2022/06/28

Charles A. Foster - Wikipedia

Charles A. Foster - Wikipedia

Charles A. Foster

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For the early member of the Latter Day Saint movement, see Charles A. Foster (Latter Day Saints).
Charles Foster (2019)

Charles Foster (born 1962) is an English writer, traveller, veterinarian, taxidermist, barrister and philosopher. He is known for his books and articles on Natural History, travel (particularly in Africa and the Middle East), theology, law and medical ethics. He is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. He says of his own books: 'Ultimately they are all presumptuous and unsuccessful attempts to answer the questions 'who or what are we?', and 'what on earth are we doing here?'[1]

Education[edit]

He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge University, where he read Veterinary Medicine and Law. He holds a PhD in medical law and ethics from the University of Cambridge. He is a qualified veterinary surgeon. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple.

Career[edit]

After Cambridge he worked on the comparative anatomy of the Himalayan Hispid hare and chemotaxis in leeches, worked in Saudi Arabia studying the immobilisation of Goitred and Mountain gazelles, did pupillage at the English Bar, and was a research fellow at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He was a research assistant to Aharon Barak, Justice (and later President) of the Supreme Court of Israel. He practises at the Bar in London, primarily in medical law, and has been involved in some of the most significant cases of recent years. He was called to the Bar of the Republic of Ireland in 1996. He teaches Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Oxford and was a Visiting Fellow of Green College, Oxford. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford.

Recent expeditions have included the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, studying water metabolism in mules; ecological surveys in the Quirimbas Archipelago, northern Mozambique, and a successful ski expedition to the North Pole. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Linnean Society.

In the fields of law and philosophy he is probably best known for his criticisms of the hegemony of autonomy in medical ethics (in 'Choosing Life, Choosing Death' (2009)), and for his contention that the 'Four Principles' approach of Beauchamp and Childress is redundant, and should be replaced by an analysis based on a broadly Aristotelean account of human dignity ('Human Dignity in Bioethics and Law' (2011)).

Many of his writings on religion have been attacked as heretical by conservative Christians, particularly in the US.[2]

As part of his philosophical investigations relating to authenticity and identity, he has tried living as a badger, an otter, an urban fox, a red deer and a swift,[3][4] and he has written about this in his book Being a Beast in 2016. For living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird, he won an Ig Nobel prize in Biology.[5]

Bibliography[edit]

In addition to a large number of articles, there are the following books and book chapters:[6][7]

