Metaphors and Models: The Neuroscience of Comparison – Seminars in Society and Neuroscience

This event explores the conceptual force of metaphors in neuroscience.  How do metaphors shape how we think and communicate? How are they represented in the brain? To answer these questions, this event engages with the everyday persistence of these rhetorical tools by examining scientific studies of metaphor use and metaphors in scientific discourse.  Featuring perspectives from neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, our speakers probe the distinction between metaphors and models that emerge from thinking and reasoning.  These models are further taken up in different social and political circumstances and are used to describe a range of phenomenon from mental health to climate change that articulate and obscure our efforts to make sense of the world.

Speakers:

Dedre Genter, Director of Cognitive Science Program, Northwestern University

Stephen Flusberg, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Purchase College, SUNY

Respondent:

Stephen Casper, Associate Professor of History, Clarkson University

Additional speakers to be announced shortly.