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The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

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Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#31

Post by chronolitus »

starbeast wrote: post #16

When I first read it, I felt he was trying to find a solution for a problem that doesn't exist, that of; 'given humans are conscious and animals are not, what mechanism could bring about an incredibly sudden evolution of consciousness out of nowhere?' The answer being that there was not a sudden evolution of consciousness out of nowhere. Human conscious states may be greatly more reflective that other animals, with a…

I think it also useful to semantically separate cognitive consciousness (i.e. Knowing and expressing the existence of your thought processes through arguably higher, more abstract thought processes - which might even go on recursively - knowing that I know that i am conscious, etc) from the externally unmeasurable 'conscious experience', (i.e qualia, the awareness of sensory or thoughts at the most essential level, 'seeing' what one sees, etc).

One could imagine a living being with one but not the other, for example qualia without cognitive consciousness (if I had to guess, I would imagine this experience to be similar to being drugged to the point of having no internal monologue, no complex thought process, but keeping your sensations and vision, etc, or being a barely-sentient animal in purely instictual mode of thought and action)

The opposite, cognitive consciousness without qualia - a.k.a the philosophical zombie - or a computer which can argue the existence of it's thoughts without feeling them is, I gather, a more controversial state of being.

What I find interesting is that in separating the two 'consciousness's, the former ends up taking almost all of the importance and the latter none - anything which can be externally measured ends up in the first category (which is a computable logic process), which leaves very little of utilitarian/evolutionary/algorithmic importance in the second. However, in much discourse about consciousness the latter takes a disproportionate role (i.e fear of losing your unmeasurable consciousness when teleporting, etc, though the cognitive consciousness, being by definition a logical and measurable process is theoretically preserved)

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#32

Post by AltruisticGap »

> Jaynes recognizes that consciousness itself is only a small part of mental activity and is not necessary for sensation or perception, for concept formation, for learning, thinking or even reasoning. Thus, if major human actions and skills can function automatically and unconsciously, then it is conceivable that there were, at one time, human beings who did most of the things we do – speak, understand, perceive, solve problems – but who were without consciousness.

In the spiritual teachings & traditions the wording would be different. I think they would refer to was Jaynes call "consciousness" as "self awareness"; and then assert that "consciousness" is prior to any of that. For example in the dream state we are typically not in control, nor are we aware it's a dream.. yet when we "wake up" we remember having dreamed and having "been there".

In fact I'd argue that we DO many times of the day every day... speak and act without much self awareness. And yet, we remember afterwards and then claim those moments as something we did.

> In short, Jaynes claims that men in the age of the Iliad learned to speak, read, and write, as well as conduct their daily lives, yet remained nonconscious throughout their lives.

Maybe they were indeed much less "self-aware" as we are today, which again is not same as saying not conscious.

edit: it seems to me this is the main contetion in science often times people just conflate mind activity and consciousness , as an (possibly not deliberate) attempt to chuck away the "hard problem of consciousness".

pps: funny enough it is actually an hypothesis, that for human beings to recongize consciousness is also something made possible through self awareness. For example, what is called "awakening" in spiritual teachings is supposed to be the natural state, hence, whatever "spiritual" state it is thought to be, is a self-refetential acknowledhgement of a change of one's perception of self and world. That is, "self awareness" allows for human beings to acknowledge consciousness (since we have to conceive of it).. whereas a dog or cat can be consciouss, and relatively free of worry, yet will never know themselves as "free of worry" (I mean in a rational / self aware way).

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#34

Post by thanatropism »

Science aside, the breakdown-of-bicameral-theory has intriguing parallels to Lacan's theory of the mirror stage. In this (nonscientific - but we're learning the limits of scientific psychology) theory, infants are born unarticulated, a mass of limbs with no wholeness to them. In the mirror stage they discover they have a body which is articulated and which is subject to the gaze of others. This begins the split between the Imaginary and the Symbolic (social reality). Under bicameral conditions, men didn't see themselves as articulated and autonomous, let alone as objects of others' (or in the case of gods, the Other, who provides the law) gaze. They didn't have imaginations split from social reality.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#35

Post by armitron »

Apocryphon wrote: post #7

Like the phantom time hypothesis, bicameralism is a sort of massively revisionist theory that relies on wild interpretations of historical information. And both are pretty entertaining, regardless.

