The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

Deacon, Terrence. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: Norton, 1998.

According to the Amazon.com on-line rev., "The final section of The Symbolic Species posits that human brains and human language have coevolved over millions of years, leading Deacon to the remarkable conclusion that many modern human traits were actually caused by ideas." TSS, then, is opposed to David Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" (q.v.) and other "reductionists" who take a mechanistic approach to consciousness, both assuming and attempting to demonstrate how the physiologic and anatomical processes in the already-evolved brain produce language and consciousness. Reviewed by Shankar Vedantam, "Move over Descartes: Neuroscientists have joined philosophers in searching for the origin of consciousness," q.v. in this Category.

RDE, Title, 29Aug19