This page provides the essential facts for anyone wanting to know who I am professionally. If you’re a journalist or need contact information, you’ll find it here along with a link to the Contact page.
I am a philosopher and writer, British-born but living in Crete, Greece, and now with dual British/Greek citizenship. The Greek version of my name is Κηθ Φράνκις.
I am an Honorary Professor in the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities at the University of Sheffield, UK, Visiting Professor with the School of Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Development, Geography at The Open University, UK, Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme in Neurosciences at the University of Crete, Greece, and Affiliated Professor with the MA in Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Athens, Greece. I am also editor of the Cambridge University Press series Elements in Philosophy of Mind.
My research interests lie mainly in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I am well known for defending an illusionist view of consciousness, according to which phenomenal properties are illusory, in opposition to forms of phenomenal realism. I have also written extensively on the nature and function of belief, defending an action-based account of conscious reasoning and a two-level view of the human mind in which a basic biological mind supports a constructed supermind. My work has strong connections with dual-process theories in psychology.
I am the author of Mind and Supermind (2004) and Consciousness (2005), and am currently working on Consciousness: The Basics for Routledge. I have published numerous journal articles and book chapters. I am editor or co-editor of In Two Minds: Dual Processes and Beyond (with Jonathan Evans, 2009), New Waves in Philosophy of Action (with Jesús Aguilar and Andrei Buckareff, 2010), The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science (with William Ramsey, 2012), The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (with William Ramsey, 2014), Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness (2017), and The Landscape of Introspection (with François Kammerer, 2024). My academic articles have appeared in journals including Journal of Consciousness Studies, Mind, The Philosophical Quarterly, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Synthese, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, and Philosophy Compass. I have given invited talks at conferences and research seminars internationally, including keynote addresses and plenary sessions at major consciousness conferences. I have written about philosophy of mind and other topics for a range of magazines and online publications, including Aeon, The Economist, New Humanist, Philosophy Now, Psyche, The Philosophers’ Magazine, Times Higher Education, and The Times Literary Supplement. I have been interviewed on numerous podcasts and radio programmes, including Philosophy Bites, Rationally Speaking, and The Creative Process. I also co-host Mind Chat with Philip Goff, where we interview leading scientists and philosophers about consciousness from our opposing perspectives (Philip defends panpsychism; I defend illusionism), and I host my own interview podcasts, Mind to Mind and The Persuaders (with Pete Mandik).
