Dan Sperber

Is mind-reading involved in ownership judgments?

By @rekablazsek.bsky.social & @heintz-c.bsky.social

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible

Rashid Khalidi withdraws course on Middle East history, saying it's 'impossible to teach' given adoption of IHRA.

'Columbia's capitulation..is being done to cover up...the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia's leadership is now fully complicit' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Palestinian who helped make Oscar-winning No Other Land killed in West Bank Israeli settler Yinon Levi, whom Trump removed from US sanctions list, arrested after death of Awdah Hathaleen

And in the meantime, in the West Bank, Israeli settlers proceed with their own genocidal goals:
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

It contains a radical and I believe serious critique of the very idea of scalars implicatures. I wondered why it has never been discussed at all. I downed on me that it has probably never been read. Oh well!
Here is the 2012 version.
www.dan.sperber.fr/wp-content/u...

ABOUT SCALARS:
Ira Noveck and I published in 2007 "The why and the how of experimental pragmatics: The case of scalar inferences" in _Advances in Pragmatics_ (N Burton-Roberts ed.), republished in D. Wilson & D. Sperber _Meaning and Relevance_ 2012, as ch 14.

Excellent article: "Tracking minds in communication" by
Paula Rubio-Fernandez, Marlene D.Berke, and
Julian Jara-Ettinger
Open access at pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i...

i.guim.co.uk/img/media/48...

YouTube video by Météore Films Le Rire et le Couteau | Bande-Annonce | au cinéma le 9 juillet 2025

youtu.be/2AcoQk1u20I?...
An totally out-of-the-ordinary wonderful portuguese film directed by Pedro Pinho: "O riso e a faca", "Le rire et le couteau", "I only sleep in the storm", action taking place in Guinea Bissau, shown at the festival de Cannes, now showing in France.

Opinion | I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

Helen De Cruz (1978-2025) - Daily Nous Helen De Cruz, professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University, has died. Professor De Cruz specialized in philosophy of religion and cognitive science. They were the author of Wonderstruck: How Won...

Philosopher Helen De Cruz has died.

Israel is accused of the gravest war crimes in Gaza Distinguished lawyers, senior humanitarians and diplomats tell Jeremy Bowen why they are increasingly concerned about the catastrophe inside Gaza.

Well worth a read.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Rethinking Ostensive Communication in an Evolutionary, Comparative, and Developmental Perspective" now published in Psychological Review
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Happy In Theory This is the short story of my long search for a stable academic home. There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending.

thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

There is suffering everywhere you look, says mother of emaciated baby girl trapped in Gaza Babies such as Siwar Ashour are suffering from malnutrition as crucial supplies run out amid Israel’s total blockade on aid

Gaza and Warsaw Ghetto: Compare
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Cognitive Artifacts

Valeria Giardino on cognitive artifacts:
oecs.mit.edu/pub/bx21plqj...

Joshua Craze, Sudan’s World War — Sidecar Two years of conflict.

Read to understand how: "The last two years of war have lain waste to the country. Over 150,000 people are estimated to have died. ... 13 million people have fled from their homes."
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

.A tiny bit maybe. The subject-matters overlap but the perspective, conceptual framework, and conclusions are quite different.

‪Molly O’Rourke-Friel argues that, "when beliefs are formed and sustained by dialogical deliberation, the relevant justification-conferring process doesn’t occur solely within the cognition of the subject ..."
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Do kids prefer to play with helpers? Our paper on children's trait attribution and partner choice is out! doi.org/10.1111/cdev... We wanted to know if kids, after observing other agents' behaviors, spontaneously (!) interpret them in terms of traits and choose cooperation partners accordingly. 🧵...

Excellent didactic historical overview

A year ago I linked to a paper by Deirdre Wilson and me entitled "Rethinking ostensive communication in an evolutionary, comparative, and developmental perspective."
A much revised version has been accepted by Psychological Review. The preprint is available at
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Objectify and Commit: How Reasons Bring About Cultural Change and Progress - Topoi Humans are uniquely reasoning animals as they are the only species who produce and evaluate reasons. Reasons bring about cultural change and even progress in the sense that they lead to increasingly b...

A new article by Stefaan Blancke on the role of reasoning in cultural evolution:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

From the slatestarcodex community on Reddit: The Last Decision by the World’s Leading Thinker on Decisions Explore this post and more from the slatestarcodex community

In March 2024, Daniel Kahneman sent this last email: "This is a goodbye letter I am sending friends to tell them that I am on my way to Switzerland, where my life will end on March 27. " I find this awsome.
www.reddit.com/r/slatestarc...

How the Right Hijacked Antonio Gramsci Inspired by a misreading of Antonio Gramsci, far-right activists have spent decades attempting to shape intellectual and cultural spaces. But their version of Gramsci’s ideas leaves out a crucial elem...

Nathan Sperber and George Hoare:
jacobin.com/2025/03/righ...

Seized, settled, let: how Airbnb and Booking.com help Israelis make money from stolen Palestinian land As Israel deploys tanks in the West Bank for the first time in 20 years, we reveal how two of the world’s biggest travel companies are helping settlers commercialise stolen land

And in the meantime...
www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Trump cuts aid to South Africa over ‘racial discrimination’ against Afrikaners US president also offers asylum to Afrikaners and criticises law that allows land seizures without compensation in some circumstances

The abject absurdity of Trump: Apartheid, which lasted from 1948 to 1991, went on without American economic sanctions until 1986 and even then Reagan tried to veto sanctions.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

The phonology of letter shapes: Feature economy and informativeness in 43 writing systems Differentiating letter shapes accurately is a core competence for any reader. Are letter shapes as distinctive as they could be? The visual shapes of …

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Twice as long – life expectancy around the world Life expectancy has doubled over the last two centuries around the world. How has this happened?

Always keep in mind the historical perspective

ourworldindata.org/life-expecta...

New paper in Open Mind! What does it mean to help? What is the goal of a helping action? We wanted to probe infants' & preschoolers' helping concept - specifically, whether they think helpers reduce others' action costs. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Goodbye to the lost children of Gaza. You were loved, you are remembered, you did not deserve it | Nesrine Malik There is no way to rationalise the horrors inflicted on Gaza’s innocent children. Now is the time to mourn them fully, says columnist Nesrine Malik

Whatever you views, surely, these children deserve to be mourned and remembered
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...