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  1. Home
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  3. Aping Mankind
  • This book is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
  • Cited by 239
Publisher:
Acumen Publishing
Online publication date:
February 2013
Print publication year:
2011
Online ISBN:
9781844652747
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844652747
Subjects:
Philosophy of Science, Philosophy
Information

Book description

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 “Neuromania”– 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. Tallis dismantles this idea, and shows it to be confused and fallacious, sidestepping a whole range of mind–body problems. 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.

Reviews

"A terrific book, though readers must be prepared to read it at least twice, not because it is in any sense obscure, but fully to appreciate the richness and subtlety of Tallis’s novel insights, with all their implications for our understanding of humanity’s precious attributes of freedom, intentionality and moral responsibility."

James Le Fanu

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