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Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking

• leaveyou 11y ago
  Richard Dawkins about "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind": "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets." Whoa !
  • dalke 11y ago
    Also, used as the premise to Neal Stephenson's early novel "The Big U" and part of the plot for "Snow Crash."
    • oliwary 11y ago
      And the excellent "Wake, watch, wonder"-trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer.
• DiabloD3 11y ago
  This is actually rather disturbing on multiple levels. Is there any actual basis for this science, or is the guy a crackpot? The article kinda seems vague on it, which makes me think the guy straddles that fine line between insanity and genius. I mean, I'm sitting here rather terrified that I can't comprehend such a state without saying everyone back then was 100% schizoid (or whatever you'd call this in modern psychological medicine), and could be fixed with a few pills (in theory, anyways). I know HN frowns on macro memes and all, but http://goo.gl/5FQ0kI http://goo.gl/5FQ0kI, this is the only way I can currently describe my mental state.
  • voidz 11y ago
    It is not disturbing, you are disturbed. Ironic to me and others who do know the subject of this article. Maybe one day you will have the mind to comprehend, but, since you asked, as an example: "[...] in the case of problem-solving, creative or otherwise, we give our minds the information we need to work through, but we are helpless to force an answer. Instead it comes to us later, in the shower or on a walk. Jaynes told a neighbor that his theory finally gelled while he was watching ice moving on the St. John River. Something that we are not aware of does the work." Maybe you are trying too hard to grasp a concept that is not really about grasping, but rather about being. Sorry you had to ask your question in such a judgemental tone, though.
  • jacobolus 11y ago
    > straddles that fine line between insanity and genius That sounds about right. In any case, I highly recommend reading Jaynes’s book for yourself. Daniel Dennett: “I think first it is very important to understand Julian Jaynes’ project to see a little bit more about what the whole shape of it is, and delay the barrage of nitpicking objections and criticisms until we have seen what the edifice as a whole is. After all, on the face of it, it is preposterous, and I have found that in talking with other philosophers my main task is to convince them to take it seriously when they are very reluctant to do this. I take it very seriously, [...]” http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-archeology.pdf http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-arch... Richard Dawkins: “either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between.” (in The God Delusion) etc. (cf. http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-quotes-reviews.php http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-quotes-revi...) > I can't comprehend such a state without saying everyone back then was 100% schizoid Sounds more like a problem with “modern” models of consciousness and sanity, rather than a problem with past people. This was recently on Hacker News: http://priceonomics.com/how-culture-affects-hallucinations/ http://priceonomics.com/how-culture-affects-hallucinations/ Semi-related, I like this blog post: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-more-players/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-m...
  • andybak 11y ago
    This is where the term 'Neurotypical' can be useful. Some people with some forms of (what are labelled) 'mental health conditions' protest that it's not a deficiency at all - just a different way of being. Certainly it's easy to sympathise with this for conditions such as high-functioning Asperger's, ADHD and even some manifestations of bi-polar. (Stephen Fry famously said that he wouldn't change this aspect of himself even if he could).
    • mtrimpe 11y ago
      Or that they are inevitable results of mild neurological deficiencies; similar to e.g. dyslexia but more strongly stigmatized. If you believe that attribution of consciousness to only yourself is a culturally developed feature (which seems plausible given the existence of many mystics who don't seem to do so) then it is very possible that in some people the machinery that is required to do so doesn't work properly resulting in varying degrees of schizophrenia.
    • digi_owl 11y ago
      On the topic of Aspergers, i found a part of the article interesting. "As Jaynes saw it, a great deal of what is happening to you right now does not seem to be part of your consciousness until your attention is drawn to it. Could you feel the chair pressing against your back a moment ago? Or do you only feel it now, now that you have asked yourself that question?" A year or two ago i ran into an article that looked at autism/aspegers as "intense world" syndrome. This in that people with it do no shut out inputs that "neurotypicals" do by reflex. I think for someone with that the idea of not being aware of the chair is borderline preposterous. It may only be valid when "in the zone", fully engaged and focused on some task, be it programming, gaming, or perhaps a good book.
