Nicholas Humphrey

Last updated

Nicholas Humphrey
Nick Humphrey.jpg
Born
Nicholas Keynes Humphrey

(1943-03-27) 27 March 1943 (age 82)
London, England
CitizenshipBritish
Alma mater Trinity College, Cambridge
Known for Social intelligence, Blindsight, Evolutionary psychology of consciousness
Spouse(s) Caroline Humphrey (m. 1967; div. 1977)
Ayla Kohn (m. 1994)
Children2
AwardsMartin Luther King Memorial Prize, Pufendorf Medal, Mind & Brain Prize
Scientific career
Institutions London School of Economics
Doctoral advisor Lawrence Weiskrantz

Nicholas Keynes Humphrey (born 27 March 1943) is an English neuropsychologist and writer whose work has focused on the evolution of consciousness and social intelligence. He carried out early research on visual perception after cortical damage in monkeys and collaborated with Lawrence Weiskrantz. Humphrey's observations contributed to the later experimental and conceptual development of blindsight. Humphrey has held academic posts at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the New School for Social Research in New York, and the London School of Economics. His popular books on mind and consciousness, including A History of the Mind (1992), Seeing Red (2006), Soul Dust (2011) and Sentience (2023), have been reviewed and have received both praise and criticism. He has also been active as a public intellectual, presenting television series on the development of the human mind and speaking on topics such as nuclear disarmament and belief in the supernatural.

Contents

Family and early life

Nicholas Keynes Humphrey was born in London, in what The New Yorker described as "an illustrious family of intellectuals". [1] His father, John Herbert Humphrey (1915–2011), elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1963, was an immunologist who researched allergies and immunoglobulins and served as deputy director (1954–1961) and director (1961–1976) of the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR). His mother, Janet Elizabeth Humphrey (née Hill, 1918–2000), was a psychiatrist specialising in psychosomatic disorders who worked with Anna Freud. [1]

His paternal grandfather was the inventor H. A. Humphrey, brother of the pioneering chemist Edith Humphrey. Humphrey's maternal grandparents were Nobel laureate Archibald Vivian Hill, who shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Otto Meyerhof for discoveries on the production of heat in muscles, and Margaret Neville Hill (née Keynes, 1885–1970), a social reformer and sister of economist John Maynard Keynes.

These relatives were an active part of Humphrey's early life. His Nobel Prize-winning grandfather A. V. Hill took him on Boxing Day, 1960, to his lab at University College London to help with his research. (This day had been chosen because a recently developed moving-coil galvanometer was sensitive to traffic vibrations that were minimal due to the holiday.) Humphrey notes, "He could have done the experiment alone. But science for my grandfather was nothing if not a family affair". [2]

Humphrey described the impact of growing up among scientists in his chapter in the 2004 book Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist.

What I gained from this childhood environment was a sense of intellectual entitlement: a right to ask questions, to pry, to provoke, to go where I pleased in pursuit of knowledge. … I grew up feeling I carried a similar warrant to explore anything I chose, that I could indeed safely cross into areas "Not for Everybody." [2]

Education

Humphrey attended Westminster School (1956–61) Earlier at boarding school, he acted in productions of Richard II and Romeo and Juliet. He read widely and kept a commonplace book, a practice he is reported to have maintained in later life. At Westminster, a science teacher encouraged hands-on experimentation, including a project to measure the speed of light using equipment set up along a London street. [1]

In his autobiography, Stephen Hawking recalls that in 1958, when he was sixteen and his family was in India, he "stayed with the family of Dr. John Humphrey" while preparing for exams in England. [3] Humphrey (two years younger) recalls him as "quizzical" and "somewhat bossy". [2]

Between school and university, for six months, he worked as a lab assistant to Eric Denton "a protégé" of his grandfather at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth. [2]

In 1961 Humphrey went up to Trinity College, Cambridge on a scholarship, initially to read mathematics and physics. Finding theoretical physics remote from the empirical phenomena that interested him, he switched to physiology and psychology. His physiology tutor, Giles Brindley, introduced him to experimental neuroscience in dramatic fashion: Humphrey encountered Brindley standing in a salt bath, wearing a helmet from which a metal rod projected against his right eye, through which Brindley was passing electric current to his retina to study phosphenes, inspired by an experiment of Isaac Newton in the 1660s. [1]

