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Culture and Cognition
Introduction
Precursors
Anthologies, Handbooks, Special Issues
Cultural Evolution of Cognition
Cultural Learning and Scaffolding in Evolution
Nativism versus Anti-nativism
Culture in Development
Cognition and Culture in Religion
Embodiment, Culture, and Expertise
Instructional and Observational Learning
Emotions
Memory
Material Culture, Distributed Cognition, and Cognitive Ecologies
New Approaches in Anthropology
Cultural Neuroscience
Language and Perception
Morality
Introduction
Culture is, notoriously, an intractably large and complex phenomenon, and any attempt to define it is
ultimately doomed to failure. However, one can characterize culture by looking at some of its crucial
elements. These can be summarized as follow: (1) Culture is both learned and inherited. That is, it
derives from one’s social environment as well as from one’s genes. (2) Culture has both universal and
variable components. That is, it consists of behavioral patterns (e.g., rules to regulate sexual behaviors,
jokes, games, art, or music) that are shared by all of humanity collectively, and by other variable
elements (e.g., perception of time and odors, interpretation of gestures) that are culture-specific and
largely acquired in developmental settings. (3) Culture gradually evolves over time and therefore is not
static. Incremental changes occur by virtue of innovations, discoveries, diffusion (temporary acquisition)
or acculturation (long-term contact with another culture). (4) Culture is transmitted, and is therefore
adaptive. Each generation passes its culture on to the next—which constantly refines it in the face of
adaptive pressures. (5) Culture is based on symbols—systems that people use to capture and
communicate their experiences, feelings, and emotions. These include language, but also images,
paintings, icons, stories, myth, legends, rituals, and so on. While no one denies the fact that culture is
important to human cognition, much of the current debate about their relations is concerned with the
precise extent to which the former can influence or determine the latter. This entry, besides providing a
general overview of the field (Precursors; Anthologies, Handbooks, Special Issues) and offering insights
about the cultural basis of human cognition (Cultural Evolution of Cognition; Cultural Learning and
Scaffolding in Evolution), makes important steps to clarify their relations. It does so by looking at a
number of domains in which culture and cognition have been studied empirically (e.g., Emotions;
Morality; Memory; Material Culture, Distributed Cognition, and Cognitive Ecologies; Language and
Perception; Cognition and Culture in Religion; Embodiment, Culture, and Expertise; Instructional and
Observational Learning), and by summarizing current findings (Cultural Neuroscience; New Approaches
in Anthropology) and theoretical perspectives (Culture in Development; Nativism versus Anti-nativism).
This helps problematizing the relation between culture and cognition, while driving further reflections on
how they reciprocally interact (e.g., causal versus constitutive contribution). These reflections are
relevant to philosophers that routinely make assumptions about the cognitive processes involved (e.g.,
perception, social cognition, language acquisition, learning, reasoning, emotion, or morality), and about
their origin, functions, interactions, development, and evolution. This entry thus represents a valuable
source to researchers in philosophy of mind, biology, and cognitive science, because it offers them
precious insights into the various mechanisms through which culture enters into human cognition. The
author would like to express his appreciation to the British Academy for the Humanities and Social
Sciences and to King’s College, London for financing his research. A very special thanks goes to Duncan
Pritchard and Daniel Rogers. Thanks also to Julian Kiverstein for helpful comments and sharp criticism
on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
Precursors
The intellectual roots of contemporary research on culture and cognition can be traced back to early work
conducted on cultural and developmental psychology, which stresses the importance of embodiment in
explaining cognition, to research carried out on symbolic and cultural anthropology, and to investigations
at the confluence of philosophy, ethnography, biology, and linguistics. In psychology, Vygotsky 1980 and
Luria 1976 were among the first to study the extent to which psychological and behavioral tendencies are
rooted in an embodied culture. In anthropology, Boas 1940 introduced the idea of culture as the primary
concept for describing differences in behavior between human groups. Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952
further contributed to the development of culture theory by defining the concept of culture in operational
and scientific terms, while Geertz 1973 successfully explored the role of symbols in constructing public
meaning across different cultures. In philosophy, Peirce 1931–1960 argued for the dependence of logical
and mathematical thinking on external symbolic systems. Another pragmatist, George Herbert Mead,
should be acknowledged for the emphasis he placed on studying communication and the influence of the
other’s perspective on our own self-conception (see Mead 1934). Winch 1964 also argued that the
principle of bivalence (the idea that every sentence expressing a proposition [of a theory under
inspection] has only one truth value) is also culturally contingent. In biology, Darwin 1872 sought to trace
the origins of genetically determined aspects of behavior and attempted to demonstrate that emotions in
both animals and humans were outwardly manifested in similar ways, so they were cultural universals. In
linguistics, the idea that the structure of a language deeply affects its speakers’ cognition, and therefore
its perception of the world, was first explored through the lenses of the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,
which essentially states that the way people think is strongly affected (if not determined) by their native
languages and cultural environments. The sharpest formulation of this hypothesis is probably in Whorf
1941, written for Sapir’s Festschrift. Bruner 1985 also presents an extremely interesting analysis of the
social and interpersonal nature of language. Similarly, Mikhail Bakhtin has been enormously influential for
his work on the dialogical nature of thinking and for the emphasis he placed on studying the role of
dialogue and communication in the transmission of culture (see Bakhtin 1981).
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Introduces the theory of dialogism, which is an approach to texts and discourse that emphasizes their
historical, sociocultural, and context-specific nature. Central to this approach is the idea that meaning is
created and recreated through dialogic processes. Bakhtin’s work is crucial for current research in the
philosophy of cognitive science because it offers the conceptual tools to understand cognitive
phenomena as context-dependent and in relations to each other.
Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.
This volume is a collection of essays on the science of anthropology. Here the author introduces and
discusses the idea that people see the world through the lens of their own culture, and therefore that
culture may condition people to understand and think about the world differently.
Bruner, Jerome S. Child’s Talk: Learning to Use Language . New York: Norton, 1985.
Bruner explores how children acquire language, and also studies the mechanisms that may facilitate this
learning. The central thesis of the book is that language is the vehicle for the transmission of culture.
Darwin, Charles. The Expression of Emotion in Animals and Man. London: Methuen, 1872.
An important source for a defense of the idea that emotions are cognitive universals; that is, that they are
invariant patterns across species.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
The book presents a new method to explain human behavior. This method is based on the idea of “thick
descriptions.” Thick descriptions are, according to Geertz, descriptions that not only specify facts about a
particular culture, but also explain the context, conceptual structures, and/or hidden meanings underlying
it. Geertz’s approach has been very influential among philosophers of mind, especially among embodied
cognition theorists.
Kroeber, A. L., and Clyde Kluckhohn. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions . Papers of
the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952.
This book helpfully catalogues and critically reviews the many and varied definitions of “culture” that
scholars have produced since the late 19th century. The authors end up with 164 different definitions.
Luria, A. R. The Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations . Harvard, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1976.
This book presents experimental data collected among several groups of minorities (Uzbeks and Kirghiz)
in remote parts of Central Asia. These data are used to support the main thesis of the volume: the idea
that mental processes are social and historical in character.
Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.
This book lays down the foundation of symbolic interactionism—the idea that human action is symbolic in
character. This theory describes the mind as the capacity to use symbols to create meanings for the
world, and society as a network of interactions in which humans symbolically interpret behaviors and
thoughts. This theory is relevant to current research in philosophy of mind because it emphasizes the role
of individuals in shaping their own environments.
Peirce, Charles S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 vols. Edited by C. Harshorne, P.
Weiss, and A. Burk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1960.
One very important thesis contained in this magnum opus is the idea that we don’t have immediate
access to our inside realm. Peirce argues that thinking does not start with introspection, but rather with
extrospection. Our thoughts begin with percepts that are out in the open. Accordingly, our cognitive
processes cannot be fully understood by solely looking at the activities of the internal machinery of our
brain.
Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes . Harvard, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1980.
The volume presents a selection of Vygotsky’s most important essays. One of the central ideas of this
book is that the mind cannot be understood in isolation from the surrounding society. Human intelligence,
it is argued, develops in interaction with people and is characteristically mediated through objects and
social activity. This work has inspired many contemporary approaches to philosophy of mind (such as
embodied and extended theories of cognition).
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language.” In Language,
Culture, and Personality: Essays in Memory of Edwards Sapir. Edited by Leslie Spier, 75–93. Menasha,
WI: Sapir Memorial Publication Fund, 1941.
This paper defends the idea that we cognize and perceive the world in the way we do because of the
specific set of language habits that characterize our environments and our communities. Language, on
Whorf’s account, is thus understood as the ability to structure and predispose our choices and
interpretations about the world.
Winch, Peter. “Understanding a Primitive Society.” American Philosophical Quarterly 1.4 (1964): 307–
324.
Engages the ethnographic work of Evans-Pritchard and claims that different cultures are characterized by
different sets of norms and values—which, however, are equally valid. The goal of this article is to
develop a position that prevents anthropologists from concluding that a given culture is “wrong” about a
certain reality (cultural imperialism). Winch’s position has become the cornerstone of modern
anthropological work.
Anthologies, Handbooks, Special Issues
There are currently many anthologies, handbooks, and special issues investigating the relation between
cognition and culture, which would also work well as textbooks for advanced undergraduate or
postgraduate courses. For instance, Yasnitsky, et al. 2014 offers a clear and readable review of the most
important work conducted in the nascent field of cultural-historical psychology. Valsiner 2012 provides a
comprehensive analysis of the notion of culture in different contexts and disciplines (including
psychology, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, and biology). Carruthers, et al. 2007 provides
an interesting treatment of the relations between culture and cognition from the perspective of
evolutionary psychology and massive modularity. Keller, et al. 2002 argues for an integrated treatment of
biology and culture in the study of ontogenetic development. Chiao 2009 studies the emergence of
complex and sophisticated human behaviors as a result of the dynamic interaction of genes, brains, and
their cultural environments. Lerner, et al. 2010 expands on these results and embraces a life-span
perspective on learning, sociality, and emotionality. Heyes and Frith 2012 showcases new ideas and
discoveries in research on the evolution of human cognition, while Downes and Machery 2013 offers new
resources for exploring the debate around the meaning of human nature. According to Downes and
Machery 2013, human nature consists of the properties that we possess as a result of evolutionary
processes. These properties vary across our species because of both genetic and phenotypic variation,
leading to human diversity. Human diversity is observed in the production of different cultures and is
therefore paramount to understanding our rather unique cognitive evolution.