      • Nadya 11y ago
        You are now aware your tongue has weight and you can't find a comfortable place for it in your mouth. I don't see how your your brain censoring unnecessary sensory information is preposterous. But once its drawn to your attention - it can be hard to stop thinking about it and get it "filtered" again.
  • andreasvc 11y ago
    What is disturbing, and what state are you referring to? Jaynes' theory is more aptly described as fringe science, something far from the mainstream but without any of the obvious shortcomings of "crackpottery". Personally I am a bit surprised by how most people are so dismissive of his theory. We really understand very little about consciousness and the human mind, and there's no archeological evidence that falsifies his theory, rather, it seems to provide support. > saying everyone back then was 100% schizoid [...], and could be fixed with a few pills (in theory, anyways). Not in theory and not in practice either. Psychiatry attempts to make symptoms go away, and we understand very little about how it does so. We know about neurotransmitters and genes that are implicated, but we don't have much more than such correlations. I think it's possible that everyone back then was 100% hearing voices and that it was adaptive at the time.
    • dragontamer 11y ago
      Ancient Sumerians had battle-tactics and formations around 3000 BC. Which suggest that the soldiers of Bronze-Age Sumeria were _professional_ soldiers. Their Lapis Lazuli mosaics have stood the test of time, and we can see these artifacts 5000 years later. Sumerians were a society, a true civilization with specialized jobs, training, and technology. You can't have battle tactics without the "conscious" year long practice with your kinsmen. We may not know what the Acient Sumerian's battle tactics were exactly (those artists weren't exactly... good... at drawing what they saw). But we know that they had formations, and it sorta looked like a Phalanx. (Big Shield + Spear with everyone lined up) ------------ Another obvious "consciousness" bit is the Code of Hammurabi. Dated to 1754 BC (or roughly 4000 years ago), it demonstrates that the ancient Babylonians did in fact have law. Kind-of-crappy law, but its law nonetheless. The Code of Hammurabi assigned justice to slanderers, thieves and murderers.
      • the_af 11y ago
        > "Another obvious "consciousness" bit is the Code of Hammurabi. Dated to 1754 BC (or roughly 4000 years ago), it demonstrates that the ancient Babylonians did in fact have law." I recommend you read Jaynes' book, because it specifically addresses this. There is an entire chapter devoted to Hammurabi and his laws. If I remember correctly, he argues quite convincingly that Babylonians were indeed bicameral (surprisingly, in Jaynes' theory you don't need conscience to have laws, and the hallucinated words of your chieftain were the first "laws", which later gave way to the "voices of the gods"). I think according to Jaynes, Babylonia was already stretching it and bicameralism was starting to break down when meeting other civilizations. War is possible and even likely between smallish bicameral cultures; complex trade relations are way more difficult. Jaynes' definition of "conscience" is quite technical, mind you. To him it's a relatively sparse act of "narrative introspection". I totally buy that you don't need conscience at all for the most part of your life! You don't need conscience to act, or even learn in some cases! I think Jaynes was a crackpot. But his theory is a fascinating read nonetheless.
  • fsloth 11y ago
    The observation that conscious mind forms only a thin layer on top of our daily cognition is a fact, more or less I think. The special position that language holds on human neurological activity is a valuable notion. But the conclusions that are drawn from these on the evolution of the mind are more interesting than useful, IMO. "and could be fixed with a few pills (in theory, anyways)." What would you specifically fix if this condition existed? Not all human brains are alike, and many people suffer when their neurological structure does not fit societies norms and are forced to modulate their self just to fit into a square box.
    • digi_owl 11y ago
      > The special position that language holds on human neurological activity is a valuable notion. Dunno. Apes seem quite capable of language once offered alternate modes of expression, like picking symbols on boards or screens.
      • the_af 11y ago
        Aren't those findings on apes heavily contested? I know there were a few cases of hoaxes/deluded researchers. Apes are quite capable of something, true, but is it language as we understand it?
        • learc83 11y ago
          You're correct, most linguists agree that what apes are capable of is not language.
    • bweitzman 11y ago
      I don't think it is a at all a fact that the conscious mind forms a thin layer on top of our daily cognition. We are in position right now where we are explaining behaviors left and right but we have made absolutely zero progress in the scientific study of consciousness. If anything, we are getting closer and closer to showing that we are not conscious. Wouldn't that be an interesting result.
