding of the infnite divisibility of number and matter
- Spelke, E.S. & Kinzler, K. (2007) Core knowledge
- Xu, F. & Spelke, E.S. (2000) Large number discrimination in 6-month old children
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- The debate over maths in the Amazon: still counting points (Olivier Morin)
Minds (agency detection, theory of mind)
Basics
- Astuti, R., (2001) Are we all natural dualists? A cognitive developmental approach
- Boyer, P., (2010) Intuitive Expectations & The Detection of Mental Disorder: A Cognitive Background To Folk-Psychiatries
- Call, J. & Tomasello, J. (2008) Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later
- Onishi, K. & Baillargeon, R. (2005) Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs?
- Southgate, V., Chevallier, C. and Csibra, G. (2009) Seventeen-month-olds appeal to false beliefs to interpret others' referential communication
More
- Berring, J., (2006) The folkpsychology of souls
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Is resonance the cement of society? (Nicolas Baumard)
- "No evidence of human mirror neurons" (Olivier Morin)
- Social neuroscience under attack (Olvier Morin)
Religion, ritual and magic
Basics
- Astuti, R., (2008). What happens after death?
- Barrett, J. L. & Keil, F.C., (1996) Conceptualizing a non natural entity: Anthropomorphism in Gods concepts
- Boyer, P., (2003) Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function
- Liénard, P.& Boyer, P. (2008) Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualized behavior
- Harris, P. & Koenig, M., (2006) Trust in Testimony: How Children Learn about Science and Religion
- Whitehouse, H., (2005) The cognitive foundations of religiosity
Books
- Atran, S., (2002). In gods we trust : the evolutionary landscape of religion
- Boyer, P., (2001) Explaining religion
- Maley, B., (2004) How the bible works
- Pyysiäinen, I., (2004) Magic, Miracles and Religion: A Scientist's Perspective
- Pyysiäinen, I. & Anttonen, V., (2002) Current approaches in the cognitive science of religion
- Whitehouse, H. (2000) Arguments and icons: divergent modes of religiosity
More
- Astuti, R. (2001) Are we all natural dualists?
- Berring, J., (2006) The folkpsychology of souls
- Fessler, D.M.T. & Navarrete, C.D. (2003) Meat is good to taboo: Dietary proscriptions as a product of the interaction of psychological mechanisms and social processes
- Sperber, D. (1997) Intuitive and reflective beliefs
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Death, where is thy sting? (Pascal Boyer)
- Intuitive fatalism: Adaptation or by-product? (Nicolas Baumard)
- Is Saint Nicholas a god? (Helen de Cruz)
Social life (social norms, reputation managment, coalition formation)
Basics
- Astuti, R, Solomon, G.E. & Carey, S. (2004) Constraints on conceptual development: a case study of the acquisition of folkbiological and folksociological knowledge in Madagascar
- Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. and Kurzban, J. (2003) Perceptions of race
- Haley, K.J. & Fessler, D.M.T. (2005) Nobody's watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game
- Kurzban, R. & Aktipis, A., (2007) Modularity and the Social Mind: Are Psychologists Too Self-Ish?
- Nichols, S. (2002) On The Genealogy Of Norms: A Case For The Role Of Emotion In Cultural Evolution
Books
- Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage
- Frank, R., (2000) Luxury fever: money and happiness in an era of excess
- Hirschfeld, L., (1998) Race in the making: Cognition, culture, and the child's construction of human kinds
More
- Cohen, D., Nisbett, R., Bowdle, B.F. and Schwarz, N. (1996) Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An "Experimental Ethnography"
- Kurzban, R., DeScioli, P. and O'Brien, E. (2007) Audience effects on moralistic punishment
- Kurzban, R. & Leary, M. (2001) Evolutionary Origins of Stigmatization: The Functions of Social Exclusion
- Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., et al. (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation
Relevant posts on the ICCI blog
- Why you should rank your friends (but not tell them) (Ophelia Deroy)
Denis, your story strikes a Romanian chord. The situation around here is even worse, from what I can tell. But it is quite a fascinating question, with different answers from different points of view.
For an economist, it is a matter of price formation. In the state system, Romanian doctors are paid a fixed (and miserable) wage, largely unrelated to quality or effort. The incentive to pocket bribes is huge, and patients know it so well. In the private sector (with transparent and varied prices for medical services), bribes are almost unheard of. Also, there is a more or less efficient market for bribes. Patients find out how much a doctor expects, usually from past patients, or from other doctors. Surgeons receive more than GPs, professors more than debutants, etc.
