I am an oby-gyn specialist and readings of cognitive studies is one of my interests. Of course I prefer superficial writings and any book becomes out of touch and rejected as soon as it involves deeper issues. Paradoxically some rare books are easy to digest, yet exceedingly succesfull at promising new ways for capturing a glimpse. This work is such an attractive one. If consciousness will reveal its secrets someday, I feel that the key is evolutionary approaches and this master-piece of Donald is one of the bests in its era.

This is a fun book to read-- which is something for a book that credibly spreads across a number of disciplines and through some pretty dense stuff....

Donald is a credible writer and has a style that is simultaneously engaging without losing academic credibility. After opening up with a couple of chapters dealing with a review of literature stemming from before Darwin, he moves into an examination of archaeology, anthropology, and neurology trying to trace how the human mind came to function as it does (if you see it as special... or not....)

He traces through most of history. It is a broad, well-constucted swoop but one of which I still have not passed my final judgement. Perhaps it will take a couple of reads before I get to that point. What I am certain of is that this book, secondary to Julian Jaynes "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" made me THINK more about how we think than any other book I have come across.

I wholeheartedly recommend for you to buy this book if you have stumbled across this page....

Although I didn't finish this book altogether convinced (nor altogether unconvinced) of his schema for human cognitive evolution, I was nonetheless very pleased and very grateful for Merlin Donald's clear and thorough review of the facts. Donald carefully sorts through the wealth of anthropological, paleontological, physiological, linguistic, and, most intriguingly, cognitive-psychological data, to separate the real clues from the red herrings. He expertly demonstrates the complexity and nuances of the evidence, while at the same time building his outline of a theory of the emergence of human consciousness. While I found this theory somewhat hazy and incomplete, particularly with respect to the "mimetic" stage he posits for H. erectus, it is quite acceptable in the spirit in which it is given: a tentative suggestion of what a plausible origins scenario must look like. From this perspective, his thoughts are most valuable, and by necessity provoke the reader to ruminate on the bewildering array of issues the author navigates so expertly. Merlin Donald does not adopt the strident, advocative tone that so many big-picture human evolution theorists do--rather, he lets the steady buildup of evidence and counter-evidence show you how he arrived at his ideas. The book is a dated, but still glittering, treasure of references and findings in the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and animal and human cognition--I have used it quite a few times simply to remind myself--and others--of the strange but true, and of how things don't always conform to the wished-for pattern. For instance, Donald's wonderful and almost touching account of "Brother John", a paroxysmal aphasic, is a perfect rejoinder to anyone who equates "language" with "intelligence".

This is a book about consciousness, but Donald concentrates on extended human consciousness. His approach is functional and psychological, not neurobiological, but he uses neurobiological evidence here and there. The first thing Donald does is discuss many different views on consicousness, dismissing their proponents as "hardliners" and their theories as unsatisfactory. For example, he does not like the equating of consicousness to perception or sensation (nick humphrey, robert kirk, etc..). He also does not like working memory and language-as-consciousess theories (Fodor, Jaynes, John G. Taylor, Larry Weiskrantz, Dennett, but I think he has a point- aphasics, deaf mutes, and non linguistic creatures {probably} are conscious). Consciousnes is none of this, Donald argues. It is a cognitive ability of executive control, multifocal capacity with a vast evolutionary heritage. Now I would agree with this, but Donalds objections probably arise from confusions. For example, he fails to notice that theorists that equate consciousness with sensation have phenomenal consicousness (qualia) in mind (think of Blocks distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness) not full fledged extended human consciousness. It is true access consciousness cannot be reduced to sensation, but phenomenal consciousness might (notice the might). The same with at least some language theorists (Dennett, for example) They claim not that consicousness is language, but that it is essential for it, especially in the human type of consicousness. This is something Donald argues for later in the book himself. The same with working memory as consciousness theories. They explain the role of WM in consciousness, wich Donald also considers essential.