  • alextgordon 11y ago
    I don't believe it is true. You would see some evidence of it, among the many isolated and recently contacted tribes. There are lots of people in the Papuan rainforest who only joined civilisation in living memory. So we don't need to guess what life was like "before", we can just ask.
    • andreasvc 11y ago
      Do we have comprehensive observations on consciousness in recently contacted tribes? I believe we don't have evidence for or against the theory from recently contacted tribes. I read a book about the Piraha tribe and the observation that their simpler language correlates with their simpler world view was quite suggestive.
  • sebastianconcpt 11y ago
    Try to answer this question: why Qualia exists and do you have it? what proof do we have that you are not a well implemented automata? how can we be sure you are not a philosophical zombie? what proof do we have that you are actually experiencing things inside you?
  • delinka 11y ago
    I don't think it's any wackier than faith in a supernatural creator/messiah/teacher. Most of today's theologists do indeed try to answer the questions posed by those with a more critical mindset, and those answers get pretty wacky, IMO. See [1] and [2]. If ancient civilizations believed in supernatural beings, then it stands to reason that perhaps their idea of a conscience was these beings speaking in their heads. I feel like the only exceptionally strange idea in this article is that humans weren't self-aware until these beings decided to STFU. My own opinion is that we couldn't have organized into societies without self-awareness. And at some point, someone decided that societies needed rules, "higher purpose" was a bit abstract, so let's create beings to be feared ... and oh, yeah, that little voice in your head telling you not to do bad shit? The gods! 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transignification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transignification 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation
    • kefka 11y ago
      Try working with the occult for a year. Specifically chaos magic. It focuses on using science to verify and disqualify claims and what can be done, given that your sample size is inherently 1; yourself. There's something there, that's for sure. Don't believe me? You don't have to. Try it out yourself.
      • digi_owl 11y ago
        How do one account for placebo in all that? It seems to walk willingly into the traps that double blind testing is set up to avoid.
        • kefka 11y ago
          There really is no good answer to your question. You'd have to go down that path and experience it for yourself. Or you could trust someone else who is sensitive to these things... but you'll be in the same boat.
          • eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  • tormeh 11y ago
    The bicameral mind sounds a lot like how artificial neural networks work in machine learning. It's basically the "about-ness" problem from the standpoint of psychology, rather than computer science. When does something that can learn and compute become conscious? When can it think about a problem rather than act on training and instinct?
  • gus_massa 11y ago
    I wish to simplify your question: Is there any actual basis for this? Or in other framework: I there an experiment that can prove that this theory is wrong? I this theory falsifiable? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability From the article: > A psychology based on rats in mazes rather than the human mind, Jaynes wrote, was “bad poetry disguised as science.” Ok, let's forget rats for a moment. Try to apply this to a closer relative: chimps Does this theory imply that chimps are conscious xor they have gods? (Or chimps are too dumb for any of them?)
    • andreasvc 11y ago
      Chimps don't have language, so they cannot be used to test this theory.
    • the_af 11y ago
      I don't know why you're being downvoted. I truly enjoyed Jaynes' book, but I think you hit the mark. His theory is not falsifiable, and that's the biggest flaw. I don't think there's a single experiment we could make that could refute it, short of travelling back in time and... and I'm not even sure that would help. How would you check, upon meeting the ancient Greeks, whether they are bicameral? Definitely not by chatting with them, or even dissecting their brains! I love the book, though. Even if you disagree with the premise, I really recommend you read it. It's an amazing (if inconclusive) thought experiment.
      • NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
        The trouble is that even if Jayne is right, none of the people who experienced life like this still exist. We've contaminated the pool of test subjects, 100%. This isn't the same as being non-falsifiable, we understand what resources would be required to test it... we just don't have them available. > How would you check, upon meeting the ancient Greeks, whether they are bicameral? Interviews. Observation. There would be communication anomalies. Some would no doubt claim these were merely translation errors, but it would become increasingly apparent that explanation was insufficient. It would probably filter through our preconcpcetions such that they were universally (and profoundly) mentally ill or defective. The big trouble here is, having met them, we might only have a few years to study them. I suspect that our form of consciousness might be contagious, especially to their younger demographic. So by the time we would almost start understanding it, it would be gone.