While an undergraduate, Humphrey edited with John Barrell the literary magazine Granta , described by Edge.org as the only scientist in the history of the magazine to do so. [4] [5]

Academic career

Early vision research and Cambridge

Humphrey's doctoral research at Cambridge, supervised by Lawrence Weiskrantz, focused on the neuropsychology of vision in primates. He made single-cell recordings from the superior colliculus of monkeys, investigating neural mechanisms underlying visual perception. [6] [7]

In 1966 he began work with a rhesus monkey, Helen, whose primary visual cortex had been surgically removed. [1] Contrary to contemporary expectations that she would be completely blind, Helen gradually recovered substantial visual competence under Humphrey's long-term training and observation. Researchers took film of Helen and showed it to psychologists and primatologists, "but nobody guessed the truth: Helen was cortically blind." [8] This work was later summarised in his case study "Vision in a monkey without striate cortex". [9] Humphrey's observations contributed to the later experimental and conceptual development of blindsight. [10]

His early research period was spent primarily at Cambridge, where he held junior appointments associated with this work. [11]

Oxford and evolutionary aesthetics

After completing his doctorate, Humphrey became Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Oxford in 1967. There he investigated visual and colour preferences in monkeys and developed an evolutionary account of aesthetic response. [10] His essay "The Illusion of Beauty", based on this work, was broadcast on BBC Radio and won the Glaxo Science Writers Prize in 1980. [12]

Cambridge, fieldwork, and social intelligence

Humphrey returned to Cambridge in 1970 as Assistant Director of the Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, joining a department shaped by the ethologists Robert Hinde (Assistant Director of Research, 1958–63) and Patrick Bateson (director, 1976–88). In this environment he developed the Darwinian approach to understanding mind and behaviour that became central to his later work.

In 1971 he spent several months at Dian Fossey's gorilla study camp in the Virunga Mountains and later visited Richard Leakey's archaeological field site at Lake Turkana. These field experiences, combined with laboratory work on primate cognition, informed his thinking about the evolution of intelligence. [1]

Humphrey noted that gorillas and other primates could display sophisticated problem-solving abilities under experimental conditions yet appeared to live relatively simple lives in the wild, with abundant food, few predators and limited need for complex tool use. This perceived mismatch between cognitive capacity and environmental demands led him to focus on social, rather than ecological, pressures in cognitive evolution. His ideas were crystallised in the 1976 essay "The Social Function of Intellect", published in the volume Growing Points in Ethology edited by P. P. G. Bateson and R. A. Hinde. [13] These themes were further developed in his first book, Consciousness Regained: Chapters in the Development of Mind (1983). [14]

Television work and North American appointments

In 1984 Humphrey resigned his academic post at Cambridge to write and present a Channel 4 television series, The Inner Eye, on the development of the human mind, broadcast in 1986 [15] alongside a companion book of the same title. [16] [17] [10]

In 1987 he joined philosopher Daniel Dennett at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, collaborating on an empirically oriented theory of consciousness. [8] During this period Humphrey also worked on Multiple Personality Disorder, exploring whether distinct personalities might correspond to distinct streams of consciousness. [18] He later returned to the US as Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research from 1995-2005. [4]

Darwin College and parapsychology research

In 1992 Humphrey was appointed to a Senior Research Fellowship at Darwin College, Cambridge, funded by the Perrott-Warrick Fellowship in parapsychology. He used this position to conduct a sceptical investigation of parapsychological claims, examining phenomena such as extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. [10] This research led to the book Soul Searching: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief (1995), published in the United States as Leaps of Faith. [19]

London School of Economics and later work

Humphrey was later appointed School Professor at the London School of Economics, where he continued his theoretical work on consciousness and began a series of investigations into the placebo effect. He subsequently became Emeritus Professor of Psychology at LSE and remains a Bye Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. [20]

Research and ideas

Work with Helen and blindsight

Humphrey's work with the monkey Helen, who had undergone removal of the primary visual cortex, suggested that visual capacities can survive the loss of the striate cortex. Initially apparently blind, Helen gradually learned to navigate obstacle courses, avoid objects and retrieve food, and was reported to be able to catch a moving fly. To observers she appeared to have regained normal sight, a recovery publicised in New Scientist as "A Blind Monkey That Sees Everything". [21]

