Non fiction

Pluralism and the Mind: Consciousness, Worldviews and the Limits of Science. (Imprint Academic, 2011).

Given that consciousness is poorly understood and vaguely defined, Paul Feyerabend's advice to "keep our options open" seems sound, but is frequently ignored in favour of an insistence that a scientific theory of consciousness must be reducible to current monist physics and biology. This book argues that such an insistence is historically unsupportable, theoretically incoherent and unnecessary. The author instead makes the case for emergent property pluralism. New concepts of emergent mental properties are needed because of the failure of mainstream approaches satisfactorily to address issues like subjective volition, autonomy and creativity. Personal consciousness is active and classifiable as a subset of the wider problem of biological causation.

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Praise for Pluralism and the Mind

“…this is science writing of the first order. It isn't flashy - it contains few flamboyant images and metaphors - but it's clear, detailed and thoughtful. It gives a highly readable account of the story so far,” Robert McLuhan, Guardian Journalist and author of Randi’s Prize.

See also the Review in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.