Speaker: Paul Thagard, Professor of Philosophy, with cross appointment to Psychology and Computer Science, Director of the Cognitive Science Program and University Research Chair at University of Waterloo
Date: Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013, 2-4pm
Title: Creative Cognition in Social Innovation
Category: Seminar

Abstract:
Human creativity operates in many domains, including scientific discovery,technological invention, artistic imagination, and social innovation. Creativity requires cognitive processes such as combining ideas, generating hypotheses, and using analogies. It also requires social processes such as exchanging ideas and transferring emotional evaluations. This talk will examine the cognitive and social processes responsible for social innovation in six cases: Wendy Kopp with Teach For America, Cicely Saunders with hospices, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, Elizabeth Fry with prison reform, Millard Fuller with Habitat for Humanity, and Muhammad Yunus with microfinance. Dr. Thagard will outline models of how new methods are generated (procedural creativity), and of how cognitive and social processes interact to foster creativity.

Speaker Biography:
Paul Thagard is a Professor of Philosophy, with cross appointment to Psychology and Computer Science, and the Director of the Cognitive Science Program and University Research Chair at University of Waterloo.He is a graduate of the Universities of Saskatchewan, Cambridge, Toronto (Ph. D. in philosophy) and Michigan (M.S. in computer science).

He is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Cognitive Science of Science:Explanation, Discovery and Conceptual Change (MIT Press, 2012) and The Brain and the Meaning of Life (Princeton University Press, 2010, paperback, 2012).

Dr. Thagard was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council in 2007 and also the Killam Prize in 2013.

Creative Cognition in Social Innovation from Waterloo Complexity Institute on Vimeo.

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