Carruthers, Peter, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen P. Stich, eds. The Innate Mind. Vol. 2, Culture and
Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Highly interdisciplinary volume, edited by philosophers, on the key theme of this entry. The volume
addresses fundamental questions, such as: How do minds generate and shape cultures? How do
phylogenetically inherited elements interact with ontogenetically developed practices to allow for the
realization of sophisticated cognitive capacities?
Chiao, Joan Y. Cultural Neuroscience: Cultural Influences on Brain Function. Progress in Brain
Research. New York: Elsevier, 2009.
This volume explores the extent to which cultural practices influence the neural processes underlying
sophisticated human abilities (e.g., perception, decision making, memory). It also highlights the
theoretical and methodological challenges that neuroscientists have to face when studying such culturally
driven abilities. Useful resource for any philosopher interested in the empirical debate surrounding the
relations between culture and cognition.
Downes, Stephen, and Edouard Machery. Arguing about Human Nature: Contemporary Debates.
London: Routledge, 2013.
This book examines, through an in-depth analysis of a series of key debates in philosophy, psychology,
biology, and anthropology, the meaning of the notion of “human nature.” Thirty-five carefully selected
essays offer the reader a vast perspective on what it means to be human.
Heyes, Cecilia, and Uta Frith, eds. Special Issue: New Thinking: The Evolution of Human Cognition.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences 367.1599 (2012).
This special issue features contributions from world-leading philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists,
anthropologists, linguists, and biologists. Our unique cognitive abilities, it is argued, are not the result of
domain-specific (genetically inherited) adaptations, but rather have emerged from domain-general,
developmental processes.
Keller, Heidi, Ype H. Poortinga, and Axel Schölmerich, eds. Between Culture and Biology: Perspectives
on Ontogenetic Development. Cambridge Studies in Cognitive Perceptual Development 8. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
This book presents new perspectives on ontogenetic development. In particular, it argues that the
biological and psychological mechanisms underlying human cognitive behaviors need to be studied in
conjunction with the complex cultural and historical contexts supporting such behaviors. The volume is a
precious resource for any philosopher interested in culture and its relation with human cognitive
development.
Lerner, Richard M., Michael E. Lamb, and Alexandra M. Freund. The Handbook of Life-Span
Development. Vol. 2, Social and Emotional Development. New York: John Wiley, 2010.
A handbook about social and emotional development, featuring contributions from leading psychologists,
psychiatrists, and neuroscientists. A must-read for any philosopher interested in the empirical
underpinning of sociality, emotionality, and their relations with human cognition.
Valsiner, Jaan, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012.
This handbook linking anthropology, archaeology, history, and sociology with psychology and
developmental biology is a must-read for any philosopher interested in the relations between culture and
cognition, as it provides new insights into how human cultural constructions organize and direct human
thinking and acting in a variety of social and ecological contexts.
Yasnitsky, Anton, René van der Veer, and Michel Ferrari, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-
Historical Psychology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
This handbook provides one of the most representative treatments of the scientific legacies of the
Russian scholars Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria. Its major goal is to specify the field of cultural
psychology as an integrative/holistic/developmental paradigm that studies the social, evolutionary, and
historical interplay between mind, brain, body, and culture.
Cultural Evolution of Cognition
Work on the evolution of cognition has a long history and spans various disciplines, including philosophy,
psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. A major focus of researchers working in this field is
the study of the evolution of factors that favored the emergence of specific cognitive abilities in humans
and the analysis of how genes and culture combine to produce the extreme diversity observed in our
species. Tooby and Cosmides 1995 famously defended a modular account of human cognition rooted in
evolutionary psychology. According to this account, psychological adaptations are central to human
cognitive evolution. Sperber and Hirschfeld 2004 refined and broadened such an account and proposed
that a modular organization of human cognitive abilities can favor the recurrence, cross-cultural
variability, and cultural stability of a wide range of cultural representations. More recently, Barrett 2015
showed how the human brain and its stunning capacities can be legitimately understood as the result of
the work of specialized psychological adaptations and as the product of a very high degree of plasticity.
In parallel to the research discussed above, a number of thinkers have also investigated the ways in
which cognition and culture coevolved (see, for example, Dennett 1996 and Lewens 2015). Richerson
and Boyd 2005 describes the evolution of human cognition as a product of the many interactions
between genes (or a set of psychological adaptations) and the environment (the pressure that culture
puts on genes). Similar considerations are made in Gintis 2011, which reflects on the adaptive advantage
of an extended window for learning in humans; Laland, et al. 2001, which emphasizes the power of
organism-environment interactions in constructing and scaffolding our cognitive and social capacities;
and Henrich and McElreath 2003, which shows how many behavioral adaptions can evolve culturally. On
a similar vein, Tomasello 1999 investigated the cognitive capacities of children and argued that such
capacities, especially the ability for symbolic culture, emerge developmentally during ontogeny. Jablonka
and Lamb 2014, while not denying the importance of genes in evolution, challenges neo-Darwinism and
three individuated extra-genetic dimensions (epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic) that underpin human
cognition. Richerson and Christiansen 2013 explores the central role of cultural evolution in the
production of different aspects of human behavior (technology, language, and religion).
Barrett, H. Clark. The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve . Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2015.
Brings together recent findings in biology and cognitive science and defends the thesis that adaptive
specialization and flexibility (or plasticity) are not at odds. This book is therefore important because it
contributes to bridging the long-standing divide between “nativist” (based on innateness) and empiricist
(based on learning) accounts of development.
Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1996.
Looks at the repercussions of Darwinian theory for our understanding of human evolution. The crucial
chapter for this entry is chapter 12. The central idea of the chapter is that memes (ideas, symbols, or
practices that can be transmitted from one individual to another via processes such as writing, speech,
gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena) allow for the production of cumulative human cultural
evolution.
Gintis, Herbert. “Gene-Culture Coevolution and the Nature of Human Sociality.” Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366.1566 (2011): 878–888.
Gintis argues that humans’ unique cognitive capacities are the product of an extended evolutionary
dynamic that involves the reciprocal interplay between genes and culture over long periods of time. Gintis
also claims that gene-culture coevolution is responsible for the emergence of many other primarily
human characteristics (such as morality, the capacity to empathize with others, and the ability to share
social norms).
Henrich, Joseph, and Richard McElreath. “The Evolution of Cultural Evolution.” Evolutionary
Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 12.3 (2003): 123–135.
Crucial source to understand the interplay between culture and cognition. The central thesis of the paper
is that the psychological adaptations that explain the incredible success of our species are culturally
driven; that is, they are accumulated and transmitted inter- and cross-generationally via mechanisms of
social learning and through the evolutionary dynamics of cultural systems.
Jablonka, Eva, and Marion J. Lamb. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and
Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Rev. ed. Illustrations by Anna Zeligowski. Cambridge, MA: MIT,
2014.
The volume challenges the idea that genes are the blueprint of evolution and argues for the influence of
culture on it (through the medium of symbolic inheritance). The authors, in particular, individuate four
“dimensions”—four inheritance systems—that play a fundamental role in human evolution: genetic,
epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic.
Laland, K. N., F. J. Odling-Smee, and M. W. Feldman. “Cultural Niche Construction and Human
Evolution.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 14 (2001): 22–33.
This paper provides a helpful introduction to Niche Construction Theory, the idea, roughly speaking, that
organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other’s environments. The
paper then illustrates the importance of niche construction for the development and evolution of human
cognition and reflects on its implications for the human sciences.
Lewens, Tim. Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Provides a lucid overview of research in the field, while offering a remarkable philosophical defense of
cultural evolutionary thinking (and of the naturalistic approach to culture that it endorses).
Richerson, Peter J., and Robert Boyd. Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
The book argues that our unique capacity for social learning stems from a psychology uniquely adapted
to create complex cultures. By drawing on results in various disciplines (such as biology, anthropology,
sociology, and economics), the authors also demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked,
and that it is precisely this interplay that yields a richer understanding of human nature.
Richerson, Peter J., and Morten H. Christiansen, eds. Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology,
Language, and Religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013.
This volume brings together researchers from biology, psychology, religious studies, anthropology,
history, sociology, linguistics, and economics to study, analyze, and explore the crucial role of cultural
evolution in the production of different aspects of human behavior (e.g., language and religious systems).
Sperber, Dan, and Lawrence A. Hirschfeld. “The Cognitive Foundations of Cultural Stability and
Diversity.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8.1 (2004): 40–46.
Attacks a reductionist explanation of culture, according to which only psychological factors matter.
Defends a modular view in which a whole range of interacting factors (including cognitive, psychological,
ecological, sociological, and emotional) help explain cultural diversity and stability.
Tomasello, Michael. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
The book argues—through the analysis of two case studies, involving communication and language
acquisition—that the roots of our extraordinary and rather unique capacity for cognition are based in our
abilities for symbolic culture.
Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. “The Psychological Foundations of Culture.” In The Adapted Mind:
Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides,
and John Tooby, 19–136. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Attacks what the authors refer to as the Social Standard Science Model, the theory asserting that the
contents of the human minds are primarily the results of social constructions. Proposes to replace this
model with an alternative framework rooted in evolutionary psychology (the Integrated Causal Model).
According to this framework, culture is based on a universal human nature, and the brain must be
understood as a collection of domain-specific processors.
Cultural Learning and Scaffolding in Evolution
Cultural learning can be defined as the capacity of a group of people within a society or a culture to learn
and pass on new information (Tomasello, et al. 1993). Cultural learning is normally achieved via
processes of enculturation (activities through which people learn the requirements of their surrounding
culture and acquire values appropriate for it). Such processes include, for instance, language acquisition
and teaching. Many researchers have argued that the capacity for cultural learning is what distinguishes
humans from other animals (e.g., Heyes 2012, Tomasello 2014, Henrich 2015). This capacity, on their
view, enabled the development of imitative practices (Hurley and Chater 2004), social cognition (Zawidzki
2013), and, ultimately, complex human societies. At the core of our capacity for cultural learning lies our
ability for cultural scaffolding (Wood, et al. 1976). Cultural scaffolding is the process of progressive
(cross-generational) accumulation of knowledge that allows individuals belonging to a given population to
inherit the epistemic and cognitive benefits (ranging from signs, survival strategies, and symbols to skills
and natural languages) of the culturally scaffolded contexts in which they have been raised (Sterelny
2003). Caporael, et al. 2013 provides one of the most sophisticated analyses to date of the various
scaffolding specificities underlying cultural learning in humans.
