Circling Round Explicitness: The Heart of the Mystery of Human Being

by Raymond Tallis

Explicitness is one of the fundamental mysteries in which our lives are wrapped. If there is Something (rather than Nothing) and that Something has an order which, according to the standard story, ultimately gives rise to and sustains life, explicitness is what makes that Something, that “what is”, into something “that-it-is”. Our capacity, as conscious subjects, to make things explicit, so that what-is presents itself as that-it-is or “that-it-is-the-case” is at the heart of the mystery of human being.



Circling Round Explicitness is an endeavour to make explicitness explicit or, at least, more explicit. This ambition is rooted in the belief that the failure to acknowledge the centrality to our nature as human beings, of explicitness, more specifically the capacity to make things explicit, explains many false directions in contemporary philosophy, most importantly in the embrace of scientism.



With characteristic erudition and acuity across a breathtaking range of subjects, Ray Tallis explores how explicitness connects with fundamental ontological, metaphysical and epistemological questions, including the gap between matter and persons, the properties of the brain, the nature of ourselves as embodied subjects and as agents, the phenomenology of thought, the realm of possibility (and probability) and the ideas of reality and truth.



Although the attempt to grasp explicitness is fraught with challenges – it is an attempt to reach out to that which comprises one’s act of reaching, analagous to the endeavour to land on oneself – the task is a fascinating endeavour that takes us closer to understanding what it is to be, to be human, and our connection with the material world. In circling round explicitness, we are circling round Man, the Explicit Animal, around ourselves.

496 pages, Hardcover

Published November 25, 2025

About the author

Professor Raymond Tallis is a philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic and was until recently a physician and clinical scientist. In the Economist's Intelligent Life Magazine (Autumn 2009) he was listed as one of the top living polymaths in the world.

Born in Liverpool in 1946, one of five children, he trained as a doctor at Oxford University and at St Thomas' in London before going on to become Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in Health Care of the Elderly in Salford. Professor Tallis retired from medicine in 2006 to become a full-time writer, though he remained Visiting Professor at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London until 2008.

Prior to his retirement from medicine to devote himself to writing, Raymond Tallis had responsibility for acute and rehabilitation patients and took part in the on-call rota for acute medical emergencies. He also ran a unique specialist epilepsy service for older people. Amongst his 200 or so medical publications are two major textbooks - The Clinical Neurology of Old Age (Wiley, 1988) and the comprehensive Brocklehurst's Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology (Harcourt Brace, co-edited with Howard Fillitt, 6th edition, 2003). Most of his research publications were in the field of neurology of old age and neurological rehabilitation. He has published original articles in Nature Medicine, Lancet and other leading journals. Two of his papers were the subject of leading articles in Lancet. In 2000 Raymond Tallis was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in recognition of his contribution to medical research; in 2002 he was awarded the Dhole Eddlestone Prize for his contribution to the medical literature on elderly people; and in 2006 he received the Founders Medal of the British Geriatrics Society. In July 2007, he received the Lord Cohen Gold Medal for Research into Ageing, and in November 2011 he was honoured with the International League Against Epilepsy's Special Excellence in Epilepsy Award. He is a Patron of Dignity in Dying.

Over the last 20 years Raymond Tallis has published fiction, three volumes of poetry, and 23 books on the philosophy of mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art and cultural criticism. Together with over two hundred articles in Prospect, Times Literary Supplement and many other outlets, these books offer a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness, the nature of language and of what it is to be a human being. For this work, Professor Tallis has been awarded three honorary degrees: DLitt (Hon. Causa) from the University of Hull in 1997; LittD (Hon. Causa) at the University of Manchester 2002 and Doc (Med) SC, St George's Hospital 2015. He was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Liverpool until 2013.

Raymond Tallis makes regular appearances at Hay, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and other book festivals, and lectures widely.

Raymond Tallis's national roles have included: Consultant Advisor in Health Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer; a key part in developing National Service Framework for Older People, in particular the recommendations of developing services for people with strokes; membership of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence Appraisal Committee; Chairmanship of the Royal College of Physicians Committee on Ethics in Medicine; Chairman of the committee reviewing ethics support for front-line clinicians; and membership of the Working Party producing a seminal report Doctors in Society, Medical Professionalism in a Changing World (2005). From July 2011 to October 2014 he was the elected Chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD).

In 2012 he was a member of the judges' panel for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

In 2015 he judged the Notting Hill Essay prize.