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
    If it were true, pills wouldn't have fixed it... consciousness would be some sort of contagious cultural norm, taught to children and so forth. Not sure what's disturbing about it. Many times in my life I've met people who seem to be able to say the right things at the right time, but it feels like they're only some sort of clever parrot that recognizes that repeating that phrase is moderately relevant without actually understanding it. Has that never happened to you?
    • juliangregorian 11y ago
      Not to bag on artists but, sounds like a pretty apt description of the art world.
      • anigbrowl 11y ago
        That's quite reasonable. There's definitely an analytical/technical dimension to art (of whatever kind), but the whimsical/inspirational component is important as well. That's why you hear so much about getting to a 'flow' state where your own consciousness goes into a more passive mode and you become a conduit for the muse. When I'm writing I'm often taken aback by what my characters say or do; I'll sit down and think 'OK, I've realized X went here to look for Y, so Z - you go there and look up Y in order to learn more about X.' Then instead of being sensible Y and Z get into a huge fight and both end up worse off than before. I don't mean of course that they exist objectively in some parallel dimension or derive their existence from Platonic ideal forms (although either possibility is interesting to consider); certainly they're projections of my self and my knowledge about narrative structure that I cobble together retroactive narratives to explain. But it's not unusual to 'know' more about a character than one can consciously articulate to oneself, in the same way that we can reach out and catch a thrown ball faster than we can articulate the ballistic calculations involved in such a feat. So just as an athlete needs to get into the habit of catching or hitting a ball rather than thinking about its trajectory, as an artist you need to get into the habit of moving your body and whatever artistic tools you employ in a sort of mindless, passive fashion. If you think about it too much it's either contrived or you get stuck. You know that situation where you watch a movie and everything flows along smoothly, but after you get up and walk around you realize the plot didn't make any sense - things happened at the same sort of pace they do in many good stories, but only because they were organized that way in advance rather than for fundamental reasons of character. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma
  • jotm 11y ago
    You speak with yourself inside your brain, right? And show yourself pictures, video and audio files that you stored around in there, commenting on them each time? So how is this any weirder? :-)
    • digi_owl 11y ago
      > And show yourself pictures, video and audio files that you stored around in there, commenting on them each time? As best i can tell we don't so much replay a video file as recreate it using random bits of sound and imagery we find strewn about. This in turn makes witness testimony much less reliable than the weight it is current given in court would suggest.
  • ThomPete 11y ago
    Consciousness is one of those areas where you probably can't validate scientifically what it really is because it's more than the sum of it's parts. So instead of thinking about whether it's scientifically validated I think it's helpful to think about it as a perspective and then ask yourself whether thats a more useful perspective on consciousness than the others out there. I happen to think his views are a better perspective than most others only maybe rivaled by Bateson.
  • s_baby 11y ago
    >This is actually rather disturbing on multiple levels. Is there any actual basis for this science, or is the guy a crackpot? The article kinda seems vague on it, which makes me think the guy straddles that fine line between insanity and genius. Here's what we do know: 1) It's a fact that pre-modern humans didn't just believe in deities but interpreted their world through them. If you were Ancient Greek and feeling love it was because Eros or Aphrodite was causing it. This is true across cultures. Judaism has a saying about how there is an "Angel" behind every blade of grass. The saying is implying that there is an anthropomorphic entity behind every object and action in the world. 2) You see this anthropomorphic interpretation of the world at the pre-operational stage of child development. Toddlers anthropomorphize the world in a similar way which suggests that this way of seeing the world is not socialized but a biological stage most of us go through. With that said I don't know what a "Bicameral" mind is. People will have different ways to interpret these data points.
  • anigbrowl 11y ago
    Nobody knows; the conjecture is really too big to test, and we don't have reliable markers for a lot of psychiatric problems right now. I came across it some 20 years ago and have read it 8 or 10 times since. I don't believe it, but but I don't disbelieve it either - it's become a permanent part of my mental toolbox. Yes, it's quite a disorienting read at first, and indeed on subsequent readings.