Unlike the phantom time hypothesis, you can find actual non-historic evidence for the bicameral theory of mind. The strongest of which you can actually experience yourself by triggering psychotic states (through the use of psychedelics or other practices).

There were times where I fully regressed into a psychological state perfectly described by Jaynes in his book, voices and all.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#36

Post by apk-d »

goto11 wrote: post #13
nsajko wrote: post #8

A nice way to look at Bicameralism is as (good) science fiction. (Wikipedia calls it a "radical hypothesis".)

It is also non-falsifiable since it is impossible to prove or disprove whether ancient people were conscious or not. Or for that matter whether a present-day schizophrenic is conscious or not in the same sense.

Can we even prove whether a modern person is conscious? If so, shouldn't we be able to occasionally encounter such unconscious people, either occurring randomly by natural variation (especially given how recently the breakdown is claimed to have happened), or in people who had very little contact with language (hard but not impossible to come by)?

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#37

Post by coldtea »

>In fact, the Iliad does not seem to mention any subjective thoughts or the contents of anyone’s mind. The heroes of the Iliad were not able to make decisions, no one was introspecting or even reminiscing. Apparently, they were noble “automata” who were not aware of what they did. Iliadic man did not have subjectivity as we do; he had no internal mind-space to introspect upon. Some lexical oddities in the Homeric text (such as the absence of a single word translating “consciousness”, “mind”, “soul”, or even “body”) led Jaynes to formulate the hypothesis that the Iliad was composed by nonconscious minds, which automatically recorded and objectively reported events, in a manner rather similar to the characters of the poem. The transition to subjective and introspective writings of the conscious mind occurred in later works, beginning with the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is not that later (for any evolutionary or great developmental force to have any effect). Plus it is strongly considered to be of the same authorship and the writing style is very much the same.

What's worse, unlike what the above excerpt claims, most of the Iliad deals with feelings of various kinds -- starting with the famous opening line: "Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus".

Does these parts seem to have any relation to the idea that "The heroes of the Iliad were not able to make decisions, no one was introspecting or even reminiscing. Apparently, they were noble “automata” who were not aware of what they did. Iliadic man did not have subjectivity as we do; he had no internal mind-space to introspect upon"?

> At this Jove was much troubled and answered, "I shall have trouble if you set me quarrelling with Juno, for she will provoke me with her taunting speeches; even now she is always railing at me before the other gods and accusing me of giving aid to the Trojans. Go back now, lest she should find out. I will consider the matter, and will bring it about as wish. See, I incline my head that you believe me. This is the most solemn that I can give to any god. I never recall my word, or deceive, or fail to do what I say, when I have nodded my head."

> As he spoke the son of Saturn bowed his dark brows, and the ambrosial locks swayed on his immortal head, till vast Olympus reeled.

> When the pair had thus laid their plans, they parted- Jove to his house, while the goddess quitted the splendour of Olympus, and plunged into the depths of the sea. The gods rose from their seats, before the coming of their sire. Not one of them dared to remain sitting, but all stood up as he came among them. There, then, he took his seat. But Juno, when she saw him, knew that he and the old merman's daughter, silver-footed Thetis, had been hatching mischief, so she at once began to upbraid him. "Trickster," she cried, "which of the gods have you been taking into your counsels now? You are always settling matters in secret behind my back, and have never yet told me, if you could help it, one word of your intentions."

(...)

> The old man tore his grey hair as he spoke, but he moved not the heart of Hector. His mother hard by wept and moaned aloud as she bared her bosom and pointed to the breast which had suckled him. "Hector," she cried, weeping bitterly the while, "Hector, my son, spurn not this breast, but have pity upon me too: if I have ever given you comfort from my own bosom, think on it now, dear son, and come within the wall to protect us from this man; stand not without to meet him. Should the wretch kill you, neither I nor your richly dowered wife shall ever weep, dear offshoot of myself, over the bed on which you lie, for dogs will devour you at the ships of the Achaeans."