  • The Screaming Sky, 2020, shortlisted for Wainwright Prize
  • Being a Beast, 2016, Profile Books
  • Altruism, Welfare and the Law, 2015, Springer (with Jonathan Herring)
  • Dementia: Law and Ethics, 2014, Hart (editor, with Jonathan Herring and Israel Doron)
  • Medical Law: A Very Short Introduction, 2013, Oxford University Press
  • In the hot unconscious: An Indian Journey, 2012, Tranquebar
  • Human dignity in bioethics and law, 2011, Hart
  • The Sacred Journey, 2010, Thomas Nelson
  • Wired for God? The Biology of religious experience, 2010, Hodder
  • The Selfless Gene:Living with God and Darwin, 2009 (Hodder) and 2010 (Thomas Nelson)
  • The misadventures of Mr. Badshot, 2010, Quiller (with James St Clair Wade)
  • Medical Law Precedents, 2010, Wildys
  • 'Challenging the Inquiry', in Public Inquiries, 2011, OUP
  • Choosing Life, Choosing Death: The tyranny of autonomy in medical ethics and law, 2009: Hart
  • Veterinary Negligence: in Professional Negligence and Liability, Informa, 2008
  • Tracking the Ark of the Covenant, 2007: Lion Hudson
  • The Christmas Mystery, 2007: Authentic Books
  • The Jesus Inquest, 2006: Lion Hudson
  • Medical Mistakes, 2007: Claerhout Publishing
  • Elements of Medical Law, 2005, Barry Rose, 2nd Ed. 2007, Claerhout Publishing
  • Personal Injury, 2006, Jordans (contributor)
  • Travellers in the Near East: Stacey International (Editor), 2004
  • Sahara Overland: Trailblazer publications, 2004. Ed. Chris Scott: Section on travel with camels, 2004
  • Regulating Health Care Quality: Legal and Professional Issues: Butterworth Heinemann/Elsevier Science (Editor, with John Tingle and Kay Wheat), and chapter on 'Disciplinary jurisdiction over the medical and other healthcare professions': 2004
  • Freedom Fighters: Authentic Press, 2005. Ed. Rob Frost: Chapter on 'Law, Freedom and Christian Principle in England'
  • The literature of travel and exploration: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003 (contributor): Edited by Jennifer Speake. Essays on Cairo, Damascus, the Gobi desert, the Mekong River, travellers of the ancient Greek world, western travellers to Central Asia, Ranulph Fiennes, Fitzroy Maclean.
  • Twenty-First Century Nursing: Law and Ethics: TVF Medical Communications/Pharmacia (CD Rom)
  • Clinical Guidelines: Law, policy and practice: Cavendish, 2002 (joint editor with John Tingle and chapter on “Civil procedure, trial issues and clinical guidelines).
  • Nursing Law and Ethics: Blackwell Scientific. 2nd Ed., 2002. Ed. Tingle and Cribb. Chapter on: Negligence: The legal perspective.
  • Civil Advocacy: Cavendish (with Charles Bourne, Jacqui Gilliatt and Prashant Popat): 2nd Ed. 2001
  • Healthcare Law: The impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 (Ed. Garwood-Gowers, Tingle and Lewis): Cavendish, 2001: Chapter on “Access, Procedure and the Human Rights Act 1998 in Medical Cases”.
  • Desert Travellers: from Herodotus to T.E. Lawrence: Ed. Starkey and El Daly; ASTENE Publications, 2000: Chapter on: “The Zoology of Herodotus and his Greek descendants.”
  • Drafting: Cavendish, 2nd Ed. 2001 (with Elmer Doonan)
  • Clinical confidentiality: Monitor Press, 2000 (with Nick Peacock)
  • Disclosure and Confidentiality: FT Law and Tax, 1996 (with T. Wynn and N. Ainley)
  • Personal Injury Toolkit: FT Law and Tax/ Sweet and Maxwell, 1st Ed.1997, 2nd Ed. 1998, 3rd Ed. 1999, 4th Ed. 2001, 5th Ed. 2002, 6th Ed. 2003 (Electronic and paper publication, with G. Reeds and M. Bennet).
  • Tripping and Slipping Cases: A Practitioner's Guide: Longman/FT Law and Tax/Sweet and Maxwell, 1st Ed. 1994: 2nd Ed. 1996: 3rd Ed. 2002, 4th Ed. 2005

References[edit]

  1. ^ http://www.charlesfoster.co.uk
  2. ^ e.g. http://5ptsalt.com/2010/01/18/book-review-the-selfless-gene-living-with-god-darwin/
  3. ^ "Being a Beast: Charles Foster tries life as an animal". Oxford Today. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  4. ^ "Going underground: meet the man who lived as an animal". The Guardian. 23 January 2016. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  5. ^ https://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2016[dead link]
  6. ^ "Biography, Charles Foster Research Associate, the Ethox Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health". University of Oxford, Faculty of Law. 16 July 2015. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  7. ^ Foster, Charles. "All books & publications". Charles Foster, Author, Barrister, Traveller. Retrieved 19 February 2016.

External links[edit]

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Top 10 books about human consciousness | Science and nature books | The Guardian

Top 10 books about human consciousness | Science and nature books | The Guardian


Top 10 books about human consciousness

Authors from Carl Jung to Aldous Huxley and Susan Blackmore explore the deep mysteries of what it means to be a person

trippy consciousness
Just a chemical event? Photograph: Fredrik Skold/Alamy

Do you know what sort of animal you are? It’s rather important to know. If you call yourself a humanist, for instance, don’t you need some idea of what a human is so that you can make sure your behaviour accords with your ethics? If you think that humans are just a little lower than the angels, as the Judaeo-Christian tradition says, shouldn’t you know how much lower, so you can be appropriately aspirational but not frustrated or cocky?

Being a Human review – two go mad in the stone age
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And then there’s the problem of personal identity. When you say “I love you”, or “I‘m afraid”, how confident are you about wielding that mighty and mysterious pronoun? Are you as confident as modern neuroscientists that “you” are just the chemical events that happen in your brain? Does that explanation satisfy you?

I expect, if you’re asked what “you” are, part of your answer would involve saying that you were human. So we’re back to the first problem.

