BLAB: Reminder and reading for October 1 meeting

[Gary Varner]

BLABers -

Our next meeting is this Friday, October 1. With direction from Tracey 
Martin of Ted Friend's ANSC euthenics group, we'll be reading:

	Povinelli, Daniel J. 1989. "Failure to Find Self-Recognition
	in Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in Contrast to Their Use
	of Mirror Clues to Discover Hidden Food." *Journal of
	Comparative Psychology* 103:122-31. 	(PDF attached.)

We'll meet at the same time (4:00 Friday) and place (directions below) 
and I'll again have a couple of snacks and a cooler out for anybody who 
wants to bring drinks.

Feel free to bring along interested colleagues, and remember to bring 
your payment for subsidized copies of the Macphail book, to which we 
will be turning our attention after this week (details on that are 
repeated below).


========== DIRECTIONS ==========

Gary Varner (and Melissa Reyna)
406 Woodson Drive, Bryan
Phone: 846-0250

Directions: From the U.S. Post Office on University Drive, go north on 
College Main. Just before College Main ends in a “T” intersection with 
Old College, turn right onto Woodson Drive. We’re the house on the 
outside of the turn at the end of the street, with a red Toyota truck in 
the driveway.


========== DETAILS ON THE MACPHAIL BOOK ==========

At our last meeting, we resolved to read a book of very general 
interest, titled *The Evolution of Consciousness*. It's by a prominent 
British psychologist, Euan Macphail. It includes overviews of: (a) 
theories of the mind-body relationship in both philosophy and 
psychology, (b) comparative studies of cognition and learning in various 
animal taxa, (c) the significance of pain and the concept of self, and 
(d) a novel argument for the neo-Cartesian conclusion that only humans 
are conscious. The Oxford University Press blurb on the book and some 
snippets of reviews are here:

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Cognitive/?ci=0198503245&view=usa

The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research (CHR) provides 
some funding support to this reading group, and we decided that a good 
use of some of the allocated funds would be to subsidize purchases of 
the above book. After talking to CHR Director Jim Rosenheim, it looks 
like the best way to do this is as follows. The book is selling for 
about $30 (a little pricey for a paperback, but not outrageous for an 
academic book from Oxford University Press). I will order all copies of 
the book at my own expense. We will ask graduate student participants in 
the BLAB to pony up $5 out of pocket, and faculty to pony up $10. Then I 
will file one reimbursement request equal to the total cost of the books 
(and postage) minus the $5s and $10s from students and faculty.

*IMPORTANT NOTE*: To purchase a copy of this book at the subsidized 
rate, you must get your contribution ($5 for grad students, $10 for 
faculty) to me by our next meeting. If you cannot make our next meeting, 
you can bring cash to my office (305A Bolton Hall) or send a check (but 
*not* cash), made out to my name, through campus mail to: Gary Varner, 
Philosophy, MS 4237.

-- 
  ____________________________________________________________________
|    |  |____      Gary Varner             Listen to "Hickory Wind"  |
| ___|       |     Philosophy               contemporary folk music  |
| \       .  |     Texas A&M                        on KEOS 89.1 fm  |
|  \/\_     /  Director of Graduate Studies         Mondays 7-9 p.m. |
|      \  /      (979) 845-8499, 845-0458 (FAX) g-varner at tamu.edu    |
|       \(         Home page: http://philosophy.tamu.edu/~gary/      |
|____________________________________________________________________|


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