Dr Nicolas Baumard
About
Nicolas Baumard is a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the University of Oxford. Nicolas has studied philosophy, social sciences, psychology and biology at the universities of Paris, Nantes, Aix-en-Provence and Michigan. He completed a PhD under the supervision of Dan Sperber in the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and at the Institut Jean-Nicod in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In his PhD, he has developed a mutualist theory of morality which proposes that morality has evolved by market selection and aims at respecting equally the interest of others. This theory has led to a series of experimental studies in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology and evolutionary psychology. Nicolas has also published papers on the naturalist approach in sociology, anthropology and philosophy. His most recent project seeks an understanding of the cognitive basis of religion and aims at proposing a dual-system theory of religious beliefs.
