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How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

nautil.us

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Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#71

Post by tzs »

nabla9 wrote: post #12

Wacky 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…

> When I started to read about the philosophy of consciousness, it became obvious that most people experience their own consciousness differently than I do.

Perhaps at some point you will travel into the past and do the nasty in the pasty with one of your ancestors, and that past nastification results in you being your own ancestor. That is known to be capable of causing one to have a mind that works differently from that of the rest of humanity.

Huh? Yes, yes I am watching the Futurama marathon on SyFy right now. How did you know?

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#72

Post by hyperpallium »

alsetmusic wrote: post #34
nabla9 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had interesting discussion about logical thinking once. My fried claimed that it's impossible to think logically (btw. etymology of word logic is "word" or "what is spoken") without verbally running the the words and sentences in your head. Then I explained that I have always used logic visuospatially. "and" is choice between places or fork in the road, "or" is combining two objects in the same place and so on. Con…

> My fried claimed that it's impossible to think logically (btw. etymology of word logic is "word" or "what is spoken") without verbally running the the words and sentences in your head. In this case, would numbers represent “words” in the language of mathematics? When I was younger and sharper, I used to see products of numbers physically manifest in my mind. This is a form of logic, but it also required an “alphabe…

Mathematical proof did not originate with number, but geometry.

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#73

Post by perl4ever »

nabla9 wrote: post #12

Wacky 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…

When I want to figure something out, I find it helps to express it in words, written or spoken. So I could say my way of thinking is verbal more than visual or anything else. But I have the sense that I have a "background task" running that finds the answer to a problem while my conscious mind is forming the verbal expression. I am not sure I do analysis with the aware part of my mind. I also have the odd sense that I cannot think clearly about a problem while looking over someone's shoulder, but when I sit down at my own computer, putting my hands on my own keyboard allows me to concentrate.

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#74

Post by chrisweekly »

nabla9 wrote: post #12

Wacky 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…

> “There is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a depth of formless feeling untouched by thought.” - Rilke

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#75

Post by uoaei »

paulsutter wrote: post #7

Crucially, Jayne's definition of "consciousness" is basically introspection. If you replace the word "consciousness" with "introspection", all the controversy evaporates and the story becomes (only mildly) interesting. > Jaynes ... decides to read early texts, including The Iliad and The Odyssey, to look for signs of people who aren’t capable of introspection—people who are all sea, no rime. And he believes he sees t…

I'm still astounded by all the different things people mean when they say "consciousness." I think a better term for the discussion surrounding Jaynes and his theory is "awareness"--understanding and conceptualizing reality via a semantic framework, rather than merely processing inputs and directing outputs.

The ego (or the default mode network, in which I hypothesize the ego "resides") basically connects those disparate parts of the brain and makes the leap to turn the brain from a few interacting modules into an integrated whole, giving rise to the sense of the self as we understand it today. This must somehow activate our self-awareness by us understanding not only that we inhabit a body, but that the mind doing so can also be identified.

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#76

Post by lukasb »

rusk wrote: post #14
nabla9 wrote: post #12

Wacky 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 a…

Not just psychology, look up the linguistic turn in philosophy in the 20th century.

There is support for a weak version of Sapir-Whorf, but in general any time someone says "the limits of your language determine the limits of your thought" I just s/language/culture.

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#77

Post by joe_the_user »

nabla9 wrote: post #12

Wacky 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…

Hmm, I think the assumption that consciousness is wrapped-up in language is justified.

Language involves representation. "self-consciousness" as generally expressed, is one's representation of one's self.

Obviously one can have visual or spatial representation of one's body. But the unique quality of language is that it involves an easy shorthand for the manipulation of representations. "Who am I?" is the standard question of consciousness - as language, it has a thousand shades. I don't know if it can even be meaningfully expressed in other modalities but if it could, it doesn't seem like it could be easily manipulated in the fashion of language.

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#78

Post by jjaredsimpson »

vinceguidry wrote: post #6

Any 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.

Not really. A theory is useful if it makes accurate predictions and explains phenomena in the domain to which it applies.

Theories in physics has always been useful even though they are incomplete to this day.

Re: How Julian Jaynes’ consciousness theory is faring in the neuroscience age (2015)

#79

Post by jacobolus »

nikki93 wrote: post #35
nabla9 wrote: post #12

Wacky 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…

But whatever that information space is could be called a language too, right?

I don't think so. 'Language' per se is inherently abstract-symbolic and serial. Other types of thought rely on non-symbolic types of metaphor, often quite concrete ones, and on more graph-like connections between ideas. Sometimes the relationships between nodes are very fuzzy and inexplicit.

The best you'll get with 'language' is poetry and puns and outline-style hierarchies, but these don't cover anywhere near all types of thought. As stark examples, I don't think you can classify e.g. sculptures or textile patterns or mechanical designs as 'language'.

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