Cultural evolution, philosophy & emotions

The Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven is pleased to 
announce a call for abstracts for its conference on: 

Cultural evolution, philosophy and the emotions
University of Leuven, 28-30 May, 2013
Deadline for submissions: 30 December, 2012. 

About the conference:
The past decades have witnessed a proliferation of evolutionary theories 
on culture and cultural capacities. In general, evolutionary theories of 
culture have been rather well received in the philosophical literature. 
However, a number of important philosophical issues concerning this theory 
remain largely unsettled. This focused conference aims to address some of 
these issues by examining how gene-culture co-evolutionary theories can 
explain human emotions – a topic that has been of special importance for 
more narrow evolutionary approaches, such as evolutionary psychology. 

Below are some of the kinds of questions that we hope will be discussed in 
the course of the conference. The list is not exhaustive, but should be 
read as a list of suggestions: 

1. What role do emotions play in cultural evolution? 
2. Which human emotions are socially transmitted? 
3. Which aspects of emotions are socially transmitted? 
4. Can gene-culture co-evolutionary theory offer a plausible account of 
culture-bound syndromes? 
5. How can cultural evolutionary theories contribute to a more profound 
evolutionary understanding of basic emotions? 
6. Why have emotions been neglected by cultural evolutionists? 
7. Do some cultural variants spread because they solve emotional problems? 
8. Is emotional contagion a key factor for human cooperation? 
9. Has shame/disgust/fear been culturally exapted to solve modern adaptive 
problems? 
10. Can gene-culture co-evolutionary theories bring us any closer to a 
unified theory of the emotions? 

Invited speakers:
Peter J. Richerson (UC Davis), Daniel Kelly (Purdue University), Grant 
Ramsey (University of Notre Dame), Lesley Newson (UC Davis), Tim Lewens 
(Cambridge University), Stefan Linquist (University of Guelph), Stefano 
Ghirlanda (CUNY), and Murray Smith (University of Kent). 

Information for submissions:
Send an abstract of c. 500 words to andreas.deblock@... before 
December 31, 2012. You will be notified of acceptance before January 22, 
2013. Please note that this will be a pre-read conference, so there is 
also a final paper submission deadline on April 25, 2013. The final paper 
should not be longer than 7000 words. We are able, on certain conditions, 
to offset the costs of travel for a limited number of graduate students. 
Please check with the organizers if you are interested. 

Publication:
We intend to publish most of the papers presented at the conference in an 
edited volume or a special issue. We will aim high when looking for a 
publisher. Please note, however, that all papers will have to go through 
the usual process of peer review, and that the publication of your paper 
cannot be guaranteed. 

Organization:
Organizers are Andreas De Block, Pieter R. Adriaens and Helen De Cruz. The 
meeting is part of a research project about the historical and 
evolutionary roots of homophobia (‘Homophobia and cultural evolution: A 
Philosophical approach’), and is sponsored by the Research Foundation 
Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), the Human Evolution and Behavior Network 
(HEBEN), and the Institute of Philosophy (HIW, University of Leuven).

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