Dear all, You are warmly invited to a special seminar put on by the Nature and Culture group. Kim Sterelny (ANU) will be speaking at 2pm on Monday 18th April 2016. The talk will take place in Seminar Room 2 in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
Artefacts, Symbols, Thoughts. Abstract: Until relatively recently, it was often supposed that changes in the material record of hominin life indexed advances in hominin cognitive sophistication in a relatively direct way. In particular, the “Upper Palaeolithic Revolution” — an apparently abrupt increase in the complexity and disparity of our material culture — was thought to signal the arrival of the fully human mind. While the idea of a direct relationship between material complexity and cognitive sophistication still has some defenders, this view has largely been abandoned. It is now widely appreciated that aspects of ancient hominin’s demographic and social organisation have a powerful influence both on the material culture they need and the material culture they can sustain. But if this more nuanced view is right (and I shall defend it), what does the deep material record tell us about the evolution of hominin cognition? I explore that question in this paper, in the context of recent ideas about the evolution of social complexity. http://www.humannature.hps.cam.ac.uk/upcoming-seminar-kim-sterelny-on-artifacts-symbols-thoughts _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
