The Explicit Animal: A Defence of Human Consciousness

The Explicit Animal is a comprehensive and sometimes impassioned attack on attempts to 'biologise' consciousness by explaining its origin in evolutionary terms and identifying mental phenomena with brain processes; to 'computerise' 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. Future attempts to eliminate or marginalise consciousness or to accommodate it to the physicalist world picture will have to answer the arguments of this book.