6 ms·

Keep in mind this is a hypothesis and lacks significant supportive evidence. Even after 38 years.

by Codhisattva 12y ago

mbrock 12y ago
It's also not significantly falsified.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Is it falsifiable? I read this book years ago. I'll be damned if I can remember what it says.
  - mbrock 12y ago
    Well, it's not just wild speculation: it's based on his interpretation of ancient literature and archaelogy. Since the hypothesis is fundamentally about the subjective experience of (illiterate and long dead) people, it's naturally hard to verify or disprove. But to me, Jaynes's theory seems to shine a lot of light on certain phenomena: the prevalence of statuettes in tombs; the injunctive tone and form of common schizophrenic hallucinations; specific artworks like the Homeric poems, the Bible, and the altar of Tukulti-Ninurta I; and so on. Daniel Dennett wrote an article about the book, in which he states that he "takes it very seriously": http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-archeology.pdf http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-arch... A quote from that review that I think portrays the book quite fairly: "Now, when Julian Jaynes tells his story he doesn’t say that it is a just-so story. He doesn’t say it is just a sort of guess at how it might have been. He claims to be telling the historical truth as best as he can figure it out. But he is also clever enough to realize that if he doesn’t have the details just right, then some other story which is in very important respects rather like it must be true. So the whole account is put together by a rather interesting amalgam of aprioristic thinking about how it had to be, historical sleuthing, and inspired guesswork. He uses aprioristic reasoning to establish that we have to have travelled from point A to point B by some route—where and when the twists come is an interesting empirical question. He flavors and deepens and constrains his aprioristic thinking about how it had to be with whatever he can find about how it was and he lets his imagination go as fertile as he can and clutches at whatever straws he can find in the 'fossil record.'"
    - judk 12y ago
      That fancy quote seems to be saying "Jaynes believes what he says, even though he gives no reason for any reader to believe him." That's not science, that's storytelling, of the very kind he is analyzing in ancient literature. It is almost as though he is writing a neuroscience book, using the style someone like Homer or Plato would have used.
      - mbrock 12y ago
        That's not at all what it's saying, though?
  - judk 12y ago
    Ironically, one thesis of the book is that consciousness arises when you can remember your past thoughts.
lnanek2 12y ago
Must have been nice back when science was just making up fun stories like the one linked.
- foxhill 12y ago
  science has always about taking random guesses (some less random than others) and using evidence to determine wether those guesses are true. perhaps this makes no falsifiable claims. maybe it does, but we have no means to test them. sound familiar? string theory.
- mantrax5 12y ago
  Science is making up stories and seeing how they check out with reality. If they check out, we use the stories to extrapolate reality, i.e. build models that predict where reality will go based on our stories. There are three things to keep in mind: 1) There are infinite stories that may be equally good at describing the same reality. It's best to pick the simplest one that has a set of benefits we need, because why make our life hard, right? 2) If we can't measure how a story matches reality, the story is useless. Say, how on Earth would we measure if people had voices in their minds 3000 years ago? We can't. Therefore the story can't be verified. 3) One should be very careful not to confuse the stories with the reality it models. A story is a story. A model is a model. A math formula is a math formula. Reality is neither a story, a model, or a math formula. So when it comes to explaining the true nature of things, such as what the heck conscience is, and how it comes to be, science comes short. Because it always has been, and it always will be, just making up stories. But that doesn't make science any less useful, of course.
foxhill 12y ago
nothing wrong with a little conjecture as long as you are aware that it is conjecture. this has certainly made me want to read the book.
brudgers 12y ago
In which one should it be kept? Any theory of mind - unicameral, bicameral, polycameral - is naught but an hypothesis because the claim that there are such things as minds is itself an hypothesis. One that for some is as scientifically plausible as souls and essences...or consciousness. If one wants to argue over the material character of the mind, bicameralism seems a bit late to be drawing a line in the sand. The enemy has landed, breached the city walls and occupies the lower floors of the innermost keep. I read Jaynes about twenty years ago. It's thoughtful and entertaining and it's ideas plausible...what is this voice that formulates these words as I type? Certainly better than Penrose who was running rampant over the alt.philosophy at the time. Jaynes is very readable.
- EGreg 12y ago
  Can you articulate the difference between a MEMORY OF DECISION PROCESS and consciousness? Can you articulate the difference between a sense of humorand a sense of morality?
- judk 12y ago
  Well the existence of a whole group of "not even wrong" theories doesn't make any single one of them less deserving of complaint when it shows up on its own at a party like HN
  - brudgers 12y ago
    To me theories of mind are like programming languages, there's room for lots of them and having one in my toolbox doesn't mean that I cannot have others...and if one is not suited for a particular task or just doesn't appeal to me...well that doesn't make the whole raft of them bad. And I take the analogy between programming languages and theories of mind seriously. We don't dismiss programming languages because they don't describe the physical flipping of particular bits that happens on the computer and we don't throw out client-server architectural models when we are working with only one machine. Physicalism when it comes to computing is absurd in most contexts.
- SAI_Peregrinus 12y ago
  You claim that the existence of minds is just a hypothesis. If that's so, what thought the thoughts which lead to your post? An entity capable of thought IS a mind, and the existence of thought is the only certain thing. Something is thinking, therefore thought exists. The thing which is thinking seems to be somehow located in my body, but I can't prove that I'm not just some sub-process in a vast simulation or such. I also can't prove that the thing which is thinking is actually located in my body, and not just operating through it but with an independent existence. But either way something is thinking, so there is a mind. Whether one chooses solipsism, spiritualism, or materialism (or anything else) the existence of at least one mind is directly observable.
wmil 12y ago
One big problem is the there aren't any existing societies that dress, pose, and feed the dead. So it's very difficult to investigate why they would do that.
- balsam 12y ago
  This might come close. Anecdotally, I know people from that part of the world who are quite functional and yet occasionally tell me quite matter of factly what gods or demons say to them. http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-creepy-walking-dead-of-tana-toraja.html http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-creepy-walking-dead-of...
lmkg 12y ago
Not true. He made a predictive hypothesis of how the brain activity in a schizophrenic person behaves that was later borne out by imaging technology. Now, to be fair, that particular hypothesis is pretty far removed from the rest of this theory. I would certainly not say that the meat of his theory is in any way supported by this evidence. It's basically an aside to the rest of his theories. But, that was a really damn specific hypothesis, and he totally nailed it. He said that people with schizophrenia undergoing a command hallucination would have heightened activity in the right-hemisphere areas that correspond to the speech centers in the left hemisphere, which they do. That's kind of... not the sort of prediction that you just happen to get right by chance. It also revolutionized the study of schizophrenia. But yes, his statements about the non-schizophrenic brain are basically philosophy and not science at this point. And his historical hypotheses may never reach the state of falsifiability.

