#209 Cecilia Heyes: Cultural Evolutionary Psychology, Imitation, And Mindreading

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Dr. Cecilia Heyes is a Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Science at All Souls College, University of Oxford. She was trained as an experimental psychologist at University College London (UCL, 1978-84). As a Harkness Fellow in the United States (1984-6), she studied evolutionary epistemology with Donald T. Campbell and philosophy of mind with Daniel Dennett. She’s done experimental work, initially in animal cognition and later in cognitive neuroscience, and more recently her group developed and tested an associative account of the origins of imitation and the mirror neuron system. She’s the author of Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking.

In this episode, we talk about the approach developed by Dr. Cecilia Heyes and collaborators, as exposed in her book, Cognitive Gadgets – cultural evolutionary theory. First, we discuss what it borrows from Evolutionary Psychology and Cultural Evolutionary Theory, and what assumptions from both of those fields it rejects. We talk about modularity of mind, and then get into two of the cognitive mechanisms that Dr. Heyes explores in the book, namely imitation and mindreading (or theory of mind). We get a bit into how language might influence our thinking. And toward the end we address issues regarding human nature, and evolutionary mismatch.

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Follow Dr. Heyes’ work:

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Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking: https://amzn.to/2Jem1cI

Twitter handle: @CeliaHeyes

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