Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).

Pt. 1. Brains, persons and beasts -- -- 1. Am I My Brain? -- 2. Was Schubert a Musical Brain? -- 3. Wit and Wickedness: Is It All in the Brain? -- 4. Are Conscious Machines Possible? -- 5. David Chalmers's Unsuccessful Search for the Conscious Mind -- 6. A Conversation with My Neighbour -- 7. Silk: Metamorphoses Beyond Biology -- Pt. II Philosophy and Physics -- 8. Should We Just Shut Up and Calculate? Does Physics Need Philosophy? -- 9. You Chemical Scum, You -- 10. Did Time Begin with a Bang? -- 11. A Hasty Report from a Tearing Hurry -- Pt. III. Philosophy and Physic -- 12. Medical Ethics in the Real Mess of the Real World -- 13. On Caring and Not Caring -- 14. Coinages of the Mind: Hallucinations -- 15. Becoming the Prisoners of Our Free Choices -- 16. The Right to an Assisted Death.

These essays from one of our most stimulating thinkers showcase Tallis's infectious fascination, indeed intoxication, with the infinite complexity of human lives and the human condition. In the title essay, we join Tallis on a stroll around his local park - and the intricate passages of his own consciousness - as he uses the motif of the walk, the amble, to occasion a series of meditations on the freedoms that only human beings possess. In subsequent essays, the flâneur thinks about his brain, his relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom, his profession of medicine and about the physical world and the claims of physical science to have rendered philosophical reflection obsolete. Taken together the essays continue Tallis's mission to elaborate a vision of humanity that rejects religious myths while not succumbing to scientism or any other form of naturalism. Written with the author's customary intellectual energy and vigour these essays provoke, move and challenge us to think differently about who we are and our place in the material world.