2008-2009 Templeton Research Lectures
Culture and Religion in a Naturalistic Perspective

Lecture 1: Naturalizing culture: philosophical and empirical issues

Abstract:
Explaining culture in a naturalistic perspective faces two challenges. The best understood challenge is that of identifying the natural factors that make the existence of culture possible and that play a causal role in its perpetuation and evolution. A less well understood and deeper challenge is that of developing a naturalistic understanding of what culture is made of. I suggest a way to meet both challenges at once.

Lecture 2: Cultural epidemiology: ecological and psychological factors

Abstract:
Culture can be viewed as the distribution in a human population of mental representations, artifacts and practices that are linked through causal chains where mental and environmental events alternate. These causal chains crisscross and mesh in a way that determines both our individual thoughts and actions and our common institutions.