Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD. from Oxford University.
She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was the first to argue that children’s minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. She is a columnist (every other week) for The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of over 100 journal articles and several books including “Words, thoughts and theories” (coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff), MIT Press, 1997, and the bestselling and critically acclaimed popular books “The Scientist in the Crib“(coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl) William Morrow, 1999, and “The Philosophical Baby; What children’s minds tell us about love, truth and the meaning of life” Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009.
She has also written widely about cognitive science and psychology for Science, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist and Slate, among others. And she has frequently appeared on TV and radio including “The Charlie Rose Show” and “The Colbert Report”.
Professor Gopnik is an external advisor to the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
When children are more intelligent than adults: Theory formation, causal models, and the evolution of learning. A public lecture given by Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley Date: 18 May 2017 Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College Abstract: In the past 15 years, we have […]
Can machines be creative? Examining the capacity for creative thought. Creativity is often considered a distinctive feature of human or human-like intelligence. Scientists and artists struggle to explain their creativity, often resorting to all-too-easy creation myths (eg Newton’s apple), appealing to the divine, or citing the immense complexity and idiosyncrasy of the human mind. This […]