Humphrey concluded that Helen's vision differed from normal sight. She could localise objects and guide action but had difficulty identifying them without additional sensory cues, and her abilities were vulnerable to stress. He proposed a distinction between two visual systems: "focal" vision (cortical, conscious, detail-oriented) and "ambient" vision (subcortical, unconscious, spatial), suggesting that Helen had lost focal vision but learned to exploit an older subcortical system. [9]

Humphrey's findings encouraged Weiskrantz to investigate comparable phenomena in humans. Working with a patient known as D.B., who was blind in part of his visual field following surgery, Weiskrantz and colleagues showed that D.B. could accurately "guess" the location of stimuli despite reporting no visual awareness. They termed this capacity "blindsight", a dissociation between visual performance and conscious experience that has become central to contemporary research on consciousness. [22]

Social intelligence hypothesis

In "The Social Function of Intellect" (1976), Humphrey argued that the advanced cognitive abilities of primates evolved primarily to deal with complex social environments rather than to solve purely ecological problems such as foraging or predator avoidance. This thesis paralleled Alison Jolly's earlier 1966 observations of lemur social structures, [23] which likewise emphasised the social context of primate intelligence. On this view, primates are "calculating beings" capable of anticipating the behaviour of others, forming alliances, and detecting deception. [24]

He proposed that individuals become "natural psychologists", using introspection to model the minds of conspecifics. This work has been "recognized as giving rise to the social intelligence hypothesis (SIH) and the resulting research in this area". [25] It also influenced later formulations of Machiavellian intelligence by Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten. [26] These ideas were popularised for a broader readership in Consciousness Regained. [14]

Theories of consciousness

Humphrey's work on consciousness spans several decades and is characterised by an explicitly evolutionary approach: conscious experience is treated as a biological trait that must have conferred adaptive advantages. A profile in The New Yorker characterised Humphrey's overarching view as the claim that consciousness evolved to make life feel worth living. [1]

Sensation and perception

In A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness (1992), Humphrey uses an evolutionary approach to explain the origin and development of human consciousness. He describes the book as "a partial history of a part of what constitutes the human mind: an evolutionary history of how sensory consciousness has come into the world and what it is doing there." [27] : xiii, xv 

Humphrey draws a sharp distinction between "perception" and "sensation". Perception is described as outward-directed, objective knowledge about the external world ("I see the apple"), whereas sensation is inward-directed, subjective feeling ("I feel redness"). He suggests that sensations evolved from bodily responses such as withdrawal from pain or movement toward warmth. Over evolutionary time, these responses became internalised within the nervous system, so that when we feel pain or see red we are engaging in a form of "virtual action" that loops back upon the self. The book discusses the phenomenon known as blindsight, in which people who are blind in a large part of the visual field nevertheless retain certain perceptual faculties—apparently demonstrating "perception without sensation"—as well as the views of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Colin McGinn, and Daniel Dennett on the nature of consciousness. [27] : 5, 41, 66–73, 170 

The book received mixed reviews. The Lancet described it as "entertaining and well-thought out" and Humphrey's attempt to solve the riddle of consciousness as "brave", suggesting his ideas offered a possible basis for "a new neurophysiology". [28] The psychologist George Armitage Miller found it "readable and entertaining" though he questioned aspects of Humphrey's treatment of blindsight and mental imagery. [29] McGinn dismissed the theory as a "dismal failure", while crediting Humphrey with interesting observations on topics such as the "affective dimensions of colour". [30] The author Richard Webster called the book one of the most interesting attempts to solve the mind–body problem, suggesting that Humphrey succeeded in eliminating mind-body dualism entirely, though he acknowledged that Humphrey's hypothesis remains speculative. [31]

Sentition and phenomenal consciousness

In Seeing Red (2006), Humphrey introduced the notion of "sentition", a feedback process in which sensory signals are routed back toward their point of bodily origin. On this account, sensations are generated in the brain but experienced as occurring at the body surface. This arrangement is argued to give sensations their distinctive "magical" quality and to underwrite what Humphrey calls a "self worth having"—a sense that one's own existence matters and is to be protected. [32]

