Finally found some time to read the transcript of the 5th lecture of BBC's Reith Lectures 2003 on The Emerging Mind by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. He's highly entertaining and very thoughtful. Everyone interested in the brain/mind should read the whole lecture series. I especially like the bits where he talks about reasons for having a consciousness and about the evolution of language. Some good academic papers about these topics are on Ramachandran's homepage.