If you find this sort of thing interesting, I highly recommend HBO's Westworld. It's really well done and thoroughly thought provoking.
How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
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Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#12Wacky and entertaining idea.
The theory rests on another idea that many people assume is obviously true without ever thinking twice.
It's the notion that verbal thought and verbal thinking is required and fundamental part of consciousness and self awareness.
When I started to read about the philosophy of consciousness, it became obvious that most people experience their own consciousness differently than I do. Their inner starting point is completely off from my personal epistemology and it may be hard for them to see the alternative viewpoint interesting.
For me, verbal thoughts have always been just one cognitive ability in par with spatial reasoning. I have always had trouble understanding why people link verbal thinking and consciousness and self awareness.
Temple Grandin's has really good insight into the differences of thinking: Thinking the Way Animals Do: Unique insights from a person with a singular understanding http://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#13Any useful theory of consciousness has to be able to explain animal consciousness too. Language is really the only differentiator between us and other primates, cognitively. (naturally it's a powerful difference) Primates far and away clear the bar for sentience, we know enough about dogs and cats to grudgingly accept them into the fold too. Plenty of birds are extremely intelligent and social as well.
I'm not sure how important "langauge" is for cognition. I think it is clear that the cognitive facilities that, in humans, we attribute to language, are a significant part of human cognition.
However, when we test for language in other animals, we do not test for these underlying cognitive abilities. Rather, rather, we test for the animals ability to express these facilities through some communication system with other animals (either in the same species, or with humans).
It is conceivable to have an animal that has all of the cognitive abilities we associate with language except the ability to serialize/deserialize [0] it. While this ability is significant at the species level, it does not seem like it would be particularly significant at an individual level.
Further if you take the view that language was evolved primarily as a tool for thinking (rather than a tool for communicating), this possibilities seems even more likely. Under this view, we would first develop the cognitive aspects, then develop the communicative aspects on top of them (in the same way that we evolved our "speech organs" on our digestive (tongue) and respiratory (lungs/airway) ones.
It also seems plausible that it was this adaptation that allowed humans to pass the singularity point necessary to reach modern society (which grew up very quickly on an evolutionary timeline). If this were the case, then I would expect to see that the rest of the cognitive abilities associated with speech are actually present and similar in related species.
[0] Our current model of human language is that of a tree. We do not see processes that act on a linear structure until we get into phonology.
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#14Wacky and entertaining idea. The theory rests on another idea that many people assume is obviously true without ever thinking twice. It's the notion that verbal thought and verbal thinking is required and fundamental part of consciousness and self awareness. When I started to read about the philosophy of consciousness, it became obvious that most people experience their own consciousness differently than I do. Their…
> I have always had trouble understanding why people link verbal thinking and consciousness
I came across the same conundrum when I was studying psychology. It all came down to the medium becoming the message. Language is the prime means through which we convey experience. Of course there are other means visual, spacial but when you're "studying consciousness" you're typically reading books. Serious treatise in the area are delivered in the form of books. We come to think of thought as being predominantly verbal because that's the predominant means through which we acquire an "objective" appreciation for what consciousness "is". Even to use a word "consciousness" puts that set of concepts in a delineated box. I could go on ... but I risk becoming stream of consciousness ...
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#15From 2015.
And it's really hard to verify what people heard in the past. “Our kings, presidents, judges, and officers begin their tenures with oaths to the now-silent deities, taken upon the writings of those who have last heard them.” How do we know that they weren't just doing poetry or fiction, or creating religion to control the masses?
Nietzsche wrote at length about the "death of god," which was his way of symbolizing the unseating of god from society's abstract throne, and the dangerous power vacuum that blood would be shed to re-fill. You can't walk three feet through the past couple centuries before finding some text discussing, cheering on or mourning the transition from a society where god is generally assumed to be behind things to one where he isn't.
If a similar phase change had occured 3000 years ago, I'm pretty sure it would have been well-documented. I have a hard time believing that this event is for the first time being seen clearly from a vantage point three thousand years distant!
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#16Any useful theory of consciousness has to be able to explain animal consciousness too. Language is really the only differentiator between us and other primates, cognitively. (naturally it's a powerful difference) Primates far and away clear the bar for sentience, we know enough about dogs and cats to grudgingly accept them into the fold too. Plenty of birds are extremely intelligent and social as well.
I'm not sure how important "langauge" is for cognition. I think it is clear that the cognitive facilities that, in humans, we attribute to language, are a significant part of human cognition. However, when we test for language in other animals, we do not test for these underlying cognitive abilities. Rather, rather, we test for the animals ability to express these facilities through some communication system with oth…
> I'm not sure how important "langauge" is for cognition.
It's not. That's why I said that any good theory is going to have to account for all the sentience in the world that doesn't talk to each other.
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#17These ideas are mentioned by the character of Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins) in Westworld, in regards to creating consciousness in robots, and they made quite a bit of sense to me in that context.
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#18I’ve been familiar with this idea for a while, although whenever it comes up, I can’t help but think about Hitchens’s razor:
“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#19I read that book about 15 years ago, it's a fantastic read. I picked it up because either Dennett or Dawkins called it something like "the most insightful and thought provoking idea that is probably not true" (I think it was the latter).
Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)
#20Any useful theory of consciousness has to be able to explain animal consciousness too. Language is really the only differentiator between us and other primates, cognitively. (naturally it's a powerful difference) Primates far and away clear the bar for sentience, we know enough about dogs and cats to grudgingly accept them into the fold too. Plenty of birds are extremely intelligent and social as well.
Language is really the only differentiator between us and other primates, cognitively
I don't agree. Many other types of animals have rudimentary languages, but I wouldn't dispute the sophistication of human language towers above all others, that in itself rests (along with other uniquely sophisticated behavioural endowments) upon what really differentiates us which is the capacity for imagination and abstract thought. The capability to imagine things that aren't actually real, but perhaps could be. It's thought that the seat of all this is the frontal cortex but I see now on wikipedia that is contentious these days [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_lobe#In_other_animals