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Conference Announcement Theme: Extension and Embodiment in Cultural Evolution Type: International Conference Institution: Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH), University of Cambridge Location: Cambridge (United Kingdom) Date: 19.–20.9.2013 __________________________________________________ The noted social anthropologist Clifford Geertz warned in 1973 that ‘the main source of theoretical muddlement in contemporary anthropology is a view which […] is right now very widely held—namely, that [...] “culture [is located] in the minds and hearts of men.” ’. The view that Geertz opposed is precisely the one upheld by many influential cultural evolutionists: as Richerson and Boyd put it in their (2005) manifesto for an evolutionary approach to culture, ‘culture is (mostly) information stored in human brains’. This standoff is symptomatic of a more general debate over the proper role of appeals to cognition in understanding cultural change and cultural stasis: cultural evolutionists have tended to argue that cognition has central explanatory relevance, while many social anthropologists (with some notable exceptions) have recently been sceptical of such appeals to cognition (Bloch 2012). In this conference, our contributors look at the question of whether cognition itself occurs solely ‘in human brains’, or whether cognition should instead be properly thought of as occurring partly in embodied action, or partly in extra-bodily artefacts (Clark and Chalmers 1998). Appeals to embodied or extended forms of cognition open up the possibility of a variety of rapprochements between cultural evolution and social anthropology, for they signal moves away from a conceptualisation of cultural traits as atoms located in the heads of individuals, and towards a notion of cognition as partially constituted by, or realised in, social and technical environments (Henare et al 2007). Papers Wybo Houkes: Technology and cumulative cultural evolution Emma Flynn: Developmental niche construction Michael Wheeler: Moving out: Cultural evolution and extended cognition Cecelia Heyes: Cultural inheritance of mindreading Tim Ingold: Personal knowledge: Embodied, extended or animate? Jesse Prinz: The culturally embodied mind Location Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences University of Cambridge S1, Alison Richard Building 7 West Road Cambridge CB3 9DT Registration Free online registration via the link on the right hand side of this page. Please note that places are limited. Deadline: Monday 16 September 2013 Convenors Beth Hannon (University of Cambridge) Tim Lewens (University of Cambridge) Contact: Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences University of Cambridge S1, Alison Richard Building 7 West Road Cambridge CB3 9DT Tel: +44 1223 766886 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2497/ __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
