Raymond Tallis

Previously published: Durham [England]: Acumen Pub., 2012.

Aping Mankind

The Kingdom of Infinite Space is a journey around the part of our anatomy to which we feel most attached: our heads. In this unique combination of biological science and philosophical interrogation, Raymond Tallis takes the head apart, piece by piece, in search of the place where our souls, and consciousness, reside. From the act of blushing and the amount of manganese in our tears (tears of pain contain more than tears of distress) to the curiousness of a kiss, The Kingdom of Infinite Space explores the astonishing range of activities that go on inside our heads, most of which are entirely beyond our control. After escorting his readers on a fantastic voyage through every chamber of the head and brain, Raymond Tallis demonstrates that not only does consciousness not reside between our ears, but that our heads are infinitely cleverer than we are.

A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head

The Kingdom of Infinite Space

Jacky Davis

An explosive polemic revealing how the NHS was butchered by reform - and how we can revive this national treasure while we still have the chance.

how the NHS was betrayed - and how we can save it

NHS SOS

In a devastating critique Raymond Tallis exposes the exaggerated claims made for the ability of neuroscience and evolutionary theory to explain human consciousness, behaviour, culture and society. While readily acknowledging the astounding progress neuroscience has made in helping us understand how the brain works, Tallis directs his guns at neuroscience’s dark companion – "Neuromania" as he describes it – the belief that brain activity is not merely a necessary but a sufficient condition for human consciousness and that consequently our everyday behaviour can be entirely understood in neural terms. With the formidable acuity and precision of both clinician and philosopher, Tallis dismantles the idea that "we are our brains", which has given rise to a plethora of neuro-prefixed pseudo-disciplines laying claim to explain everything from art and literature to criminality and religious belief, and shows it to be confused and fallacious, and an abuse of the prestige of science, one that sidesteps a whole range of mind–body problems. The belief that human beings can be understood essentially in biological terms is a serious obstacle, argues Tallis, to clear thinking about what human beings are and what they might become. To explain everyday behaviour in Darwinian terms and to identify human consciousness with the activity of the evolved brain denies human uniqueness, and by minimising the differences between us and our nearest animal kin, misrepresents what we are, offering a grotesquely simplified and degrading account of humanity. We are, shows Tallis, infinitely more interesting and complex than we appear in the mirror of biologism. Combative, fearless and always thought-provoking, Aping Mankind is an important book, one that scientists, cultural commentators and policy-makers cannot ignore.

Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

An important new reading of the importance of Parmenides, widely regarded as the most influential of the Presocratic philosophers.

Unthinkable Thought

The Enduring Significance of Parmenides

In The Hand, the first volume of his trilogy, Raymond Tallis looked at how humans have overcome the constraints of biology. The second volume, I Am, focused on two crucial aspects of the escape from being a mere organism: selfhood and agency. This, the final volume in the trilogy, argues that knowledge is unique to human beings and sufficiently important to call man 'the knowing animal'.Raymond Tallis examines the profound difference between knowledge 'That things are the case' and mere sentience. He criticises both accounts of knowledge that marginalise the consciousness of the knower and naturalistic accounts that assimilate knowledge to sense experience and, ultimately, neural activity. He argues that knowledge arises because humans are embodied subjects and not just organisms: knowing subjects know both about events in the material world which they can perceive as well as non-material 'facts'. It is because knowledge is relatively 'uncoupled' from the material world that active inquiry, reason-directed behaviour and deliberate manipulation of nature are possible. A critique of evolutionary psychology examines these phenomena and looks at the replacement of animal 'appetites' with propositional 'attitudes', at carnal knowledge and at explicit awareness of death. The various ways humans have dealt with the 'wound' opened in consciousness by knowledge - religion, art and philosophy - are also discussed. The Knowing Animalcompletes a trilogy that aims to revolutionise our understanding of what it is to be a human being without recourse to theology and supernatural explanations on the one hand or scientism and naturalistic explanations on the other. Features:*The question of humankind's unique ability to know things is covered in this volume and follows on from Ray Tallis' inquiry into humankind's unique 'handedness' (The Hand) and ability to reflect on itself (I Am) - he has explore our ability to know, to hold

A Philosophical Inquiry Into Knowledge and Truth

The Knowing Animal

In Logos, Raymond Tallis steps into the gap between mind and world to explore what is at stake in our attempts to make sense of our world. He reveals how thinkers have sought to demystify our capacity to understand the world by collapsing the distance between the mind that does the sense-making and the world that is made sense of.

The Mystery of how We Make Sense of the World

Logos

These essays from one of our most stimulating thinkers showcase Tallis's infectious fascination, indeed intoxication, with the infinite complexity of human lives and the human condition. In the title essay, we join Tallis on a stroll around his local park - and the intricate passages of his own consciousness - as he uses the motif of the walk, the amble, to occasion a series of meditations on the freedoms that only human beings possess. In subsequent essays, the flaneur thinks about his brain, his relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom, his profession of medicine and about the physical world and the claims of physical science to have rendered philosophical reflection obsolete. Taken together the essays continue Tallis's mission to elaborate a vision of humanity that rejects religious myths while not succumbing to scientism or any other form of naturalism. Written with the author's customary intellectual energy and vigour these essays provoke, move and challenge us to think differently about who we are and our place in the material world.

