Cecilia Heyes, "Cognitive Gadgets"
Duration: 25 mins 4 secs
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About this item
| Description: | This is a talk from Cecilia Heyes (All Soul's College, Oxford). It formed part of Session Three of The Human Mind Conference, "Self & Other: Social Cognition & Communication." |
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| Created: | 2017-10-30 09:47 |
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| Collection: | The Human Mind Conference |
| Publisher: | University of Cambridge |
| Copyright: | Cecilia Heyes |
| Language: | eng (English) |
| Distribution: |
World
(downloadable)
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| Explicit content: | No |
| Abstract: | I will suggest that distinctively human cognitive mechanisms – including imitation, mindreading, and language – are cognitive gadgets. Like slingshots, hour glasses and spinning wheels, they are products of cultural evolution. This view from ‘cultural evolutionary psychology’ combines the computationalism of evolutionary psychology with a specific, selectional variety of cultural evolutionary theory. Supported by evidence from animals, children and adults, cultural evolutionary psychology distinguishes our genetic starter kit (consisting of temperamental and attentional biases, and souped-up, general-purpose mechanisms of learning and memory), from the impressive, special-purpose cognitive mechanisms found in mature adult humans. It implies that the mental processes that make human lives so different from those of other animals are both more agile and more fragile than is typically assumed. |
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