• andybak 11y ago
  I've described this to someone as "The most interesting wrong idea I've ever heard".
• sebastianconcpt 11y ago
  Well, there is no proof of Consciousness as Epiphenomenon that's why Panpsiquism is gaining traction. If Consciousness is not Computation, then we need a better framework. http://youtu.be/hTIk9MN3T6w http://youtu.be/hTIk9MN3T6w
  • cristianpascu 11y ago
    The classical argument against an immaterial soul is that something material CAN NOT interact with something material. BUT, we don't know what matter is. Attributing properties of supposedly immaterial substances to material substances is just as bad. One has to account for why matter has those properties, that is, the contingency of the fact that electrons are capable of posting cat pictures on the on the internet. I believe that the contingency of the matter itself points to intelligence, thus consciousness, metaphisically prior to matter. But this comment box is not sufficient for me to prove this novel statement of mine, made for the first time in history.
    • conscioushaha 11y ago
      do you have a blog? are you theist?
    • andreasvc 11y ago
      I don't quite follow where the contingency comes from. In fact, most scientists seem to subscribe to naturalism which posits that the world is fully deterministic. Also, in case you're not being facetious, these are pretty long running debates so you're probably not the first in history to claim something like that.
      • jqm 11y ago
        "probably not the first in history to claim something like that" Certainly not. The idea that consciousness preceded matter and exists independently of matter is a central tenant of many religions. It's a view I don't agree with but that's beside the point.
    • lukev 11y ago
• jotm 11y ago
  The bicameral mind sounds a lot like an early type of consciousness. I think Jaynes' timelines are off, but it is possible that our consciousness worked differently back in the day. After all, we've seen how much humanity changed after switching to agriculture and farming. Also "The picture Jaynes paints is that consciousness is only a very thin rime of ice atop a sea of habit, instinct, or some other process that is capable of taking care of much more than we tend to give it credit for" Isn't this more or less the current theory of what consciousness is? That it's a small part of the brain, and has little direct control over the brain/body, instead controlling it through indirect means such as habits, reflexes, instincts and other subconscious activities? I mean, excluding all the "soul" and "God" theories, of course.
  • mtbcoder 11y ago
    > The bicameral mind sounds a lot like an early type of consciousness. I think Jaynes' timelines are off, but it is possible that our consciousness worked differently back in the day. I agree, I see no reason that consciousness wouldn't follow evolutionary processes over time.
  • digi_owl 11y ago
    I think one thing one must be careful off is to think everyone woke up one day and was conscious. It may well be that early writers etc was first on the scene so to speak, perhaps standing one leg in each group for quite some time. It could very well be that what made Buddha special is for everyone today, but be do not recognize it because it is so common and we don't expend effort to reach it.
• ThomPete 11y ago
  One of the most interesting books I have ever read. If nothing else it helped me change perspective on how I think about consciousness.
• jqm 11y ago
  The majority of people in this day and age are still not conscious most of the time (if you consider consciousness as self awareness or awareness that one is conscious). Generally people act out of habit, conditioning, or mechanical stimulus/response. This lack of actual consciousness is the cause of many tragedies, accidents, cruel behaviors and downright stupid decisions. Maybe the evolution of consciousness is just getting started. I hope anyway.
  • conscioushaha 11y ago
    hahahaha agreed
  • chippy 11y ago
    I'd say the lack of actual consciousness is something we aspire too - we want to get in the zone for that game or for the work task - we want to perform automatically where time flies by. We want to be untroubled by conscious thought which causes worry and fear and escape via entertainment, or yoga, or sex etc.
• tim333 11y ago
  >humans were not fully conscious until about 3,000 years ago, instead relying on a two-part, or bicameral, mind, with one half speaking to the other in the voice of the gods with guidance whenever a difficult situation presented itself Sounds well nuts to me.
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  • ekianjo 11y ago
    Indeed, I find it hard to believe that unconscious beings would be capable of art and self-reflection.
    • JonnieCache 11y ago
      Have you ever tried to create art through conscious effort? It's ineffective to the point of masochism.
