[epgui]

I can't say how good this book is, but the author has a PhD in parapsychology. This makes me question how prone they are to magical thinking, and also whether I'd want to read what they have to say about this topic.

Yes this comment is an ad hominem, and no I have not read the book... All I have is a skeptical hunch that this might not represent "the state of the art" on the topic.

[mellosouls]

After an initial, intense, personal experience understandably awakened her interest she always approached the subject from a scientific point of view:

From her wiki page:

It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena—only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic.

[hanche]

If you had read anything by Susan Blackmore (I have, but admittedly long ago), I think you’d find that she’s not at all into magical thinking.

[epgui]

That's certainly reassuring to hear!

[mistermann]

> Yes this comment is an ad hominem

It is also a natural consequence of the culture you happen to have been raised in, which is an extremely interesting aspect of consciousness: how easily it can be programmed, and how influential it can be (it changes how reality "is"). In your case you have self-awareness of the phenomenon, at least in this case, but most people don't operate on that level.

[jsuth]

It's understandable why you'd think this but it seems either didn't read much or were selective about her bio. Briefly:

* After spending time in research on parapsychology and the paranormal,[5] her attitude towards the field moved from belief to scepticism.[6][7] In 1987, Blackmore wrote that she had an out-of-body experience shortly after she began running the Oxford University Society for Psychical Research (OUSPR):[8][9]

"Within a few weeks I had not only learned a lot about the occult and the paranormal, but I had an experience that was to have a lasting effect on me—an out-of-body experience (OBE). It happened while I was wide awake, sitting talking to friends. It lasted about three hours and included everything from a typical "astral projection," complete with a silver cord and duplicate body, to free-floating flying, and finally to a mystical experience. It was clear to me that the doctrine of astral projection, with its astral bodies floating about on astral planes, was intellectually unsatisfactory. But to dismiss the experience as "just imagination" would be impossible without being dishonest about how it had felt at the time. It had felt quite real. Everything looked clear and vivid, and I was able to think and speak quite clearly."

In a New Scientist article in 2000, she again wrote of this:

"It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena—only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic.[10][11]"

* She is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly CSICOP)[12] and in 1991, was awarded the CSICOP Distinguished Skeptic Award.[4]

* Susan Blackmore has made contributions to the field of memetics.[19] 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."[20] Other treatments of memes, that cite Blackmore, can be found in the works of Robert Aunger: The Electric Meme,[21] and Jonathan Whitty: A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management.[22]

This is all from her wikipedia, which is about a one minute read.

As I recall, her consciousness textbook is fairly opinionated but it still gives a fair tour of the mainstream theories. She happens to be an illusionist like Dan Dennett. There's no "woo" in her coverage of the topic.