Raymond Tallis on consciousness, the self and the brain

"I am very worried that we are misunderstanding what it is to be a human being" he told The Information Daily's reporter Eva Quigley at Thinktank the Birmingham Science Museum where he had just given the Lunar Society's 10th Annual Lecture 2013.

"The brain is an absolutely necessary condition of our everyday consciousness but it isn't the whole story," the Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester explained,. "If you look at the characteristics of the brain, the nerve activity of the brain, it is quite different from the contents of consciousness."

[disfiguringthegoddes]

It is evident from some of the comments from disgruntled neuromaniacs on this video that they haven't read his book. Professor Tallis does not pretend to have all the answers as many contemporary neuroscientists do, he simply points out the fallacious language and false arguments that some neuroscientists use to publicise their research. From a philosophical and logical perspective I find Professor Tallis to be completely consistent. He does not appeal to a false dualist philosophy, he simply provides a convincing argument against eliminative materialism and its proponents.

[vernonevery]

I was fascinated by the way things were developing in the earlier parts of the talk where it looked as though the obsession with all that is material was becoming superseded by something of a higher nature but then came the confession of an outlook on life that was typical of many scientists. In this respect we are metaphorically still at the "flat earth" stage where what you could perceive with your physical senses was the way it was. Since the earth looks flat, it is. We live for a temporary time here, so does that imply that's all there is? Bias should not be a part of science and we should at least be open to the possibility of other and higher dimensions and life after death. After all, our 70+ years here as individuals is a minuscule part of existence, as if we had never lived at all, in the big scheme of things.

[benmijuskovic]

Plato refers to a perennial Battle between the Gods and the Giants, the conflict between the Idealists and the Materialists  (Sophist 245e-246e). The critical issue centers on the  question whether "senseless matter can think?" It pits  Plato against Democritus; Plotinus against Epicurus, Augustine and Aquinas against Skeptics  Atheists: Ficino against Valla; Descartes against Hobbes; Leibniz against Locke; Kant against Hume; Hegel against Marx; Husserl against Ryle; Freud against Pavlov; H. D. Lewis against Russell, etc.The fundamental question is whether consciousness is immaterial and active or material and passive? Materialists, mechanists, determinists, empiricists, phenomenalists, behaviorists, and neuroscientists (D. M. Armstrong, John Cacioppo, Paul and Patricia Churchland) claim that consciousness is material, i.e., reducible to the brain and the central nervous system. But to be reducible to is not the same as to be identical with or caused by. Dualist, idealists, rationalists, phenomenologists, and existentialists maintain that consciousness is both immaterial and active and on two counts: (1) reflexive self-consciousness (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz,  Kant); and (2) transcendent  intentionality (Husserl, Sartre).

[MatthewMcVeagh]

It is interesting to hear a materialist be so sceptical of the standard materialist explanations of human nature and consciousness. I note that he admits he does not have an answer. If he let go of his materialism he would find it a lot easier - and he has no good rational reason not to do so.

[BrightRomeo]

Analysing the large number of NDE cases and reincarnation. I would love to ask Raymond since there is a difference between the mind and the brain, where does that mind/consciousness goes after you die ?

[benmijuskovic]

I offer a chapter in my study, Consciousness and Loneliness; Theoria and Praxis (2019), dealing with Dr. Tallis' Aping Mankind, Chapter 6, where I find Dr. Tallis' humanistic arguments against his neuroscientific colleagues as actually steeped in idealist arguments and misinterpretations of Kant's reflexive unity of consciousness and Husserl's transcendent intentionality.

[exgen]

+Philip if you look at the atoms of a car axel, you won't see the car axel, sure.  If you look at the atoms of the brain, you won't see the brain, sure.  But a physical description, say or atoms, or of an axel, or of a brain, or of whatever you look, doesn't cease to be a physical description of a physical thing, just because you are at some greater level of complexity of a structure.  At the end of the day, you are still talking in the 'language' of particle decorations albeit some descriptions are far more complex than others.  However, that physical language of particle descriptions, while it might parallel the language of a conscious (phenomenological) description, it is not the same as it.  The vocabularies are incommensurate with one another, hence so are the languages.  There is no translation, although the two can be correlated.   So, yeah, you can't talk about a few atoms and then using that language talk about a car axel.  You would need much more atoms and int he right configuration to then talk about a car axel, but you are still talking the language of atoms.  The same is true for the brain.  But it is the fallacy of equivocation to move from the language of physics, which describes atoms all the way up to the workings of axels and brains, to consciousness, precisely because the language used to describe consciousness has no translation into physical terms, although, again, the two can be correlated. 

[TheSamuiman]

There are no "others"! The division happens when the subject identifies objects as apart from it-self! The Indian Vedas and Upanishads are a good base regarding this problem, which isn't a problem as such, but a total misunderstanding of how things really are and how perception fit's into all of this!

[stanleyklein]

The mind is what the brain does. So cardio activity via the vagus nerve is an activity of mind. Wonderful definition..

[benmijuskovic]

In my study, Consciousness and Loneliness: Theoria and Praxis (Brill, 2019), Chapter 6, "Neuromania and Neo-Phrenology versus Consciousness, " I discusses at some length Dr. Tallis' book, Aping Mankind. Although I agree with his criticisms of neuroscience, I try to point out his own limitations.

[dennissmith]

What is the "society" he mentions at the end of the video?

[tongleekwan]

When it comes to science, there is absolutely no need or even an insult to human intelligence to say the word god

[YaleBreaker]

Language and socialization are hardly superficial.

[globaldigitaldirectsubsidi]

The desire to be loved is evidently created by evolution and so is the desire to to be part of a group.

[infinitesimotel]

Good video. The car and the driver, are not the same thing.

[louisburke]

What is wrong with seeing ourselves as part of nature like any other beasts? What is he proposing?

[globaldigitaldirectsubsidi]

Mathematics is greater than physics and neuroscience.

[YaleBreaker]

Tallis seems to be primarily conflating different levels of analysis of the same processes, to be honest. He raises some interesting (not too novel) points, but the connections he draws between them don't seem very coherent to me.

[MidiwaveProductions]

Monistic Idealism is the answer ... Checks all the boxes.

[globaldigitaldirectsubsidi]

Hilarious. Obviously evolution created consciousness. It's plausible, coherent and fully explanatory