      • ekianjo 11y ago
        What I meant is, you don't create art if you are not conscious of your existence and of your mind in the first place.
        • the_af 11y ago
          Why? And is religious/burial/ceremonial art "art" in the sense you mean it? Maybe ancient people didn't think they were creating "art". And what beauty we find in it -- and they found it too, I'm sure -- can be quite unconscious! You don't need to be aware of your own mind in that case. You can create something beautiful out of inner impulses, without "thinking" about it or even intending it. Maybe it is religious awe for someone, and artistic beauty for another, but the end result is the same!
        • mrb 11y ago
          Fish create art on ocean floors, yet these animals are not conscious of their existence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbssnFfTcqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbssnFfTcqI
• T-A 11y ago
  Unmentioned in the article, but quite possibly the most enjoyable consequence of Jayne's work, is that it provided the back story for Snow Crash [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
  • wyager 11y ago
    As I was reading about bicameralism, I thought "Huh, this sounds like Snow Crash". Guess I was right!
  • jessaustin 11y ago
    I loved Snow Crash, but Peter Watts' more recent Blindsight is a fascinating and more direct exploration of this theme.
• mystique 11y ago
  Ancient Hindu monks have pondered on the question of consciousness forever. Ancient Hindu texts elaborate on differences between Self, Consciousness, Experiences, Knowledge. Some of this is intertwined with the Hindu concept of souls. All of Hindu philosophy is based on the concept that Self (pure consciousness) and Brahman (total reality, universe) is the same if we dig deeper and our goal as a human being is to find that union. In Sanskrit, the term itself is similar to "same yet different" - Advaita Vedanta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta) Lot of spirituality and even if you do not believe in those religious teachings, monks who wrote those texts thousands of years ago were conscious and questioning their consciousness.
  • code_reuse 11y ago
    And then Buddha arrived on the scene and argued that the Hindu concept of Self (Atman) doesn't even exist. The Buddha argued that no permanent, unchanging, "Self" can be found. All conditioned phenomena are subject to change, and therefore can't be taken to be an unchanging Self. Instead, the Buddha explains the perceived continuity of the human personality by describing it as composed of five attributes (skandhas) none of which contain a permanent entity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha
    • kranner 11y ago
      The Hindu concept of Self (with a capital S) denotes Brahman. That is different from the more personal self (with a lowercase s) or Atman that the Buddha demolished. At least that is the convention that I've observed in books on Hinduism and Buddhism. edit: I looked this up and now I'm more confused than when I started. There is a distinction made between the lowercase self and capital Self all right; I'm just not sure I understand the details.
      • code_reuse 11y ago
        sigh This is one of the problems that comes with trying to map these traditions into our common English vernacular. We end up inventing new words (like capital Self vs lowercase self) or worse (as is often the case in buddhist circles) we borrow terminology from Freud (ego) and reuse it in ways that would have the Austrian neurologist flabbergasted.
• michaelvkpdx 11y ago
  One of many incredible books from the 70's, when science and humanities were interconnected and writers were exploring the edges of possibility. Then Reagan came around, fear was restored, and corporations took ovet education. So much great work from the 70's and 80's and early 90's has already been lost, as young people assume everything worth learning is on Google or will get you a Valley job. Is this how the Dark Ages began?
  • shiggerino 11y ago
    The Dark Ages began with the Islamic conquest. Reagan, too, was a religious nutter, so you might not be so far off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog#Modern_apocalypticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog#Modern_apocalypt...
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• escape_goat 11y ago
  Did the bicameral mind ever exist in Polynesia? If it didn't, why not? If it did, then when and how did it disappear? Are Polynesians actually conscious after all? If consciousness is an artifact induced by "cultural development and knowledge about the world", then are people born into deprived circumstances perhaps not as conscious as the rest of us? If consciousness is a psychological development induced by specific linguistic features, then what are those features? Are people capable of consciousness if they can only speak an insufficiently advanced language?
  • s_baby 11y ago
    >If consciousness is a psychological development induced by specific linguistic features, then what are those features? Are people capable of consciousness if they can only speak an insufficiently advanced language? Developmental psychology has alot to say on this topic. For one you need the linguistic structure of "I" and pronouns in general(I/We/It). Pronouns are a universal linguistic structure and represent the ability to shift between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspective. A pretty amazing cognitive ability if you think about it.
