new book – ‘Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur and Other Essays’ by Raymond Tallis
Written on May 31, 2013
Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur and Other Essays by Raymond Tallis (Acumen, 2013)
Book description from the publisher:
In the title essay of “Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur”, Raymond Tallis uses the motif of the stroll, the amble, to connect a series of meditations on the freedoms that only humans possess. In subsequent essays, the flaneur thinks about his brain, his relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom, his profession of medicine and about the physical world and the claims of physical science to have rendered philosophical reflection obsolete. The book is a continuation of Tallis’s endeavours to elaborate a vision of humanity that rejects religious myths while not succumbing to scientism or any other form of naturalism. Written with the author’s customary intellectual energy and vigour these essays provoke, stimulate and challenge us to think in new ways.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
Reflections of a Metaphysical Flâneur
Part I: Brains, Persons and Beasts
1. Am I my Brain?
2. Was Schubert a Musical Brain?
3. Wickedness and Wit: Is it all in the brain?
4. Are Conscious Machines Possible?
5. David Chalmers’s Unsuccessful Search for the Conscious Mind
6. A Conversation with My Neighbour
7. Silk
Part II: Philosophy and Physics
8. Should We Just Shut Up and Calculate?
9. You Chemical Scum, You
10. Did Time Begin with a Bang?
11. A Hasty Report from a Tearing Hurry
Part III: Philosophy and Physic
12. Medical Ethics in the Real Mess of the Real World
13. Some Reflections on Caring and Not Caring
14. Coinages of the Mind: Hallucinations
15. Becoming the Prisoners of Our Free Choices
16. The Right to an Assisted Death
Epilogue: And so to Bed
See also: Author’s website
Filed in: new books,philosophy of mind.
