This proposal requests funds to support a symposium entiled "Historical, Philosophical and Empirical Perspectives on Animal Consciousness." The symposium will be held under the auspices of the 1999 annual metting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology that will be held in Denver. This symposuim will bring together anthropologists, biologists, philosophers of pyscholog, and conflicting views concerning the history and philosophy, and historians and philosophers of science to present and discuss their conflicting views concerning the history and philosophy of scientific claims and assumptions about animal sentience. The participants have been carefully chosen to represent facets of the many-sided debates that surround the issue of animal consciousness. They include many of the most distinguished and important scholars and scientist in their fields. Participants in the symposium,and readers of its proceedings, will be compelled to focus on the difficulties that science has in dealing with subjective experience. The symposium will raise this issue in a debate that brings togather scientists, philsophers, and historians to discuss a topic of mutal interest.