Writing in Brain, Dennett praised Humphrey as "unique... in his combination of audacity and circumspection, an intellectual tightrope walker" whose methods had already made "a large contribution to our understanding of consciousness", though he questioned whether Humphrey sufficiently distinguished "redding" from other responses to red stimuli. [33] Natika Newton in Artificial Intelligence called it "an invaluable contribution to the mind-body debate" that addressed selfhood in a way that was "straightforward, parsimonious, and intuitively plausible", while acknowledging that Humphrey had not fully explained how qualitative differences between sensations could be commensurate with differences in bodily responses. [34] Josh Weisberg in Nature described it as "a slim and elegant volume" and "a wonderful success" in stimulating new ways of thinking about consciousness, though noting that the crucial question of how neural feedback loops produce immediate awareness was "left unresolved". [35] Bill Rowe in The American Journal of Psychology endorsed Humphrey's central claims, describing how multiple readings converted him from scepticism to agreement. [36] John Searle, writing in The New York Review of Books, was critical, arguing that Humphrey "makes a fundamental error from the beginning" by seeking an equation rather than a causal explanation, and that the enterprise "was bound to fail because the equation does not solve the problem; it presupposes that the problem has already been solved". [37]

Consciousness as a "magic show"

In Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness (2011), Humphrey proposes that consciousness functions like a "magical-mystery show" staged by the brain. [38] He argues that this show "lights up" the world and fosters a sense of personal depth and transcendence, encouraging humans to occupy what he terms the "soul niche", in which individuals experience themselves as possessing an inner life that seems to go beyond the material. By generating an impression of a metaphysical self, consciousness is said to enhance motivation and survival. A review in Science expressed its core idea:

While this category of red is monitored in the brain, that representation may itself be resampled, giving rise to a phenomenological feeling of redness. The personal experience of the color is applied to the tomato even though the feelings of red are all taking place internally. This projection from internal experiences to external object is the spreading of 'soul dust' that informs the book's title. [39]

Humphrey's claim that consciousness is in some sense an illusion has been controversial. A review by Keith Frankish in the Philosophical Quarterly was enthusiastic: "It may change your mind about consciousness; it has changed mine". [40] The review in Science concluded he had "laid out a new agenda for consciousness research". [39] However, the philosopher Galen Strawson called its central contentions "hopeless". [41] Mary Midgley [42] and John Cottingham [43] were also critical. Later Humphrey expressed doubts about his use of the term "illusionism". [44]

Sentience and its distribution across species

In Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness (2023), [45] Humphrey argues that phenomenal consciousness depends on sensory feedback loops he calls "ipsundrum" that are self-generated, self-sustaining neural attractors. He proposes that their existence is a recent development, confined to warm-blooded animals such as mammals and birds. He proposes that sentience depends on "thick-skinned" bodily interfaces that maintain a boundary between self and world while permitting rich interaction. By this criterion, he regards the probability of sentience in cephalopods such as octopuses as negligible, despite their behavioural complexity. While his approach is materialist, he notes "for us humans—sensations have evolved to be a metaphysical supplement to the reality of our embodiment. To put it at its grandest: we have a phenomenal self in order not to die of materialism" [45] : 118 

This position has been discussed and criticised in reviews of the book with critics questioning both its empirical assumptions and its implications for animal welfare. [46] Some reviewers have been positive: "a welcome scientific antidote to the rampant spate of panpsychist and neo-dualist models and theories that have pervaded the field of consciousness studies in the past couple of decades". [47] Others dismissive: "Humphrey's 'ipsundrum' is consciousness conundrum's murmdrum's humdrum". [48]

The "health management system"

Humphrey examined the placebo effect in 2002 [49] and then again in 2012 [50] arguing that the brain manages bodily healing resources through what he and John Skoyles term a "health management system". [50] In this account, the body retains reserve healing capacities that are normally inhibited; placebo responses are thought to work by convincing this system to lift its restraints.