    • escape_goat 11y ago
      If pronouns are a universal linguistic structure, then doesn't that suggest that the cognition that they reference is innate rather than linguistically acquired? How does one determine that consciousness requires the linguistic category, rather than the other way around? I can see how, in children, the development of consciousness and the meaningful use of pronouns might coincide, and that the two might be conflated in a description of normative developmental psychology. If one strictly regards consciousness as emerging from language development, however, the suggestion is that a child that was never capable of speech or language comprehension would never actually become conscious. It also leaves as an open (and rather curious) question whether an adult would continue to be conscious after the onset of any of the more serious categories of aphasia.
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• digi_owl 11y ago
  Reading that brings to mind Peter Watts' Blindsight. http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm Watts seems to have a real obsession with consciousness.
  • Flenser 11y ago
    Peter Watts is certainly aware of Julian Jaynes work http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=104 http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=104 and the sequal to Blindsight seems to be more specifically about this: http://www.rifters.com/echopraxia/enemywithin.htm http://www.rifters.com/echopraxia/enemywithin.htm which has probably generated interest in Julian Jaynes and so I suspect Echopraxia is partially responsible for the commissioning of the submitted article.
    • digi_owl 11y ago
      Seems he gave up on reading it after some pages (if that). http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=104#comment-1346 http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=104#comment-1346
• ninkendo 11y ago
  I really like the article author's description of the subconscious: > Focus is required to learn to put together puzzles or execute a tennis serve or even play the piano. But after a skill is mastered, it recedes below the horizon into the fuzzy world of the unconscious. Thinking about it makes it harder to do. It makes me think of consciousness like training AI neural networks. Consciousness is akin to training a neural net by testing the result and triggering the reward function accordingly, whereas the subconscious is when you don't bother checking the result, you just "execute" the neural net from the control signal and take whatever result. I'm sure the analogy breaks down quite heavily, but it works pretty well as a simplification: when you're learning you're constantly providing yourself feedback to try to strengthen the neural pathways that led to a positive result through a reward system ("good, that was the right note", "bad, that was the wrong note"). But presumably once those neural pathways are satisfactorily shaped, trying to use that reward system (ie. "thinking about" what you're doing) could serve to just mess you up. Because you don't want to modify those neural pathways further if they were already "good" to begin with. (Problem is, I don't think you're ever not conscious of whether your piano playing sounds right, so your brain is always going to be mutating those pathways whether you want to or not. But if you're already good at the piano, the less you can think about your playing, the better.)
  • peter303 11y ago
    The Brain is like XXXX technology, where XXXX is: 1) Clockwork (18th century) 2) Factory (19th century) 3) Computer (10th century) 4) Nueral Net (21st century) 5) None of the above! Ding Ding Ding
    • gipp 11y ago
      It would seem to be increasingly similar to each of those things in turn, not "none of the above".
    • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
      Except a neural network is much like a simulation of neurons. So its not "like a computer," we're using computers to implement a model based roughly on the biological brain. Its an intentional implementation to mimick the brain.
• copsarebastards 11y ago
  Bicameralism is no more than a difficult-to-test hypothesis at this point and should not be mistaken for factual. Jaynes' work is basically pure speculation. It happens to be speculation that has piqued the interest of some high-profile scientists, but until there's some hard evidence for or against the idea, it's basically useless. There's a good amount of information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29#Reception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29#R...
  • gipp 11y ago
    I don't think anyone anywhere regards it as fact. It's completely speculative, and acknowledged as such in the book. The evidence laid out in the book is narratively compelling but totally circumstantial. For example, the way it so perfectly explains the obsession with physical idols in such a huge and disparate array of cultures around the world is really profound, but of course is no proof at all. It's just that it's one of the most utterly original and compelling bits of speculation ever written about the mind. It's almost certainly off-base, but I still think it's invaluable reading for anyone interested in consciousness and the mind, if only as an example of how strange a satisfactory explanation may end up being, and as a way of exposing one's own unstated assumptions about consciousness.
