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  • Introduction to the SAAP Proceedings
  • Kenneth W. Stikkers

I am delighted to present this special issue of The Pluralist, the official journal of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, containing selected papers from the 37th Annual Meeting of the Society, held in Spokane, Washington, March 10–12, 2011. The Society cordially thanks the many people from Eastern Washington University, especially Kevin Decker and Terrance MacMullan, for their gracious and generous hospitality in hosting the meeting.

The Society also extends a hearty thanks to its Program Committee for all its hard work, contributing so importantly to the success of the Annual Meeting: Elizabeth Cooke (Creighton University) and Todd Lekan (Muskingum University), Co-Chairs; and Tom Burke (University of South Carolina), Marilyn Fischer (University of Dayton), Maurice Hamington (Metropolitan State College of Denver), and Marcia Moen (University of Hartford).

Opening this issue is the Founders Address, delivered by Sandra Rosenthal, Provost Distinguished Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Loyola University, New Orleans. The Founders Address is delivered in alternate years when there is no Presidential Address, by a member of the Society who both exemplifies the finest scholarship in the American philosophical tradition and has served the Society with distinction throughout his or her career. In her distinguished scholarly career, Rosenthal has published approximately two hundred articles and twelve books, the most recent of which is C. I. Lewis in Focus: The Pulse of Pragmatism (2007). Most of these publications have concerned American philosophy, but she has also written extensively in contemporary continental philosophy and business ethics. She served as President of the Society and of four other major professional associations, including the Metaphysical Society of America. In her address, “The Process of Pragmatism: Some Wide-Ranging Implications,” Rosenthal offers a remarkably [End Page 1] rich and concise articulation of pragmatism’s understanding of metaphysics, experience, and knowing as lying between the extremes of foundationalism and anti-foundationalism.

Since 1995 a central feature of the Society’s Annual Meetings has been the John J. Coss Dialogues, made possible through an endowment from the estate of Herbert Schneider. The aim of the Dialogues is to promote discussion “across boundaries,” such as those between scholarly disciplines, geographical regions, and philosophical traditions. The 2011 Coss Lecturer was Roger Fouts, Professor of Psychology at Central Washington University, a leading scholar in primate behavior, and author of Next of Kin: What Chimpanzees Tell Us About Who We Are. His lecture, “Chimpanzees and Sign Language: Darwinian Realities versus Cartesian Delusions,” presented how his research in teaching chimpanzees to communicate via sign language, with both humans and one another, demonstrates the closeness between the two species and thereby raises serious ethical issues regarding the use of chimpanzees for laboratory experimentation. Because Fouts’s lecture involved extensive video clips of his research, it is summarized here by Erin McKenna (Pacific Lutheran University), in collaboration with Fouts.

Responding to Fouts are Kelly Booth (Thompson Rivers University), McKenna, and Steven Fesmire (Green Mountain College). Booth is largely sympathetic to Fouts’s arguments. He suggests, however, that current discussion of primate behaviors focuses too much on how animals such as chimpanzees are like humans and that we ought to consider more how research such as Fouts’s helps us to understand and appreciate better our own animality. He also, drawing from the work of George Herbert Mead, raises the issue of, to what extent, if any, are chimpanzees able to take the position of an other subject. McKenna furthers Fouts’s Darwinist criticism of Cartesianism, arguing that Fouts’s philosophical orientation is pragmatist: his epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics are all in accord with the naturalism of classical American pragmatism. Fesmire argues that research, such as Fouts’s, with non-human behavior, is especially valuable, from a pragmatist point of view, because it offers a perspective from which one can appraise human social habits critically, as Dewey encouraged us to do, in ways that one cannot do if limiting oneself only to human behavior. Moreover, such research expands our circle of care to include non-humans and thereby enriches our care for humans as well.

Thanks go to the Coss Dialogues Committee for organizing this year’s very provocative event, which crosses a disciplinary...

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