The phenomenon where the expectation of support from a treatment leads the body to boost its immune response has been called the "Humphrey effect". Conversely, where the belief that a treatment will cure the condition independently leads the body to conserve resources by reducing immune activity—potentially causing harm—it has been termed the "reverse Humphrey effect". [51]

Quadrupedalism and human evolution

In 2005 Humphrey visited the Ulas family in southern Turkey, some of whose members habitually walk on all fours. He co-authored a report with John Skoyles and Roger Keynes and appeared in the BBC2 documentary The Family That Walks on All Fours , broadcast in March 2006 and later on PBS NOVA in November 2006. The case has been discussed in relation to balance, motor control and the evolution of bipedalism. [52] [53]

Public engagement and activism

Anti-nuclear activism

Humphrey became involved in the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970s during the Cold War. In 1981 he delivered the Bronowski Memorial Lecture on the BBC, titled "Four Minutes to Midnight", referring to the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which then stood at four minutes to midnight. [54] [55]

Broadcast on BBC2 on 23 October 1981, the lecture analysed psychological factors that, in his view, inhibited effective public response to the nuclear threat. [56] Humphrey compared humanity to "lemmings heading for the sea" under a kind of collective hypnotism induced by the scale of potential catastrophe. The BBC received "80 letters of appreciation, many of them from doctors and scientists". [57] The 1986 BBC Annual Report noted that the Bronowski Memorial Lectures, which had begun in 1977, concluded in 1981 after his talk. [58]

With psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, Humphrey co-edited the anthology In a Dark Time (1984), a collection of writings on war, peace and life under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. [59] The book received the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize. [60]

Television, radio and public talks

Humphrey has used television and radio to present scientific ideas to wider audiences. His 1986 Channel 4 series The Inner Eye explored human imagination, social intelligence and consciousness, featuring conversations with figures such as Richard Dawkins, with whom he discussed memes as evolving cultural units. [61]

In 1987 he presented a documentary, Is There Anybody There?, examining paranormal claims from a psychological perspective, [62] and in the early 2000s he narrated The Trials of Animals, a BBC production directed by James Marsh about medieval European court cases involving animals. [63]

On 21 September 2023 he delivered a Royal Institution lecture titled "How did consciousness evolve?", in which he argued that sentience has adaptive functions in social signalling. [64]

He has also been active in the Edge Foundation, participating in its events and online discussions on topics including consciousness, evolution and human nature. [4] He was formerly an advisor to the BMW Guggenheim Lab. [65]

Reception and influence

His 1976 essay "The Social Function of Intellect" has been widely cited as a foundational statement of the social intelligence and Machiavellian intelligence hypotheses in primate and human evolution. In the introduction to their edited volume Machiavellian Intelligence (1988), Andrew Whiten and Richard Byrne stated that "Humphrey's essay is the single most important seed from which much of the research reported in this book has grown." [66] The anthropologist Michael Carrithers devoted a substantial portion of his book Why Humans Have Cultures (1992) to assessing the importance of Humphrey's theory, writing that "Humphrey's ideas blend harmoniously with others in a wide river of continuing research in human evolution, psychology, behavioural ecology, socio-linguistics, social anthropology and even philosophy." [67]

Philosopher Dennett has claimed that "It was Nick who had discovered blindsight, in Larry Weiskrantz's lab". [68]

His theories of consciousness, emphasising the primacy of sensation, the role of feedback loops and the evolutionary function of subjective experience, have been both influential and also controversial. They have prompted discussion about the adaptive value of phenomenality and the distribution of sentience among non-human animals. Reviewing Seeing Red (2006) in the journal Brain , philosopher Daniel Dennett described Humphrey as "unique in his combination of audacity and circumspection, an intellectual tightrope walker." [33]

As a public intellectual, Humphrey has combined scientific research with communication through books, broadcasts and public lectures. Commentators have noted his use of literary and philosophical references alongside empirical science in addressing questions about consciousness and human nature. Dennett in his autobiography noted this combination of science and literature:

Nick has a wealth of articles published in Nature, the leading science journal in the UK, so he is undoubtedly a scientist of stature, but he is also deeply and knowledgeably in love with literature and history, always ready to adorn his writing with the perfect quote from Shakespeare or some other great thinker of the past. [8]

Published works

Books

Selected academic publications

Personal life

Humphrey married his first wife, Caroline Humphrey, in 1967; they divorced in 1977. In the late 1970s, Humphrey was in a relationship with actress Susannah York; York later recalled living with him in Cambridge and London while she was performing in Peter Pan and commuting with her two children. [69] [a] He married Ayla Kohn in 1994; they have two children.

