Discussion Hour with Dr Christophe Heintz

Speaker: Dr Christophe Heintz (Central European University, Vienna, Austria and Visiting Scholar at the GRCDI, University of St Andrews)

In place of an abstract, Christophe would like to discuss the following themes:

1. Further debates based on the talk I shall give on May 6th: “Diverse pathways to satisfying informative intentions”, in particular concerning:
   i- recognising humans’ diverse ways to satisfy their informative intentions, opening the question about why one way rather than another is selected at any given time.
   ii- what mind-reading capacities can be ascribed to non-human great apes: recursive mind-reading, why not?
   iii- the selection pressures for the emergence of human ostensive communication:
   – they are first and foremost about ostension—producing and processing evidence of communicative intentions—not so much about language.
   – they come from a partner choice ecology in which there are multiple win-win opportunities.

2. Can there me non-mentalistic ostension?
   Several papers, including Sperber and Wilson recent one:
   Rethinking ostensive communication in an evolutionary, comparative, and developmental perspective
   Although the idea has some appeal, I do not think it is the case: ostension is best characterised as providing evidence for one’s communicative intention.

3. Commitment: what it is, and how it is involved in ostensive communication.

Speaker bio:
Christophe Heintz is working on the role of adaptive cognition in shaping cultural evolution and cooperation. He is a cognitive psychologist at Central European University (CEU), Vienna. His webpage can be found here: http://christophe.heintz.free.fr/

Registration
Lunch will be provided, and your registration will allow us to manage catering and room capacity. Please email the GRCDI Coordinators (Laura and Sarah) via [email protected] by 9 May 2025, indicating any dietary requirements.