Susan Blackmore
Visiting Professor
University of Plymouth, United Kingdom
Profile – Susan Blackmore (b. 1951)
As a student in Oxford, reading physiology and psychology, Sue Blackmore had a dramatic out-of-body experience which convinced her that consciousness could leave the body and made her determined, against much sound advice, to study parapsychology. She learned to read Tarot cards, sat with mediums, and trained as a witch, but her 1979 PhD thesis contained only numerous failed experiments on extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. Becoming ever more sceptical of paranormal claims, she turned to studying the experiences that foster paranormal belief, including near-death experiences, sleep paralysis, and dreams, eventually concluding that parapsychology is a red herring in any attempt to understand consciousness. Meditation proved far more helpful, and she has been practising Zen since the early 1980s. She carried out one of the first experiments on change blindness, and her books include the controversial bestseller The Meme Machine as well as books on OBEs, NDEs, meditation, and consciousness. While at the University of the West of England in Bristol, she taught the consciousness course on which this book is based, but finally decided that the only way to learn more about consciousness was to give up the job and write this book. Since then she has been a freelance writer and lecturer and is now working (again) on out-of-body experiences, tremes (technological memes), and (unsuccessful) children’s books. She plays in a samba band, loves painting, kayaking, and her garden, and is learning powerlifting. She is Visiting Professor in Psychology at the University of Plymouth.
More biographical information
Interviews with Susan Blackmore
‘In-sight’. April 2014
The Third Way. Christian magazine, 2010
Publications
Complete list of publications
Citations on Google Scholar
Quotes on Goodreads
Selected publications relevant to consciousness
Blackmore, S. J. (1982). Beyond the body: An investigation of out-of-the-body experiences. London: Heinemann. Reprinted (1992) with new postscript, Chicago: Academy Chicago.
Blackmore, S. J. (1992). Psychic experiences: Psychic illusions. Skeptical Inquirer, 16, 367–376. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. J. (1993). Dying to live: Science and the near-death experience. London: Grafton. Google Books preview here.
Blackmore, S. J. (1987). A report of a visit to Carl Sargent’s laboratory. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 54, 186–198. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. J. (1996a). In search of the light: The adventures of a parapsychologist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. Google Books preview here.
Blackmore, S. J. (1996b). Out-of-body experiences. In G. Stein (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the paranormal (pp. 471–483). Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.
Blackmore, S. J. (1997). Probability misjudgment and belief in the paranormal: A newspaper survey. British Journal of Psychology, 88, 683-689. Journal record (abstract only) here. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. J. (1998). Why psi tells us nothing about consciousness. In S. R. Hameroff, A. W. Kaszniak, and C. Scott (Eds), Toward a science of consciousness II (pp. 710–707). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. J. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Blackmore, S. J. (2002). There is no stream of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9(5–6), 17–28. Journal record (abstract only) here. Direct PDF download here.
Blackmore, S. (2004). A retroselection theory of dreams. Poster presented at the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, ASSC8 Antwerp, Belgium, 25–28 June 2004. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. (2005). Conversations on consciousness: What the best minds think about the brain, free will, and what it means to be human. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Blackmore, S. (2007a). Seeing or blind? A test of sensorimotor theory. Poster presented at the conference ‘Perception, action and consciousness: Sensorimotor dynamics and dual vision’, Bristol, 1–3 July.
Blackmore, S. (2007b). Memes, minds and imagination. In I. Roth (Ed.), Imaginative minds (pp. 61–78). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. (2009). A psychological theory of the OBE. In C. D. Murray (Ed.), Psychological scientific perspectiveson out of body and near death experiences (pp. 23–36). New York: Nova. Reprinted (with new postscript) from (1984), Journal of Parapsychology, 48, 201–218. New postscript here.
Blackmore, S. (2010). Memetics does provide a useful way of understanding cultural evolution. In F. Ayala and R. Arp (Eds), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology (pp. 255–272). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Books preview here. Direct PDF download here.
