352 Haines Hall,  UCLA  (see directions below)

10:30
Susan Perry  http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/sperry/ sperry@anthro.ucla.edu
Traditions in Wild Capuchin Monkeys
    Capuchin monkeys exhibit several group- or clique-specific behaviors in the behavioral domains of social conventions and food processing that seem to qualify as traditions.  I will present the results of an empirical study involving the collaboration of 10 researchers at 4 study sites in Costa Rica, including about 20,000 hours of observation over a 12-year period.  I will speculate as to the function of the social conventions, and discuss how function is likely to affect variables of traditions such as durability, proportion of the population acquiring the trait, and transmission fidelity.

1:30
Stanley Klein  http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/fac/klein.htm klein@psych.ucsb.edu
Self and Memory:  Multiple Systems, Multiple Functions
     Memory can be viewed as consisting of a number of functionally independent systems, each designed by evolution to accomplish a specific set of goals. Because these goals differ with respect to both the operations required for their successful achievement, as well as the representational format best suited to those ends, these different memory systems operate independently, although, they typically interact in performance of everyday memory tasks.
     In my talk I will describe two memory systems that have received the bulk of theoretical and empirical attention over the last 25 years -- the episodic and semantic memory systems. I will then present evidence, both from normal subjects and from amnesic case studies, pointing toward the functional independence of these two systems. The amnesic material is particularly important because it allows us to view dissociations between two systems that interact so closely in normal memory operation that their independence is easily overlooked.
     I then will discuss the role of these two systems in the representation and utilization of knowledge about self. Finally, I will attempt to provide one answer to the critically important, but seldom addressed question, "What is the functional basis for episodic and semantic memory?" My answer to this question will involve showing how interaction with the world would be altered if one had only  semantic (or episodic) memory. The evidence I will discuss will come from the domain of person memory -- how we represent knowledge about others and use that knowledge when making judgments about the person's characteristics.

3:30
Michael Chwe  http://chwe.net/michael/michael@chwe.net
Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge

   Say that a group of people face a "coordination problem" in that each person wants to participate only if many other people do (for example, group hunting, political demonstrations, buying a Macintosh computer).  People most often "solve" coordination problems through communication.  However, game theory shows that to solve a coordination problem, it is not enough for a message simply to be received by each person; each person must know that each other person has received it, each person must know that each other person knows that each other person has received it, and so forth.  In other words, it is not enough for the message to simply be "known"; it must be "common knowledge" (each person knows that other people know it, and so forth).  This argument is well known (the philosopher David Lewis made it in 1969) but its empirical relevance has not been fully realized.  I argue that the concept of common knowledge is extremely helpful in looking at "public rituals," such as public ceremonies, rallies, and media events.  I consider (among other things) the Super Bowl, political techniques during the French Revolution, data from US network television advertising, the question of how a group's social network affects its ability to coordinate, and the "instability" of Bentham's panopticon prison design.  Most work on the "theory of mind" (a person's ability to understand the mental states of others) has focused on how meaning is created and understood in two-person interactions.  My argument suggests that "theory of mind" is an essential aspect of how large-scale social institutions such as public rituals "work."
   The talk is based on Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge, Princeton UP, 2001.

Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture and the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology.  This event is organized as a working seminar for faculty and graduate students.  For more information, please contact Alan Fiske.

UCLA and UCSB will hold a Saturday conference once a quarter, alternating between the two campuses.  This one, the first, will be in the Anthropology Department Reading Room.

Map of the UCLA campus (Haines Hall is #22, at coordinates C, 6).

There may be car pools coming from UCSD; ask Stan Klein, Leda Cosmides, or John Tooby.

Driving directions: From the 405 freeway, take Sunset Blvd. east;  pass Veterans Ave. and turn right onto Westwood Plaza.  Go down into the garage to the parking & information kiosk and pay $6 for a pass to parking structure 5. Make a U-turn to come out of the garage, go right (east) on Charles Young Drive North to Royce Drive, turn right, go straight down hill after stop sign.  Park in structure 5, any level.  Go to top of southeast stairs, cross pedestrian bridge and continue east 150 meters.  Turn right along Haines Hall, go in main entrance, up to the third floor and turn right to room 352.