Encephalization, or brain expansion, underpins humans’ sophisticated social cognition, including language, joint attention, shared goals, teaching, consensus decision-making and empathy. These abilities promote and stabilize cooperative social inter-actions, and have allowed us to create a ‘cognitive’ or ‘cultural’ niche and … Continue reading
This paper contrasts conservative and liberal interpretations of the extended mind hypothesis. The liberal view, defended here, considers cognition to be socially extensive, in a way that goes beyond the typical examples (involving notebooks and various technologies) rehearsed in the … Continue reading
The social brain hypothesis is a well-accepted and well-supported evolutionary theory of enlarged brain size in the non-human primates. Nevertheless, it tends to emphasize an anthropocentric view of social life and cognition. This often leads to confusion between ultimate and … Continue reading
The field of social cognitive neuroscience has captured the attention of many researchers during the past ten years. Much of the impetus for this new field came from the development of functional neuroimaging methods that made it possible to unobtrusively … Continue reading
