Text Box: BEING AN ANIMAL Text Box: It is a platitude that human beings are animals; it is also true that we are a special sort of animal, with capacities for language, culture, science, and the arts. We cannot understand what it means to be an animal without confronting the similarities and differences between human and non-human animals. Our speakers have spent their professional lives studying the similarities and differences between human and non-human animals. One is a scientist (Sarah Boysen, Ohio State) who works with chimps. The other is a philosopher (Colin Allen, Texas A&M) who studies how best to understand the mind and behavior of animals of other species. Each offers a fresh look at our animal nature in ways likely to foster dialogue on a range of topics associated with what it means to be animals. It has been said that thinking of ourselves as animals is dangerous because it threatens to grip us, in a negative way, with a picture of ourselves as primitive, instinctual and brutish. Our speakers plan to challenge this negative conception. SCHEDULE (All events to be held in DeTamble Auditorium at Wake Forest University unless otherwise noted.) Thursday, April 15 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Video screening — a program about Sarah Boysen’s efforts to teach language skills to chimps. Hosted by the Undergraduate Philosophical Society and presented by Dr. Karen Roper (Psychology Dept., WFU.) A306 Tribble Hall Friday, April 16 4:00 p.m. Sarah Boysen, “Cultural Hybridization with Chimpanzees: It’s not Smoke and Mirrors.” DeTamble Auditorium 6:00 p.m. Reception. Tribble entrance lobby. Saturday, April 17 9:00 – 10:30 a.m. Colin Allen, “Jumping the gap: animal cognition beyond the great apes.” DeTamble Auditorium 10:30 – 10:55 a.m. Break 11:00 – noon Panel discussion. Moderator: Hugh LaFollette (East Tennessee State University). Panelists to include Sarah Boysen, Colin Allen, Robert Beck (Psychology, WFU), Karen Roper (Psychology, WFU), and Carol Shively (Wake Forest University School of Medicine). DeTamble Auditorium. Sponsored by the Wake Forest University Department of Philosophy and the Thomas Jack Lynch Philosophy Funds Boysen Allen LaFollette