Biography:Mark Rowlands

Short description: Welsh writer and philosopher

Mark Rowlands
Born	1962 Newport, Wales
Education	BA (philosophy) University of Manchester DPhil (philosophy) University of Oxford
Known for	The Philosopher and the Wolf (2008), Running with the Pack (2013), Everything I learned from TV
Scientific career
Fields	Philosophy of mind, Moral philosophy
Institutions	University of Miami
Thesis	Anomalism, supervenience, and explanation in cognitive psychology (1989)

Mark Rowlands (born 1962) is a Welsh writer and philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, and the author of several books on the philosophy of mind, the moral status of non-human animals, and cultural criticism. He is known within academic philosophy for his work on the animal mind and is one of the principal architects of the view known as vehicle externalism, or the extended mind, the view that thoughts, memories, desires and beliefs can be stored outside the brain and the skull. His works include Animal Rights (1998), The Body in Mind (1999), The Nature of Consciousness (2001), Animals Like Us (2002), and a personal memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf (2008).

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

His best known work is his international best-selling memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf, about the decade he spent living and travelling with a wolf. As Jonathan Derbyshire wrote in his Guardian 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." Julian Baggini wrote in the Financial Times that 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 added that it "could become a philosophical cult classic."

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, MIT Press, 2010. ISBN:978-0-262-01455-7
• Can Animals be Moral? Oxford University Press, 2012 ISBN:978-0-19-984200-1
• Running with the Pack, Granta, 2013 ISBN:978-1847082022

See also

• List of animal rights advocates

Further reading

• "Mark Rowlands interview: The company of wolves", The Scotsman, 20 November 2008.
• Fiske-Harrison, Alexander. 'On philosophers and wolves', Prospect, 22 January 2009
• Hafner, Michael. "The Philosopher, the Wolf, the Dog and the Fleas", The Mashazine, 10 November 2009.
• Gray, John. 'The Nature Of The Beast', Literary Review, 12 December 2008

External links

• Mark Rowlands blog