This work presents a comprehensive and sometimes impassioned attack on attempts to "biologize" consciousness by explaining its origin in evolutionary terms and identifying mental phenomena with brain processes, to "computerize" it by identifying mind with the supposed computational activity of the brain, and to empty or eliminate it by denying the reality of qualia. Raymond Tallis's critique concludes with a long look at man, "the explicit animal", that makes the irreducible mystery of human consciousness impossible to overlook or deny.

Author Biography

RAYMOND TALLIS was recently described in The Times Higher Educational Supplement as 'one of the most intriguing figures in the current intellectual scene'. Trained as a doctor at Oxford University and St. Thomas' Hospital, he has written extensively outside of medicine of the last 15 years. He has published short stories and poetry, and been recognized for his critiques of post-Saussurean thought, his reflections on art and science, and his discussions of the philosophy of mind. He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Hull in 1997 for his contributions to literary scholarship. Since 1987 he has been Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the elderly in Salford.