But I think there is something more about "medical envelopes", from a cognitive point of view. First of all, there is a vast asymmetry of competence between doctors and patients, which gives the former a large freedom of action. Is this pill better, or another one? Surgery or not? Home treatment or hospitalisation? To make things worse, the post-hoc reckoning is not very helpful, since most decisions may be medically justified, but you might also end up dead. The patient is at the mercy of the practitioner since she does not know what choices are better. The best way to make sure one gets the proper treatment is to insure the benevolence of the doctor, and a bribe is the simplest path to gain the doctor's amity.
Second, there is something special about this particular social exchange: the patient is dealing in an ultimate value - her health. Something everyone in Romania says is that there is no price too high to be healthy. (Paradoxically, giving up smoking somehow does not make the list - self-hint-hint-nudge-nudge). If people would risk not bribing a policeman to avoid a fine, they are extremely unlikely to jeopardise their health in this manner. One cannot afford to stick to abstract principles (like discouraging corruption) when her life is at stake.
Finally, there is something like a Maussian gift in the affair: one passes a fat envelope even without the explicit mention of an economic exchange. It is not that the surgeon would not operate without being bribed - the patient just shows gratitude without visible economic reckoning. Of course, under the veil of generosity stands the solid self-interest of the patient. The fat envelope is meant to make sure that no scalpel is lost in her belly. But no-one says it out loud. It's a "I know that you know that I know etc" which makes sure that the transaction is smooth and polite.
To end with a personal anecdote: I was (and to some extent I still am) very wary of giving out envelopes to doctors. A little bit of moral prudishness, a little bit of fear (what if he feels insulted?), a bit of monetary unsaviness. Those who are more competent in these matters reassured me: "just put the envelope on his desk - he knows what to do next" After all, he is the expert, and I am not.
"Very well-rounded analysis. A few thoughts. First, I am glad you mentioned nurses in your comment* because in the article you discount this, perhaps unintentionally. I remember my aunt consistently bribing the nurses when my uncle was recovering from a stroke for several months in the hospital. Also, I've had many conversations with my family here in Hungary about this, trying to understand the rationale behind this irrational system (I'm originally from the US). I think both motivations could be at play here. I got the impression that, in addition to the bribe, people are still very sensitive to the "wage supplement" aspect. That is, most people I've talked to find the wages of doctors and other health care providers rather deplorable. Even if GMs are a considerable expense for my working class family members, they seems to use the wage supplement as a way to render this dysfunctional reality more palatable somehow. I also think there is a third factor at work here - but I think it's linked to the others. I've witnessed situations where doctors behave very condescendingly toward patients or their families, despite a hefty bribe of some 20,000 HUF. Part of that harks back to the days of the socialist regime - when the power of public authorities was unquestioned. As one of my Hungarian friends likes to say about health clinics here: "they just want to make you feel like they still have power over you." When my aunt and I went to visit my cousin in critical care last year, the doctor didn't want to give us the time of day. We didn't give her a tip, but we kept pressing her for answers. I said to her, "is it a virus or a bacteria?" The doctor looked at me like a deer in headlights. I think she was surprised I even knew the difference. She opened up quite a lot to us after that and we never gave her a tip. Finally- and I'll get off my soapbox - private insurance systems are not necessarily more transparent. The US being a case in point. There is a great (surprisingly) 28-pg TIME article about this, "The bitter pill: why medical bills are killing us." I'm sue you'd find it relevant. Anyway, thanks so much for posting this!!"
*This is the comment by me which Eva refers to:
"I should have also added that, in fact, there is GM directed to nurses when they are perceived as the primary caretakers. Usually this is the case for families having elderly parents in retirement houses."
That GM thing reminds me of a funny routine that happens in France: around the end of the year, firemen and mailmen knock at your door to sell (ugly) calendars. Folk wisdom holds that if you don't buy the calendar, firemen will not rush if there is a fire in your house. Similarly, mailmen will be more likely to lose important mail you receive. What is striking is that this belief seems to carry on though it makes complete non-sense. I bet the situation is a bit different as for GM: the physician obviously remembers you and s/he is more likely to act benevolently towards you with a bit of extra money...
Azzouni certainly has the bona fides to weigh in on this. But it seems to me that the pure sociology of it isn't quite so simple.
Take Wiles' first proof of Taniyama-Shimura. It had an error, but it took concerted efforts by extreme experts to locate it. But that's not the end of the story. It turns out that he and Richard Taylor were able to ascertain that piecing together two parts of the theory that didn't quite seem to work on their own was in fact enough to 'patch' the proof together (Wiles himself says as much).
