Raymond Tallis
Encyclopedia
Raymond Tallis F.Med.Sci.
Academy of Medical Sciences
The Academy of Medical Sciences is the United Kingdom's national academy of medical sciences. It was established in 1998 on the recommendation of a group that was chaired by Michael Atiyah. Its president is John Irving Bell....

, F.R.C.P.
Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...

, F.R.S.A.
Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity...

 (born 1946 in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

) is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 philosopher, humanist
Secular humanism
Secular Humanism, alternatively known as Humanism , is a secular philosophy that embraces human reason, ethics, justice, and the search for human fulfillment...

, poet, novelist, cultural critic and retired medical doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

.

Medical career

On leaving Liverpool College, Tallis gained an Open Scholarship to Keble College
Keble College, Oxford
Keble College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to the south by Museum Road, and to the west by Blackhall...

, University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 where he completed a degree in Animal Physiology in 1967. He completed his medical degree
MBBS
MBBS was a popular BBS system in the Nordic countries during the mid-1990s. It was created by a team of Oslo-based enthusiasts, led by Mike Robertson. As many BBS systems of that era, it was only available for the DOS platform. Since one process could only handle one node, multitaskers such as...

 in 1970 at the University of Oxford and St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It has provided health care freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century and was originally located in Southwark.St Thomas' Hospital is accessible...

 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 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
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

.

Philosophical works

Tallis has attacked Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...

 in books such as Not Saussure, Theorrhoea and After and the assumptions of much artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 research in his book Why the Mind is Not a Computer: A Pocket Dictionary on Neuromythology. 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; I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being; and The Knowing Animal.

In 2007, Raymond Tallis finished Unthinkable Thought: The enduring significance of Parmenides. In April 2008, his book about the human head, The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head, was published. His book Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence was published in 2010.

Aping Mankind was published in 2011.

Other work

He is on the list of Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association
British Humanist Association
The British Humanist Association is an organisation of the United Kingdom which promotes Humanism and represents "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs." The BHA is committed to secularism, human rights, democracy, egalitarianism and mutual respect...

. Tallis is also a Patron of Dignity in Dying
Dignity in Dying
Dignity in Dying is a United Kingdom nationwide campaigning organisation. It is funded by voluntary contributions from members of the public, and as of December 2010, it claimed to have 25,000 actively subscribing supporters...

. On 15 September 2010, Tallis, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...

's state visit to the UK.

External links

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