Caporael, Linnda R., James R. Griesemer, and William C. Wimsatt, eds. Developing Scaffolds in
Evolution, Culture, and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013.
The term “scaffolding” has been consistently used by educators to refer to the assistance that an expert
offers to a novice in acquiring new skills or in performing a new task. The goal of this book is to examine
common threads in diverse applications of scaffolding (especially in disciplines like theoretical biology,
cognitive science, or social theory) while reflecting on its importance for human cognitive evolution.
Henrich, Joseph. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating
Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
The book argues that the capacity for cultural learning is the secret of the evolutionary success of our
species. This capacity, the author claims, has enabled the development of complex human societies and
has allowed humans to acquire sophisticated cognitive abilities.
Heyes, Cecilia. “Grist and Mills: On the Cultural Origins of Cultural Learning.” Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367.1599 (2012): 2181–2191.
In this paper, Heyes argues that cultural learning is responsible for cumulative cultural evolution (the
process through which a body of relevant evolutionary information is passed from individual to individual
and across generations). Heyes also claims that cumulative cultural evolution is what has allowed for the
emergence of our unique cognitive abilities, which are not inherited but rather unfold through domaingeneral, culturally mitigated, developmental processes.
Hurley, Susan, and Nick Chater. Perspectives on Imitation. Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004.
A wonderful resource for anyone willing to understand imitation. The book brings together contributions
from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology to investigate the nature, evolution,
and development of this fascinating phenomenon. The central thesis of the book is that imitation makes
us humans, and is therefore what distinguishes us from other animals.
Sterelny, Kim. Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition . Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2003.
The book offers an account of human uniqueness that gives prominence to our extraordinary capacities
as ecological engineers; creatures capable of modifying and augmenting (via cultural inheritance) our
living environments. Sterelny also offers a compelling critique of nativist and massively modular versions
of evolutionary psychology.
Tomasello, Michael. A Natural History of Human Thinking. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
In this book, Tomasello lays out his latest views on the evolution of human cognitive behavior and
presents the “new shared intentionality hypothesis,” which suggests that there were two major transitions
in the evolution of human thinking. The first, emerging about 400,000 years ago, was a shift from
“individual intentionality,” as observed in great apes, to the “joint intentionality” of early humans. The
second, arising 100,000 years ago, was a shift from “joint intentionality” to the “collective intentionality” of
modern humans.
Tomasello, Michael, Ann Cale Kruger, and Hilary Horn Ratner. “Cultural Learning.” Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 16.3 (1993): 495–511.
In this groundbreaking paper, Tomasello and colleagues look at the notion of cultural learning and its
enabling factors and underlying mechanisms. Cultural learning is identified with instances of social
learning in which intersubjectivity plays a vital role.
Wood, David, Jerome S. Bruner, and Gail Ross. “The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving.” Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17.2 (1976): 89–100.
This paper provides the first definition of scaffolding in the literature. According to the authors, scaffolding
refers to the acts of a single more knowledgeable person (an expert, such as a parent or a teacher),
providing both motivations and support to a less knowledgeable individual (a learner), who, in virtue of
such support, achieves a specific goal or task.
Zawidzki, Tadeusz Wiesław. Mindshaping: A New Framework for Understanding Human Social
Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013.
Brings together findings from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and philosophy of
mind. The major thesis of the book is that cultural learning is central to the evolution and development of
human social cognition.
Nativism versus Anti-nativism
Nativism and anti-nativism are rival approaches to questions about the origins of knowledge and
cognition. Roughly speaking, nativism is the understanding that certain human skills or capabilities are
innate or hardwired into the brain at birth (and hence not learned from experience). Anti-nativism, on the
contrary, is the view that important elements of our understanding of the world are primarily acquired
from our interactions with the environments surrounding us. Nativist theorists typically embrace the idea
that certain innate structures subserve important aspects of human cognition (e.g., arithmetic
competences, capacity for language and reading; see, for example, Fessler and Machery 2012 and
Margolis and Laurence 2013). Some nativists believe that functionally specialized cognitive systems (or
modules) can be found in peripheral processing (e.g., low-level visual process; see Fodor 1983). Others
nativists—massive modularity theorists—instead claim that these modules have evolved in response to
specific selection pressures (communicating, prey stalking, or mate choice; see Carruthers 2006) and are
thence found in central processing (e.g., belief formation). Anti-nativists typically reject the very existence
of cognitive modules with a variety of different strategies. Karmiloff-Smith 1992, for instance, presents an
account of the human mind where flexibility and creativity are the driving forces of cognitive development
acting from infancy to middle childhood. Building and expanding on Karmiloff-Smith’s developmental
ideas, Farina 2016 presents a constructivist critique of nativism in philosophy. Prinz 2012 defends an
empiricist view, in which cultural diversity and life span experiences take center stage and are
responsible for shaping and molding the cognitive abilities with which we come to the world. Griffiths and
Stotz 2000 attacks biological determinism and argues that cognitive processes are not just inherited, but
are also constructed or scaffolded in each generation through the interaction of a wide range of
developmental resources. Anderson 2014 uses principles of brain plasticity to present a new theory of
human cognitive development (neural reuse) that explains flexibility of thought and makes the notion of
cognitive module redundant. Ingold 2004 attacks Darwinian accounts of human evolution in biology and
proposes a relational view that focuses on the dynamics of developmental systems. There are, of course,
also middle-ground positions, which try to merge together the best of nativist and anti-nativist research.
For example, Cowie 2003 attacks strong Chomskyan nativism, while retaining a moderately nativist view
of language acquisition. On a similar vein, Buller 2005 formulates one of the most devastating critiques of
massive modularity to date, but does not question the existence of localized “modules,” which on his view
results from our brain’s capacity (developmental plasticity) to adapt to local conditions. This debate
between nativism and anti-nativism is crucially relevant for our understanding of the relations between
culture and cognition. It can be said that if one supports a nativist perspective, one implicitly assumes
that culture is only playing a causal, and at best assisting, role in our cultural evolution. On the contrary, if
one argues for an anti-nativist (empiricist) view, then one makes a pretty strong commitment to the
constitutive and instrumental role of culture in molding and shaping our cognitive and social abilities.
Anderson, Michael L. After Phrenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2014.
The book defends the theory of neural reuse, a form of neuroplasticity whereby neural elements originally
developed for one purpose are put to other uses, and investigates the revolutionary implications of this
theory for the way cognition is understood within the cognitive sciences.
Buller, David J. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature .
Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005.
Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, the author develops a measured but devastating critique
of massive modularity. The core idea of the book is that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene,
but rather are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes.
Carruthers, Peter. The Architecture of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
This book is the most recent and coherent defense of the massive modularity hypothesis—the idea that
the human mind and its core faculties consist of a large number of evolutionarily adapted, highly
specialized, semi-independent modules.
Cowie, Fiona. What’s Within?: Nativism Reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Marshaling empirical evidence from computer science, psycholinguistics, and developmental psychology,
the author offers a sustained critique of strong nativism, the idea that our cognitive capacities are
hardwired into our brains at birth.
Farina, Mirko. “Three Approaches to Human Cognitive Development: Neo-nativism, Neuroconstructivism,
and Dynamic Enskillment.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67.2 (2016): 617–641.
Important philosophical source in the debate between nativists and anti-nativists. Proposes an improved
account of the role of plasticity in development and introduces the concept of “dynamic enskillment,”
which is the idea that both brain organization and cortical development are heavily dependent on
patterned practices and culture-sensitive activities throughout the life span.
Fessler, Daniel M. T., and Edouard Machery. “Culture and Cognition.” In The Oxford Handbook of
Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Edited by Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels, and Stephen P. Stich, 503–
527. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
In this review chapter, the authors embrace an evolutionary psychological approach and investigate the
relations (from a nativist perspective) between culture and cognition in four different domains: (1) the
analysis of universal features of the mind, (2) the study of features of mind that vary across cultures, (3)
the examination of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the acquisition of cultural information, and (4)
the effects of features of cognition on culture.
Fodor, Jerry A. The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology . Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1983.
This book proposes a nativist account of human cognition that rests on a distinction between functionally
specialized computational systems (modules) and more flexible central processors.
Griffiths, Paul E., and Karola Stotz. “How the Mind Grows: A Developmental Perspective on the Biology
of Cognition.” Synthese 122.1–2 (2000): 29–51.
Challenges the idea that genes are the blueprint for evolution, from a developmental systems
perspective. What individuals inherit from their ancestors, it is claimed, is not a set of unchangeable
developmental outcomes, but rather the ability to develop a mind through a series of interactions with a
wide (and evolving) range of developmental resources, including cultural resources.
Ingold, Tim. “Beyond Biology and Culture: The Meaning of Evolution in a Relational World.” Social
Anthropology 12.2 (2004): 209–221.
The paper defends a relational account of human evolution. Ingold argues that cognitive and social
abilities in humans are not genetically prespecified (inherited, predetermined, or fixed in stone at birth),
but rather emerge or develop ontogenetically from processes that are historical and evolutionary in
character.
Karmiloff-Smith, Annette. Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science.
Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1992.
Taking a stand between Piaget’s constructivism and Fodor’s nativism, Karmiloff-Smith develops a
fascinating new theory of developmental change that comprises both these approaches. Specifically, the
author defends a developmental view in which innate adaptations are channeled and specified through a
sequence of fully developmental (domain-general, culturally mitigated) changes.
Margolis, Eric, and Stephen Laurence. “In Defense of Nativism.” Philosophical studies 165.2 (2013): 693–
718.
Reviews key questions in the debate between nativism and empiricism and argues that existing empirical
evidence favors the former over the latter. The central goal of the paper is therefore to demonstrate that
nativism represents the best general framework for the scientific study of the human mind.
Prinz, Jesse J. Beyond human nature: How culture and experience shape our lives . London: Penguin,
2012.
The book presents a sustained argument against determinism (either genetic or neural). Prinz
compellingly argues that there is no good evidence for the idea that the brain is fixed and hardwired at
birth. Instead, he demonstrates that the essential and most fundamental feature of human nature is its
flexibility, the ability to adapt to different contexts and situations.