and Other Essays

Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur

`Als ik ergens naar wijs, moet je niet naar mijn vinger kijken, luidt een oude wijsheid. Maar Raymond Tallis doet dat juist wel. De wijsvinger is de enige vinger die we onafhankelijk van de andere vingers kunnen gebruiken en hij speelt de hoofdrol bij een handeling waartoe alleen de mens in staat is: wijzen. Op het plafond van de Sixtijnse Kapel prijkt Michelangelo's fresco met de wijsvinger van God. Ook dat is een aanwijzing voor het immense belang van de vinger.Tallis analyseert de rol die de vinger speelt in de ontwikkeling van onze beschaving. Hoe komt het bijvoorbeeld dat mensen kunnen wijzen en dieren niet? Hoe kan het dat je door met je vinger te wijzen je woorden meer kracht geeft? En wat is de verhouding tussen wijzen en macht? De vinger is een boeiend en humoristisch geschreven boek over een bijzonder menselijk onderwerp.

de mens en zijn wereld verklaard aan de hand van de wijsvinger

de Vinger

Julian Spalding

An examination of why artists make art in the first place, and why we all feel the need for it.

The Purpose of the Arts Today

Summers of Discontent

Tallis argues that the rise of biologism has serious consequences and demonstrates that, by denying human uniqueness and minimizing the differences between humans and their nearest animal kin, it misrepresents what we are, offering a grotesquely simplified and degrading account of humanity. He suggests that seeing ourselves as animals may lead us to find reasons for treating others as less than human.

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

Nick Page is a young doctor in free fall into despair due to his failure to seduce the object of his desire. Beneath the comic surface of this novel is a serious investigation into human nature and love, its desires, its prejudices, its unhappiness, and the various absences that haunt and intoxicate it.

Absence

In Seeing Ourselves, philosopher and neuroscientist Raymond Tallis goes in search of what kind of beings we are, and where we might find meaning in our lives. Showcasing a remarkably detailed engagement with a huge range of disciplines, Tallis shows the unique nature of human consciousness.

Seeing Ourselves

God, Freedom and the NHS

The Mystery of Being Human

Raymond Tallis explores the nature and meaning of time and how best to understand it. A bold, original, and thought-provoking work, Of Time and Lamentation is for anyone who has puzzled over the nature of becoming, wondered whether time is inseparable from change, whether time is punctuate or continuous, or even whether time itself is real.

Reflections on Transience

Of Time and Lamentation

Neuroscience has made astounding progress in the understanding of the brain. What should we make of its claims to go beyond the brain and explain consciousness, behaviour and culture? Where should we draw the line? In this brilliant critique Raymond Tallis dismantles "Neuromania", arising out of the idea that we are reducible to our brains and "Darwinitis" according to which, since the brain is an evolved organ, we are entirely explicable within an evolutionary framework. With precision and acuity he argues that the belief that human beings can be understood in biological terms is a serious obstacle to clear thinking about what we are and what we might become. Neuromania and Darwinitis deny human uniqueness, minimise the differences between us and our nearest animal kin and offer a grotesquely simplified account of humanity. We are, argues Tallis, infinitely more interesting and complex than we appear in the mirror of biology. Combative, fearless and thought-provoking, Aping Mankind is an important book and one that scientists, cultural commentators and policy-makers cannot ignore. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the Author.

In these lively and provocative essays, philosopher, polymath and all-round intellectual heavyweight, Raymond Tallis debunks commonplace truths, exposes woolly thinking and pulls the rug from beneath a wide range of commentator whether scientist, theologian, philosopher or pundit. Tallis takes to task much of contemporary science and philosophy, arguing that they are guilty of taking us down ever narrowing conduits of problem solving that only invite ever more complex responses and in doing so have lost sight of "wonder" - the metaphysical intoxication that first gave birth to philosophy 2,500 years ago. Tallis tackles some meaty topics - memory, time, language, truth, fiction, consciousness - but always with his characteristic verve, insight and wit. These essays showcase Tallis's skill for getting to the heart of the matter and challenging us to see, and wonder, in different ways. Wonder is the proper state of humankind, and as these essays show it has no more forceful a champion than Raymond Tallis.

In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections

This work subjects the fundamental ideas of Derrida, Lacan, Barthes and their followers to an examination and demonstrates the baselessness of post-Saussurean claims about the relations between language, reality and self.

A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory

Not Saussure

In this pathbreaking book, one of Britain s most eloquent and original thinkers writes about the head, what happens in it, and how it is and is not connected to our sense of identity and consciousness. Blending science, philosophy, and humor, Raymond Tallis examines the extraordinarily complex relationship we have with our heads. His aim, as he says, is to turn readers into astonished tourists of the piece of the world that is closest to them, so they never again take for granted the head that looks at them from the mirror. Readers will delight that this is precisely what he accomplishes. The voyage begins with a meditation on the self-portrait of a mirror image, followed by a consideration of the head s various secretions. Tallis contemplates the air we exhale; the subtle meanings of nods, winks, and smiles; the mysteries of hearing, taste, and smell. He discusses the metaphysics of the gaze, the meaning of kissing, and the processes by which the head comes to understand the world. Along the way he offers intriguing digressions on such notions as having and using one s head, and enjoying and suffering it. Tallis concludes with his thoughts on the very thing the reader s head has been doing throughout the book: thinking.

Raymond Tallis

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