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In "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", Julian Jaynes argues that before human intelligence was experienced as reflective, self
by nvader 6y ago
In "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", Julian Jaynes argues that before human intelligence was experienced as reflective, self-conscious internal monologue, early humans would routinely experience "command hallucinations" which they ascribed to gods[0].
In a setting that was designed to induce awe, reverence and altered states of consciousness, an idol could prompt believers to hallucinate an appropriate command. Today, we may say that a painting "speaks" to us--perhaps these statues did so literally to the people of their time.
If that is true, then defacing these statues would be a viable strategy to inhibit their ability to trigger these hallucinations or visitations. Rivals of a religion would easily be able to cut off believers from a direct experience of their god.
[0] https://www.julianjaynes.org/about/about-jaynes-theory/overview/ https://www.julianjaynes.org/about/about-jaynes-theory/overv...
- ColanR 6y agoI was under the impression - not having studied much about Jaynes' theory - that it is a well-regarded but falsified theory. That being said, what you describe sounds like an amazing premise for a novel.
- arctangent 6y agoThe excellent novel "Snow Crash" was directly inspired by "The Origin of Consciousness": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
- strbean 6y agoI was going to say, that theory sounds an awful lot like Stephenson's stuff about neurolinguistic programming.
- ColanR 6y agoThat novel looks amazing, and it's going on my reading list. Thanks!
- nojokes 6y agoAnother fictional investigation of bicameral minds are two novels in the Firefall series by Peter Watts.
- uoaei 6y agoThe falsification usually hinges on discrediting the physiological aspects of the hypothesis: specifically, where the "commander" and the "actor" reside in the brain. Jaynes hypothesized that one lives in one hemisphere, and the other in the other, and commands are issued across the corpus callosum. This has since been disproven in favor of the perspectives centering the default mode network. The other more phenomenological aspects are not easily falsifiable, nor indeed verifiable. But the arguments he provides at least itch the scratch of explaining strange behaviors and characteristics of our ancestors and the relics they left behind in a way that approaches Occam's razor.
- DC-3 6y agoThe most obvious refutation is that according to Jaynes' theory conciseness emerged just a few thousand years ago. Since humans took divergent paths across the globe over a hundred thousand years ago, this raises the question of how all humans developed consciousness independently and simultaneously - unless you think that consciousness is spread in a sort of memetic fashion, in which case you are asserting that aboriginal people did not have a consciousness as we would understand it prior to their contact with European colonialists, which is - to say the least - a weighty assertion to make.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoJaynes argument makes a lot more sense when you take the modern psychiatric view that the way we respond to voices in our head is socially constructed. His claim that it is literally caused by the corpus collosum was bad biology (which was not his field).
- mr_toad 6y ago> the way we respond to voices in our head Voices plural? I doubt most of society experiences such a phenomenon, and if they do they’re not talking about it.
- adamjb 6y agoThe decomposition of the self into competing voices is a fairly common idea. It's present in phrases like "part of me thinks/wants X" or "I am of two minds about X". It's a key part of the whole Freudian id, ego, superego thing and related motifs like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.
- ncmncm 6y agoEverybody agrees he took on an important question, but his answer was not right. I spoke to a Greek classics scholar who said Jaynes's interpretations of the evolution of Greek emotion names was very far off the mark. The most fundamental problem is that the dates don't line up. Causes and effects are separated by millennia. It remains a mystery. A bigger mystery is where the pre-dynastic Egyptians got hold of all those extremely precisely worked, very, very hard stone bowls and jugs. Some are of carborundum! All we know is that they were completely unable to make them themselves. We would be hard-pressed to make those today, using our most advanced fabrication tools. Likewise the 50+-ton basalt boxes found empty underground at Saqqara, polished to a mirror sheen, optically flat, with interior faces exactly parallel.
- hobby-coder-guy 6y agoAny links to this stuff?
- AlotOfReading 6y agoI've seen you post things like this multiple times and while I'm not an egyptologist, it's pretty clear that you're getting some details wrong and consistently reaching bad conclusions. First of all, there was no carborundum in ancient egypt. Silicon carbide was only discovered in the 19th century and doesn't occur in large deposits naturally. I assume you mean corundum, which is most definitely workable with time, patience, and lots of abrasive powder. All of these were part of the Egyptian toolkit. Secondly, I assume you're referring to the sarcophagi of the Serapeum. They're impressive, but nothing outside the realm of the known tools if given enough time and skill, neither of which they were short on.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoMany have made the claim that the known Egyptians had the tools and expertise to do the job. Few have demonstrated convincing evidence of this claim. Very few. The closer experts look, the more questions arise. Explorer Flinders Petrie spent decades there and was left with a lot of thoughtful questions about how those artifacts might have been made with known methods. Modern engineer Christopher Dunn has the pro and evidentiary background to have raised challenging question about such facile assertions.