Culture in Development
The important role of culture in human development (both social and cognitive) is amply acknowledged
and widely recognized. A major controversy, however, arises when trying to address the specific question
of how much of our cognitive and social development is determined or influenced by innate qualities or
factors, and how much is instead caused, forged, and shaped by sociocultural experiences. Hirschfeld
and Gelman 1994 developed a modular (nativist) approach to cognition—an understanding in which the
basic features of cognitive behavior are evolutionarily inherited and prespecified at birth. Wexler 2006
challenged this modular understanding by pointing out the necessity to explore and investigate how
individual ontogenetic histories affect specific expertise and—more generally—human cognitive functions
across the life span. On a similar vein, Li 2003 formulated the so-called principle of developmental
biocultural co-constructivism as a way to explain how contextualized experiences, learning, and brain
plasticity operate conjointly to shape the development of human cognitive and social functions. With
respect to this point, Garfield, et al. 2001 and Carpendale and Lewis 2006 offer innovative, fully
developmental accounts of theory of mind (the cognitive capacity to understand others as intentional
agents) and of children’s social understanding, while De Villiers 2000 and Fernyhough 2008 demonstrate
the essential role of language and semiotics in the development of social cognition. Hutto 2007 also
explores the instrumental role of social narratives in the development of intentional actions, and
Tomasello, et al. 2005 argues that the driving force beyond human cultural evolution (and much of its
development) lies in our capacity for shared intentionality (the ability of humans to engage with others in
collaborative, cooperative activities with joint goals and intentions).
Carpendale, Jeremy, and Charlie Lewis. How Children Develop Social Understanding. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2006.
Provides a Vygotskyan account of the development of children’s social understanding. The book thus
investigates the connections between children’s mental state understanding and their understanding of
language, skills, morality, and emotions in social settings.
de Villiers, Jill G. “Language and Theory of Mind: What are the Developmental Relationships?” In
Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Autism and Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience .
Edited by Simon Baron-Cohen, Helen Tager-Flusberg, and Donald J. Cohen, 83–123. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Investigates how theory of mind and social cognition develop in deaf children raised by signing parents. It
then compares them with the development of the same abilities in deaf children born to hearing parents.
The study points to a crucial and rather essential role of language experience in shaping the
development of a mature theory of mind and of sophisticated social skills.
Fernyhough, Charles. “Getting Vygotskian about Theory of Mind: Mediation, Dialogue, and the
Development of Social Understanding.” Developmental Review 28.2 (2008): 225–262.
Summarizes how Vygotskian ideas have been used to explain the development of social understanding.
Develops a positive model of social cognition that stresses the importance of semiotic mediation and
emphasizes the dialogic nature of higher mental functions. The paper then assesses the value of the
proposed model against competitive accounts.
Garfield, Jay L., Candida C. Peterson, and Tricia Perry. “Social Cognition, Language Acquisition and the
Development of the Theory of Mind.” Mind & Language 16.5 (2001): 494–541.
Drawing on empirical data from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, the authors offer a sociocultural
and fully developmental account of theory of mind. The main thesis of the paper is that adequate
language and social skills are jointly causally sufficient, and individually causally necessary, for
understanding how we attribute mental states to ourselves and others.
Hirschfeld, Lawrance A., and Susan A. Gelman, eds. Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition
and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
The book presents the hypothesis of domain-specificity, the idea that many aspects of human cognition
are supported by highly specialized, evolutionary, prespecified mechanisms. Drawing on data from a
number of disciplines (ranging from anthropology to neuroscience), the authors test the validity of this
hypothesis and conclude that (rather than a general problem solver) the human mind must be understood
as a collection of cognitive abilities specialized to handle specific tasks.
Hutto, Daniel D. Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons .
Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007.
Challenges the idea that our capacity to understand intentional actions is inherited from our evolutionary
ancestors. Hutto argues instead that this capacity has a strong sociocultural basis. More precisely, he
claims, it is often based on the construction of social narratives.
Li, Shu-Chen. “Biocultural Orchestration of Developmental Plasticity across Levels: The Interplay of
Biology and Culture in Shaping the Mind and Behavior across the Lifespan.” Psychological Bulletin 129.2
(2003): 171.
This paper presents an integrative framework for understanding the relationships among gene, culture,
and environment. This framework (biocultural co-constructivism) envisages cross-level, across-the-lifespan interactions between a highly plastic brain and a culturally rich environment. It encompasses
different timescales (e.g., microgenesis, life-span ontogeny) and several levels of analysis (e.g.,
cognitive, behavioral, and sociocultural). It aims to explain how the study of cultural practices can be
integrated with research on behavioral genetics and cognitive neuroscience.
Tomasello, Michael, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, and Henrike Moll. “Understanding and
Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28.5 (2005): 675–
691.
Argues that shared intentionality is what distinguishes us from other intelligent animals—being
responsible for the rather unique cognitive and sociocultural evolution we have enjoyed as a species.
Wexler, Bruce E. Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT,
2006.
Combining experimental evidence from developmental psychology with insights from psychoanalysis,
history, and anthropology, the author explores the social implications of the relationship between the
individual and his or her environment. Great attention is devoted to the analysis of the difficulties subjects
face during adulthood when the milieu in which they live changes beyond their ability to maintain the
necessary fit between existing internal structures and external reality.
Cognition and Culture in Religion
Dennett 2006 famously defended the idea that all religious beliefs are in need of proper scientific
analysis. The scientific study of the mechanisms underlying religious thinking and supernatural beliefs
(see, for example, Paloutzian and Park 2014)—known as the cognitive science of religion—combines
methods and theory from cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology (see Whitehouse and
McCauley 2005) with questions that drive anthropologists, philosophers, and historians of religion (see
Wuthnow 2007 and De Cruz and Smedt 2014). The main goal of the cognitive science of religion is to
explain the acquisition, transmission, and recurrence of religious phenomena (thoughts, ideas), ritual
practices, and symbolic systems in human societies. Research questions thus include the following:
What are the exact relations between religion, culture, and cognition (Geertz 2013)? Why is religion so
common around the world (Barrett 2007)? Why religious experiences are so recurrently observed in
human beings (Boyer 1994)? Why do religious practices share common characteristics across diverse
cultures (Tremlin 2006)? Why do some religious ideas and systems outcompete others (Atran and
Henrich 2010)? Does religion impede societal progress? (Norenzayan 2013).
Atran, Scott, and Joseph Henrich. “The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive
Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial
Religions.” Biological Theory 5.1 (2010): 18–30.
This paper argues that competition among religions across millennia has favored those that most
efficiently instill faith in the believers. The most successful religions, it is argued, are those that have most
effectively adopted indoctrination practices, rituals, or sacrifices, or that enforced rigorous religious
beliefs.
Barrett, Justin L. “Cognitive Science of Religion: What Is It and Why Is It?” Religion Compass 1.6 (2007):
768–786.
By bringing together different methods, theories, and approaches from within the cognitive sciences, the
author reflects on why religious beliefs and experiences are so common in humans.
Boyer, Pascal. The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion . Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994.
Drawing on research in evolutionary psychology, Boyer argues that important aspects of human religious
experiences (religious representations or ideas, etc.) are constrained by a set of prespecified or early
developed principles, which, he argues, are recurrently observed across a variety of different cultures.
De Cruz, Helen, and Johan De Smedt. A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of
Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2014.
Uses philosophical reflections and empirical data drawn from the cognitive sciences to provide much
needed answers to long-standing research questions (e.g., Why is religion culturally universal? What are
the reasons that lead us to infer the existence of a Designer? What do our beauty and sense of order
may tell us about this Designer?).
Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon . London: Penguin, 2006.
Calls for a scientific treatment of religion. The “spell” that needs “breaking” is not, however, the idea of a
religious belief in itself, but rather the belief that this belief is off limits to or beyond any scientific inquiry.
Geertz, Armin W. Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture. Durham, UK: Acumen, 2013.
Brilliant interdisciplinary volume that attempts to elucidate and clarify the relations between religious
experiences, cognition, and culture.
Norenzayan, Ara. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2013.
By drawing from a large base of literature, ranging from social psychology to behavioral economics, the
volume answers some of the fundamental questions about the origins and spread of world religions. It
also argues that exceptionally prosperous societies (societies with large atheist majorities) have often
climbed religion’s ladder (this favored initial cooperation) and then kicked it away (to allow further societal
development).
Paloutzian, Raymond F., and Crystal L. Park, eds. Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and
Spirituality. 2d ed. New York: Guilford, 2014.
This edited collection investigates the cognitive, sociocultural, and psychological mechanisms underlying
religious thinking, conversion experiences, and spiritual struggles. Empirical findings also help clarify the
implications of this approach for mental health and clinical practice.
Tremlin, Todd. Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006.
This book offers a modular explanation of the origin, evolution, and composition of religious and
supernatural beliefs. Tremlin, in particular, argues that humans come predisposed with certain essential
and universal features, and that these inherited features naturally lead to the production of religions.
Whitehouse, Harvey, and Robert N. McCauley. Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive
Foundations of Religiosity. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 2005.
This edited collection features contributions from anthropologists, historians, psychologists, philosophers,
and archaeologists. It questions, tests, and critically evaluates Whitehouse’s “modes of religiosity” theory.
Wuthnow, Robert. “Cognition and Religion.” Sociology of Religion 68.4 (2007): 341–360.
By drawing on research in the cognitive sciences (especially cognitive anthropology and neuroscience),
the author presents an original account for investigating important topics in the study of religion, such as
cultural schemas and metaphors.
Embodiment, Culture, and Expertise
Research on embodiment has demonstrated that cognition is often grounded in bodily interactions with
the environment, and that even abstract concepts (such as language or mathematical cognition) are tied
to the body’s sensory and motor systems. Bourdieu 1977 developed a theory of practice deeply rooted in
culture, embodiment, and agency. Krois, et al. 2007 advanced our understanding of the relations
between embodiment, cognition, and culture and elucidated their interactions in several domains of
research, including history, literature, anthropology, medicine, religious studies, philosophy, biology, and
cognitive science. Expanding on the approach of Krois and collegues, Cohen and Leung 2009,
Voestermans and Verheggen 2013, and Rietveld and Kiverstein 2014 demonstrated the fundamental role
of cultural artifacts, affordances, embodied practices, skills, rituals, schemas, and rules in the
development of sophisticated mental and symbolic systems of representation, and argued that these are
often produced without the aid of any prewired (evolutionarily predetermined) connections, thus
developing an ecological approach to cognition. On a similar vein, Heft 2007 put forth an interesting
framework that recognizes the constitutive role played by social processes in our cognitive evolution. A
number of other findings (involving juggling [Draganski, et al. 2004] and usage of sensory substitution
devices [Farina 2013]) have also demonstrated that extensive training and specific sociocultural
backgrounds profoundly affect people’s capacities to solve complex tasks and problems. These results
have also highlighted the cultural nature of these activities, which are the result of complex historically,
sociologically, pedagogically, and technologically driven actions embodied and scaffolded cross- and
intergenerationally. These studies have thus provided empirical evidence for the claim that the brain’s
functions (not only anatomical structures) are deeply and dramatically affected by patterns of social,
technological, and cultural activity (Mithen and Parsons 2008), and therefore for the idea that socially,
technologically, and culturally based activities can give rise (in relatively short timescales) to different
cognitive outcomes, leading to deeply embodied, enculturated brains (Roepstorff, et al. 2010).
