Nicholas Humphrey
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, London School of Economics; Visiting Professor of Philosophy, New College of the Humanities; Senior Member, Darwin College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Profile – Nicholas Humphrey (b. 1943)
As a PhD student in Cambridge, Nicholas Humphrey worked with a monkey called Helen whose visual cortex had been removed (an experiment that would never be done today) and discovered, almost by accident, that she still retained some visual ability. This was the phenomenon later known as blindsight. In 1971, during several months at Dian Fossey’s gorilla research centre in Rwanda, he began to focus on the evolution of social intelligence, leading to the idea that human beings are ‘natural psychologists’ who use introspection to model the minds of others. Returning to Cambridge in 1990 after three years with Dan Dennett at Tufts, he went on to propose a radically new theory about the nature of sensation and qualia, arguing that sensations originated in evolution as a form of ‘bodily expression’ that was then elaborated to become the basis of the phenomenal self. He has investigated the evolutionary background of religion, art, the placebo effect, death awareness, and suicide; he has also campaigned for nuclear disarmament, earning him the Martin Luther King Memorial prize. His most recent book, Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness (2022a), brings all these threads together to make the case that sentience, far from being a primitive trait, is a relatively recent evolutionary innovation that exists only in mammals and birds.
More biographical information
Profile in the Guardian, July 2006
Publications
List of papers for download
Contributions on Edge
Articles in Prospect Magazine
Citations on Google Scholar
Selected publications relevant to consciousness
Humphrey, N. (1983). Consciousness regained: Chapters in the development of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Humphrey, N. (1986). The inner eye: Social intelligence in evolution. London: Faber & Faber. Google Books preview here.
Humphrey, N. (1987). The inner eye of consciousness. In C. Blakemore and S. Greenfield (Eds), Mindwaves: Thoughts on intelligence, identity, and consciousness (pp. 377–381). Oxford: Blackwell.
Humphrey, N. (1992). A history of the mind: Evolution and the birth of consciousness. London: Chatto & Windus. Google Books preview of 1999 edition (Copernicus) here.
Humphrey, N. (2000). How to solve the mind–body problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(4), 5–20, with commentaries, pp. 21–97, and reply, pp. 98–112. Reprinted in Humphrey (2002). The mind made flesh: Frontiers of psychology and evolution (pp. 90–114). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paywall-protected journal record here. Full text (html, target article only) here.
Humphrey, N. (2002). The mind made flesh: Essays from the frontiers of psychology and evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Humphrey, N. (2006). Seeing red: A study in consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Books preview here.
Humphrey, N. (2011). Soul dust: The magic of consciousness. London: Quercus. Google Books preview here.
Humphrey, N. (2016). Redder than red illusionism or phenomenal surrealism? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11–12), 116–123. Paywall-protected journal record here.
Video
His list of downloadable videos
The invention of consciousness. Lecture, EuroAsianPacific Joint Conference on Cognitive Science, Turin, September 2015
The magic of consciousness. The Royal Institution, September 2014; includes follow-up Q&A, March 2015
Soul dust: The science and art of consciousness. Creativity Lecture, Keble College, Oxford, May 2011
Audio
His list of downloadable audio
Interview for The Partially Examined Life, May 2015