Mark Rowlands

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, The Body in Mind (1999), The Nature of Consciousness (2001), Animals Like Us (2002), and a personal memoir, The Philosopher and the Wolf (2008).

Biography

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."