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
A key text on the foundations of cultural anthropology and sociology. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork
on matrimonial strategies in Kabylia (northern Algeria), Bourdieu proposes a unifying theory that seeks to
explain the relationships between human agency and the social structure in which humans live.
Cohen, Dov, and Angela K.-Y. Leung. “The Hard Embodiment of Culture.” European Journal of Social
Psychology 39.7 (2009): 1278–1289.
Calls for a developmental approach in the study of the relations among embodiment, cognition, and
culture. The main idea underlying this paper is therefore that development—in the form of cultural
embodiment—is the key to human cognition. This point is illustrated with three experiments that examine
how moral systems can become embodied and show that predetermined adaptations aren’t always
necessary to explain complex cultural representations.
Draganski, Bogdan, Christian Gaser, Volker Busch, Gerhard Schuierer, Ulrich Bogdahn, and Arne May.
“Neuroplasticity: Changes in Grey Matter Induced by Training.” Nature 427 (2004): 311–312.
The authors used magnetic resonance imaging to visualize learning-induced plasticity in the brains of
trained volunteers who have learned to juggle for approximately 60 seconds without dropping a ball over
a period of three months. The experimenters found that, compared to control subjects, there were
significant changes involved in the volume of grey and white matter in the brains of the jugglers.
Farina, Mirko. “Neither Touch nor Vision: Sensory Substitution as Artificial Synaesthesia?” Biology &
Philosophy 28.4 (2013): 639–655.
The author suggests the emergence of a new sensory modality in sensory substitution perception. In
arguing that SSD perception in highly proficient and competent users might be a kind of artificially
induced synesthesia, this paper tries to undermine the widely shared assumption that there are only two
options available to explain SSD acuity; namely, that it either stays in the substituting modality and is
therefore touch/audition, or it is entirely visual.
Heft, Harry. “The Social Constitution of Perceiver-Environment Reciprocity.” Ecological Psychology 19.2
(2007): 85–105.
Defends an ecological approach to cognition in which culture, embodiment, and society are keys factors.
According to this approach, the external world contributes constitutively to the construction of the
ecological niche in which we operate. The central idea of the volume is therefore that human cognitive
evolution and human environment strongly depend on each other.
Krois, John Michael, Mats Rosengren, Angela Steidele, and Dirk Westerkamp, eds. Embodiment in
Cognition and Culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007.
Investigates the potential significance and crucial importance of research conducted on embodied
cognition for cultural studies. Key research topics include the dependence of meaning in signs upon
biological embodiment, intermodal understanding of art, psychosomatic medicine, and the relations
between embodied cognition and philosophical anthropology.
Mithen, Steven, and Lawrence Parsons. “The Brain as a Cultural Artefact.” Cambridge Archaeological
Journal 18.3 (2008): 415–422.
The authors explored how the brain functional organization of an adult individual would change by
participating in a form of unfamiliar cultural activity (e.g., singing). Results showed that after one year of
extensive training, significant increases in brain activity occurred in the right inferior frontal gyrus, in the
right pole of the temporal cortex, and in the right superior temporal gyrus, leading, as expected, to
enhanced performance.
Rietveld, Erik, and Julian Kiverstein. “A Rich Landscape of Affordances.” Ecological Psychology 26.4
(2014): 325–352.
Affordances are generally defined as the possibilities of action (reaching, grasping, sitting, etc.) that an
environment or a given object offers to a subject. This paper attempts to broaden and enrich our
understanding of the notion of affordance, by stretching it beyond the simple identification with motor
action. The core idea is therefore that affordances are related to abilities available to the subject in a
specific ecological context.
Roepstorff, Andreas, Jörg Niewöhner, and Stefan Beck. “Enculturing Brains through Patterned
Practices.” Neural Networks 23 (2010): 1051–1059.
Calls for a new framework to elucidate how patterns of brain activity change across cultural and social
contexts, and argues for an understanding of culture as “patterned practices.” Through the analysis of
two case studies involving phoneme perception and game play, the authors demonstrate that brain
organization and cortical development are heavily dependent on active participation in specific culturesensitive activities.
Voestermans, Paul, and Theo Verheggen. Culture as Embodiment: The Social Tuning of Behavior.
Chichester, UK: John Wiley, 2013.
A forceful critique of views that see culture as an invisible determinant of human behavior. Drawing from
insights in psychology, biology, psychology, and affective neuroscience, the authors demonstrate how
group members interact with one another through cultural patterning behaviors, thus endorsing an
understanding of culture as a truly human accomplishment.
Instructional and Observational Learning
Learning theories offer interesting conceptual frameworks to investigate the relations between culture
and cognition. This section reviews work on two forms of learning (instructional and observational) that
bear important consequences for our understanding of human cognition. “Instructional learning” (Csibra
and Gergely 2009) refers to learning undertaken under the guidance of a teacher and is associated with
the learner’s understanding of the difference in expertise between the learner and the teacher (Kline
2014). This learning typically involves the teacher communicating generic knowledge to the learner (Lee
and Anderson 2013), by constructing or scaffolding (Sterelny 2012) appropriate situated learning
contexts (Brown, et al. 1989), which facilitate the learner’s acquisition of novel behaviors and
understanding (Rogoff 1990). “Observational learning” is learning that occurs through observing the
behavior of others. In the mid 1980s, Bandura 1986 presented an influential theory of cognitive
development that highlighted the crucial importance of observation in the production of new knowledge
structures. Odden and Rochat 2004 independently confirmed and extended Bandura’s theory by
demonstrating the significance of observational learning, as well as its fundamental role in the
transmission of social knowledge.
Bandura, Albert. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986.
The book presents an original sociocognitive theory of human knowledge and development. According to
this influential theory, new knowledge structures are acquired developmentally through observational
learning or inferences from exploratory experiences.
Brown, John Seely, Allan Collins, and Paul Duguid. “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.”
Educational Researcher 18.1 (1989): 32–42.
Shows why conceptual knowledge cannot be abstracted away from the situations in which it is learned
and used. The authors develop a new approach to teaching (cognitive apprenticeship) that implies the
situated and embodied nature of knowledge. Examples of mathematical instruction are discussed to
justify the virtues of this new approach.
Csibra, Gergely, and György Gergely. “Natural Pedagogy.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13.4 (2009):
148–153.
The paper argues that human beings have developed a communication system (natural pedagogy) that
consists of a set of very specialized cognitive adaptations. These adaptations, it is argued, allow humans
to transmit and receive generic knowledge through teaching.
Kline, Michelle Ann. “How to Learn about Teaching: An Evolutionary Framework for the Study of
Teaching Behaviour in Humans and Other Animals.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2014): 1–70.
This paper offers a unifying and interdisciplinary framework for understanding the evolution of the
complex social-cognitive mechanisms subserving human teaching behavior.
Lee, Hee Seung, and John R. Anderson. “Student Learning: What Has Instruction Got to Do with It?”
Annual Review of Psychology 64.1 (2013): 445–469.
In this review paper, the authors address the question of how much instructional guidance ought to be
provided in learning contexts. Should students construct and discover knowledge by themselves? Or
should such knowledge be offered under direct supervision? After reviewing evidence for both of these
approaches, the authors conclude that a combination of them can pave the way for more productive
ways to conceive of learning.
Odden, Harold, and Philippe Rochat. “Observational Learning and Enculturation.” Educational and Child
Psychology 21.2 (2004): 39.
This paper argues that observational learning plays a crucial role in the transmission of social knowledge.
Evidence for this claim is presented in the form of experimental testing, belief questionnaires, and semistructured interviews that the authors carried out in Samoa.
Rogoff, Barbara. Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context . Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990.
Rogoff argues that children’s cognitive development is a form of apprenticeship—a socially and culturally
structured activity—in which children engage with parents, caregivers, peers, and other companions to
appropriate and extend relevant knowledge, skills, and expertise.
Sterelny, Kim. The evolved apprentice. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2012.
The book develops a coevolutionary theory of human cognitive functions and of human social behavior. A
central tenet of this book is the idea that human uniqueness gradually and progressively emerged from
small-scale, positive feedback loops (involving, for instance, mindreading, learning adaptations, and
technological artifacts) taking place in an adaptively structured, culturally enriched learning environment.
Emotions
Some researchers view emotions as universal phenomena, experienced in analogous ways, as a
reaction to similar events, across all cultures (see Izard 1971 and Ekman, et al. 1987). These
researchers find evidence for this hypothesis in a set of empirical studies on facial expression, which they
claim provide support for the idea that there exists a prewired, phylogenetically derived core emotion
system that we are all endowed with at birth. Other scholars instead describe emotions as socially and
culturally influenced (Harré 1986; Fridlund 1994; Uchida, et al. 2009). These scholars recognize that
some components of emotions are universal, but they also point out that many of their patterns are
socially, culturally, and developmentally constructed or scaffolded (Prinz 2004; Griffiths and Scarantino
2009). Some of these researchers also note significant shortcomings (e.g., within-subject design) in the
methodologies developed within the universalist paradigm of facial expression, which question its internal
validity (Russell 1994). These shortcomings have partially hampered universalist research and triggered
a new wave of investigations into how emotions and emotional communications or responses can vary
across people of different cultural backgrounds (Fessler 2004; Masuda, et al. 2008; Sauter, et al. 2010).
The divide between these two competing paradigms is still sharp and unbridged. However, increasingly
integrative models, which incorporate sociological, anthropological, biological, and psychological
research, are being developed. Kelly 2011, for instance, proposes an interdisciplinary framework to
account for the evolution of disgust in relation to different social and moral settings. These models
promise to significantly advance research in the field.
Ekman, Paul, Wallace V. Friesen, Maureen O’Sullivan, et al. “Universals and Cultural Differences in the
Judgments of Facial Expressions of Emotion.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53.4 (1987):
712.
