•  66
    In Kourken Michaelian questions the basic tenets of our article (Sperber et al. 2010). Here I defend against Michaelian's criticisms the view that epistemic vigilance plays a major role in explaining the evolutionary stability of communication and that the honesty of speakers and the reliability of their testimony are, to a large extent, an effect of hearers' vigilance
  •  45
    Culturally transmitted misbeliefs
    with Ryan T. McKay and Daniel C. Dennett
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6): 534-535. 2009.
    Most human beliefs are acquired through communication, and so are most misbeliefs. Just like the misbeliefs discussed by McKay & Dennett (M&D), culturally transmitted misbeliefs tend to result from limitations rather than malfunctions of the mechanisms that produce them, and few if any can be argued to be adaptations. However, the mechanisms involved, the contents, and the hypothetical adaptive value tend to be specific to the cultural case.
  •  214
    Truthfulness and relevance
    Mind 111 (443): 583-632. 2002.
    This paper questions the widespread view that verbal communication is governed by a maxim, norm or convention of truthfulness which applies at the level of what is literally meant, or what is said. Pragmatic frameworks based on this view must explain the frequent occurrence and acceptability of loose and figurative uses of language. We argue against existing explanations of these phenomena and provide an alternative account, based on the assumption that verbal communication is governed not by ex…Read more
  •  59
    In two experiments, we investigated whether 13-month-old infants expect agents to behave in a way consistent with information to which they have been exposed. Infants watched animations in which an animal was either provided information or prevented from gathering information about the actual location of an object. The animal then searched successfully or failed to retrieve it. Infants’ looking times suggest that they expected searches to be effective when—and only when—the agent had had access …Read more
  •  60
    not only anomalous animals, but also exemplary animals often take on a symbolic value, thus raising a second problem. A solution to both problems is suggested, based on an examination of the cognitive..
  • ELIZABETH S. SPELKE (MIT) Children's use of geometry and landmarks to reorient in an open space, 119±148 JENNY R. SAFFRAN (University of Wisconsin±Madison) Words in a sea of sounds: the output of infant statistical learning, 149±169 Brief articles (review)
    with Marc Pomplun, Eyal M. Reingold, Jiye Shen, Vittorio Girotto, Markus Kemmelmeier, Jean-Baptiste van der Henst, Edward Munnich, Barbara Landau, and Barbara Anne Dosher
    Cognition 81 (249): 249-251. 2001.
  •  39
    The article revisits the old controversy concerning the relation of the mother's brother and sister's son in patrilineal societies in the light both of anthropological criticisms of the very notion of kinship and of evolutionary and epidemiological approaches to culture. It argues that the ritualized patterns of behavior that had been discussed by Radcliffe-Brown, Goody and others are to be explained in terms of the interaction of a variety of factors, some local and historical, others pertainin…Read more
  • La pertinence, communication et cognition
    with Deirdre Wilson and A. Gershenfeld
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 182 (2): 256-257. 1992.
  •  193
    Fodor's frame problem and relevance theory (reply to chiappe & kukla)
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (3): 530-532. 1996.
    Chiappe and Kukla argue that relevance theory fails to solve the frame problem as defined by Fodor. They are right. They are wrong, however, to take Fodor’s frame problem too seriously. Fodor’s concerns, on the other hand, even though they are wrongly framed, are worth addressing. We argue that Relevance thoery helps address them.
  •  70
    Rhetoric and Relevance
    In J. Bender & D. Wellbery (eds.), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice, Stanford University Press. pp. 140-56. 1990.
  •  64
    Culture and modularity
    with Lawrence Hirschfeld
    In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.
    Members of a human group are bound with one another by multiple flows of information. (Here we use “information” in a broad sense that includes not only the content of people’s knowledge, but also that of their beliefs, assumptions, fictions, rules, norms, skills, maps, images, and so on.) This information is materially realized in the mental representations of the people, and in their public productions, that is, their cognitively guided behaviors and the enduring material traces of these behav…Read more
  •  60
    Experimental evidence on reasoning and decision making has been used to argue both that human rationality is adequate and that it is defective. The idea that reasoning involves not one but two mental systems (see Evans and Over, 1996; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich, 2004 for reasoning, and Kahneman and Frederick, 2005 for decision making) makes better sense of this evidence. ‘System 1’ reasoning is fast, automatic, and mostly unconscious; it relies on ‘fast and frugal’ heuristics (to use Gigerenzer’s e…Read more
  •  143
    Meaning and relevance
    Cambridge University Press. 2012.
    When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is an inference process guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximat…Read more
  •  23
    Are folk taxonomies “memes”?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (4): 589-590. 1998.
    This commentary stresses the importance of Atran's work for the development of a new cognitive anthropology, but questions both his particular use of Dawkins's “meme” model and the general usefulness of the meme model for understanding folk-taxonomies as cultural phenomena.
  •  24
    This work examines how people interpret the sentential connective “or”, which can be viewed either inclusively (A or B or both) or exclusively (A or B but not both). Following up on prior work concerning quantifiers (Noveck, 2001; Noveck & Posada, 2003; Bott & Noveck, 2004) which shows that the common pragmatic interpretation of “some,” some but not all, is conveyed as part of an effortful step, we investigate how extra effort applied to disjunctive statements leads to a pragmatic interpretation…Read more
  • Des idées qui viennent
    with Roger-pol Droit
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 191 (4): 526-527. 2001.
  •  28
    Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (edited book)
    Oxford University Press USA. 2000.
    This the tenth volume in the Vancouver Studies in Cogntive Science series. It concerns metarepresentation: the construction and use of representations that represent other representations. Metarepresentations are ubiquitous among human beings, whenever we think or talk about mental states or linguistic acts, or theorize about the mind or language. It is crucial to the unconscious process we use to divine the mental states of others, and ultimately to any workable theory of the mind. This volume …Read more
  •  93
    Defining and explaining culture (comments on Richerson and Boyd, not by genes alone)
    with Nicolas Claidi”ere
    Biology and Philosophy 23 (2): 283-292. 2008.
    We argue that there is a continuum of cases without any demarcation between more individual and more cultural information, and that therefore “culture” should be viewed as a property that human mental representations and practices exhibit to a varying degree rather than as a type or a subclass of these representations and practices (or of “information”). We discuss the relative role of preservative and constructive processes in transmission. We suggest a revision of Richerson and Boyd’s classifi…Read more
  •  197
    This chapter determines a major empirical hurdle for any future discipline of memetics. It mainly shows that one can find very similar copies of some cultural item, link these copies through a causal chain of events which faithfully reproduced those items, and nevertheless not have an example of memetic inheritance. In addition, the stability of cultural patterns is proof that fidelity in copying is high despite individual variations. It is also believed that what is offered as an explanation is…Read more
  •  5172
    On Anthropological Knowledge
    Cambridge University Press. 1985.
  •  327
    Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (2): 57. 2011.
    Short abstract (98 words). Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given humans’ exceptional dependence on communication an…Read more
  •  24
    The mutual relevance of teaching and cultural attraction
    with Thomas C. Scott-Phillips
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38. 2015.