Culture and the Mind

The AHRC Culture and the Mind project is a major five-year interdisciplinary research project based in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. The project is funded primarily through a major research grant of £538,000 from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (to the Project Director, Stephen Laurence).

The project brings together top scholars in a broad range of disciplines to investigate the philosophical consequences of the impact of culture on the mind and the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of culture. These disciplines include anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, developmental psychology, economics, history, neuroscience, and philosophy.

The AHRC Culture and the Mind Project is organised around three subprojects:

1. Folk psychology and folk epistemology (2006 to 2009)

2. Norms and moral psychology (2007 to 2010)

3. Artefacts and material culture (2008 to 2011)

Each subproject involves a number of workshops and philosophically informed anthropological fieldwork, and will culminate in a major international conference that will be open to the public. 

Publications based on project research

Related project: AHRC Innateness and the Structure of the Mind

Publications

H. Clark Barrett, Alexander Bolyanatz, Alyssa Crittenden, Daniel Fessler, Simon Fitzpatrick, Michael Gurven, Joe Henrich, Martin Kanovsky, Geoffrey Kushnick, Anne Pisor, Brooke Scelza, Stephen Stich, Chris von Reudon, Wanying Zhao, and Stephen Laurence (2016). Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition. [with supplementary information, pp. 1-71]. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1522070113

Daniel M. T. Fessler , Colin Holbrook, Martin Kanovsky, H. Clark Barrett, Alexander H. Bolyanatz, Mathew M. Gervais, Michael Gurven, Joseph Henrich, Geoff Kushnick, Anne C. Pisor, Stephen Stich, Christopher von Rueden, and Stephen Laurence (2016). Moral parochialism misunderstood: A reply to Piazza and Sousa. Proceedings of the Royal Society; B (Biological Sciences), 283, 2015262. [with electronic supplementary materials (pp. 1-9)]. DOI:10.1098/rspb.2015.2628

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