Susan Blackmore

Susan Jane Blackmore (born 29 July 1951) is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth.

Her fields of research include memetics, parapsychology, consciousness, and she is best known for her book The Meme Machine.

She has written or contributed to over 40 books and 60 scholarly articles and is a contributor to The Guardian newspaper.

In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St Hilda's College, Oxford, with a BA (Hons) degree in psychology and physiology.

She received an MSc in environmental psychology in 1974 from the University of Surrey.

The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

In 1980, she earned a PhD in parapsychology from the same university; her doctoral thesis was entitled "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process."

In the 1980s, Blackmore conducted psychokinesis experiments to see if her baby daughter, Emily, could influence a random number generator.

The experiments were mentioned in the book to accompany the TV series Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers.

In 1987, Blackmore wrote that she had an out-of-body experience shortly after she began running the Oxford University Society for Psychical Research (OUSPR):

Within a few weeks I had not only learned a lot about the occult and the paranormal, but I had an experience that was to have a lasting effect on me—an out-of-body experience (OBE).

It happened while I was wide awake, sitting talking to friends.

It lasted about three hours and included everything from a typical "astral projection," complete with a silver cord and duplicate body, to free-floating flying, and finally to a mystical experience.

It was clear to me that the doctrine of astral projection, with its astral bodies floating about on astral planes, was intellectually unsatisfactory.

But to dismiss the experience as "just imagination" would be impossible without being dishonest about how it had felt at the time.

It had felt quite real.

Everything looked clear and vivid, and I was able to think and speak quite clearly.

She is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly CSICOP) and in 1991, was awarded the CSICOP Distinguished Skeptic Award.

In an article in The Observer on sleep paralysis Barbara Rowland wrote that Blackmore, "carried out a large study between 1996 and 1999 of 'paranormal' experiences, most of which clearly fell within the definition of sleep paralysis."

Blackmore has done research on memes (which she wrote about in her popular book The Meme Machine) and evolutionary theory.

She was on the editorial board for the Journal of Memetics (an electronic journal) from 1997 to 2001, and has been a consulting editor of the Skeptical Inquirer since 1998.

She acted as one of the psychologists who was featured on the British version of the television show Big Brother, speaking about the psychological state of the contestants.

She is a Patron of Humanists UK.

In his foreword to Blackmore's book The Meme Machine (1999), Dawkins said, "Any theory deserves to be given its best shot, and that is what Susan Blackmore has given the theory of the meme."

Other treatments of memes, that cite Blackmore, can be found in the works of Robert Aunger: The Electric Meme, and Jonathan Whitty: A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management.

Blackmore's treatment of memetics insists that memes are true evolutionary replicators, a second replicator that like genetics is subject to the Darwinian algorithm and undergoes evolutionary change.

Her prediction on the central role played by imitation as the cultural replicator and the neural structures that must be unique to humans in order to facilitate them have recently been given further support by research on mirror neurons and the differences in extent of these structures between humans and the presumed closest branch of simian ancestors.

In a New Scientist article in 2000, she again wrote of this:

"It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena—only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic."

Blackmore taught at the University of the West of England in Bristol until 2001.

After spending time in research on parapsychology and the paranormal, her attitude towards the field moved from belief to scepticism.

Her book Consciousness: An Introduction (2004), is a textbook that broadly covers the field of consciousness studies.

Blackmore debated Christian apologist Alister McGrath in 2007, on the existence of God.

At the February 2008 TED conference, Blackmore introduced a special category of memes called temes.

Temes are memes which live in technological artifacts instead of the human mind.

In 2017, Blackmore appeared at the 17th European Skeptics Congress (ESC) in Old Town Wrocław, Poland.

This congress was organised by the Klub Sceptyków Polskich (Polish Skeptics Club) and Český klub skeptiků Sisyfos (Czech Skeptic's Club).

At the congress she joined Scott Lilienfeld, Zbyněk Vybíral and Tomasz Witkowski on a panel on skeptical psychology which was chaired by Michael Heap.

Susan Blackmore has made contributions to the field of memetics.

In 2018 she debated Jordan Peterson on whether God is needed to make sense of life.