Mark Rowlands

Mark Rowlands
Born	1962 Newport, Wales
Occupation	Philosopher
Nationality	Welsh
www.markrowlandsauthor.com

Mark Rowlands (born 1962) is a Welsh writer and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami.

Life and Work

Mark Rowlands was born in Newport, Wales and began his undergraduate degree at Manchester University in engineering before changing to philosophy. He took his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University and has held various academic positions in philosophy in universities in Britain, Ireland and the US.

His best known work is the book The Philosopher and the Wolf about a decade of his life he spent living and travelling with a wolf. As The Guardian described it in its 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." Reviews were very positive, the Financial Times said it was "a remarkable portrait of the bond that can exist between a human being and a beast,". Mark Vernon writing in The Times Literary Supplement "found the lessons on consciousness, animals and knowledge as engaging as the main current of the memoir," and added that it "could become a philosophical cult classic", while John Gray in the Literary Review thought it "a powerfully subversive critique of the unexamined assumptions that shape the way most philosophers - along with most people - think about animals and themselves." However, Alexander Fiske-Harrison for Prospect warned that "if you combine misanthropy and lycophilia, the resulting hybrid, lycanthropy, is indeed interesting, but philosophically quite sterile" and that, although Rowlands "acknowledges at the beginning of the book that he cannot think like a wolf... for such a capable philosopher and readable author not to have made the attempt is indeed an opportunity missed."

As a professional philosopher, Rowlands is known as one of the principal architects of the view known as vehicle externalism or the extended mind, and also for his work on the moral status of animals.

Bibliography

• Supervenience and Materialism, Ashgate, 1995.
• Animal Rights: A Philosophical Defence, Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-333-71131-6
• The Body in Mind: Understanding Cognitive Processes, Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-521-04979-5
• The Environmental Crisis: Understanding the Value of Nature, Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 2000.
• The Nature of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-521-03947-5
• Animals Like Us, Verso, 2002. ISBN 978-1-85984-386-4
• Externalism: Putting Mind and World Back Together Again, Acumen/McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-1-902683-78-2
• The Philosopher at the End of the Universe, Ebury/Random House, 2003 ISBN 978-0-09-190388-6; retitled Sci-Phi: Philosophy from Socrates to Schwarzenegger, 2nd edition ISBN 978-0-312-32236-6
• Everything I Know I Learned From TV: Philosophy for the Unrepentant Couch Potato, Ebury/Random House, 2005 ISBN 978-0-09-189835-9
• Body Language: Representing in Action, MIT Press, 2006.
• Fame, Acumen 2008. ISBN 978-1-84465-157-3
• The Philosopher and the Wolf, Granta, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84708-059-2
• The New Science of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2010. ISBN 978-0-262-01455-7

External links

• Mark Rowlands Personal Website
• Mark Rowlands Blog
• Interview with Mark Rowlands in The Scotsman
• Interview with Mark Rowlands in themashazine.com