He is a Bye Fellow of Darwin College, [20] and has an emeritus position at the London School of Economics. [20]

Humphrey is an atheist and is credited with suggesting to Richard Dawkins the analogy between religion and viruses, contributing to the development of the idea of religious beliefs as "mind viruses" or harmful memes. [10] [61]

In 2016 National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1672/21) with Humphrey for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library. [11]

Awards and honours

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ His relationship with Susannah York played a role in getting involved in TV: "Susannah … I think was very important in terms of getting this work in television. To be quite honest … I was seen as a rather unusual academic with these … other sides to myself which would appeal to the public and, make, possibly, the television series go, go well. I mean … I had, and I'm sorry to say, you know, spreads across the back of the News of the World and the rest of it, covering Susie and me. So, I think, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't an insignificant factor in my being offered this role as presenter of this series" quoted in Merchant (2018).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Nick Romeo (15 March 2023). "Nicholas Humphrey's Beautiful Theory of Mind". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Humphrey, Nicholas (2004). "A Family Affair". In Brockman, John (ed.). Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist. New York: Pantheon Books. pp. 3–12. ISBN   978-1400076864.
  3. ↑ Hawking, Stephen (2013). "Chapter 3". My Brief History. Bantam Books. ISBN   978-0-345-53913-7.
  4. 1 2 3 "Nicholas Humphrey". Edge.org. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  5. ↑ "Granta Magazine Volume 123/1 (November 1963)". AbeBooks. Archived from the original on 4 December 2025. Retrieved 4 December 2025. Listing includes cover image showing Nicholas Humphrey credited as co-editor.
  6. ↑ Humphrey, N. K.; Weiskrantz, L. (1967). "Vision in Monkeys after Removal of the Striate Cortex". Nature. 215 (5101): 595–597. Bibcode:1967Natur.215..595H. doi:10.1038/215595a0. PMID   4963569.
  7. ↑ Goodale, Melvyn Alan (2020). "Lawrence Weiskrantz. 28 March 1926—27 January 2018". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 69: 539–559. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2019.0045. ISSN   0080-4606.
  8. 1 2 3 Dennett, Daniel C. (3 October 2023). "The Center for Cognitive Studies: Adventures with Nicholas Humphrey". I've Been Thinking. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   978-0-393-86805-0.
  9. 1 2 Humphrey, N K (1974). "Vision in a Monkey without Striate Cortex: A Case Study". Perception. 3 (3): 241–255. doi:10.1068/p030241. ISSN   0301-0066.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Brown, Andrew (29 July 2006). "The human factor". The Guardian.
  11. 1 2 "National Life Stories: Science and Religion - Nicholas Humphrey". The British Library. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  12. 1 2 "Award Winners 1966–2023" (PDF). Association of British Science Writers. Association of British Science Writers. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 December 2025. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  13. ↑ Humphrey, N. K. (1976). "The social function of intellect". In Bateson, P. P. G.; Hinde, R. A. (eds.). Growing Points in Ethology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 303–317. ISBN   0521212871.
  14. 1 2 Humphrey, Nicholas (1983). Consciousness Regained: Chapters in the Development of Mind. Oxford University Press.
  15. ↑ "The Inner Eye: The Ghost in the Machine (1986)". IMDb. IMDb.com, Inc. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
  16. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas (1986). The Inner Eye: Social Intelligence in Evolution. Faber & Faber. ISBN   9780192802446.
  17. ↑ Merchant, Paul (20 September 2018). "Particular popular science: British scientists writing, speaking and broadcasting on science and religion from the 1980 s". Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. 72 (3): 365–381. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2017.0045. ISSN   0035-9149.
  18. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas; Dennett, Daniel C. (1989). "Speaking for Ourselves". Raritan: A Quarterly Review. 9 (1): 68–98.
  19. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas (1995). Soul Searching: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief. Chatto & Windus.
