I just read his Aping Mankind book and also one called Why the Mind is not a Computer. I am a scientist and broad minded and was expecting a really good and thoughtful argument from Prof. Tallis. I was bitterly disappointed.
If there was a black-belt in straw-man argument, he would deserve one. Over and over again, he willfully misconstrues what others claim in order to argue against points that they never made. Then, when it comes to his own ideas, they are shockingly naive and shallow.
For example, he argues at great length that the mind is not the brain, but nobody claims it is. What neuroscientists typically say is that the mind is generated by the brain – that’s obviously different. He claims that the mind does not compute, but he does so by deliberately and explicitly refusing to accept anything other than arithmetic as computation and says arithmetic can only be performed by a conscious mind and therefore a mind cannot be made from arithmetic, since that would require another mind to produce it … etc..
Of course he knows that computation is information processing and that when two or more neurons work together to integrate their respective input signals, they are processing information. Scale that up and at least in theory you have the basis of brain function. He knows that and deliberately ignores it in his books.
You have offered an interesting hypothesis as to why. On the other hand he might realise that he’s wrong but not be able to recant because he is trapped in his own argument and fame. I am astonished there is so little criticism of his apparently deliberate misrepresentations and his lack of any reason for pushing the metaphysical idea he does: that humans are unique because by virtue of consciousness they harbour something from beyond physics, something other-worldly and mystical that we will never be able to understand.
What tosh!