The ever insightful, incisive and entertaining Prof. Raymond Tallis will give the Francis Bacon Lecture 2012 on 29th February at the University of Hertfordshire. The lecture will be titled ‘Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Mankind’ and will discuss themes from Tallis’s latest publication of the same title. Here’s the blurb:
Neuromania is based on the incorrect notion that human consciousness is identical with activity in the brain, that people are their brains, and that societies are best understood as collections of brains. While the brain is a necessary condition of every aspect of human consciousness, it is not a sufficient condition – which is why neuroscience, and the materialist philosophy upon which it is based, fails to capture the human person. Since the brain is an evolved organism, Neuromania leads to Darwinitis, the assumption that, since Darwin demonstrated the biological origins of the organism Homo sapiens, we should look to evolutionary theory to understand what we are now; that our biological roots explain our cultural leaves. In fact, we belong to a community of minds that has developed over the hundreds of thousands of years since we parted company from other primates.
The lecture is free and open to the public, but booking is required. See the site hyperlinked above for details.
And here’s a link to a NDPR review of Tallis’s book by Justin Garson (Hunter College, CUNY): http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/28270-aping-mankind-neuromania-darwinitis-and-the-misrepresentation-of-humanity/