Mark Rowlands received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford and then went to work in the United States for seven years teaching philosophy. Victim of too many parties, he decided to move to Ireland to do nothing except write philosophy and surf. Seven years later he moved to Devon, where he currently works as the director of the Centre for Philosophical Social Sciences at the University of Exeter. He is the author of seven previous philosophy books including The Body in Mind, The Nature of Consciousness, and Animals Like Us.