LLOYD, Dan (Edward) 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born August 7, 1953. Education: Oberlin College, B.A. (English and philosophy), 1975; Columbia University, M.A. (philosophy), 1977, Ph.D. (philosophy), 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106. Agent—c/o Author Mail, MIT Press, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-1493. E-mail—Dan.Lloyd@trincoll.edu.

CAREER:

Educator and writer. University of California, Santa Barbara, assistant professor of philosophy, 1982-85; Trinity College, Hartford, CT, assistant professor, 1987-90, associate professor, 1991-99, professor of philosophy, 2000—. Simmons College, Boston, MA, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, 1985-86; University of Helsinki, visiting professor, 2002-03. Has also served on the editorial boards of Mind and Brain and Philosophical Psychology; as an associate of Behavioral and Brain Sciences; and as a manuscript reviewer for MIT Press, Laurence Erlbaum, Mayfield Publishers, and various journals. Member of board of directors for Connecticut National Organization for Women.

MEMBER:

American Philosophical Association, Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Society for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Andrew W. Mellon faculty fellowship in the humanities, Harvard University, 1986-87; American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, 1990-91; New Perspectives in Functional Brain Imaging research award, Functional MRI Data Center/ Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Simple Minds, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1989.

(Editor, with others) Minds, Brains, and Computers: Perspectives in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Ablex Publishers (Norwood, NJ), 1992.

Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness (novel), MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

Author of numerous articles for scientific journals, including Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain and Mind, and Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology.

SIDELIGHTS:

In his first book, 1989's Simple Minds, philosophy professor Dan Lloyd followed his training to draw on philosophy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to explore the nature of the nebulous "mind" versus the anatomical brain. Nearly a decade and a half later, Lloyd took a different approach to discussing the paradigms of consciousness by writing the fictional novel Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness. The novel presents a new theory of consciousness couched in the story of Miranda Sharpe, who discovers her stodgy college professor slumped over his keyboard. Miranda came to take back her dissertation, which she does, assuming that her professor is dead. By later that afternoon, however, the body has disappeared, leading Miranda to question whether or not her professor is really dead. she becomes entangled in the mystery of her professor's disappearance and decides to try and solve the neurophilosophical problem of consciousness that he was working on. As she investigates, Miranda encounters others interested in the problem, some with ulterior movies. She ultimately teams up with a fictional "Dan Lloyd" to solve the mystery. In addition to the story, the author includes a one-hundred-page afterword to help explain his proposed theory of consciousness in technical terms.

"Lured in by the sinister atmospherics … and clipped, Sam Spade narration … readers soon find themselves enrolled in a heady tutorial on Husserl, phenomenology, neural networks and multidimensional scaling," noted Emily Eakin in the New York Times. As to why he decided to present the theory in fictional form, Lloyd told Eakin, "I'm trying to show the way that consciousness is personal and idiosyncratic and especially bound up with time. If you put those factors together, you end up with a novel as a way to express those ideas."

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Jaak Panksepp noted that Radiant Cool "doubles your intellectual delight with two ingenious contributions under one cover." Panksepp went on to call the "scientific whodunit" an "extended appetizer" and refers to the appendix as "the richer main-course." Although Panksepp did not agree with all of Lloyd's theory about consciousness, he noted that "For the time being, Lloyd has created a distinctive waterspout above the scintillating and intimidating Niagara of words and ideas in modern consciousness studies." In nonacademic publications, some reviewers felt that the novel suffered because of the highly technical nature of the story. For instance, a Publishers Weekly contributor commented that by the end of the story, because of the focus on neurophilosophical issues, "the characters have lost definition and the narrative is tied up in knots." However, Booklist reviewer Bryce Christensen noted called the book "certainly not the most accessible first novel of the season but quite possibly the most original." As for the novel's success in presenting Lloyd's theory, George Scialabba of the Boston Globe noted, "As Lloyd's final pages make clear, consciousness may in principle be partly opaque. But by then, you'll see a lot farther into it than before."

Lloyd told CA: "Every day I'm impressed all over again by the richness and complexity of human consciousness. But that intricacy is matched by the intricacy of the brain, and my work is an attempt to bridge the gap between brain and consciousness. I hope that readers appreciate the richness to be found in both mind and brain, and the excitement of the science that will bring them together."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2003, Bryce Christensen, review of Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness, p. 578.

Boston Globe, February 1, 2004, George Scialabba, review of Radiant Cool, p. H6.

Journal of the American Medical Association, May 17, 2004, Jaak Panksepp, review of Radiant Cool, p. 1388.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2003, review of Radiant Cool, p. 1246.

New York Times, October 18, 2003, Emily Eakin, review of Radiant Cool, p. B7.

Publishers Weekly, December 8, 2003, review of Radiant Cool, p. 48.