Blackmore, S. (2011). Zen and the art of consciousness. London: Oneworld. Originally published (2009) as Ten Zen questions. Google Books preview here. Find out more on Sue’s site here.
Blackmore, S. (2012). Turning on the light to see how the darkness looks. In S. Kreitler and O. Maimon (Eds), Consciousness: Its nature and functions. New York: Nova. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. (2013). Living without free will. In G. D. Caruso (Ed.), Exploring the illusion of free will and moral responsibility (pp. 161–175). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Google Books preview here.
Blackmore, S. (2014). Are you convinced that dreaming is a conscious state? In N. Tranquillo (Ed.), Dream consciousness: Allan Hobson’s new approach to the brain and its mind (pp. 91–93). Cham: Springer International. Google Books preview (full text) here.
Blackmore, S. J. (2016). Delusions of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11–12), 52–64. Full text here.
Blackmore, S. (2017). Seeing myself: The new science of out-of-body experiences. London: Robinson. Amazon preview here.
Blackmore, S. (2017). Consciousness: A very short introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Books preview here.
Blackmore, S. J., Brelstaff, G., Nelson, K., and Troscianko, T. (1995). Is the richness of our visual world an illusion? Transsaccadic memory for complex scenes. Perception, 24, 1075–1081. Journal record (abstract only) here. Direct PDF download here.
Blackmore, S. J., and Hart-Davis, A. (1995). Test your psychic powers. London: Thorsons. Also (1997) New York: Sterling. (Also in Kindle edition.) Amazon preview here.
Parker, J. D., and Blackmore, S. J. (2002). Comparing the content of sleep paralysis and dreams reports. Dreaming: Journal of the Interntional Association for the Study of Dreams 12(1), 45–59.
Video
Complete list of videos and podcasts
Four interviews with Mel van Dusen, August 2017
- Self, free will and consciousness
- Genes, memes and tremes
- Out-of-body experiences
- Near-death experiences
Dan Dennett and Susan Blackmore in ‘Conversation’ about his new book, Bristol Festival of Ideas. February 2017
Could the Internet be conscious? ‘ColLaboratoire’ summer school, University of Plymouth, August 2016
The new science of out-of-body experiences. Lecture for CogNovo, University of Plymouth, December 2015
Swedish TV station (Axess TV), June 2015. Susan Blackmore interviews:
- David Chalmers
- Patricia Churchland
- Andy Clark
- Michael Gazzaniga
- Thomas Metzinger
May I offend you? The clash of science, religion and free speech. American Atheists Convention, Memphis, TN April 2015
My weird experiences with Michael Persinger and his God Helmet. Web of Stories.
MOOC interviews – for ‘Think101’, 2014
Interview 1: my own OBE, ESP and OBE experiments, Tarot
Interview 2: psychics, NDEs, scientific thinking
‘Living without free will’. Lecture, British Humanist Annual Conference Leeds, June 2013
The mystery of consciousness. Lecture in Sofia, Bulgaria, April 2013
Debate with Deepak Chopra at Towards a Science of Consciousness, TSC Tucson April 2012. My lecture; panel discussion.
Contributions to Closer to Truth
Audio
Susan Blackmore talks to Cara Santa Maria at the QED conference in Manchester, for Talk Nerdy, October 2016 (Episode 135)
The nature of consciousness. Interview on Radio West (KUER) from Salt Lake City, 10 December 2015
The viral mind of Susan Blackmore. Interviewed on Litopia After Dark, 27 March 2015
Memes, tremes and the future of consciousness. Cologne Conference Futures, October 2014
The biggest questions. Discussion on consciousness with Tony Sobrado. October 2013
Three of the interviews for Sue’s book Conversations on Consciousness, 2005. These are the interviews posted by the Guardian: Francis Crick, Dan Dennett, V. S. Ramachandran. Plus Sue talking about doing the interviews and writing the book.