Raymond Tallis

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Raymond Tallis bigraphy, stories - British philosopher

Raymond Tallis : biography

1946 –

Raymond C. Tallis F.Med.Sci., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.A. (born 1946 in Liverpool) is a polymath from Great Britain. He is a philosopher, poet, novelist, cultural critic and a retired medical physician and clinical neuroscientist. Specializing in geriatrics, Tallis served on several UK commissions on medical care of the aged and was an editor or major contributor to two key textbooks in the field, The Clinical Neurology of Old Age and Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology.

Other work

He is on the list of Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association. Tallis is also a Patron of Dignity in Dying. On 15 September 2010, Tallis, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to the UK.

In a 2010 Interview with author Jesse Horn, Tallis expressed that he is a optimistic humanist and an atheist. “Given that I was born a few months after Auschwitz was liberated, it is hardly surprising that I have a strong sense of the evil that humans – individually and collectively – do. My position is that of cautious and chastened optimism, a belief that, if we are ourselves well-treated by others, we will usually treat others reasonably well.”

Medical career

On leaving Liverpool College, Tallis gained an Open Scholarship to Keble College, Oxford, where he completed a degree in animal physiology in 1967. He completed his medical degree in 1970 at the University of Oxford and St Thomas’ Hospital in London. From 1996 to 2000, he was Consultant Adviser in Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer. In 1999-2000, he was Vice-Chairman of the Stroke Task Force of the Advisory Group developing the National Service Framework for Older People. He has been on the Standing Medical Advisory Committee and the Council of the Royal College of Physicians and was secretary of the Joint Specialist Committee of the Royal College on Health Care of the Elderly between 1995 and 2003. He was a member of the Joint Task Force on Partnership in Medicine Taking, established by Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, in 2001. For three years he was a member of one of the appraisal panels of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. He retired in 2006 as Emeritus Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester.Andrew Brown – interview with Raymond Tallis in The Guardian, April 29, 2006. Retrieved on 21 July 2007.

Philosophical works

Tallis has attacked post-structuralism in books such as Not Saussure,Raymond Tallis, Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory, Macmillan Press 1988, 2nd ed. 1995. Theorrhoea and AfterRaymond Tallis, Theorrhoea and After, Macmillan, 1998 and the assumptions of much artificial intelligence research in his book Why the Mind Is Not a Computer: A Pocket Dictionary on Neuromythology.Raymond Tallis, Why the Mind is Not a Computer: A Pocket Dictionary on Neuromythology, Imprint Academic, 2004. To this end, he has attacked the notion that our appreciation of art and music can be reduced to scientific terms.Raymond Tallis, – How The Light Gets In, 2 June 2012 He has also published volumes of poetry, plays and novels. His philosophical writings have attempted to supply an anthropology that acknowledges what is distinctive – and remarkable – about human beings. To this end he has written a trilogy of books entitled The Hand;Raymond Tallis, The Hand: A philosophical inquiry into human being, Edinburgh University Press, 2003 I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being;Raymond Tallis, I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being, 2004, Edinburgh University Press and The Knowing Animal.Raymond Tallis, The Knowing Animal: A Philosophical Inquiry into Knowledge and Truth,Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

In 2007, Raymond Tallis finished Unthinkable Thought: The enduring significance of Parmenides. The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head, which explores the range of activities that go on inside the human head, was published in April 2008.Catherine O’Brien, – interview with Raymond Tallis in The Times, March 25, 2008. Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence was published in 2010.

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity was published in 2011. In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections, a collection of essays from The Reader and elsewhere, was published in April 2012.