The CU townies might be interested in this CAS / Millercomm lecture next week. I’ll probably go, if my schedule and the universe doesn’t conspire against me.
Analogy as the Core of Cognition
September 14, 2006
Thursday, 7:30 p.m.
Theatre, Lincoln Hall
702 South Wright Street, Urbana
Douglas Hofstadter
Director, Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University
The widely known author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid argues that every concept in our minds arises from an accumulation of analogies stretching back to our earliest childhood, and that thinking — the pinpointing of the right concept at the right time — is the result of a relentless swarm of unconscious analogy-makers competing with each other. He will offer many examples, including errors of diction, expanding spheres of word meanings, proverbs as situation labels, the sudden bubbling-up of buried memories, and counterintuitive leaps that constitute the pinnacle of creative human thought.
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