Thus did the two with many tears implore their son, but they moved not the heart of Hector, and he stood his ground awaiting huge Achilles as he drew nearer towards him. As serpent in its den upon the mountains, full fed with deadly poisons, waits for the approach of man- he is filled with fury and his eyes glare terribly as he goes writhing round his den- even so Hector leaned his shield against a tower that jutted out from the wall and stood where he was, undaunted.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#38

Post by coldtea »

friendstock wrote: post #6
goto11 wrote: post #4

Sounds like a crackpot theory by someone not understanding literature. Because the Illiad does not contain the word "mind" and describes events and actions but not thoughts and mental states, it follows that people at the time did not have consciousness. I guess Hemmingway did not have consciousness either?

Jaynes was a professor at Princeton University, so he must've built up enough credibility to get this appointment. I was a student at Princeton and actually sat in on his class for a few sessions.

>Jaynes was a professor at Princeton University, so he must've built up enough credibility to get this appointment

Well, Pauling got two Nobel prizes, but still had crackpot theories about Vitamin C

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#39

Post by Nav_Panel »

AltruisticGap wrote: post #32

> Jaynes recognizes that consciousness itself is only a small part of mental activity and is not necessary for sensation or perception, for concept formation, for learning, thinking or even reasoning. Thus, if major human actions and skills can function automatically and unconsciously, then it is conceivable that there were, at one time, human beings who did most of the things we do – speak, understand, perceive, sol…

Jaynes addresses this critique in the revised Afterword:

> The most common error which I did not emphasize sufficiently is to confuse consciousness with perception... This type of confusion was at least encouraged back in 1921 by Bertrand Russell: “We are conscious of anything that we perceive.” And as his logical atomism became fashionable in philosophy, it became difficult to see it any other way. And in a later book Russell uses as an example of consciousness “I see a table.” But Descartes, who gave us the modern idea of consciousness, would never have agreed. Nor would a radical behaviorist like Watson, who in denying consciousness existed certainly did not mean sense perception.

Earlier in the book he makes a linguistic argument, claiming that his usage of "consciousness" is the only that unifies both the subjective (I am conscious) and objective (I am conscious of X) usages.

Beyond Jaynes and more broadly, I'd consider comparing his theses with that of McLuhan in Gutenberg Galaxy, namely McLuhan's theories about mass literacy. There seems to be a unifying element in that the structure of one's experience (of one's interpretation of their sensory inputs) is strongly related to the sorts of media they consume and to the sorts of epistemological "channels" available. The structure of knowledge and its dissemination (collectively oral? Or privately read? Think about problems such as "atomization of society" and a lightbulb should go off) seems to determine our internal experience to a large degree: older writers such as Walter Benjamin have touched on "movie consciousness" (although not strictly in those words), while more contemporary authors like Sarah Perry discuss "Social Media Consciousness" (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/09/07/social-media-conscious...).

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#40

Post by wpietri »

bloak wrote: post #12
goto11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are still speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion. The theory can "rationally" explain…

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal. If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a li…

This point is one I've chewed on some:

> Therefore, if people educated in the right way could hear voices I'd expect there still to be groups of people (members of some religious sect perhaps) who hear voices.

My (entirely made up) theory here is that it's mediated through stress and exhaustion. Even today there's something called "brief psychotic disorder" where during a period of extreme stress somebody can experience delusions, hallucinations, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_psychotic_disorder

There are also a variety of religious traditions where modern people will hear the voice of god, enter trance states, channel spirits, etc. And we all know that sleep deprivation can produce all sorts of mental effects.

Given that civilization is mainly marked by improvements in life quality over time, it seems reasonable that the further back we go, the rougher people have it. So figure less sleep, worse nutrition, more desperation, more trauma, both direct and through the frequent death of children, friends, family.

So it seems reasonable to me that early on in civilization people were on average pretty bonkers. And social creatures that we are, that we'd be jointly bonkers; if our parents and siblings and and neighbors experience parts of themselves as the voice of particular gods, we would be likely to as well.

As our lives over generations get slowly better, the stress level drops. So too does the level of biologically driven psychosis. Which undermines the cultural elements that support and channel it, which might collapse relatively suddenly. (A reasonable modern parallel might be the European collapse in religious belief over recent generations.)

All pure speculation, of course. Jaynes's theory is certainly fun to think about, but we would have a hard time getting real experiments past an IRB.

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