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Title: A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness by Merlin Donald ISBN: 0-393-32319-6 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Corticocentrism Reconsidered
Comment: In this sweeping neocortical neuroparadigm, Merlin Donald brings elan and scholarship in our hour of need.
It has become almost normative to speak of higher consciousness as modular, with each module (attention, emotion, volition and so on...) in turn, a weighted sum of parallel agents interacting in unconscious 'pandemonium'. Dennett and other proponents of this view are joined by the evolutionary psychologists, who deconstruct the Purpose of human endeavor by reference to these modules, seen as vestigial survival strategies inappropriate to contemporary life, eg. the frisky male ex-hunter-gatherer dumping MDMA in the drinks of ladies who chance bearing his offspring ..well, you get it.
A picture emerges: an incontrovertibly brilliant series of contributions by 'Hardliners' [philosophers, psychologists, linguists and cognitive scientists] has weakened an Emperor already hostage to the 'demons' of his unruly New Mind. While holists wave hands and damn the evidence, serious observers nod in depressed capitulation. Another Postmodern Truth has displaced our helmsman to the periphery.
Donald comes to the rescue, wielding formidable expertise and sharp wit. He makes an excellent case for Autonomous Man, without soft fuzzies and without cliche. And he vigorously and cogently propounds a top-down viewpoint.
Cortical Size does count, and human consciousness is active, not a passive construction of the "real stuff" from lower hierarchical levels.
With the unitary perspective that single authorship confers, this kind of coherent articulation stands as a monument to plausible theorizing. Much what Lee Smolin's 'Life of the Cosmos' did for cosmology, 'A Mind So Rare' does for neuropsychology. Maybe Smolin's Universe and Donald's three-pound universe are connected after all.
The book is neither casual in popularization nor dense in neurobabble . Nearly every page discloses smaller and larger insights which make the reader wonder "why, despite a lesser IQ, didn't I think of that? "
Drawbacks? Not when one takes this book on its own terms, but there are some omissions. The big one (two) is Emotion and Value. Donald, effectively flogging the philosophers, needs to conciliate some scientists, eg. Douglas Watt, who just as effectively dethrones the cerebral cortex as Donald enthrones it (see the journal Consciousness & Emotion).
It's thus no surprise that Donald mentions little of the extended limbic system or lower brain centers which undergird crucial emotional and evaluative parameters. But such differences are essentially those of emphasis. One can appreciate the Hardliners and still retain perspective.
Doubts may arise as to testability. Quantum consciousness surely has no slam-dunk model, yet Stuart Hameroff has attended to such concerns. Yet even someone as articulate as Donald can't know everything about everything. It's enough that he effectively (and uniquely) spans the yawning chasm between neural circuitry and cognitive psychology, and does so without making us yawn.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Game of Words
Comment: Donald's A MIND SO RARE was an enjoyable read. It is probably the only book that I enjoyed reading, while disagreeing with almost all the conclusions that the author has reached.
I think the attack on hardliners is a game of words. Donald disagrees with how Dennett, for instance, defines consciousness. I think the hardliners might refer to the phenomenological aspects of consciousness as epiphenomenal, however, they view the functional aspects (online represtation of the world) as a crucial to survival.
I found the distinction of different levels of awareness that Donald overviews very helpful. I might disagree however, that all aspects of the intermediate term/long term awareness are conscious. I think that they are reducible to short term memories bound in time by unconscious processes.
The case that Donald makes for enculturation as key for making of the human consciousness is fascinating. I think the book would have been much better if he got straight into that point. It is confusing to try to connect his arguments in the begging of the book to those at the end. However, I give this book 4 stars for being such a great source of information.
Rating: 5
Summary: Consciousness from genetic thru cultural evolution
Comment: As a concerned reader I will explain, briefly, what I took from the book, and not critique the negatives. One strength seems to be a multidisciplinary approach. Merlin Donald is a research psychologist and makes an effort to draw from Psychological, Cognative, Neurological, and Evolutionary sciences; as well as literature.
Points: the shift of evolutionary importance from genetic to cultural in the hominid line; recognition of a fourth layer in human mental evolution, that of cultural memory (which he calls "external" memory in his fourth or Theoretic layer); and consideration of the whole of human consciousness.
Donald has expanded on his "Origins of the Human Mind" ('93) with exploring how culture has outstripped genetics in co-evolution with supporting the emergence of Homo Erectus, and then structuring the extended consciousness and symbol manipulation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
He postulated a fourth Theoretic layer (after Episotic, Mimetic, and Mythic layers) as an "external symbolic universe", or recorded symbols, or "external memory". But before recorded symbols, the past was only recovered by recall, by both speaker and, often, the listener. Recall must be distinguished from memory (as recorded symbols), for recall of past events or thoughts or moods must be incomplete and personal, whereas using recorded symbols is about interpretation, which is as complete as the writer and reader choose to make it, and is social. If people insist in using 'memory' for 'recall', then recorded symbols should be called 'cultural memory', but it is critically different.
Donald attempts an evolutionary analysis of the integrated, whole of consciousness. Since I am more interested in the human emotional (value) systems than in consciousness, I have one critical comment. Donald ignores the role of emotions in consciousness, which is to leave out feelings (which are the conscious perception of emotions), and the role of emotions in guiding consciousness. Emotions (or values) on several layers interact with most cognative functions.
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Title: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition by Merlin Donald ISBN: 0674644840 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: February, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought by Gary Marcus ISBN: 0465044050 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 16 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the Frontiers of Psychology and Evolution by Nicholas Humphrey ISBN: 0192802275 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan J. Blackmore ISBN: 019515343X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition by Michael Tomasello ISBN: 0674005821 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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