Susan Blackmore

Susan Blackmore (2014)

Susan Jane Blackmore, PhD, MSc, BA (born 29 July 1951, in London) is a British psychologist, researcher, freelance writer, lecturer and broadcaster, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine. She is well known for her studies and books on memetics, consciousness and parapsychology.

Quotes

• Consciousness is an illusion constructed by the memes.
  • - Susan Blackmore, interview in MungBeing

• Memetics appears to have a lot of implications that we humans are machines, which people have never liked. Of course we're machines, we're biological machines. But people don't like that. Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes. People don't like that. My view is that if these things are true it doesn't matter if we like them or not.
  • Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes, Wired.com, 2/29/2008

• Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies.
  • Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter 74

• If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe.
  • Life lessons, Guardian, 04/07/2005

• The other key to my failures seemed to be belief. I was told that I didn’t get results because I didn’t believe strongly enough in psi, because I didn’t have an open mind!
  • The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of

• The way I really think is more like this "I am a scientist. I think the way to the truth is by investigation. I suspect that telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and life after death do not exist because I have been looking in vain for them for 25 years. I have been wrong lots of times before and am not afraid of it".
  • Dr. Susan Blackmore

See also

• Daniel Dennett, American philosopher and another popular writer on the subject of memetics

External links

• Susan Blackmore's website
• Interview With Susan Blackmore