Portalism: An Event with Author Jeffrey Laird

Join local author Jeffrey Laird as he discusses his book, Portalism: An Externalist Theory of Consciousness. A book signing will follow with copies available for purchase from Poor Richard's Books.

The mind is not the brain. The locus of consciousness is in the world. Portalism embraces radical phenomenal externalism and presents a contemporary form of dualism that rejects materialist assumptions of mind/brain identity. 

As a philosophy of mind, Portalism breaks with traditional thinking in two significant ways: first by holding that consciousness is in fact a fifth fundamental force of nature endowed with behavioral attributes not unlike that of gravity, and second by arguing how consciousness inheres in all living organisms regardless of their biological sophistication. Portalism responds to the traditional arguments against dualism and answers those questions that inhere in all philosophies of mind, revealing the theory's plausibility through its exceptional explanatory power.

Portalism compels us to reject traditional monist theories about the nature of consciousness and boldly enter into a new way of thinking about our own reality.

Jeffrey Laird is a retired cartographer and technical consultant in geographic information systems technology, with BA degrees in Geography from George Mason University and Philosophy from the University of New Orleans. By virtue of his previous professional experience, as a philosopher of mind he offers a new perspective on the enigma of consciousness as observed through the lens of the mapping scientist. Originally from Washington, D.C., he now lives in Frankfort.