Aping Mankind by Raymond Tallis
Aping Mankind presents a powerful critique against the temptation to fuse scientific inquiry with overly simplistic and shallow isms. A neuroscientist and self-proclaimed atheist, author Raymond Tallis distinguishes between the advances of neuroscience with its petty use as a proxy for the hidden phenomena and complexity of human behavior and society, a term he calls neuromania. These complexities include the concepts of freewill and (neuro)determinism, efforts to find a “neural account of consciousness”, and the subject of his other discussion—Darwinism.
While the author acknowledges our biological evolution, his concern lies with our tendency to fill the wedge between the human and animal disguising our generous differences. His position sits dangerously close to human exceptionalism but may still be helpful for those accustomed to anthropomorphic/zoomorphic rhetoric. We are unlike other animals through our intentionality, our "merging without mushing” (i.e., recognizing a leaf is a part of a tree while simultaneously keeping its leaf-being identity), and our ability to instruct one other.
Another interesting argument to consider is the progression towards the ‘objectivity’ of ideas. He describes this movement as a “gradual shedding of perspective—a journey towards Nagel’s “view from nowhere”.” Dismissing subjectivity and treating people like passive respondents to stimuli will lead to the circular discovery “that they are passive respondents to stimuli.” Instead, we interact with the world around us, engage with and resist ideas, and map out decisions that influence our subsequent behaviors.
“The footprint is not the memory of a foot, except to an observer.”
While Raymond Tallis presents thought provoking ideas for the scientist, I found this book to be a bit dense and tedious for someone without such a technical background. The text was often slow and redundant, with key points being left to only occupy a narrow space. I also found myself to be frequently unsure of whether he was alluding to scientific or philosophical grounds for his argument. For example, building on the work of thinkers before him, he chalks up our self-awareness and potent sense of agency to the hand. It was the hand, he argued, that divided animal consciousness to human self-consciousness. His reasoning for this is highly theoretical, describing its versatility, its proximity to the eye, the reciprocity of touching and being touched, and the position of the index finger that can point in differentiation between the public world and the private self. These ideas, while highly illuminating, can better be condensed into a smaller volume. Aping Mankind, in its present form, is unlikely to be engaging to the nonscientist.
Rating: 3/5