  20. 1 2 3 "Dr Nicholas Humphrey". Darwin College, Cambridge. Retrieved 5 December 2025.
  21. ↑ "How blindsight answers the hard problem of consciousness | Aeon Essays". aeon.co. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  22. ↑ Weiskrantz, L.; Warrington, Elizabeth K.; Sanders, M. D.; Marshall, J. (1974). "Visual Capacity in the Hemianopic Field Following a Restricted Occipital Ablation". Brain. 97 (1): 709–728. doi:10.1093/brain/97.1.709. PMID   4434190.
  23. ↑ Jolly, Alison (1966). "Lemur Social Behavior and Primate Intelligence: The step from prosimian to monkey intelligence probably took place in a social context". Science. 153 (3735): 501–506. doi:10.1126/science.153.3735.501.
  24. ↑ Humphrey, N. K. (1976). "The Social Function of Intellect". In Bateson, P. P. G.; Hinde, Robert A. (eds.). Growing Points in Ethology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 303–317.
  25. ↑ Ashton, Benjamin J.; Thornton, Alex; Ridley, Amanda R. (26 September 2018). "An intraspecific appraisal of the social intelligence hypothesis". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 373 (1756) 20170288. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0288. ISSN   0962-8436. PMC   6107571 . PMID   30104433.
  26. ↑ Byrne, Richard W.; Whiten, Andrew (1988). Machiavellian Intelligence: Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes and humans. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  27. 1 2 Humphrey, Nicholas (1992). A History of the Mind. London: Chatto & Windus. p. 47. ISBN   0-7011-3995-1.
  28. ↑ "Bookshelf". The Lancet. 340 (8819): 595–596. 1992. doi:10.1016/0140-6736(92)92119-z. S2CID   208793316.
  29. ↑ Miller, George A. (4 October 1992). "Sneaking Up on Consciousness". The New York Times Book Review. p. 33.
  30. ↑ McGinn, Colin (1992). "Getting the wiggle into the act". London Review of Books. Vol. 14, no. 17. ISSN   0260-9592 . Retrieved 10 December 2025.
  31. ↑ Webster, Richard (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press. p. 484. ISBN   0-9515922-5-4.
  32. ↑ Nicholas Humphrey (30 June 2003). "A Self Worth Having". Edge.org. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  33. 1 2 Dennett, Daniel C. (2007). "A daring reconnaissance of red territory". Brain. 130 (2): 592–595. doi:10.1093/brain/awl366.
  34. ↑ Newton, Natika (2007). "Book review". Artificial Intelligence. 171 (18): 1127–1135. doi:10.1016/j.artint.2007.10.010.
  35. ↑ Weisberg, Josh (1 June 2006). "Red in the Head". Nature. 441: 577.
  36. ↑ Rowe, Bill (2008). "The Innocent Illusion". The American Journal of Psychology. 121 (3): 506–514. doi:10.2307/20445479. ISSN   0002-9556.
  37. ↑ Searle, John R. (2 November 2006). "Minding the Brain". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
  38. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas (2011). Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Princeton University Press. ISBN   9780691156378.
  39. 1 2 Proulx, Michael J. (2011). "Consciousness: What, How, and Why". Science. 332 (6033): 1034–1035. ISSN   0036-8075.
  40. ↑ Frankish, Keith (2014). "Review of Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness". The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-). 64 (255): 338–340. ISSN   0031-8094.
  41. ↑ Strawson, Galen (9 January 2011). "Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey – review". The Observer. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  42. ↑ Midgley, Mary (5 February 2011). "Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey – review". The Guardian.
  43. ↑ Cottingham, John (2021). Meijer, Michiel; De Vriese, Herbert (eds.). Religion without Magic: Responding to the Natural World. London: Routledge. pp. 38–53. ISBN   9780367823443.
  44. ↑ Humphrey, N. (2016). "Redder than Red: Illusionism or Phenomenal Surrealism?". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 23 (11–12). Imprint Academic: 116–123.
  45. 1 2 Humphrey, Nicholas (2023). Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness. MIT Press. ISBN   9780262047944.
  46. ↑ Calegari, Beatrice (2025). "Book-review of N. Humphrey, Sentience: The invention of consciousness". Rivista internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia. 16 (1): 76–77. doi:10.4453/rifp.2025.0009.
  47. ↑ Abed, Riadh; St John-Smith, Paul (2023). "Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness By Nicholas Humphrey Oxford University Press. 2022. £16.99 (hb). 256 pp. ISBN 9780198858539". The British Journal of Psychiatry. 223 (4): 494–495. doi:10.1192/bjp.2023.100. ISSN   0007-1250.
