Lehigh’s third philosophy conference to focus on metaphors

What are metaphors, and what role have they played in humanity’s age-old quest to find meaning in life? Forty-six scholars from around the world will ponder these and other questions on Thursday and Friday (Oct. 8-9) when the department of philosophy holds its Third Annual Lehigh Philosophy Conference.

The conference, titled “Metaphors in Use,” begins at 9 a.m. on Thursday in Linderman Library. Two sessions will run concurrently all day Thursday and on Friday morning in Rooms 200 and 342. A third session will be added on Friday afternoon in Room 300.

There will be three keynote addresses. At 10:45 a.m. Thursday, Lynne Tirrell, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, will speak on “Metaphors, Euphemisms and Slurs: Using Tropes to Sculpt the Social Landscape.”

At 10:45 a.m. Friday, Elisabeth Camp, associate professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, will discuss “Analogical Equations and Conceptual Expansion: Metaphors in Scientific Imagination.”

At 4:30 p.m. Friday, Bryan Van Norden, professor of philosophy at Vassar College, will give a talk titled “’Like Loving a Lovely Sight’: Simile and Metaphor in Chinese Philosophy.”

A donor generous in anonymity

This year’s conference is the largest of the three that have been held so far, says Robin Dillon, the department chair and the William Wilson Selfridge Professor of Philosophy. Scholars are attending from Pakistan, Scotland, Italy, Georgia, South Africa, Canada and the United States. The annual event is supported by a grant to the department from an anonymous donor.

Metaphors are frequent companions to everyday speech, says Dillon. Almost without thinking, people lament that time flies and observe that the human mind is like a computer.

“Metaphors also do heavy lifting in philosophical thinking,” says Dillon. “Our goal at the conference is to try first to be clear about our topic and then to examine the roles that metaphors have played throughout history in philosophical work.”

A consensus has not always prevailed among the various schools of philosophical thought, says Dillon. René Descartes (1596-1650), for example, declared that knowledge, like a well-built building, required a secure foundation that could withstand attacks. This point of view was later challenged by epistemologists (those who study the theory of knowledge), who questioned the need for knowledge to have a foundation.

Sessions at the conference are titled Metaphor and Analogy; Hermeneutics and Beyond; Metaphor in the Ancient World; Personal Identity Politics; Metaphor, Metaphysics and the Sciences; Metaphor in Cross-Cultural Context; Metaphor on the Continent: Lacan/Sartre; Metaphor Reconsidered; Minds, Metaphors and Induction; Dealing with Metaphors; Who Owns What?, Metaphors in the Ancient World: Plato and Aristotle; Metaphor on the Continent: Hegel/Heidegger; Metaphor in the Ancient World: Pythagoras/Heraclitus; Metaphor and Language; and Metaphors and Experiences.

The goal of the conference, says Dillon, is twofold. “We want to make it clear to the world that good philosophy is happening at Lehigh, and we want to make it clear at Lehigh that world-class philosophy is happening here.”

The philosophy department this semester is offering 15 courses to 403 students. Two of the courses are being co-taught with the department of religion studies. The department has seven undergraduate majors and about 20 minors. The Lehigh student chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the philosophy honor society, has 10 members and will be inducting a new contingent of students in November.

“We’re trying to recruit more students into philosophy classes,” says Dillon. “We want them to see that philosophy is useful and that it explores questions that everyone has to deal with at some point in life.”