My work explores the impact of social interaction on our cognitive lives. This encompasses issues in the philosophy of mind and language, social epistemology, and the philosophy of evolutionary biology and developmental psychology.

I undertake purely theoretical philosophy, and also experimental work with children, adults and our nearest evolutionary cousins, the great apes. My work can be thought of as three interconnected projects, investigating: the impact of social interaction on the development of cognition; the ways in which coordination with others augments our epistemic abilities; and the building blocks of language and thought.

Research Areas

Social Epistemology

Group Cognition

Cognitive Science

Developmental Psychology

Cross-cultural Psychology

Comparative Psychology

Role/Affiliation

Assistant Professor and Acting Scientific Director. UM6P School of Collective Intelligence.

Website: cathalcom.googlepages.com

Representative Publications

Walmsley, J. and O‘Madagain, C. (Joint first authors). (in press).The Worst Motive

Fallacy. Psychological Science.

O‘Madagain, C. (in press). This is a Paper about Demonstratives.

Philosophia.

O‘Madagain, C. Kachel, G and Strickland, B. (2019). The Origin of Pointing:

Evidence for the Touch Hypothesis. Science Advances: Vol. 5,

no. 7, eaav2558, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav2558

Koymen, B. O‘Madagain, C., Domberg, A. and Tomasello, M. (2019). Young

children’s ability to produce valid and relevant counter-arguments. Child

Development, 10.1111/cdev.13338

Egré, P and O‘Madagain, C. (Joint first authors). (2019). Concept Utility. The

Journal of Philosophy.

O‘Madagain, C. and Tomasello, M. (Joint first authors). (2019). Joint Attention to

Mental Contents and the Social Origin of Reasoning. Synthese,

10.1007/s11229-019-02327-1

Contact: Cathal.omadagain@um6p.ma

People

Bisan Abdulkader

Brent Strickland

Lex Paulson