Keep in mind this is a hypothesis and lacks significant supportive evidence. Even after 38 years.

mbrock 12y ago

It's also not significantly falsified.

stcredzero 12y ago
Is it falsifiable? I read this book years ago. I'll be damned if I can remember what it says.
- mbrock 12y ago
  Well, it's not just wild speculation: it's based on his interpretation of ancient literature and archaelogy. Since the hypothesis is fundamentally about the subjective experience of (illiterate and long dead) people, it's naturally hard to verify or disprove. But to me, Jaynes's theory seems to shine a lot of light on certain phenomena: the prevalence of statuettes in tombs; the injunctive tone and form of common schizophrenic hallucinations; specific artworks like the Homeric poems, the Bible, and the altar of Tukulti-Ninurta I; and so on. Daniel Dennett wrote an article about the book, in which he states that he "takes it very seriously": http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-archeology.pdf http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-arch... A quote from that review that I think portrays the book quite fairly: "Now, when Julian Jaynes tells his story he doesn’t say that it is a just-so story. He doesn’t say it is just a sort of guess at how it might have been. He claims to be telling the historical truth as best as he can figure it out. But he is also clever enough to realize that if he doesn’t have the details just right, then some other story which is in very important respects rather like it must be true. So the whole account is put together by a rather interesting amalgam of aprioristic thinking about how it had to be, historical sleuthing, and inspired guesswork. He uses aprioristic reasoning to establish that we have to have travelled from point A to point B by some route—where and when the twists come is an interesting empirical question. He flavors and deepens and constrains his aprioristic thinking about how it had to be with whatever he can find about how it was and he lets his imagination go as fertile as he can and clutches at whatever straws he can find in the 'fossil record.'"
  - judk 12y ago
    That fancy quote seems to be saying "Jaynes believes what he says, even though he gives no reason for any reader to believe him." That's not science, that's storytelling, of the very kind he is analyzing in ancient literature. It is almost as though he is writing a neuroscience book, using the style someone like Homer or Plato would have used.
    - mbrock 12y ago
      That's not at all what it's saying, though?
- judk 12y ago
  Ironically, one thesis of the book is that consciousness arises when you can remember your past thoughts.

lnanek2 12y ago

Must have been nice back when science was just making up fun stories like the one linked.

