Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Ivana Ilic | Music Theory, Emory University
Jasna Veličković | Composer and Performer

"How Do We Know It's Music? On Musical Capacities of the Electromagnetic Field" 

What happens when the electromagnetic signal is not only deliberately made audible, but also exploited with a specifically musical aim? In this presentation, I investigate the distinctively musical use of electromagnetism in art from the 1960s until the present day. The ...

Richard Moore | Executive Director, Children in Crossfire
"Freedom, Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Lessons from Northern Ireland"

Dr. Moore’s talk is part of the CMBC's Spring 2024 sponsored course “Empathy, Theater and Social Change” taught by Dr. Lisa Paulsen and Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva.

This lunch talk was Co-sponsored by Emory’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics & Woodward Academy

“Freedom, Forgivenes...

Arkarup Banerjee | School of Biological Science / Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY 
"Neural Circuits for Vocal Communication: Insights from the Singing Mice." 

My long-standing interest is to understand how circuits of interacting neurons give rise to natural, adaptive behaviors. Using vocal communication behavior across rodent species, my lab at CSHL pursues two complementary questions. How does the auditory system interact with th...

Jack Gallant (Psychology, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science / University of California, Berkeley)
"The Distributed Conceptual Network in the Human Brain"

Human behavior is based on a complex interaction between perception, stored knowledge, and continuous evaluation of the world relative to plans and goals. Even seemingly simple tasks such as watching a movie or listening to a story involve a range of different perceptual ...

Claire White | Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge
"An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion"

In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understanding, explaining, and predicting many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that relig...

Harvey Whitehouse | Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK
"Against Interpretive Exclusivism"

Interpretive exclusivism is the claim that studying cultural systems is exclusively an interpretive exercise, ruling out reductive explanation and scientific methods. Following the lead of Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, I will argue that the costs of interpretive exclusivism are heavy and the benefits illusory. By contrast, the int...

Emma Cohen | Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK
"From Social Synchrony To Social Energetics. Or, Why There's Plenty Left in the Tank"

Thirty years ago, in an article entitled Crisis of Conscience, Riddle of Identity, Bob McCauley and Tom Lawson powerfully critiqued the “hermeneutic exclusivism” that by then prevailed in anthropology and the history of religions. When I read the article as a new doctoral student in anthropology, i...

Dimitris Xygalatas | Anthropology, University of Connecticut
"Ritual, Embodiment, and Emotional Contagion" 

While the Cognitive Science of Religion has brought the mind to the forefront of analysis, it has had little to say about the body. As a result, the mechanisms underlying much-discussed and well-documented effects often remain elusive. In this paper, I will discuss ritual’s ability to facilitate the alignment of people’s bodies...

Justin Barrett | President, Blueprint 1543
"Bringing Technology to Mind: Cognitive Naturalness and Technological Enthusiasm"

Sometimes new technologies spread before society has had sufficient time to evaluate them. Can we make better decisions about whether to be enthusiastic or reticent regarding new tech without waiting for thorough testing or the emergence of unintended negative consequences? In his book Why Religion Is Natural a...

Pascal Boyer | Psychology & Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis
"What Kinds of Religion are "Natural"?"

McCauley emphasized that religious representations are “natural”, in contrast to other cultural systems that require systematic training or leaning and institutional scaffolding. Pursuing this line of reasoning, we can see how some limited domains of religion are far more natural than others, in McCauley’s sense of that ...

Kareem Khalifa | Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles 
"The Methodenstreit Ain't Right: McCauley on Interpretation and Explanation"

Does interpretation distinguish the human sciences from the natural sciences? Or do explanations drive the human sciences in a manner akin to their more venerable natural-scientific cousins? These questions fueled the decades-old Methodenstreit (“methodological dispute”) about the foundation...

Bryon Cunningham | Psychology, Occidental College
"Evolution, Mood Disorders, and Religious Coping: Interactions Between Explanatory and Interpretive Theories in Clinical Practice" 

In this talk, I advocate for the view that explanatory and interpretive theories can be mutually enriching in clinical practice. I start with the ecumenical view that the theoretical frameworks of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory a...

Jared Rothstein | Philosophy, Daytona State University
"Surfing, Sharks, & The Limits of Reason" 

Based on personal experience surfing in the “Shark Bite Capital of the World” (Volusia County, Florida) and interdisciplinary research from the fields of behavioral economics, neuropsychology, and philosophy of mind, the author rejects the traditional Rationalist view that ‘future discounting’ is always unreasonable. He argues, on the co...

Charles Nussbaum | Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
"Why Normative Ethics Is Natural and Metaethics Is and Is Not" 

Morality prescribes privileged standards for action and character. Ethics is the philosophy of morality. Normative ethics codifies the prescriptive principles of morality that justify considered judgments of cases. Metaethics is the second-order study of ethics. It investigates the truth conditions of moral judgm...

Oliver Rollins | American Ethnic Studies / African American Studies / Sociology, University of Washington
"Towards an Anti-Racist Neuroscience: Possibilities and Problematics with Scientific Progress" 

Alongside the deadly COVID-19 outbreak, the biomedical and health sciences have been altered by the continued challenge of racism. Major academic science journals (e.g., Nature, Science, and JAMA) have responded with calls to better re...

Sashank Varma | Psychology and Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
"Mathematical Concepts in Humans and Machine Learning Models"

The nature of mathematical concepts has long been a topic of philosophical debate. Recent theorizing in mathematical cognition has tended towards nativist accounts and postulations of built-in neural circuitry. In this talk, I consider whether this status quo is being challenged by the em...

Using the Science of Love and Bonding to Bring New Perspectives on Social Relationships, Health, and the Practice of Female Genital Mutilation in East Africa. 

Larry Young | Center for Translational Social Neuroscience | Psychiatry, Emory University Rev. Patti Ricotta | President, Life Together International Discussants: Kathryn M. Yount | Global Health and Melvin Konner | Anthropology, Emory University 

Larry Young and Rev. Patti Ri...