So, Yes, the original proof was wrong. To a much lesser extent, Perelman didn't fill in all the blanks in his landmark proof of Poincare, leading to a (minor scandal) where two other mathematicians claimed to give the "first" proof based on the "ideas of" Perelman and Hamilton.
The question is this: if someone had done the patching of Wiles' proof for him, would THEY be the prover? How large does the hole have to be? When an error is found, who gets to decide whether it is trivial, whether it wrecks the proof entirely, and who will be the one credited with the insight that makes the whole thing work?
These are not trivial matters, and the issue isn't apportioning credit, but deciding what an error truly is. Typos don't count. Proving incorrect results certainly do. But what about "generally correct" ideas that eventually lead to a proof? How loose do those ideas have to be?
I don't think there's ANY argument about when large, demonstrable errors have been found in published proofs. But there are many other cases -- like de Branges' purported proof of the Riemann Hypothesis -- that fall through these neat cracks.
In respect to kinship terminologies, Levinson's question, "What constrains this exuberant diversity of systems?", is not answered by Kemp and Regier's analysis for one simple reason: Terminologies have a structure and logic, like grammars for language, that determine the possible range of kinship terminologies. Kemp and Regier assume any partition of the space of genealogical relations is a potential terminology and then show that existing terminologies occupy only a small portion of this space due, they assert, to a tradeoff between simplicity and usefulness. This would be like saying a sentence can be any subset of all possible vocabulary words, then asserting that the realized languages have sentences that are a tradeoff between simplicity and usefulness, but ignoring the fact that the simplicity and usefulness of sentences is created through the grammar of the language that constrains what are admissible sentences. The same is true for kinship terminologies, and the answer to Levinson's question has already been made by showing that kinship terminologies have a generative structure that determines the corpus of kinship terms, starting from the primary kin terms of a terminology, along with kinship concepts that are expressed in the terminology (such as reciprocity of kin terms), and the kinship structural properties embedded in a particular terminology (Read 1984, 2001, 2007, 2009; Read and Behrens 1990; Leaf and Read 2012, among others). For example, the difference giving rise to the fundamental division of terminologies into descriptive versus classificatory (bifurcate merging) terminologies derives from two different ways that sibling relations are conceptualized in different societies: (1) a sibling is the child of my parent other than myself (descriptive terminologies) or (2) siblings are those persons who have parents in common (classificatory terminologies) (Bennardo and Read 2007; Read, Fischer and Leaf 2013). Trying to understand kinship terminologies (and hence kinship systems) without first working out the generative logic of a terminology is like trying to understand languages without working out the grammar of a language. Extensive work has already been published on the generative logic of kinship terminologies and this work makes evident what constrains the variability in kinship terminologies that Levinson asks about.
References
Bennardo, G. and D. Read 2007. Cognition, Algebra, and Culture in the Tongan Kinship Terminology. Journal of Cognition and Culture 7: 49-88.
Leaf, M. and D. Read. (2012) Human Thought and Social Organization: Anthropology on a New Plane. Lanham: Lexington Press
Read, D. l984. An algebraic account of the American kinship terminology. Current Anthropology 25: 4l7-440
Read, D. 2001 What is Kinship? In The Cultural Analysis of Kinship: The Legacy of David Schneider and Its Implications for Anthropological Relativism, R. Feinberg and M. Ottenheimer eds. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Pp. 78-117.
Read, D. 2007. Kinship Theory: A Paradigm Shift. Ethnology 46(4):329-364
Read, D. 2009. Another Look at Kinship: Reasons Why a Paradigm Shift is Needed. Algebra Rodtsva 12:42-69.
Read, D. and C. Behrens. 1990. KAES: An expert system for the algebraic analysis of kinship terminologies. J. of Quantitative Anthropology 2:353-393.
Read, D., Fischer, M. and M. Leaf. 2013. What are kinship terminologies, and why do we care? A computational approach to analyzing symbolic domains. Social Science Computer Review 31(1): 16-44.
Yes, kinship is back -- or more accurately, it is reclaiming its original vigor. Haven't you heard of the Kinship Circle? For each of the past three years, and as part of this year's annual meeting of the Amerian Anthropological Association as well, we have had highly successful sessions on kinship. The sessions have been integrated with the themes of each of the meetings. We have had an international group of scholars from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar and the United States, presenting a wide range of papers, ranging from more "classic" questions about kinship systems to current research that is challenging some of our theoretical ideas about what constitutes kinship. The papers from the first two sessions will be published shortly.