foxhill 12y ago
science has always about taking random guesses (some less random than others) and using evidence to determine wether those guesses are true. perhaps this makes no falsifiable claims. maybe it does, but we have no means to test them. sound familiar? string theory.
mantrax5 12y ago
Science is making up stories and seeing how they check out with reality. If they check out, we use the stories to extrapolate reality, i.e. build models that predict where reality will go based on our stories. There are three things to keep in mind: 1) There are infinite stories that may be equally good at describing the same reality. It's best to pick the simplest one that has a set of benefits we need, because why make our life hard, right? 2) If we can't measure how a story matches reality, the story is useless. Say, how on Earth would we measure if people had voices in their minds 3000 years ago? We can't. Therefore the story can't be verified. 3) One should be very careful not to confuse the stories with the reality it models. A story is a story. A model is a model. A math formula is a math formula. Reality is neither a story, a model, or a math formula. So when it comes to explaining the true nature of things, such as what the heck conscience is, and how it comes to be, science comes short. Because it always has been, and it always will be, just making up stories. But that doesn't make science any less useful, of course.

foxhill 12y ago

nothing wrong with a little conjecture as long as you are aware that it is conjecture. this has certainly made me want to read the book.

brudgers 12y ago

In which one should it be kept? Any theory of mind - unicameral, bicameral, polycameral - is naught but an hypothesis because the claim that there are such things as minds is itself an hypothesis. One that for some is as scientifically plausible as souls and essences...or consciousness. If one wants to argue over the material character of the mind, bicameralism seems a bit late to be drawing a line in the sand. The enemy has landed, breached the city walls and occupies the lower floors of the innermost keep. I read Jaynes about twenty years ago. It's thoughtful and entertaining and it's ideas plausible...what is this voice that formulates these words as I type? Certainly better than Penrose who was running rampant over the alt.philosophy at the time. Jaynes is very readable.

EGreg 12y ago
Can you articulate the difference between a MEMORY OF DECISION PROCESS and consciousness? Can you articulate the difference between a sense of humorand a sense of morality?
judk 12y ago
Well the existence of a whole group of "not even wrong" theories doesn't make any single one of them less deserving of complaint when it shows up on its own at a party like HN
- brudgers 12y ago
  To me theories of mind are like programming languages, there's room for lots of them and having one in my toolbox doesn't mean that I cannot have others...and if one is not suited for a particular task or just doesn't appeal to me...well that doesn't make the whole raft of them bad. And I take the analogy between programming languages and theories of mind seriously. We don't dismiss programming languages because they don't describe the physical flipping of particular bits that happens on the computer and we don't throw out client-server architectural models when we are working with only one machine. Physicalism when it comes to computing is absurd in most contexts.
SAI_Peregrinus 12y ago
You claim that the existence of minds is just a hypothesis. If that's so, what thought the thoughts which lead to your post? An entity capable of thought IS a mind, and the existence of thought is the only certain thing. Something is thinking, therefore thought exists. The thing which is thinking seems to be somehow located in my body, but I can't prove that I'm not just some sub-process in a vast simulation or such. I also can't prove that the thing which is thinking is actually located in my body, and not just operating through it but with an independent existence. But either way something is thinking, so there is a mind. Whether one chooses solipsism, spiritualism, or materialism (or anything else) the existence of at least one mind is directly observable.

wmil 12y ago

One big problem is the there aren't any existing societies that dress, pose, and feed the dead. So it's very difficult to investigate why they would do that.

balsam 12y ago
This might come close. Anecdotally, I know people from that part of the world who are quite functional and yet occasionally tell me quite matter of factly what gods or demons say to them. http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-creepy-walking-dead-of-tana-toraja.html http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-creepy-walking-dead-of...

lmkg 12y ago

Not true. He made a predictive hypothesis of how the brain activity in a schizophrenic person behaves that was later borne out by imaging technology. Now, to be fair, that particular hypothesis is pretty far removed from the rest of this theory. I would certainly not say that the meat of his theory is in any way supported by this evidence. It's basically an aside to the rest of his theories. But, that was a really damn specific hypothesis, and he totally nailed it. He said that people with schizophrenia undergoing a command hallucination would have heightened activity in the right-hemisphere areas that correspond to the speech centers in the left hemisphere, which they do. That's kind of... not the sort of prediction that you just happen to get right by chance. It also revolutionized the study of schizophrenia. But yes, his statements about the non-schizophrenic brain are basically philosophy and not science at this point. And his historical hypotheses may never reach the state of falsifiability.