Susan Blackmore (born July 29, 1951)
Career
In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St. Hilda's College, University of Oxford, with a BA (Hons) in psychology and physiology. She went on to do a postgraduate degree in environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, achieving an MSc in 1974. In 1980, she gained one of the first PhDs in parapsychology in the UK (Surrey University), her thesis being entitled "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process".
In 2001, she left her position as Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, where she taught courses on parapsychology and consciousness. Her research interests include belief in the paranormal, astrology and divination, near-death experiences, the effects of meditation, evolutionary psychology and the theory of memetics. At UWE, she was Perrott-Warrick Researcher studying psychic phenomena in borderline states of consciousness. She has been awarded prizes by both the Society for Psychical Research and CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal). She is one of few researchers who have published work on Lucid Dreams.
She has done research on memes (which she wrote about in her popular book The Meme Machine), evolutionary theory, consciousness, and the paranormal.
She has also appeared on television a number of times, discussing such paranormal phenomena as ghosts, ESP, and out-of-body experiences, in what she describes as the "unenviable role of Rentaskeptic", and she has also presented a show on alien abductions. Another programme which she has presented discusses the intelligence of apes. She also acted as one of the psychologists who featured on the British version of the television show "Big Brother", speaking about the psychological state of the contestants. She was on the editorial board for the Journal of Memetics (an electronic journa, now defunctl) from 1997 to 2001, and has been a consulting editor of the Skeptical Inquirer since 1998.
One of her recent books, Consciousness: An Introduction (2004), is a textbook that broadly covers the field of consciousness studies. In it she covers a wide variety of topics such as the mind-body problem, the hard problem of consciousness, philosophy of mind, cognitive neuropsychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, evolution, parapsychology, altered states of consciousness, phenomenology, Buddhism, and meditation.
In sidebars of her book she has written brief profiles about various notable contributors to the field such as Daniel C. Dennett, John Searle, David Chalmers, Patricia Churchland, Francis Crick, Antonio Damasio, V.S. Ramachandran, John Carew Eccles, Rodney Brooks, Alan Turing, Francisco Varela, Rene Descartes, David Hume, William James, and the Buddha.
Susan Blackmore conducted interviews with leading scientists and philosophers in the study of consciousness for a proposed (but never realized) radio series, compiling their responses into lively, though slightly repetitive, Q&A interviews. The result, in book form, is her latest work, Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human, 2006.
Memetics
Susan Blackmore has made contributions to the field of memetics, with works aimed at the layman, though her writings are lacking in scientific foundation and are more cultural study than psychology or neuroscience. The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene and although the term has been widely used it is often misunderstood. Blackmore's book The Meme Machine is perhaps the most thorough introduction to memetics available.
In his foreword to this work, Dawkins said "Any theory deserves to be given its best shot, and this is what Susan Blackmore has done for the theory of the meme." Much more scientific treatments can be found in the works of Robert Aunger, such as The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think.
Blackmore's treatment of memetics insists that memes are true evolutionary replicators, a second replicator that like genetics is subject to the Darwinian Algorithm and undergoes evolutionary change. Her prediction on the central role played by imitation as the cultural replicator and the neural structures that must be unique to our species necessary to support it have recently been confirm by research on mirror neurons and the differences in extent of these structures between humans and our closest ape relations.
In her work on memetics she has emphasized the role that Darwinian mechanisms play in cultural evolution and has helped develop the field of Universal Darwinism.
Personal life
In 1977, she married fellow academic Tom Troscianko, and they had two children: Emily Tamarisk Troscianko (born February 20, 1982), and Jolyon Tomasz Troscianko (born May 17, 1984). She is now the partner of the television presenter and scientist Adam Hart-Davis.
Blackmore is an active practitioner of Zen, although she identifies herself as "not a Buddhist". Blackmore is an atheist who has criticized religion sharply, saying of religious ideas: "I believe they are false".
Books
The Adventures of a Parapsychologist, Prometheus Books (February 1987)
Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences, Prometheus Books; Reprint edition (September 1993)
In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist, Prometheus Books (May 1996)
Test Your Psychic Powers, Susan Blackmore and Adam Hart-Davis, Sterling; Reprint edition (June 30, 1997)
The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press, New Edition (May 16, 2000)
Consciousness: An Introduction, Oxford University Press (October 16, 2003)
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press (June 23, 2005)
Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human, Oxford University Press (January 1, 2006)
Contemporary Authors: Biography - Blackmore, Susan (Jane) (1951-)
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