CfP: Retuning cognition with a pair of rocks: Culture, evolution, technology
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Interest
in cultural evolution is growing exponentially, but the literature on
the evolution of technology and its developmental and evolutionary
impacts on cognition is not
yet sufficiently connected with research on cultural evolution. This is
crucial because cognition is not just a transmitted tool: at least
sometimes changes in cognition transform the worldview, capacities, and
motivations of the agent, making new adaptive
radiations possible, and sometimes this is a direct response to the
evolution or co-evolution of technology.
So,
how does technology affect the nature, properties, and capacities of
cognition? We can very quickly point to computers and the internet, but
that would not analyze this
relationship. Technology is not just a product of cognition, to be
transmitted and elaborated through cultural means. It may also be a
cognitive amplifier, yet still, a wholly external tool, such as pen and
paper, which provides a larger working memory for
production and experiment. Or a written language might drive the
reworking of neural circuitry either (developmentally) to better
recognize symbols or (evolutionarily) to better acquire the capacity to
do so. Technology may also include systematic practices
with a couple of rocks used to rework another to make an Oldowan flake,
or perhaps requiring a coevolving language to communicate the much more
complex array of actions facing the Acheulean toolmaker.
And
if technology yields an expansion of the cognitive niche, the question
arises—of whom? Is it of an individual who has mastered an elaborate
flaking technology yielding
a new diversity of tools and of the affordances they provide. Or is it
of the whole interacting population of critical mass, with diverse
normatively standardized practices, maintaining and elaborating a
complex repertoire for fabricating, hunting, and perhaps
celebrating their niche and its inhabitants? Or it is of multiple
overlapping specialized groups in between? Perhaps an analogy is useful:
In what ways is a society like a distributed brain?
We
seek papers from those who share these puzzles with us and are
interested in some aspect of the development and evolution of
technology, cognition, culture, and the socially
integrated and diverse structures (now so explosively elaborated by the
internet!) that scaffold and articulate our complex worlds.
Keynote Speakers: Colin Allen (University of
Pittsburgh, History and Philosophy of Science), Jacob Foster (UCLA,
Sociology), Karin James (Indiana University, Psychology), James Evans
(The University of Chicago, Sociology), and Cecilia Heyes
(University of Oxford, Theoretical Life Sciences)
Submission Deadline: January 7, 2019
Please
submit an abstract of no more than 1,000 words. Abstracts will be
refereed blind and notifications will be sent February 1, 2019.
Abstract submission is electronic and must be made through Easy Chair.
Please go to: https://easychair.org/
We
encourage early career scholars and scientists working on such topics
to apply. We particularly welcome submissions from members of
underrepresented groups. To facilitate
participation, we can offer a small number of awards for full or
partial support for hotel rooms during the conference. When submitting
your abstract, please indicate in the PDF if you are interested in being
considered for a full or partial hotel room award.
Accepted presenters will receive additional instructions for
consideration for an award.
Center for Philosophy of Science: www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr