I am

In The Hand, the first volume of his trilogy, Raymond Tallis looked at how humans have avoided the constraints of biology. I Am focuses on two crucial aspects of the escape from being a mere organism: selfhood and agency. These are seen as originating in what Tallis calls the Existential Intuition - the sense 'That I am this' - within the human body. The nature and origin of the Existential Intuition is described in outline and it is related to the certainty of his own existence that Descartes established through his Cogito argument. The primary reference point for the sense 'That I am this' is the body. Raymond Tallis describes the logical and existential necessity of embodiment and the complex relationships we have to our bodies such as being, using, having, suffering and knowing. He goes on to argue that bodily continuity and psychological connectedness through memory both require the Existential Intuition in order to underpin an enduring self.Moreover, the self-realising intuition 'that I am this' creates a new point of departure in the physical world enabling persons to be the origins of their acts and to establish a vantage point from which they are able to influence the course of events. I Am is full of fascinating insights into the nature of personal identity and offers an entirely new way of reconciling human freedom with the deterministic universe in which humans act. Key Features: *Addresses fundamental philosophical questions. *Approaches these questions from a novel view point. *Reconciles Darwinism with Humanism. *A major attempt to redefine what it is to be a human being and the scope of human possibility.

ISBN 074861950X   Pages 320 ISBN13 9780748619504 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Edinburgh University Press   Weight (grammes) 678 Imprint Edinburgh University Press   Published in Edinburgh Format Hardback   Previous ISBN 9780748619511 Publication date 03 Jun 2004   Height (mm) 234 Non-book description xviii, 350 :   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress 2005482269   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 126   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

1		The existential intuition : an introduction		1
2		'Therefore I am...' : the Cogito argument and the bio-logic of first-person identity		22
3		First-person authority and immunity from error		90
4		The logical necessity for embodiment		111
5		The existential necessity of embodiment : no Da-Sein without Fort-Sein		132
6		Reports from embodiment : on being, suffering, having, using and knowing a body		155
7		Personal identity : what I am		220
8		Agency and first-person being		287

Raymond Tallis is a man unusual in modern medicine. His career has been devoted to caring for, studying, and advancing the health of older people in society. But while working as a Professor of Geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, he has developed a parallel career - as a philosopher, critic, poet and novelist - largely unknown to his clinical brotherhood and sisterhood. Indeed, important though his medical work has been, it is likely that his philosophy, and especially his philosophical anthropology will leave a particularly indelible mark on human affairs. -- Richard Horton He is a splendid exception to the helpless specialisation of our age, being a professor of gerontology who writes clear and useful philosophy. More crucially though, he aims his philosophy at a target that needs it terribly, namely the confused and lazy-minded scientism that blocks our attempts to talk sense about human consciousness. -- Mary Midgley Raymond Tallis is a man unusual in modern medicine. His career has been devoted to caring for, studying, and advancing the health of older people in society. But while working as a Professor of Geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, he has developed a parallel career - as a philosopher, critic, poet and novelist - largely unknown to his clinical brotherhood and sisterhood. Indeed, important though his medical work has been, it is likely that his philosophy, and especially his philosophical anthropology will leave a particularly indelible mark on human affairs. He is a splendid exception to the helpless specialisation of our age, being a professor of gerontology who writes clear and useful philosophy. More crucially though, he aims his philosophy at a target that needs it terribly, namely the confused and lazy-minded scientism that blocks our attempts to talk sense about human consciousness.

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