All these questions worried me sick. I thought the best way to address them was to go on a journey back through the human story, pausing and immersing myself, using a kind of archaeological method acting, in three pivotal ages – ages when seismic shifts in human self-understanding occurred. These were the Upper Palaeolithic (the vast majority of our history: we’re still really hunter-gatherers, even if we wear a suit and sit slumped in front of a laptop), the Neolithic (when we caged the natural world and ourselves), and the Enlightenment (when the universe, previously seen as fizzing with consciousness, was declared to be merely a machine).

I wrote a book about this journey. It’s called Being a Human. I’m now a bit less queasy than I was about saying “I love you”. Though many mysteries have deepened and multiplied, I think I’ve got some idea of the sort of animal you are and I am.

Here are a few of the books I took along the road. Some were congenial; some infuriating.

1. The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist
A massive book and a massive achievement. A follow-up to McGilchrist’s epic The Master and His Emissary, which explored the way in which our perception of the world, and of ourselves, is influenced by – or is – the conversation or stand-off between the two cerebral hemispheres. The Matter With Things is a devastating assault on the view that there is only matter (whatever that is), and that consciousness can emerge from a conglomeration of unconscious units.

2. Scatterlings by Martin Shaw
Very few books about the wild are wild, and so very few are worthy of their subject. This one is. It’s a tale of how to be claimed by a place, and about how we’re dying because (being stories ourselves) we need good stories as we need clean air, and yet we’re offered only the tawdry stories of material reductionism and the free market – stories which literally de-mean us. Shaw knows how stories seep out of the earth. The earth, like everything, has agency, and it wants us to audition for parts in its constantly evolving stories. What is a thriving human? For Shaw, as for Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, it’s something that has a human body, which defines its position by reference to everything else in the world rather than by reference to itself, and which gets a good part in the local story.

3. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Often parodied, seldom read, Jaynes argues that (for instance) the voices of the gods in the heads of the Homeric heroes were really the voices of one compartment of the mind, overheard by another, and that true modern consciousness arose when the wall between those compartments dissolved. Though there’s too much dissonance with the archaeological record to convince me, it’s a fascinating thesis, supported by a dizzying range of references, and Jaynes is a brave and swashbuckling writer.


4. The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms
The market is awash with books expressing blithe optimism that neuroscience is about to tell us what consciousness is, why it’s there, and how it is generated. Solms is with the mainstream materialist cohort in thinking that consciousness is a function of brain activity. I’d prefer to say that brains receive, process, and perhaps broadcast consciousness. But Solms’s book stands out from the herd, marked by fitting wonderment and doubt.

Carl Jung in 1950.
Exploring the sovereign subconscious … Carl Jung in 1950. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

5. Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung
Our consciousness is relatively uninteresting and insignificant compared with our unconscious. Most of what “I” really am and what “I” actually do wells up from far below the surface. Jung is one of the great explorers of the dark but sovereign subconscious. You’ll bump into his archetypes if you dream diligently, fast long enough, or sit down in a winter wood and stare into the middle distance.

6. Nine-Headed Dragon River by Peter Matthiessen
Matthiessen, best known for The Snow Leopard, was an advanced Zen practitioner. This book contains some of his meditation diaries. They’re full of vertiginous worked examples, showing how to watch your own mind working.

7. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore
The most accessible overview of the subject, bracingly written. She thinks my views are credulous and atavistic, and says so splendidly and compellingly. Ponder her question: “What were you conscious of a moment ago?”’'

8. Breaking Convention: Essays on Psychedelic Consciousness
One of a set of proceedings of a biennial conference focusing on the academic study of psychedelics and related subjects such as shamanism and out of body and near-death experiences. Tectonic scientific progress is made by looking at the outliers – the evidence that doesn’t fit with your comforting old preconceptions. These studies do that.

9. Beyond Words by Carl Safina
Moving accounts of the reasons to suppose that various non-humans, including orcas, wolves and elephants, have emotions and a type of consciousness akin to ours. If they are conscious, why shouldn’t stones be conscious too?

10. The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Based on his experiences of taking the hallucinogen mescaline. Huxley concluded that the brain acted like a reducing valve, slowing down the influx of data into our brains to a manageable dribble. We may be drawing conclusions about the universe on the basis of a tiny fraction of the available information. We might be misreading it radically. It has recently been shown that human neural networks can process 11 dimensions. We usually use only four. We’re wired up for much, much more reality than we think.

  • Being a Human by Charles Foster is published by Profile in the UK and Metropolitan in the US. To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.


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