The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.

Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright

The complacency and rudderless drift are reminiscent of the US under Biden. If the 'It can't happen here' mentality was naïve before, it's utterly inexcusable now.

What do the gods want?
The book Seshat History of Moralizing Religion explores how cultures from Egypt to India to the Americas linked morality to supernatural reward & punishment.
Learn more & read about the book edited by Jenny Reddish, Peter Turchin and Jennifer Larson: shorturl.at/jUj6m

Thus I argue that so-called 'collective propitiatory obligations' already constitute a form of moralising religion, even before the 'Axial Age'. And they persist today in the 'little traditions' of world religions not because of superstition, but because they powerfully support local cooperation.

This isn't so different from e.g. Christian sin, in which harming others has often been thought of as wrong because it's disobedient to God. In both cases, the proximate cause of punishment is disobedience, but the ultimate cause is an interpersonal violation. In this case, defection/free-riding.

Punishment happens when designated individuals fail to contribute to the common good. Emically, sacrificial obligations on behalf of the community are no different from public goods problems like maintaining a dam or a commons. Punishment results from people failing each other, not just the deity.

Secondly, collective punishment for incorrect offerings to deities. Traditionally, this is seen as amoral, because the deity doesn't care about interpersonal behaviour; it is simply angered by not receiving its due. But I argue this is (often) a misconception.

Firstly, what @manvir.bsky.social calls 'mystical harm beliefs', such as the evil eye. These are typically supernatural punishments for breaking local norms vital to social harmony. Whether or not they actually sustain cooperation, I argue they're emically a result of key interpersonal violations.

Enjoyed putting together two chapters for this new volume on the history of how religions have come to see supernatural punishment and reward as moral (a result of interpersonal conduct). I argue that two kinds of supernatural punishment typically seen as amoral are actually moral.

I'm not sure there's a single word for it. Think of Austronesian peoples in Madagascar. When they arrived in the 6th century, they intermarried with 'indigenous' Bantu people. By the time the French arrived, they'd become 'indigenous'. You need whole sentences to explain the geographical trajectory

'Indigenous' doesn't mean this. As you say, it comes from colonialism and it's only meaningful relative to an invading colonial population. That's why the only people who use it to refer to English people are on the far right - it's a racist dog whistle.

Science is a lot cheaper than most other investments. The anti-intellectual society is inescapably on the decline, abolishing its own future. Be the opposite of that. Go all-out for science, expertise and knowledge, because it pays back, many times over,

as it did for the formerly-great America

In the past 5 years, there’s been an explosion of new work on the philosophy & cog sci of norms. If you want to get up to speed on it, check out this newly revised SEP entry on the Psychology of Normative Cognition by @dryan149.bsky.social, Stephen Setman & me.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/psyc...

"The Special Feature 'Half a Century of Cultural Evolution' assembles answers from a broad array of scientific disciplines with vastly different views on culture, but with one uniting theme: that culture evolves."

Open access

www.pnas.org/topic/565

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

Great new paper from @aiyanakoka.bsky.social consistent with the argument that 'mystical harm' can be seen as moralising supernatural punishment -- for local, particularistic norm violations

Yes, but also, moving some from obscurantist approaches to those that actually enable cumulative intellectual progress is good. Quantitative vs. qualitative is less the issue, I think, than sense vs. nonsense

Nice to see this pithy insight from Peter Turchin, with a nod to his work on Seshat, in @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...

Announcement! The next @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau, @sarahalami.bsky.social, @zhgarfield.com & @edseabright.bsky.social. Save the dates!

culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...