Nicholas Humphrey
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, London School of Economics; Visiting Professor of Philosophy, New College of the Humanities; Senior Member, Darwin College, Cambridge
Profile – Nicholas Humphrey (b. 1943)
As a PhD student in Cambridge Humphrey discovered, almost by accident, that monkeys can still see after their visual cortex has been removed (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’ using introspection to model the minds of others. He convinced Richard Dawkins that memes are living structures; made a 1980s TV series called The Inner Eye; and has long worked for the cause of nuclear disarmament. Returning to Cambridge in 1990 after three years with Dan Dennett at Tufts, he worked on radically new ideas about the nature of sensation and qualia, arguing that sensations are a form of ‘bodily expression’. In Soul Dust: The magic of consciousness, he claims that phenomenal consciousness is a ‘magical mystery show’ designed by natural selection to have seemingly ‘out-of-this-world’ properties to make us feel special and transcendent.
More biographical information
Profile in the Guardian, July 2006
Personal website
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