Event overview
07817437102
Hosted by the Goldsmiths Humanists Society as part of the invited speakers series
Are We Beasts? Against Biologism
Increasingly, it is assumed that human beings are best understood in biological terms; that, notwithstanding the apparent differences between humans and their nearest animal kin, people are, at bottom, organisms; that people are their brains, and that societies are best understood as collections of brains; and that we should look to evolutionary theory to understand what we are now; that our biological roots explain our cultural leaves. Raymond will argue that we are not just our brains; rather we belong to a community of minds that has grown up over the hundreds of thousands of years since we parted company from the other primates. The gap between our nearest animal kin and ourselves is too wide to read across from the one to the other.
Raymond Tallis:
Medical
Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford until 2006. He also advised the government on health care of older people and in particular on the development of stroke services.
200 research publications in the neurology of old age (epilepsy and stroke) and neurological rehabilitation. Original articles in Nature Medicine, Lancet and other leading journals. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
The Dhole Eddlestone Prize; the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society; the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing.
He is Chair of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying.
Non Medical
He has published fiction (a novel and short stories), three volumes of poetry, and 22 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism. These offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this he has been awarded two honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon Causa) University of Hull, 1997; and LittD (Hon Causa) University of Manchester 2002.
In 2008 he was appointed Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. He writes op-eds for The Times and has a column in Philosophy Now. A regular at the leading literary and science festivals. He is a frequent broadcaster, with appearances on Start the Week, Nightwaves, Inside the Ethics Committee and The Moral Maze.
His recent book - Aping Mankind. Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (2011) – is just out in paperback and has been followed by In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections. His forthcoming books include Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur and Other Essays (Spring 2013) and NHS SOS (Edited with Jacky Davis, Summer 2013). His main work in progress is Of Time and Lamentation which endeavours to snatch the metaphysics of time from the jaws of physics.
He was a judge of the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
In 2009, the Economist Intelligent Life Magazine listed him as one of the world’s leading polymaths.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Mar 2013 | 7:00pm - 8:30pm |
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