Mark Rowlands
Mark Rowlands | |
|---|---|
| Born | Error: Need valid birth date: year, month, day Newport, Wales, UK |
| Occupation | philosopher |
| Nationality | Welsh |
| Website | |
| http://www.markrowlandsauthor.com/ | |
Mark Rowlands, D.Phil., is the Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami.
Life
Rowlands was born in 1962, in Newport, Wales.[1] He grew up in a nearby town called Cwmbrân. He has a younger brother. His father was Chief Superintendent in the Gwent police, and his mother taught kindergarten. As a boy, he listened to the music of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Uriah Heep. He considered himself a jock type.[2] He has also lived in in the U.S., Ireland, Britain, and France.[3]
Rowlands is married. His wife's name is Emma. They have a son.[4]
Rowlands went to high school at Croesyceiliog Comprehensive School, in Cwmbrân, then studied engineering at the University of Manchester.It was at Oxford University that Rowlands got his D.Phil.[5]
Prior to his current employment, Rowlands was Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire.[6] He is known for his popular books on philosophy, for his work on the moral status of animals, and as one of the principal architects of the view of the mind known as 'vehicle externalism' or 'the extended mind'.
In an online interview[1], Rowlands stated some of his favorite books were Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and [[The Secret Agent]], F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.
Beliefs
In an online interview with Dan Schneider [2], Rowlands stated the only two truly great philosophers were Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, and listed his three major philosophical beliefs as:
- The mind is not entirely in the head: mental processes go on in the world around us as much as inside our brains.
- Consciousness – what it is like to have or undergo an experience – is real, but nowhere at all.
- Animals have moral rights (at least, they do if humans do).
Rowlands is for euthanasia, stem cell research, and gay marriage, but equivocal on abortion.[3]
Rowlands is apolitical and an agnostic. In that same interview Rowlands stated:
"It would surprise me – it would surprise me a lot – if God existed. Then again, I’ve been surprised before. One thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of thinking about things is that I really don’t know very much at all. In fact, if the history of thought has taught me anything it is that, once we go beyond mundane beliefs that I need to get around in the world, most of what I believe is probably wrong. Therefore, while I find most religious views ridiculous, I am also deeply suspicious of the sort of anti-religious proselytizing certainty you find, in for example, Dawkins or Dennett. I think John Gray is probably right when he describes them as a late Christian movement."[7]
Regarding the issue of hate crimes, Rowlands stated:
"In general, I have a deep distrust of motives, whether malign or benign. I suspect they are often masks we use to hide deeper and more important causes of our actions. Consequently, I naturally gravitate towards a consequentialist moral theory, according to which the rightness or wrongness of an action should be judged solely on its consequences. It’s a sort of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ idea."[8]
Rowlands summed up his beliefs on evil this way:
"My view of evil has many points of contact with Philip Zimbardo’s. In particular, I think the motive of the person committing the evil acts has little to do with the essence of evil. Evil has nothing essentially to do with taking delight in the suffering of one’s victims...In my view, evil is typically the result of one or another type of failure: ether a moral failure or an epistemic failure. The moral failure is the failure to perform one’s basic moral duties...The epistemic failure is far more prevalent. It is the failure to subject one’s beliefs to the appropriate amount of critical scrutiny..."[9]
Writings
Book publications
- Body Language: Representing in Action, MIT Press, 2006.
- Everything I Know I Learned From TV: Philosophy for the Unrepentant Couch Potato, Ebury/Random House, 2005
- The Philosopher at the End of the Universe, Ebury/Random House, 2003; retitled Sci-Phi: Philosophy from Socrates to Schwarzenegger, 2nd edition
- Externalism: Putting Mind and World Back Together Again, Acumen/McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
- Animals Like Us, Verso, 2002.
- The Nature of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- The Environmental Crisis: Understanding the Value of Nature, Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 2000.
- The Body in Mind: Understanding Cognitive Processes, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Animal Rights: A Philosophical Defence, Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 1998.
- Supervenience and Materialism, Ashgate, 1995.
References
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ markrowlandsauthor.com accessed 17 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008
- ^ The Dan Schneider Interview 14: Mark Rowlands 16 August, 2008