Cultural
Evolution Workshop ~ 13-15 January 2006
Download printer-friendly Word file
Dear Participants,
Welcome to Saint Louis
–
and many thanks for coming over. We hope this will prove to be a very
pleasant
as well as stimulating event. Here is a schedule of presentations and
discussion, as well as some details of logistics.
Where am I?
The hotel is in the
centre of
Clayton, Saint Louis¹ second downtown. There are many caf�s and other
places
around for those who want to escape from the social pressure for a
while. For
those who want to jog or walk: this is a very safe and lush
neighbourhood.
What am I supposed
to do here?
The sessions will all
take place
in the Crystal Room in the Crowne Plaza Hotel. They will all start with
two or
three presentations – that is, short (10mn maximum) statements of the
state of the art, the main outstanding questions, or other important
points you
want to emphasize. This will be followed by discussion, each session
lasting an
hour and a half.
How to get breakfast
Coffee and various
Danish will be
available next to the Crystal Room from 8am. More substantial fare is
available
as an extra meal at the Crowne Plaza restaurant.
What to do on a
Friday night
There are no formal
arrangements.
There are many restaurants in the neighborhood, not more than two
blocks from
the Crowne Plaza, that you can explore in small groups. The Hotel
brochures
provide phone numbers to make a reservation – all these places may be
pretty busy on a Friday night.
How to recoup some
money
Washington University
will refund
your airfare and other travel expenses with the usual celerity of large
institutions.
Please fill out the form that Kelly will give you on Friday. If you are
not a
US resident, she will need to photocopy pages of your passport. The
hotel
charge will be billed directly to Washington University. This does not
include
incidentals such as phone bills, room service, or meals other than
those
included in the workshop schedule.
Kelly
Braden & Pascal Boyer
Friday
13 January
|
8:00 9:00 |
|
|
9:00 10:30 |
What is to be done? Boyer Order of the day from the
MC Modeling cultural
evolution
Boyd Shennan Henrich Cultural evolution models
(I). Quantitative
models of cultural evolution, their assumptions, their application to
actual cultural trends, their use in Darwinian archaeology. Can the
models have predictive value? Do they rely on particulate notion of
cultural units (memes)? Do they require imitation as a central process
of transmission? |
|
10:30 11:00 |
|
|
11:00 12:30 |
Epidemiology of culture Sperber Claidiere
Fessler Cultural evolution models
(II). The
logic of epidemiological models and models of dispositions for specific
cultural behaviors. What is the ³rich psychology² assumed in such
models? Is it ad hoc? If imitation is not the central process, what
explains cultural transmission? |
|
12:30 2:00 |
|
|
2:00 3:30 |
Evoked and acquired
culture Tooby
Fessler Cultural evolution models
(III). Evolutionary psychology models. Is cultural acquisition an
adaptation? Or are there as many cultural acquisition mechanisms as
there are conceptual domains? |
|
3:30 4:00 |
|
|
4:00 5:30 |
Morality, norms and
feelings Nichols
JPrice Baumard Applications of cultural
evolution models (I). What is the psychological foundation of moral
behavior? How do the reciprocity requirements of Œcommunity of norms¹
translate as motivation? What does developmental evidence tell us about
transmission process? |
Saturday
14 January
|
8:00 9:00 |
|
|
9:00 10:30 |
Economic norms &
reciprocity
Kurzban Henrich MPrice Applications of cultural
evolution models (II). Do economic norms rely on an intuitive standard
of fairness? How are they affected by actual economic institutions? How
detailed are evolved intuitions about social exchange? How do they map
onto impersonal exchange? |
|
10:30 11:00 |
|
|
11:00 12:30 |
Intuitive sociology
& evolved politics Hirschfeld Kurzban
Harris Applications of cultural
evolution models (III). What are the foundations of an evolved
³intuitive sociology²? Do the intuitions reduce to small-group
interactions? What is the psychology required for large-scale social
interaction? What psychology for institutions? |
|
12:30 2:00 |
|
|
2:00 3:30 |
Religion as a
by-product of what? Slone Norenzayan
Lienard Applications of cultural
evolution models (IV). Is a disposition for religious concepts and
norms an adaptation? If a by-product, what adaptive structures does it
require? Does cognitive account explain religious motivation? Does it
explain recurrent behaviors such as collective ritual? What is
transmitted in religious practice? |
|
3:30 4:00 |
|
|
4:00 5:30 |
Brains and cultural
evolution Boyer Tooby Evolved ontologies as
system-level neural structures. Is there an easy mapping from evolved
capacity to neural systems? What is the contribution of cognitive
neuroscience? |
|
7:00 Dinner |
Workshop dinner, Crowne
Plaza Hotel |
Sunday
15 January
|
8:00 9:00 |
|
|
9:00 10:30 |
Doing real research Baumard Harris
JPrice Claidiere How does one apply
cultural evolution models in empirical research? Is the evolutionary
paradigm providing new answers for classical questions? How does this
work in current research programs? What is to be done?
(reprise) Boyer
(& tutti) Various compliments,
admonishments and programmatic epigrams. |
|
10:30 12:00 |
|
