Susan Blackmore

Susan Jane Blackmore, PhD, (born 29 July 1951) is an English freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster on psychology and the paranormal, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine.

Career
In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St. Hilda's College, Oxford, with a BA (Hons) degree in psychology and physiology. She went on to do a postgraduate degree in environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, achieving an MSc degree in 1974. In 1980, she got her PhD degree in parapsychology from the same university, her thesis being entitled "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process." After some period of time spent in research on parapsychology and the paranormal, her attitude towards the field moved from belief to scepticism. She is a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and in 1991 was awarded the CSICOP Distinguished Skeptic Award.

Blackmore has done research on memes (which she wrote about in her popular book The Meme Machine) and evolutionary theory. Her book Consciousness: An Introduction (2004), is a textbook that  broadly covers the field of consciousness studies. 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 Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Memetics
Susan Blackmore has made contributions to the field of memetics. The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. 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 can be found in the works of Robert Aunger: The Electric Meme, and Jon 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 presummed closest branch of simian ancestors.

In her work on memetics she has emphasized the role that Darwinian mechanisms play in cultural evolution and has helped develop the field of Universal Darwinism.. The chapter titled 'Universal Darwinism' in The Meme Machine may have been the first usage of this term to denote the body of scientific knowledge employing Darwinian mechanisms.

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.

Personal life
Blackmore is an active practitioner of Zen, although she identifies herself as "not a Buddhist". Blackmore is an atheist who has criticised religion sharply, having said, for instance, that "all kinds of infectious memes thrive in religions, in spite of being false, such as the idea of a creator god, virgin births, the subservience of women, transubstantiation, and many more. In the major religions, they are backed up by admonitions to have faith not doubt, and by untestable but ferocious rewards and punishments."

On 15 September 2010, Blackmore, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK. . On 16 September 2010, Blackmore wrote in The Guardian that she no longer believed that religion is a virus of the mind.

Books

 * Beyond the Body: An Investigation of Out-Of-The-Body Experiences, Academy Chicago Publishers, 1983, ISBN 0-586-08428-2 (first edition), ISBN 0-89733-344-6 (second edition)
 * In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist, Prometheus Books, 1987, ISBN 0-87975-360-9 (first edition), ISBN 1-57392-061-4 (second edition, 1996)
 * Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences, Prometheus Books, 1993, ISBN 0-87975-870-8
 * Test Your Psychic Powers, with Adam Hart-Davis, Thorsons Publishing, 1995, ISBN 1-85538-441-8, ISBN 0-8069-9669-2 (reprint edition)
 * The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press, reprint edition 2000, ISBN 0-19-286212-X
 * Consciousness: An Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-515342-1 (hardcover), ISBN 0-19-515343-X (paperback)
 * Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-280585-1
 * Conversations on Consciousness Oxford University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-19-280622-X