Building on Izard’s findings, this paper argues that facial expressions are biologically based and that
emotions are universal. Specifically, it shows that emotions are recognized as communicating the same
feelings in a variety of different cultures across the globe (ranging from Europe and North and South
America to Asia and Africa).
Fessler, Daniel M. T. “Shame in Two Cultures: Implications for Evolutionary Approaches.” Journal of
Cognition and Culture 4 (2004): 207–262.
Drawing on recent studies in psychology and anthropology, Fessler explores the nature and experience
of shame in people belonging to two distinct cultural groups (South East Asians and Americans). He then
reflects on the implications of these findings for evolutionary theories concerned with the origin, nature,
and function of shame.
Fridlund, Alan J. Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. San Diego, CA: Academic Press,
1994.
Another important resource, which presents empirical evidence challenging Ekman’s nativism. Drawing
from insights in neurology, linguistics, and psychology, the author argues that emotions must to be
understood as social signals.
Griffiths, Paul E., and Andrea Scarantino. “Emotions in the Wild: The Situated Perspective on Emotion.”
In The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. Edited by Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede, 437–
453. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Attacks traditional views in psychology and neuroscience that describe emotions as internal states.
Instead it argues that emotions are situated (dynamically coupled with a social context) and forms of
skillful engagement with the world, which do not necessarily require mediation by conceptual thought.
Harré, Rom. The Social Construction of Emotions. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Offers a valuable analysis of the various factors that construct our emotions culturally. Specifically, it
develops a framework in which the physiological, ethological, cognitive, and moral aspects of emotion are
understood as socially grounded.
Izard, Carroll E. The Face of Emotions. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971.
The author created sets of photographs displaying emotional expressions that were agreed upon by
Westerners. These photographs were then shown to people in other countries, who were asked to
identify the emotion that best described the face displayed. The author found that facial expressions were
agreed upon across different cultures, and so he argued that they were universal, innate, and
phylogenetically derived.
Kelly, Daniel R. Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2011.
Proposes a powerful cognitive model to account for the cultural evolution of disgust. The central thesis of
the book is that disgusts and other feelings related to it (such as moral repugnance), despite being byproducts of the specific evolution of our species, are also culturally sensitive. That is, they depend (quite
substantially) upon the social and moral upbringing of a person.
Masuda, Takahiko, Phoebe C. Elsworth, Batja Mesquita, Janxin Leu, Shigehito Tanida, and Ellen van de
Veerdonk. “Placing the Face in Context: Cultural Differences in the Perception of Facial Emotion.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94.3 (2008): 365–381.
This study looked at whether specific information from a given social context could influence people’s
judgement of emotions. Two cross-cultural studies (on Japanese and American individuals) were
conducted to test this hypothesis. Results showed that Westerners judge emotions to be individual
feelings, whereas Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group of which they are
part.
Prinz, Jesse J. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Drawing on recent research in affective neuroscience, Prinz offers an innovative philosophical defense of
the idea that emotions are fundamentally embodied appraisals, or perceptions of body states.
Russell, James A. “Is There Universal Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expressions? A Review of the
Cross-Cultural Studies.” Psychological Bulletin 115.1 (1994): 102–141.
Reviews methods and evidence presented over the years to support the idea that emotions are
universally recognized from facial expressions. Russell individuates problematic experimental issues
within the universalist paradigm (such as within-subject design) and argues that although facial
expressions and emotion labels are certainly correlated and, in part, analogously perceived cross-
culturally, their association varies with culture and is loose enough to be consistent with a number of nonuniversalist accounts.
Sauter, Disa A., Frank Eisner, Paul Ekman, and Sophie K. Scott. “Cross-Cultural Recognition of Basic
Emotions through Nonverbal Emotional Vocalizations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America 107.6 (2010): 2408–2412.
The authors examined whether the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams
and laughs, varied across two very different cultural groups (Westerners and culturally isolated people
living in Namibia). They found that nonverbal emotional vocalizations expressing primarily basic emotions
(such as anger, happiness, fear, or laughter) could be recognized across cultures, while other (nonbasic)
emotions were communicated with culture-specific signals.
Uchida, Yukiko, Sara S. M. Townsend, Hazel Rose Markus, and Hilary B. Bergseiker. “Emotions as
Within or Between People? Cultural Variations in Lay Theories of Emotion Expression and Inference.”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35.11 (2009): 1427–1438.
This paper shows that in Japanese contexts, emotions are understood as “between people” (holistically),
as opposed to American contexts, where emotions are primarily understood as “within people”
(individually). Four case studies are presented to support this hypothesis.
Memory
Recent findings have highlighted how cultural differences and historical contingencies can shape both the
development and evolution of many of our unique and sophisticated cognitive abilities, including our
capacity to remember things (Erll 2011). Boyer and Wertsch 2009 and Wang 2011 demonstrated that
memory lies at the core of our ability for historical awareness and social relation. A series of papers—
Mullen 1994; MacDonald, et al. 2000; Leichtman, et al. 2000—also provided the springboard to
investigate differences in memory abilities across different populations. These papers demonstrated that
our autobiographical memories (memories about events of our past) arise as a result of complex and
continuous sociocultural interactions with members of a given society, and that their emergence in time
varies as a function of the particular sociocultural contexts in which the person is reared and nurtured.
Expanding on this successful research, Nelson and Fivush 2004 formulated a multifactorial
(developmental, cognitive, and sociocultural) theory of memory development that highlights the crucial
role of memory in the production of many cultural norms. Building on this theory, Sutton, et al. 2010
developed a rich, interdisciplinary, and multidimensional account of collaborative recall, which is used to
show how research on memory can support an extended and socially distributed view of human
cognition. Tribble 2011 used this distributed account of memory and cognition to explain how
Shakespearian actors remembered their parts.
Boyer, Pascal, and James V. Wertsch, eds. Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2009.
The volume argues for the central role of memory in the construction of cultural norms, social concepts
and historical awareness. Important research questions include: How do memories shape history? How
do memories scaffold our past and influence our present?
Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
This highly interdisciplinary volume addresses key questions about the sociocultural dimensions of
remembering in a variety of disciplinary fields (including history, sociology, political sciences,
anthropology, and psychology). The volume is therefore an excellent source for philosophers interested
in understanding the relations between history, culture, and theory of memory studies.
Leichtman, Michelle D., David B. Pillemer, Qi Wang, Aashiyana Koreishi, and Jessica Jungsook Han.
“When Baby Maisy Came to School: Mothers’ Interview Styles and Preschoolers’ Event Memories.”
Cognitive Development 15.1 (2000): 99–114.
The paper demonstrates that children exposed to a high-elaborative style of speaking remember better
and more accurately than those exposed to a low-elaborative style of speaking. This shows that
memories (and the cognitive skills associated with them) do not develop in a vacuum, but rather require
and depend on profound and extensive sociocultural interactions.
MacDonald, Shelley, Kimberly Uesiliana, and Harlene Hayne. “Cross-Cultural and Gender Differences in
Childhood Amnesia.” Memory 8.6 (2000): 365–376.
Expanding on Mullen 1994, the authors looked at earliest memories among Caucasian, Asian and Maori
New Zealanders. They argue that the better retention of early memories observed in Maori individuals
was likely due to the fact that Maori culture places a strong emphasis on oral histories, and that talking
about past experiences is actively encouraged in their communities.
Mullen, Mary K. “Earliest Recollections of Childhood: A Demographic Analysis.” Cognition 52.1 (1994):
55–79.
This paper compares the ages of first memories across cultures (Caucasian, Asian, and Asian American
students). The author found that, on average, the Asian and Asian American students’ memories
happened six months later than the Caucasian students’ memories.
Nelson, Katherine, and Robyn Fivush. “The Emergence of Autobiographical Memory: A Social Cultural
Developmental Theory.” Psychological Review 111.2 (2004): 486.
This paper offers an original (multi-componential) and fully developmental theory of human
autobiographical memory. The components of this developmental theory are cultural in character and
include language and narrative, adult memory talk, and understanding of self and others.
Sutton, John, Celia B. Harris, Paul G. Keil, and Amanda J. Barnier. “The Psychology of Memory,
Extended Cognition, and Socially Distributed Remembering.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive
Sciences 9.4 (2010): 521–560.
Summarizes recent empirical work on collaborative recall, which is offered as empirical evidence for an
extended and socially distributed account of memory. The paper also describes, in rich detail, the whole
range of differently influential causal processes that contribute to human remembering.
Tribble, Evelyn B. Cognition in the Globe: Attention and Memory in Shakespeare’s Theatre . Basingstoke,
UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Theatrical companies in early modern England performed up to six different plays a week. This book, by
using the theoretical tools offered by distributed cognition, attempts to answer the question of how
Shakespearian actors could remember their parts. It is argued that the cognitive work of the actors was
distributed across body, brain, and a set of environmental props that complemented their remembering.
Wang, Qi. “Autobiographical Memory and Culture.” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 5.2
(2011): 2.
This paper examines the effects of culture on autobiographical remembering. The author successfully
integrates developmental, cognitive, and sociocultural perspectives and highlights the mechanisms (selfconstrual, parent-child reminiscing, and emotion knowledge) responsible for driving the cultural
differences in content, structure, and general accessibility of autobiographical memory.
Material Culture, Distributed Cognition, and Cognitive Ecologies
Those who study material culture explore the relations and reciprocal influences between persons and
things in the past and in the present in urban and industrialized as well as small-scale societies across
the planet (Hicks and Beaudry 2010). It has been argued that material culture (in the forms of material
environments, material agency, symbolic representations and artifacts, and matrixes of customs, rituals,
and myths) shaped the evolution of the human mind (Donald 1991, Deacon 1997) and that the continuing
and enduring (coevolutionary) interplay between material culture, mind, and action has changed the
operational architecture of cognition (Malafouris 2004), creating new cognitive opportunities for members
of our species (Knappett 2011). Expanding on these results, Hutchins 1995 and Malafouris and Renfrew
2010 successfully integrated the study of material culture with research conducted on distributed
cognition, which is the paradigm that describes cognition as a materially and temporally distributed
phenomenon, one that is situated in real practices and concrete sociotechnical contexts. Tribble and
Keene 2011 and Tribble and Sutton 2011 investigate empirically (their case studies are religion, literacy,
and theatrical history in early modern England) the relevance of research conducted on material culture
for the field of distributed cognition, then extend these results to the analysis of cognitive ecologies (the
study of cognitive phenomena in context) by pointing to a web of mutual dependences among the
elements of different cognitive ecosystems.
Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York:
Norton, 1997.
In combining perspectives from anthropology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and
comparative neuroscience, Deacon defends the idea that language coevolved with the brain and that
what distinguishes humans from other animals is our capacity for symbolic representation.
Donald, Merlin. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition .
Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Drawing on data from anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and neurobiology,
Donald reconstructs the stages of evolutionary human cognitive development and presents an original
theory of how the human mind evolved from its pre-symbolic form to develop spoken language and,
finally, the construction of elaborate symbolic systems (such as alphabetic languages and mathematics).
Hicks, Dan, and Mary C. Beaudry, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010.
Presents an in-depth analysis of the interdisciplinary field of material culture studies. Drawing on current
research on landscape archaeology, cultural primatology, horticultural archaeology, and material
geographies, this handbook investigates the notion of materiality and studies the place, role, and function
of material objects for the development of human cognition and advanced human societies.
Hutchins, Edwin. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1995.
Hutchins offers an in-depth analysis of a navigation team working on the bridge of a navy ship as a
socially distributed cognitive system. Specifically, he defends an understanding of human cognition as
cultural and social in character.
Knappett, Carl. Thinking through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective . Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
The main thesis of this interdisciplinary book is that humans act and think through material culture. In
other words, there is a codependency among mind, action, and matter. Knappett argues that in order to
understand this codependency, we ought to adopt a relational perspective between material artifacts and
human agents. To illustrate this thesis, the author discusses examples from prehistoric Aegean ceramics
and contemporary art.
Malafouris, Lambros. “The Cognitive Basis of Material Engagement: Where Brain, Body and Culture
Conflate.” In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World. Edited by
Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden, and Colin Renfrew, 53–61. Cambridge, UK: Macdonald Institute for
Archaeological Research, 2004.
This paper develops an innovative framework for understanding the relations between the mind and the
material world. The central thesis of the paper is that cognition and materiality ought not to be construed
as separated, but rather understood as ontologically inseparable. That is, material culture should be
studied as consubstantial and continuous with the human mind.
Malafouris, Lambros, and Colin Renfrew, ed. The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of
the Mind. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2010.
This edited collection develops a cross-disciplinary understanding of the relations between material
culture and human cognition. The central tenet of the book is the idea that artifacts can have cognitive
powers in their own right, and thus can tell us something about the cognitive lives of our ancestors.
Tribble, Evelyn B., and Nicholas Keene. Cognitive Ecologies and the History of Remembering: Religion,
Education and Memory in Early Modern England. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
This book offers a novel ecological approach to the relations between cognition and culture. It does so by
taking as its case study the cognitive cultural history of religion in early modern England.
Tribble, Evelyn B., and John Sutton. “Cognitive Ecology as a Framework for Shakespearean Studies.”
Shakespeare Studies 39 (2011): 94.
Develops a cognitive ecological approach, which improves and perfects current research engaging early
modern studies in theatrical history and historical phenomenology. This approach, it is claimed, can be
used to build historically informed accounts of skill and expertise, within a genuinely embodied and
extended model of cognition.
New Approaches in Anthropology
Since the mid-1990s, the field of anthropology has undertaken major changes, with new waves or
approaches (e.g., cognitive anthropology, neuroanthropology) being developed. Traditionally, within
anthropology there is a sharp divide between biological anthropologists, who study the evolutionary,
biological, and ecological aspects of humankind, and sociocultural anthropologists, who investigate
cultural variation (traditions, values, beliefs, customs, and practices) in different groups of individuals.
Ingold and Pálsson 2013 attempts to break down the barriers between these two subfields and proposes
a new bio-social framework that combines them. D’Andrade 1995 and Bloch 2012, by two of the leading
proponents of cognitive anthropology, use methods and theories drawn from the cognitive sciences to
formulate new integrative models that attempt to explain patterns of shared knowledge or mechanisms of
cultural innovation among individuals belonging to different societies. Other leading proponents of
cognitive anthropology have developed an approach to information pooling (called cultural consensus
theory) that sees cultural knowledge and beliefs as socially learned (see Romney, et al. 1986). Lende
and Downey 2012 proposes a neuroanthropological approach to study the relations between culture and
the brain. This approach, which sees the brain and the nervous system as cultural organs, describes the
interweaving of developmental factors and evolutionary endowment as necessary for the construction of
human cognition. Atran and Medin 2008 also investigates—cross-culturally—the interrelation between
the universal aspects of the human mind and its critical cultural differences. Quinn 2005 explores the
conceptual and methodological issues involved in studying culture through discourse. Sperber 1996
proposes a naturalistic approach to culture, which describes the causes and the effects and—more
generally—the impact of culture or cultural phenomena on human cognition.
Atran, Scott, and Douglas L. Medin. The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature.
Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008.
Drawing on cross-cultural and developmental research, Atran and Medin scrutinize the relationships
between the universal aspects of the human mind and the cultural differences observed among humans.
In discussing a number of case studies (e.g., Maya Indians, fisherman in Wisconsin), the authors also
offers new perspectives on general theories of human categorization, reasoning, and decision making.
Bloch, Maurice. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2012.
The volume proposes a naturalistic approach to social and cultural anthropology. Bloch argues that work
conducted in the cognitive sciences can enrich the practice of social scientists and contribute to shedding
new light on a number of central anthropological issues (ranging from kinship and memory to
globalization and the self).
D’Andrade, Roy G. The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1995.
The book offers a historical account of the development of cognitive anthropology, the discipline that
studies (in close collaborations with historians) patterns of shared knowledge and the transmission of
cultural innovation with methods and theories derived from the cognitive sciences.
Ingold, Tim, and Gísli Pálsson, eds. Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology .
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
In combining theoretical arguments with in-depth discussions of material from field research, this book
aims to develop a unified and integrative approach in which cultural and biological anthropology are
equal partners, both necessary to understand the complex social, cultural, and biological dimensions of
human life.
Lende, Daniel H., and Greg Downey. The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology .
Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2012.
This book is a foundational text for the emerging field of neuroanthropology. Neuroanthropology studies
the dynamic relations between culture and the brain, and how these relations affect, both theoretically
and empirically, our understanding of human society and behavior. Through the analysis of a number of
case studies (e.g., memory in medical practice, skills acquisition in martial arts), the authors introduce us
to the methods, theory, empirical basis, and prospects of this emerging field.
Quinn, Naomi. Finding Culture in Talk: A Collection of Methods. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
This edited collection studies culture through discourse. It thus takes discourse as a medium for
capturing the richness of cultural phenomena, and hence as a window for understanding anthropological
practice in the real world.
Romney, A. Kimball, Susan C. Weller, and William H. Batchelder. “Culture as Consensus: A Theory of
Culture and Informant Accuracy.” American Anthropologist 88.2 (1986): 313–338.
Outlines the central assumptions of consensus theory and develops a statistical method that helps
eliminating biases in analyzing anthropological data. This method can be used to measure and evaluate
groups’ beliefs as culturally shared while revealing patterns (e.g., intracultural variation) that may go
unnoticed when using other research techniques. This statistical method is of potential use for
philosophers, as it provides them with an empirical tool to test and adjust their theorizing.
Sperber, Dan. Explaining Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Develops a naturalistic theory of culture, which is based on the epidemiology of beliefs. As epidemiology
examines the factors determining the frequency and distribution of diseases in a population, Sperber’s
theory maps the frequency and distribution of beliefs in a given population. By studying this frequency
and distribution, along with the changes that beliefs and ideas trigger, Sperber claims that we can
develop a richer understanding of cultural phenomena.
Cultural Neuroscience
Cultural neuroscience (Chiao, et al. 2013) is an emerging research discipline that studies how cultural
and social variations (in the form of values, habits, traditions, practices, or beliefs) shape the human mind
and are in turn shaped by neural and genomic processes (see also Chiao 2009, cited under Anthologies,
Handbooks, Special Issues). The main goal of this emerging field is thus to provide a new conceptual
palette for studying (across multiple time scales and throughout the entire life span) the neural, genetic,
and sociocultural processes underlying the production of sophisticated forms of human cognition.
Research conducted in cultural neuroscience has documented the substantial degree by which an
agent’s cultural background and repeated engagement in specific patterns of cultural activities can
change the connections and functions of different areas of that agent’s brain (Kitayama and Park 2010).
In particular, a number of experiments have offered substantial evidence for the existence of culturesensitive neural mechanisms in human cognition (Han and Northoff 2008) and showed that neural activity
in some brain regions might not only be modulated by cultural engagements, but profoundly forged and
re-shaped in accordance to specific sociocultural contexts (Fiske and Taylor 2013, Nisbett and
Norenzayan 2002). In short, research on cultural neuroscience has highlighted the intrinsically biosocial
nature of the functional organization of the human brain (Cacioppo and Berntson 2004) and provided us
with new insights to understand the complex relation between culture and cognition (Ambady and
Bharucha 2009; Henrich, et al. 2010).
Ambady, Nalini, and Jamshed Bharucha. “Culture and the Brain.” Current Directions in Psychological
Science 18.6 (2009): 342–345.
In this article the authors propose an original framework for studying the neuroscience of culture. Two
goals inform this framework: (1) understanding how cultural exposure affects neural activation and
cognitive functions (culture mapping), and (2) determining the causes of observed analogies and
differences in such functions (source analysis).
Cacioppo, John T., and Gary G. Berntson. Social Neuroscience: Key Readings. New York: Psychology
Press, 2004.
The book argues for the complementary nature of cognitive, social, and biological levels of analysis and
convincingly demonstrates that research integrating these different levels of analysis can help us develop
more comprehensive theories of the mechanisms underlying complex human behavior.
Chiao, Joan Y., Bobby K. Cheon, Narun Pornpattananangkul, Alissa J. Mrazek, and Kate D. Blizinsky.
“Cultural Neuroscience: Understanding Human Diversity.” In Advances in Culture and Psychology. Vol. 4.
Edited by Michele J. Gelfand, Chi-yue Chiu and Ying-yi Hong, 1–59. New York: Oxford University Press,
2013.
The book’s major goal is to provide a novel framework for understanding the most recent theoretical and
methodological advances in cultural neuroscience. This volume consists of a target article and a series of
commentaries by leaders in the field, followed by responses from the authors.
Fiske, Susan T., and Shelley E. Taylor. Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE, 2013.
