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Commentators discussed the coherence and validity of a minimalist approach to ownership intuitions, in ways that make it possible to clarify the model, re-evaluate its cognitive underpinnings, and sketch some of its implications. This response summarizes the model; addresses issues concerning the need for a special technical lexicon when describing cognitive semantics; the psychology involved in contexts of competitive acquisition and their consequences for possession and use of rival resources; the role of cooperative expectations in creating mutually beneficial allocation of resources; the consequences of ownership psychology for social interaction and the production of social norms of property; and the relations between psychological processes and legal institutions in the domain, before proposing some final thoughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirely ad hoc , the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing that the intuitions result from the interaction of two cognitive systems. One of these handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as "this is hers," "that is not mine." This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand "cultural appropriation" and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free of ad hoc stipulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In reply to commentary on our target article, we supply further evidence and hypotheses in the description of ritualized behaviors in humans. Reactions to indirect fitness threats probably activate specialized precaution systems rather than a unified form of danger-avoidance or causal reasoning. Impairment of precaution systems may be present in pathologies other than obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), autism in particular. Ritualized behavior is attention-grabbing enough to be culturally transmitted whether or not it is associated with group identity, cohesion, or with any other social aspect of collective ceremonies.

Ritualized behavior, intuitively recognizable by its stereotypy, rigidity, repetition, and apparent lack of rational motivation, is found in a variety of life conditions, customs, and everyday practices: in cultural rituals, whether religious or non-religious; in many children's complicated routines; in the pathology of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD); in normal adults around certain stages of the life-cycle, birthing in particular. Combining evidence from evolutionary anthropology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging, we propose an explanation of ritualized behavior in terms of an evolved Precaution System geared to the detection of and reaction to inferred threats to fitness. This system, distinct from fear-systems geared to respond to manifest danger, includes a repertoire of clues for potential danger as well as a repertoire of species-typical precautions. In OCD pathology, this system does not supply a negative feedback to the appraisal of potential threats, resulting in doubts about the proper performance of precautions, and repetition of action. Also, anxiety levels focus the attention on low-level gestural units of behavior rather than on the goal-related higher-level units normally used in parsing the action-flow. Normally automatized actions are submitted to cognitive control. This 'swamps' working memory, an effect of which is a temporary relief from intrusions but also their long-term strengthening. Normal activation of this Precaution System explains intrusions and ritual behaviors in normal adults. Gradual calibration of the system occurs through childhood rituals. Cultural mimicry of this system's normal input makes cultural rituals attention-grabbing and compelling. A number of empirical predictions follow from this synthetic model. Keywords: childhood ritual; compulsion; event boundaries; evolutionary psychology; obsessive-colnpulsive disorder; ritual; thought intrusion

A large amount of research in cognitive psychology is focused on memory distortions, understood as deviations from various (largely implicit) standards. Many alleged distortions actually suggest a highly functional system that balances the cost of acquiring new information with the benefit of relevant, contextually appropriate decision-making. In this sense many memories may be examples of functionally adaptive misbelief. doi:10.1017/S0140525X09991397

Folk-sociology is a set of intuitive assumptions that organize our spontaneous theories about society, including the notion that social groups are agent-like. Pietraszewski's model may explain this folk-sociological assumption in an elegant way. However, large-scale group dynamics include features that seem to escape agent-like descriptions. Therefore, one may want to find out whether the "event-grammar" proposed here can account for these features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atran's account account of cultural transmission can be further refined by considering constraints from early-developed, domain-specific intuitive ontological understanding. These suggest specific predictions about the cultural survival of 'memes,' depending on the way they activate intuitive understanding. There is no general dynamic of cultural inheritance; only complex predictions for domain-specific competencies that cut across cultural domains.

Identifying objects as members of ontological domains activates category-specific processes. There is evidence that these processes include particular ways of 'tracking' substances and could do all the 'tracking' necessary for concept acquisition. There may be no functional need or evolutionary scenario for a general tracking capacity of the kind described by Millikan.

In this comment, we respond to comments raised by Eastwood (2012) in response to our article on the role of evolutionary psychology in understanding institutions (Boyer and Petersen, 2012). We discuss how evolutionary psychological models account for cultural variation and change in institutions, how sociological institutionalism and evolutionary models can inform each other, how evolutionary psychological models illuminate the role of power in institutional design and the possibility of a ‘general theory’ of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most standard social science accounts only offer limited explanations of institutional design, i.e. why institutions have common features observed in many different human groups. Here we suggest that these features are best explained as the outcome of evolved human cognition, in such domains as mating, moral judgment and social exchange. As empirical illustrations, we show how this evolved psychology makes marriage systems, legal norms and commons management systems intuitively obvious and compelling, thereby ensuring their occurrence and cultural stability. We extend this to propose under what conditions institutions can become ‘natural’, compelling and legitimate, and outline probable paths for institutional change given human cognitive dispositions. Explaining institutions in terms of these exogenous factors also suggests that a general theory of institutions as such is neither necessary nor in fact possible. What are required are domain-specific accounts of institutional design in different domains of evolved cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Boyer [Monodromy of perverse sheaves on vanishing cycles on some Shimura varieties, Invent. Math. 177 (2009), 239-280 (in French)], a sheaf version of the monodromy-weight conjecture for some unitary Shimura varieties was proved by giving explicitly the monodromy filtration of the complex of vanishing cycles in terms of local systems introduced in Harris and Taylor [The geometry and cohomology of some simple Shimura varieties (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2001)]. The main result of this paper is the cohomological version of the monodromy-weight conjecture for these Shimura varieties, which we prove by means of an explicit description of the groups of cohomology in terms of automorphic representations and the local Langlands correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed narrative relies on an anachronistic projection of current religions onto prehistorical and historical cultures that were not concerned with prosocial morality or with public statement of belief. Prosocial morality appeared in wealthier post-Axial environments. Public demonstrations of belief are possible and advantageous when religious diversity starts interacting with coalitional recruitment dynamics in large-scale societies, a typical feature of modern, so-called WEIRD societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents evidence that category-specific processes include particular ways of `tracking' substances and can perform the `tracking' necessary for concept acquisition. Accomplishment of tracking by specialized principles; Nondescriptionist account of Ruth Millikan in identifying substances; Description of category-specific principles.

Bering argues that belief in posthumous intentional agency may confer added fitness via the inhibition of opportunistic behavior. This is true only if these agents are interested parties in our moral choices, a feature which does not result from Bering's imaginative constraint hypothesis and extends to supernatural agents other than dead people's souls. A by-product model might handle this better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]