HOW LANGUAGE EVOLUTION RESHAPED HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

This chapter discusses the view that human consciousness may share aspects of "animal awareness" with other species, but has its unique form because humans possess language. Four ingredients of a theory on the evolution of human consciousness are offered: the view that a précis of intended activity is necessarily formed in the brain of a human that communicates in a human way; the notion that this defines a "communication plexus" essential to a particularly human form of consciousness; the mirror system hypothesis for the evolution of the human language-ready brain, and a view of the co-evolution of subtleties of emotion atop more basic systems for motivation such as thirst, hunger, fear and mating.