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Dickinson's Maher to Present Morton Endowment Lecture at W&L

Washington and Lee University’s Department of Philosophy will present a lecture by Chauncey Maher, assistant professor of philosophy at Dickinson College, entitled “Varieties of Minds,” at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 6, in Huntley Hall 327.

Sponsored by the William W. Morton Endowment for Philosophy and Religion, the lecture is free and open to the public.

Maher researches animal cognition, citing such examples as the ability of New Caledonian crows to fashion tools to retrieve food and honeybees’ ability to communicate about the location of nectar. He is working on an introductory book on intentionality “to clarify the different things one might mean in claiming that some animal or other thinks about the world.”

A member of the Dickinson faculty since 2008, he holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland, an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University.

He is the author of “The Pittsburgh School of Philosophy,” part of the Rutledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy series, and is author or co-author of several articles in professional journals.

The William W. Morton Endowment for Philosophy and Religion was created as a joint departmental support fund in 1994 through the gift of W. Preston Greene Jr., a 1960 Washington and Lee alumnus from Napa, Calif., in memory of this dedicated teacher and his wife, Frances Campbell Morton. William Morton served on the W&L faculty from 1925 to 1956.