Metaphors and Models: The Neuroscience of Comparison

Videos from the event

1. SPEAKER: Dedre Gentner, Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Psychology and Co-Director, Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, Northwestern University
2. SPEAKER: Stephen J. Flusberg, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Purchase College, SUNY
3. SPEAKER: Alexander Rapp, Faculty Member in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen
4. RESPONDENT: Stephen Casper, Associate Professor of History, Clarkson University
5. PANEL DISCUSSION: Panel Discussion

Event information

November 20, 2017, Faculty House, Columbia University

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.

Moderated by Matteo Farinella, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University; and Lan A. Li, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University.