  48. ↑ Gomez-Marin, Alex (2024). ""Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness" by Nicholas Humphrey (book review)". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 31 (1–2). Imprint Academic: 242–252.
  49. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas (2002). "Great expectations: The evolutionary psychology of faith healing and the placebo effect". In Bäckman, Lars; von Hofsten, Claes (eds.). Psychology at the Turn of the Millennium, Volume 2: Social, Developmental and Clinical Perspectives. London: Psychology Press. pp. 241–259. doi:10.4324/9780203989432. ISBN   9780203989432.
  50. 1 2 Humphrey, N.; Skoyles, J. (2012). "The evolutionary psychology of healing: a human success story". Current Biology. 22 (17): R695–698. Bibcode:2012CBio...22.R695H. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.06.018. PMID   22975000.
  51. ↑ Trimmer, Pete C.; Marshall, James A.R.; Fromhage, Lutz; McNamara, John M.; Houston, Alasdair I. (2013). "Understanding the placebo effect from an evolutionary perspective". Evolution and Human Behavior. 34 (1): 8–15. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.07.004.
  52. ↑ Adolph, Karen E.; Tamis‐LeMonda, Catherine S. (2014). "The Costs and Benefits of Development: The Transition From Crawling to Walking". Child Development Perspectives. 8 (4): 187–192. doi:10.1111/cdep.12085. ISSN   1750-8592. PMC   4357016 . PMID   25774213.
  53. ↑ Tardieu, Christine; Demirhan, Osman; Akbal, Eylül; Ozgozen, Levent; Biçer, Ömer Sunkar; Delapré, Arnaud; Cornette, Raphaël; Herrel, Anthony (2022). "Modifications of the locomotor system in habitually quadrupedal humans". Journal of Anatomy. 241 (3): 765–775. doi:10.1111/joa.13693. ISSN   0021-8782. PMC   9358744 . PMID   35661351.
  54. ↑ "Four Minutes to Midnight". Concord Media. 1981. Retrieved 2 December 2025.
  55. ↑ Nicholas Humphrey, Four Minutes to Midnight: The Bronowski Memorial Lecture 1981 (London: The Menard Press, 1982), ISBN 0-903400-74-X.
  56. ↑ "The Bronowski Memorial Lecture - BBC Two England - 23 October 1981 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 October 2014. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  57. ↑ BBC Annual Report and Handbook 1983: Incorporating the Annual Report and Accounts 1981–82 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1982), p. 44, ISBN 0-563-20153-3. Available at: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/BBC/BBC-Annual/BBC-Year-Book-1983.pdf.
  58. ↑ BBC Annual Report and Handbook 1986: Incorporating the Annual Report and Accounts 1984–85 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1986), p. 283. Available at: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/BBC/BBC-Annual/BBC-Year-Book-1986.pdf.
  59. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas; Lifton, Robert Jay (1984). In a Dark Time. Faber & Faber.
  60. 1 2 "Book awards: Martin Luther King Memorial Prize", Librarything.
  61. 1 2 "Nicholas Humphrey Interview (2/4) – Richard Dawkins". Internet Archive. Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science. 2 January 2009. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  62. ↑ "Is There Anybody There? (1987)". IMDb. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
  63. ↑ "The Trials of Animals". YouTube. Nick Humphrey. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  64. ↑ "How did consciousness evolve? - Nicholas Humphrey". Royal Institution. 21 September 2023. Retrieved 3 December 2025.
  65. ↑ "Nicholas Humphrey — Advisory Committee, Guggenheim Lab". BMW Guggenheim Lab. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  66. ↑ Byrne, Richard W.; Whiten, Andrew, eds. (1988). Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Clarendon Press. p. 1. ISBN   9780198521754.
  67. ↑ Carrithers, Michael (1992). Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social Diversity. Oxford University Press. p. 43. ISBN   9780192892119.
  68. ↑ Humphrey, Nicholas; Dennett, Daniel C. (Summer 1989). "Speaking for Ourselves". Raritan: A Quarterly Review. 9 (1): 68–98.
  69. ↑ Wells, Emma (21 October 2007). "Time and Place: Susannah York". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 5 December 2025.
  70. ↑ "Nicholas Humphrey". Closer to Truth. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  71. ↑ "British Psychological Society Book Award – winners and works". LibraryThing. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  72. ↑ "2011 Nicholas Humphrey – Pufendorf Lectures". Lund University, Department of Philosophy. Retrieved 4 December 2025.
  73. ↑ "2015 Mind&Brain Prize award". Mentecervello. Retrieved 4 December 2025.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.