Apart form these confusions in the reading by Donald of the literature, there is also his idea that short-term memory and capacity limitations are not helpful concepts. Consciousness, Donald says, is more of an intermediate term phenomenon. (Does Donald then equate consciousness with memory, and if so, is this contradictory? THink of hippocampal lesioned patients, who though consicous, can only function in intervals of seconds, before forgetting that period). His confusion I think, rests in his conception of short term memory. He argues that human consicousnes takes place in temporal units of many minutes and hours, like in the following of a converation, and since WM is of the order of seconds, this cannot be the whole story. But it is not clear to me that one could not explain Donalds "intermediate term" consciousness by alluding to WM plus some sort of reactivation by top-down processes.

To me the strongest part of the book is where Donald argues that not only humans are conscious. Consicousness emerged in stages, with different characteristics and abilities, and there is no good reason to deny it to many mamals. Humans and primates, are in a diferent class altogether. They have a group of executive abilities that make consciousness more interesting. He proposes three levels, binding, working memory, intermediate and long term control. Binding is perceptual consciousness, the coherent representation of objects, and is probably the basic form of awareness, present in many species. Working memory is extends binding in time, and is probably characteristic of primates and select mamals. Intermediate control is episodic, executive, and extends consciousness considerably, in place probably in social mamals. Here one could see that Donald fals prey of his own primary objections. He objects to consicousness being identified with working memory, language, or sensation alone, but he seems to say consicousness is all of these things together. This is not extremely self-consistent.

Next comes Donalds major point. That human consicousness is not just that. THere is more, and that is the fact that we are not just brains, but brains in culture, and that culture and language expand consciousness into the human kind we enjoy. That is, we compute symbolically, but also analogically, we are "hybrid minds". Donald lists pre-requisites of this deep enculturation. There is extended executive function, superplasticity in cortex, the evolution of asssociation areas in cortex, voluntary access to memory, and an extended working memory. This, along with the influence of culture and language, is human consicousness.

Enculturation, is to Donald essential, as can be seen in the last chapters of the book that recapitulate the ideas of his former book "Origins of the Modern Mind", about the three stages of cognitive evolution of mimesis, episodic ability and invention of symbolic comunication and external storage. This is a different matter from consicousness altogether, that proposes how the human cognitive architecture evolved. It is a very intreresting theory, that Donald at the end uses to structure his ideas on consciousness.

Donalds book is very thought provoking, but has some very questionable claims (For example, he says there are no projections from association cortex to sensory cortex, which is wrong, or that neural networks might be consicous but not serial computers, even though neural nets are implemented on the latter, being comitted to the strange position that in a computer the software might be consicous, but not the computer itself) probably due to his strange reading of the literature. He critiques models of consciousness as essentially misleading, but not noticing that it is because other theorists concentrate on primary, sensory and access consicousness, not the whole of human consciousness with its exeptional range of characteristics. He also forgets about emotions and their role on creating the self and consciousness, as well as the role of sub cortical structures, like MRT, thalamus, etc.) By concentrating on HUMAN consciousness, he only partially explains this elusive phenomenon, not giving even hints about the nature of phenomenal consciousness, and only very abstractly proposing testable hypotheses, a fatal flaw in my view for any science-inclined book.

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.

Donald (Queen's University, Canada) takes issue with those who have dismissed consciousness as a superficial evolutionary byproduct. Here he proposes that conscious awareness has driven human evolution, expanding humanity's foundational skills and enriching its intellectual universe. Historical anecdotes (from the lives of Helen Keller, Etienne Condillac, etc.) and references to opera and film keep the text lively and comprehensible. According to Donald, the same fundamental brain functions negotiate all primate experience, from short-term memory to intermediate-term governance and regulation. But humans manifest far more control over mind and action than do members of other species. These differences are due to deep enculturation and the constant reprogramming of conscious experience, a process necessitated by a series of cultural and intellectual revolutions, producing three "levels" of consciousness: the mimetic domain (defining actor and audience), the linguistic system (encoding stories and myths), and formal symbolic systems (operating institutions and governments). This volume provides a provocative model of consciousness evolution, one based on data from the neurosciences, cognitive psychology, and cultural and physical anthropology, culminating in a landmark treatise about a complex and challenging topic. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.