Reviews

[Terry Cooke-Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raymond Tallis has spent a distinguished career as both neurologist and philosopher refusing easy answers about human consciousness. In Circling Round Explicitness, he delivers his most ambitious work yet: an attempt to make explicit our uniquely human capacity to make things explicit - to transform “what-is” into “that-it-is” and “that-it-is-the-case.”
The book’s power lies in Tallis’s refusal to accept either of the two dominant frameworks. Naturalism, he demonstrates, “cannot account for the very ground on which it stands” - scientific explanation itself depends on the explicitness it cannot explain. But supernatural explanations merely “parcel up our incomprehension” in concepts that are themselves “riddled with contradictions.” Tallis charts a third way: rigorous philosophical inquiry that takes consciousness seriously without abandoning naturalism or embracing mysticism.
What makes this book essential reading is Tallis’s systematic dismantling of a century’s worth of attempts to marginalize consciousness. He traces how poststructuralism (Barthes’ “death of the author”), late Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and contemporary paninformationalism have all, from different directions, tried to explain away the conscious subject. The irony, as Tallis notes with characteristic acuity, is that these theories engage in “pragmatic self-refutation” - using high-level consciousness to argue we lack consciousness, asking us to become “mysteriously conscious of our lack of consciousness.”
His critique of paninformationalism and panpsychism is particularly sharp: by claiming consciousness exists everywhere (in electrons, ships, shoes), these approaches dilute rather than explain the genuine mystery of why certain material configurations - human brains in living bodies - generate the extraordinary phenomenon of explicit awareness.
With “characteristic erudition and acuity across a breathtaking range of subjects” (as the endorsements rightly note), Tallis explores how explicitness connects to fundamental questions about embodiment, selfhood, agency, possibility, probability, reality, and truth. His discussion of how we “stand outside of that in which we are embedded” - able to reflect on the 13.7 billion years that produced us, yet unable to “truly think” such facts - captures the productive paradox at the heart of human existence.
But what makes this book remarkable is Tallis’s intellectual honesty. In his coda, he admits to feeling “a bit glum” at having “failed to explain explicitness and its many manifestations.” He acknowledges that when he tries to capture explicitness directly, it keeps “floating towards the surface” - that “like forces repel one another: explicitness resisting making itself explicit.” His final recognition is haunting: “we had landed on our destination before we had set off on our journey, so had nowhere to go.”
This is not defeatism but philosophical maturity. Tallis has traced explicitness to the point where philosophical analysis itself breaks down - not through lack of rigor, but because certain realities resist the kind of explanation philosophy offers. As he notes, “philosophy always begins in medias res” - we never truly start at the beginning because we’re always already embedded in the discourse, assumptions, and frameworks that make inquiry possible.
For readers interested in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, or the nature of human uniqueness, this book is indispensable. Tallis writes with clarity and verve, making complex arguments accessible without sacrificing depth. His creative terminology - “the explicit animal,” “thatter,” “the thatosphere” - captures nuances that standard philosophical vocabulary misses.
The book won’t give you easy answers. It won’t solve the mystery of consciousness. But it will show you, with unprecedented clarity, why that mystery is so profound, why both scientism and supernaturalism fail to address it, and why human explicitness remains the most fascinating phenomenon in the known universe.
If you’re willing to follow Tallis in circling round explicitness without demanding to arrive at a final explanation, you’ll find this journey intellectually exhilarating. And you may discover, as he suggests, that we’ve been standing on our destination all along - we just couldn’t see it because we were looking for somewhere else to land.
Highest recommendation for anyone serious about understanding what makes us human

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite work of his; could be very dense and analytic at times, especially in the first third, roughly, where he deals with some sophisticated scientific and quantitative stuff, which I skimmed. I liked the chapters on selfhood, thinking, and reality. Much of the content here can be found in his other stuff (e.g., Seeing Ourselves: Reclaiming Humanity from God and Science), though, which is usually the case with Tallis.

Overall, his main focus, to make explictness explicit, is very admirable and fascinating, and much to my liking. It's exceedingly difficult to actually articulate, so his attempt to put it into words is impressive, and his curiosity and passion really come through in his writing, which is, as usual, very lively, witty, and learned. In a way, his lifelong mission is the same as, or comparable to, Heidegger's: To re-open the question of Being, namely, the meaning of Being, or, as in his later works, to designate the event of appropriation, or to indicate the clearing of the open. Or, in simpler language: To wonder at the fact, first, that there is something, and not nothing; and second, that we human beings can express this to ourselves and to each other. Very miraculous, indeed.

And I think Tallis is quite right to propose that all the theories and theorists he disagrees with throughout this book—e.g., neo-Darwinian neuro-naturalism, panpsychism or idealism, functionalism, eliminativism, etc.—on which he and I align perfectly—arrive at the positions they do because they overlook or undervalue explicitness. Why this should be the case, Tallis doesn't say. A number of reasons are possible: The tendency to absolutize presence-at-hand, as Heidegger proposed; the assurance that scientific knowledge seems to provide, as against the uncertainties posed by consciousness and existence; narrow professional specialization that precludes intellectual openness, etc. What I respect about Tallis is that he does justice to the mystery of existence without seeking to reduce it. Thus, he rejects both naturalism and supernaturalism. Human reality, consciousness, is neither material nor immaterial. What, then, is it? Tallis doesn't say; more than that, he's comfortable not saying: He's comfortable being uncomfortable. In contrast to the overeager scientist who's quick to eliminate consciousness or the theist who invokes God. #based