Changing Minds: Cultures and Cognition in Evolution
Cognitio 2009
Young researchers conference in cognitive science
Montréal, June 4th, 5th & 6th 2006.
Changing Minds: Cultures and Cognition in Evolution
Cognitive Science, which now includes disciplines such as cognitive genetics, evolutionary developmental neuroscience and cognitive anthropology, is unfolding a fresh view of the mind and its relation to culture, fresh yet strangely reminiscent of pre-20th century conceptions of the mind, from Plato to Freud. According to this view, much of cognition is done by unconscious automatic processes, evolved by natural selection to solve specific adaptive problems faced by hominids and early humans. To ensure the replication of their genetic builders, some of these automatic processes may even produce aspects of culture as extended human phenotype. Many cognitive scientists add an adapting mind to this adapted mind, a conscious analytical rule-following processor that can, on occasion, override actions planned by the automated processes. The conscious processor's main task is to adapt the general goals of genes (replicate) to the local environment in which the individual bearing those genes finds herself. To do so, the conscious processor possesses a general learning mechanism that allows it to reproduce any identifiable cultural item (from local norms to local prosody and local food preferences), a learning mechanism that also opens it to rogue cultural items: mind viruses. The nature of the cultural items being copied and of the conscious processor's copying mechanism may even be such that a whole new type of evolutionary process is going on over our minds: the evolution of cultural variants, or memes. If this is so, we, that is our conscious self, are but a battleground in which genes and memes fight for the right to activate our muscles.
Cognitio 2009 invites graduate students and young researchers in cognitive science, anthropology, biology, psychology, computer science, philosophy, or any discipline concerned with cognition, evolution, and culture to present their work at the conference. Suggested topics include:
- comparative psychology and animal cultures;
- culture and cognition in cross-cultural perspective;
- evolutionary psychology and the adapted mind;
- cognitive neurosciences and cultural learning;
- the modelisation of cultural evolution;
- the evolution and origins of language;
- the evolution of culture and cognition in the human lineage;
- epistemological issues related to the study of cognition, evolution, and culture.
Submission of proposals for the conference is done through the EasyChair system. We are only asking for 600 words abstracts. EasyChair will allow you to upload a PDF paper if you want to, but only your abstract will be evaluated.
The deadline for submissions is February 20th, 2009.