Mark Rowlands (born 1962) is a
Welsh writer and philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Miami, and the author of several books on the philosophy of mind, the moral status of
non-human animals, and cultural criticism. He is known within academic philosophy for his work on the animal mind and is one of the principal architects of the view known as vehicle
externalism, or the
extended mind, the view that thoughts, memories, desires and beliefs can be stored outside the brain and the skull. His works include Animal Rights (1998), The Body in Mind (1999), The Nature of Consciousness (2001), Animals Like Us (2002), and a personal memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf (2008).[1]
Rowlands was born in
Newport, Wales and began his undergraduate degree in engineering at the
University of Manchester before changing to philosophy. He took his doctorate in philosophy from the
University of Oxford,[2] and has held various academic positions in philosophy in Britain, Ireland and the United States.[3]
His best known work is his international best-selling memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf, about the decade he spent living and travelling with a wolf. As Jonathan Derbyshire wrote in his Guardian review, "it is perhaps best described as the autobiography of an idea, or rather a set of related ideas, about the relationship between human and non-human animals."[4]Julian Baggini wrote in the Financial Times that it was "a remarkable portrait of the bond that can exist between a human being and a beast."[5]Mark Vernon writing in The Times Literary Supplement added that it "could become a philosophical cult classic."[6]
Bibliography
Supervenience and Materialism, Ashgate, 1995.
Animal Rights: A Philosophical Defence, Macmillan/St Martin's Press, 1998.
ISBN978-0-333-71131-6
The Body in Mind: Understanding Cognitive Processes, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
ISBN978-0-521-04979-5
The Environmental Crisis: Understanding the Value of Nature, Macmillan/St Martin's Press, 2000.
The Nature of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
ISBN978-0-521-03947-5
Externalism: Putting Mind and World Back Together Again, Acumen/McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.
ISBN978-1-902683-78-2
The Philosopher at the End of the Universe, Ebury/Random House, 2003
ISBN978-0-09-190388-6; retitled Sci-Phi: Philosophy from Socrates to Schwarzenegger, 2nd edition
ISBN978-0-312-32236-6
Everything I Know I Learned From TV: Philosophy for the Unrepentant Couch Potato, Ebury/Random House, 2005
ISBN978-0-09-189835-9
Body Language: Representing in Action, MIT Press, 2006.