The book explores the links between neuroscience and culture. The authors summarize much of recent
cutting-edge research conducted in social neuroscience and cultural psychology, while providing the
reader with a compelling account of what social cognition is and why it’s a significant phenomenon in
today’s societies.
Han, Shihui, and Georg Northoff. “Culture-Sensitive Neural Substrates of Human Cognition: A
Transcultural Neuroimaging Approach.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9.8 (2008): 646–654.
Han and Northoff review empirical evidence showing that the neural correlates of human cognition are
profoundly dependent on culture. Specifically, they argue that transcultural neuroimaging is an effective
method for studying the dynamic interplay between genes and culture. Implications of their new approach
are discussed.
Henrich, Joseph, Steven J. Heine, and Ara. Norenzayan. “The Weirdest People in the World?” Behavioral
and Brain Sciences 33.2–3 (2010): 61–83.
The article makes an empirical case for a reduction in the current reliance on subjects from Western,
educated, industrial, rich, and democratic societies in the study of the human mind. Awareness of the
results presented in the study, it is argued, should motivate investigators to (1) decrease the
generalizability of results derived from parochial samples, and (2) pursue diverse avenues (e.g., crosscultural studies) for studying the human mind.
Kitayama, Shinobu, and Jiyoung Park. “Cultural Neuroscience of the Self: Understanding the Social
Grounding of the Brain.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5.2–3 (2010): 111–129.
In this paper, the authors demonstrate that cognitive processes are often molded by cultural tools and
social practices. The authors also reflect on the importance of brain plasticity for human cognitive
evolution while investigating its role on a variety of brain processes involved in self-representation,
cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Nisbett, Richard E., and Ara Norenzayan. “Culture and Cognition.” In Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental
Psychology. Vol. 2: Memory and Cognitive Processes. 3d ed. Edited by Harold E. Pashler and Douglas
Medin, 561–598. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2002.
Anticipated much of current research in cultural and social neuroscience. The central message of this
contribution is that cultural practices and cognitive abilities constitute one another. Evidence for this claim
is provided through of a series of cross-cultural studies comparing cultural practices and cognitive
abilities of East Asians and Westerners.
Language and Perception
Language and perception are two other fundamental domains for the study of the relations between
culture and cognition. Kramsch 1998 and Levinson 2003 offer interesting seminal accounts of how
language influences our cognitive capacities and their evolution in a variety of fields (ranging from
memory to gestures and spatial cognition). Spolsky 1998 highlights the sociocultural nature of language,
while Dennett 1994 and Clark 1998 provide sophisticated treatments of how language can enhance and
augment our computational and cooperative abilities. More recently, Dor 2015 investigates the role of
language as a tool for enhanced social communication. Nisbett and Miyamoto 2005 offers innovative
insights into the study of perception and highlights its culture-specific, context-dependent character. On a
similar vein, Ingold 2011 provides an interactive view of the relations between perception, activity, skills,
and evolution. Other researchers have also studied how our senses, among the most important
components of our sophisticated perceptual apparatus, depend on a wide network of sociocultural
interactions and how they even vary across cultures. Majid 2016, for example, successfully demonstrates
that Westerners’ inability to describe their sense of smell is culturally developed (not biologically
acquired). Classen 2012 provides an extremely interesting historical account of touch, which emphasizes
its deeply sociocultural character. Geurts 2002 investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting
sensorium of Anlo-Ewe people, a population living in the southeastern corner of the Republic of Ghana,
finding striking (culturally acquired) differences from other systems.
Clark, Andy. “Magic Words: How Language Augments Human Computation.” In Language and Thought:
Interdisciplinary Themes. Edited by Peter Carruthers and Jill Boucher, 162–183. Cambridge, UK, and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Investigates the computational power of language; that is, its capacity to transform, reshape, augment,
and simplify the computational tasks that constantly confront our biological brains.
Classen, Constance. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2012.
Provides a fascinating history of the sense of touch from the Middle Ages to modernity, and highlights the
many ways in which feelings shaped and drove the evolution of Western societies. The central thesis of
the volume is that touch is the deepest sense of all because its cultural meaning stretches into the past
and its social meanings remain fully embedded in modernity.
Dennett, Daniel C. “The Role of Language in Intelligence.” In What is intelligence? Edited by Jean Khalfa,
161–178. The Darwin College Lectures. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Dennett argues that language is one of the most powerful tools for cultural scaffolding and what makes
our species the most intelligent on the planet.
Dor, Daniel. The Instruction of Imagination: Language as a Social Communication Technology . Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015.
This fascinating book highlights the complex and multifaceted evolutionary relation between the cultural
evolution of language as a technology and the cognitive evolution of humans as its users.
Geurts, Kathryn Linn. Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community .
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
An essential reading for those philosophers interested in research on ethnography and anthropology of
the senses. The book shows that our five senses model has very little relevance among Anlo-Ewe
people, for whom kinesthesia (balance) is a sense (the most important of them all) and a crucial
component of what it means to be human.
Ingold, Tim. Culture and the Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skills .
2d ed. London: Routledge, 2011.
Brings together results from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology, and
phenomenology to provide a framework capable of explaining what it means for humans to live and
inhabit an environment. The central thesis of the volume is that skills are as much biological as cultural.
Kramsch, Claire J. Language and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
An excellent introduction to the study of the relations between language and culture.
Levinson, Stephen C. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Excellent textbook reporting on collaborative research in anthropology, linguistics, and psychology. The
volume investigates the many relations between language and culture. Specifically, through the analysis
of several cross-cultural studies, it argues that language deeply affects how people think, communicate,
memorize, and reason.
Majid, Asifa. “What Other Cultures Can Tell Us about the Sense of Smell.” In Belle haleine—the Scent of
Art: Interdisciplinary Symposium. Edited by Museum Tinquely, 72–77. Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer,
2016.
Examines the relations among olfaction, language, and culture in a population of hunter-gatherers of the
Malay Peninsula. Shows that, unlike English speakers, individuals of this population have an elaborate
vocabulary for smell. The main thesis of the paper is therefore that the inability to name smells in English
speakers is a product of culture, not biology, as previously thought.
Nisbett, Richard E., and Yuri. Miyamoto. “The Influence of Culture: Holistic versus Analytic Perception.”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9.10 (2005): 467–473.
In discussing a cross-cultural case study involving visual perception tasks in Americans and Asians, the
authors make a strong case for cultural influences on perception. The main thesis of the paper is
therefore that perception ought not to be understood as consisting of processes that are universal across
all people at all times, but instead should be viewed as a culturally specific phenomenon.
Spolsky, B. Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
A brief but comprehensive overview of the field of sociolinguistics, which is the study of language and
discourse as embedded in sociocultural settings.
Morality
Virtually everyone agrees that biology makes a contribution to morality. More controversial, however, is
establishing and determining the extent of this contribution. Are moral values universal and shared
across all people around the world (moral absolutism), or are they relative to specific contexts or
historical situations (moral relativism)? Prinz 2007 presents compelling philosophical evidence for the
idea that there are cultural variations in values, thus defending moral relativism. Nisbett and Cohen 1996
and Buchtel, et al. 2015 provide further empirical support for this idea, by studying moral diversity crossculturally. Cultural differences in morality have also been investigated through the usage of economic
games (Henrich, et al. 2005). All these studies have thus demonstrated that there may be a plurality of
potentially acceptable value systems, which depend (non-trivially) on the context, history, and culture in
which they are experienced (Wong 2006). A number of philosophers have nevertheless attempted to
resist such a theorizing. Rachels 2003, for instance, argues that there is no real cultural variation in
morality (most of the differences observed are merely apparent), while Moody-Adams 1997 claims that
because of a lack of a complete understanding of another culture’s beliefs, we might well mistake
differences in factual beliefs for moral differences. There are, of course, middle-ground positions. Cook
2003, for instance, attacks both moral absolutism and moral relativism, and instead proposes a more
subtle and complex account in which both these views are subsumed.
Buchtel, Emma E., Yanjun Guan, Qin Peng, et al. “Immorality East and West: Are Immoral Behaviors
Especially Harmful, or Especially Uncivilized?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41.10 (2015):
1382–1394.
Looks at how the concept of immorality is understood among two distinct cultural groups: Chinese
speakers and Westerners. Findings reveal that Chinese speakers are more likely to attribute the word
immoral to uncivilized behaviors, whereas Westerners more firmly associate that word with direct harm.
These findings are important because they show empirically that there is a degree of moral relativity
about what counts as immoral across different cultures.
Cook, John W. Morality and Cultural Differences. Oxford: Oxford University, 2003.
Argues that both moral absolutism and moral relativism share a distorted view of morality (the idea that
morality is about classing actions as right or wrong according to an abstract system of principles), and
that, as consequence, both are incoherent. A positive account subsuming both views is then developed.
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, et al. “‘Economic Man’ in Cross-Cultural Perspective:
Ethnography and Experiments from 15 Small-Scale Societies.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (2005):
795–855.
Excellent paper investigating moral diversity in the conception of self-interest through a set of economic
games (such as ultimatum) played in a range of small-scale societies, exhibiting a substantial degree of
cultural variability.
Moody-Adams, Michelle M. Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy . Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Proposes a philosophical defense of moral objectivity and warns against the dangers of moral relativism
in science. The central thesis of the book is therefore that we can take moral disagreement and cultural
variation seriously without necessarily having to give up a universalist perspective on morality.
Nisbett, Richard E., and Dov Cohen. Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. Denver,
CO: Westview, 1996.
Interesting cross-cultural study investigating the endorsement of violence in response to moral
transgressions (e.g., killing to defend property, corporal punishment) among individuals of two distinct
cultural groups (Americans from southern states and Americans from northern states). The authors argue
that cultural traditions and beliefs about honor play an absolutely crucial role in determining much higher
aggressive responses among southerners when compared to northerners.
Prinz, Jesse J. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
A philosophical defense of moral relativism. This truly interdisciplinary volume brings together findings
and insights from developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive anthropology, philosophy,
and cultural history. The central theses of the book are that moral values are grounded in emotional
responses and that these are in turn scaffolded by culture through mechanisms of natural selection.
Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.
Excellent textbook written by a philosopher for graduate students. Chapter 2 deals with cultural and moral
relativism. The central thesis of the book is that there is no real cultural variation in morality across the
world.
Wong, David B. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
One of the most lucid and systematic defenses of moral relativism to date. The central thesis of the book
is that morality is culture-bounded; that is, there can be a multitude of true and perfectly acceptable moral
systems existing across different traditions and cultures.