Dwight Read
Fadwa El Guindi
Dear learned scholar of mathematicians, I disagree with your premise that mathematicians do not disagree, and, being wonderful souls, are easily converted to consensus. No less a scholar, intellectual and role model than Von Neumann (1961), the founder of game theory, argued against your premise. In fact, he bemoaned that unlike physicists, mathematicians who don't agree behave in an unsocial manner by striking out in new directions, leaving their conflicts unresolved. In his article, the first in his collected works, Von Neumann wished that mathematicians disagreed as physicists did. Whenever conflict arose between two physicists (e.g., Bohr and Einstein), physicists refused to ignore it, often bringing their field to a standstill until a resolution was found (i.e., consensus via debate, unlike your fanciful example of consensus without debate). I have long cherished Von Neumann's insight, and his remarkable paper on mathematicians. BTW, in my research, I too have found that consensus without conflict is indeed possible, except that none of the participants can agree on the result.
Von Neumann, J. (1961). The mathematician. Collected works, Pergamon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/magazine/the-professor-the-bikini-model-and-the-suitcase-full-of-trouble.html?_r=3&
People concur in saying that Frampton is unusually gullible.
This story of an incredibly gullible scientist (or so it seems) might also be relevant to your remark that the optimality of epistemic vigilance can only be measured in view of its fit to the milieu. An optimal epistemic vigilance would enable people to believe most of the true things they are told and to disbelieve most of the false things they are told (especially the costly one). The inconvincible sceptic as well as the gullible has less than optimal epistemic vigilance. The optimal vigilance fall in between, but its precise position depends on whether the environment is full of false claims or not. It would be interesting to know whether there are different cognitive developments of epistemic vigilance depending on the type of environment in which a child grows up. This could account for some variability across individuals.
As for scientists, they are supposed to instantiate high epistemic vigilance. So how can Frampton be at the same time so gullible and a good physicist? I see two non-exclusive possibilities:
(1) Frampton exercises epistemic vigilance, but only in the domain of physics. This can happen because the scientific environment fosters argumentative abilities. By contrast, Frampton did not wish or need to convince others that he was having a relation with a beautiful model. He did not need to find good reasons for his beliefs and did not wish to adress counter-arguments. Hugo Mercier pointed to me that this difference in the argumentative context could explain the fact that Newton, with so great achievements in physics, did so badly in chemistry/alchemy. There was in alchemy no need to convince others; it was a secret enterprise.
(2) Frampton does not exercise much epistemic vigilance, but does well in physics nonetheless because the process of checking the plausibility of claims is distributed to others. Only very selected information arrives to his creative mind. This is thanks to the process through which scientific information comes to be distributed---the review process for instance. In science, epistemic vigilance is distributed across individuals and institutionalised. In that context, some gullibility might be an advantage. The schoolgirl, in any case, does better by believing the apparently crazy things that her teacher says (e.g. sound is the vibration of matter). At the research level also, it can pay to believe improbable hypotheses; it means pursuing a high risk, high reward research programme.
Thank you all for the very interesting discussion!
First, I would like to recommend a paper by Paul Rubin entitled “Folk Economics," where some of the views that have come out of the discussion are treated in an evolutionary framework.
In addition, I would like to mention that during my doctorate I have worked on the intellectual aversion for the market economy from a historical angle, studying the implications of the rhetorical phenomenon of the personification of money in the English literature of the early modern period. Comparing the economic views expressed by satyrical dramatists and pamphleteers to those of the economists of the time, aka the “early mercantilists,” I found out that the characterization of money as a supernatural force that takes hold of human behavior (a “visible god,” as Shakespeare called it) reveals a naive understanding on the part of the writers of the social and economic transformation taking place at the time. Most of them overlooked the economic implications of that transformation, and construed it merely as a process of corruption of traditional ethical values. This investigation led me to conclude that a promising line of research on the aversion for the market economy might consist in understanding how lay people make sense of complex economic ideas.
Let me give you a hint. When economists use such concepts as rationality, profit, cost, trade, competition, and so on, they are using words that embed a whole set of assumptions, a shared knowledge that defines the economic way of thinking. On the other hand, also common people are exposed to this jargon in their daily life: they often use the same words, but they arguably attach to it a different, non-technical meaning. How does that meaning form? Drawing on the culture and cognition research program, I have hypothesized that it forms according to the way people relate their own understanding on the word in question with real-world examples of which they have personal experience. More generally, our opinion on matters on which we have no special competence may emerge from the relation we establish between the delusively familiar ideas involved in them and our own interpretation of the small piece of world we see around us.
I have more fully developed this hypothesis here. I’ve recently also uploaded a draft here, in which I explore the topic of the aversion to the market using as a case study the Italian movies of the economic boom era. It turns out, that the Italian filmmakers, just as the English dramatists of a few centuries earlier, were quite wary of the capitalistic development of the country.