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Merlin Donald

A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness Paperback – June 17, 2002

by Merlin Donald Ph.D. (Author)

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"The most significant contribution yet to the rapidly growing literature of minds, brains, and consciousness."―Steven Rose

In this masterful rebuttal to the prevailing neuroscientific arguments that seek to explain away consciousness, Merlin Donald presents "a sophisticated conception of a multilayered consciousness drawing much of its power from its cultural matrix" (Booklist). Donald makes "a persuasive case...for consciousness as the central player in the drama of mind" (Peter Dodwell), as he details the forces, both cultural and neuronal, that power our distinctively human modes of awareness. He proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product, interweaving a super-complex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a "distributed" cognitive network. This hybrid mind, he argues, is our main evolutionary advantage, for it allowed humanity as a species to break free of the limitations of the mammalian brain. "Donald transcends the simplistic claims of Evolutionary Psychology,...offering a true Darwinian perspective on the evolution of consciousness."―Philip Lieberman

Print length

388 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

June 17, 2002
Dimensions

5.4 x 1 x 8.2 inches
ISBN-10

0393323196
ISBN-13

978-0393323191
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Donald transcends the simplistic claims of Evolutionary Psychology,...offering a true Darwinian perspective on the evolution of consciousness. -- Philip Lieberman

The most significant contribution yet to the rapidly growing literature of minds, brains, and consciousness. -- Steven Rose

About the Author

Merlin Donald is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Ontario, Canada.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (June 17, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 388 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393323196
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393323191
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.4 x 1 x 8.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #453,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #96 in Developmental Biology (Books)
- #605 in Neuroscience (Books)
- #917 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy

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Ideophile

An important corrective

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2010

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In this book, Donald approaches the philosophy of mind from a slightly different dynamic systems perspective than is traditionally taken - it's more of a "minds in society" dynamic systems perspective than a "neurons in mind" dynamic systems perspective. In contrast to the "neurons in mind" perspective which often relegates to consciousness the status of epiphenomenon, the "minds in society" perspective puts consciousness squarely at center stage as the foundation and generator of some of the very automatisms often taken by the "neurons in mind" perspective as being the primary phenomena. Donald's book is a beautiful example of the huge difference a conceptual paradigm shift can make.

Under Donald's approach, culture is found to have evolutionary priority over language and symbolic thought. Again, this is in contrast to the large body of philosophical work that finds language and symbolic thought to precede culture. A large portion of this book is devoted to scientific evidence and philosophical arguments for the validity of the former over the latter. The reason that this is such a gray area is that, once bootstrapped, human culture, language, and symbolic thought have co-evolved in an out of control positive feedback loop that shrouds the initial evolutionary steps in this direction.

With culture taken as having evolutionary priority over (or at least co-evolutionary equal status with) language and symbolic thought, the latter become (to a significant degree) products of enculturation. Donald uses the case of Helen Keller ingeniously to argue this position. Donald next presents scientific evidence and philosophical arguments that find enculturation to be a wholly conscious undertaking. The logical implication of all of this is that language and symbolic thought are products of consciousness. But drawing a parallel with the evolutionary time scale, consciousness, language, and symbolic thought are all co-*developing* which means that it is at the same time a true statement that consciousness is a product of language and symbolic thought. Donald finds consciousness to have developmental priority, however, by implication from the evolutionary priority of culture - i.e., enculturation cannot occur without consciousness.

All of this occurs within the process of enculturation - which is why Donald takes the next step in asserting that the *fully* human mind is a biology-culture hybrid.

All in all, Donald's is an important corrective perspective on the traditional philosophy of mind.

5 people found this helpful

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Carlos Camara

Interesting book, confused sometimes.

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2002

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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.

21 people found this helpful

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Ines Monguio

I am very pleased that I got a chance to read this book

Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2014

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Merlin Donald makes an incredibly lucid analysis of a really complex and multi-layered set of information. Comparing and contrasting the various theories and systems to test/think/talk about consciousness is at times dazzling, at times hilarious. His ability to synthesize and draw conclusions that challenge while intriguing the reader is masterful. I am very pleased that I got a chance to read this book, and highly recommend it.

One person found this helpful

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John Anderson

Interesting ideas flawed by sloppy writing

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2002

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I wish that I could jump on the bandwagon of approval that this book seems to be getting, but I am afraid that I can't. I picked A MIND SO RARE for a graduate seminar, largely because of the glowing reviews that it had received here & in some technical journals, but the more I read of it the more irritated I became with Donald's habit of sticking in little jeers & snide asides about his opponents, and his tendency to create straw men for any argument with which he disagrees. Having assigned the book I did my best to keep the conversation going, but to be honest it bombed with the students. Most felt that he could have summarized his "new ideas" in many fewer pages & that the elaborations served to confuse more than to enlighten. It was also hard to follow just whom he was citing or why he chose to leave some theorists out & put others in -this particularly annoying at the graduate level! All in all this is a pity, because some of Donald's ideas suggest interesting alternatives to much of the popularly stated positions in this field, but he would have done us all a much greater service by clearly expounding his points & avoiding the unproductive carping about his (often un-named) opponents.

47 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

S. G. Raggett

Consciousness in the Laboratory

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2010

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This book is unusual in that it shows an academic psychologist criticising the laboratory approach to consciousness for having the wrong focus. Methodology is claimed to be aimed only at short-term memory and attention, plus perceptual illusions. He argues that consciousness should be approached as being the continuous background to developments over longer time frames. For instance, lengthier human conversations are described as an extended control-process, in respect of selection and maintenance of attention and allocation of priorities. Consciousness is seen as being involved with medium-long-term governance, planning and supervision.

This is contrasted with the Libet experiments, which only focus on trivial actions. It is this focus on the short term and trivial that is most criticised by the author. He points out that many researchers see the automatic and unconscious nature of much activity as proof of the non-efficacy of consciousness. However,the author turns this round, by arguing that the ability to use skills automatically is a benefit of being able to use conscious learning, in order to install a repertoire of unconscious skills.

Delayed response is seen as the hallmark of conscious organisation, with notions of how activity should develop being able to override the impulse for an immediate response to the environment. In human as opposed to animal brains, consciousness is less about the external world and more about internal processing.

In terms of clinical experience, it is pointed out that some brain damaged patients have good short-term memory and attention, but have problems with self-monitoring and behaviour over longer timescales, while other patients have damage in these memory and attention areas, but are well organised in overcoming their difficulties.

The main criticism of this book is that there is a somewhat dismissive attitude towards any attempt to explain how consciousness arises, as opposed to what it does.

6 people found this helpful