    • the_af 11y ago
      Fully agreed! I think Jaynes' book is like a marvelous house of cards. Its foundation is a bit flimsy, but what a fascinating and original read! He certainly knew how to engage the reader, and lot of what he said makes sense, even if I believe he was ultimately wrong.
    • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
      >so perfectly explains the obsession with physical idols Those primitives! (clutches cross around neck and looks out window at the towering skyscrapers, all of them flying American flags on the ground level). Personally, I think the narrative of ancients being that different from us is fairly out there and deep into crackpot territory. Seems to me that a lot of STEM majors haven't read the ancient sources. The idea that Herodotus, Plutarch, or Aurelius had some pre-modern mind is asinine. I can't see how someone who sat down and read The Meditations would walk away with such a conclusion. Jayne's Illiad argument stating that every character has no freewill and playthings of the gods is super weak sauce. Greeks simply weren't that devout in real life, and stuff like he's seeing is a story telling narrative. Not understanding something that simple about the Greeks further discredits him. Imagine if our society and entire conscious structure was judged by the Twilight books. Even if we step back another couple thousands years, Egypt had a full blown society with professional tradesmen, government, militaries, etc 2500BC. Before that, Mesopotamia had all those things in 3100 BC. The Code of Hammurabi invalidates this guy's thesis pretty easily, although I can imagine him weaseling a more technical and strict definition of "consciousness" to avoid being completely discredited, but at that point this is all useless sophistry. Also, are we ignoring ancient Hinduism and Buddhism's near obsession with consciousness here? > perfectly explains I find geeks seeks out "perfect" and "simple" solutions, which make sense in code, but in the world of history, anthropology, etc are reductionist and wrong. There's also quite a bit of atheistic evangelism here, which I think is why its on HN and not in the dustbin of bad history.
• wodzu 11y ago
  I don't understand this big mystery around consciousness. Here is my take. The brain simulates the reality. That is we don't see or hear directly but instead the electro-chemical impulses go to our brain from our eyes and our ears. Our brain is big enough to simulate ourselves. Our brain is capable of noticing that the simulation of "me" is distinct from the surrounding simulation of the reality.
  • chippy 11y ago
    The theory is that humans have not always noticed that "me" is different from the surroundings.
  • gerbilly 11y ago
    I don't see the big deal either. Our brain is able to observe some of its own functioning and that is called consciousness. We can only observe a tiny fraction of that functioning, mind you. Practising Buddhists, who train at observing the mind, have categorized the same 5 senses as the western tradition does, but they also add a sixth sense that perceives 'mental formations.' The sixth sense isn't more magical than sight or smell, or hearing. With training one can extend the range of the internal brain mechanisms we can observe. It's called 'expanding your consciousness' a really straightforward concept. Not some wishy washy trippy experience.
• peter303 11y ago
  It was a kook idea then and is still one now. No scientific support, just conjecture.
• joshu 11y ago
  Or maybe gods providing directions was the narrative structure of the time. I do like the idea that consciousness is learned and that it replaced a less effective system, if only because it allows us to imagine a system better beyond what we have now...
• simonsquiff 11y ago
  There is a must read series on Julian Jaynes's ideas here, the concept of the 'selfish neuron' in particular is fascinating http://www.meltingasphalt.com/series/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/series/
• dourobert 11y ago
  I heard Jaynes speak in the early 1970s when I was a grad student at Dalhousie, and I bought the book when it came out. At the time it sounded crazy but it was also inspiring. The behaviourism of the time was suffocating and his ideas told us we could dream and think big. I hope to reread the book when I am retired, but as great literature, not science.
• riemannzeta 11y ago
  Just about everything I've read about this book has gotten it wrong in the particulars. Jaynes's is a nuanced argument, with many caveats and exceptions. It may be impossible to do justice to it with a summary. Anybody interested should just read Part I of the book. Parts II and III are where he starts to run off the rails a bit. Although not a neuroscientist, my understanding is that a quite a few of his observations in Part I have been reproduced, along with a few of his speculative hypotheses. In my experience, the main benefit of reading the book was in gaining a more precise definition of consciousness. We tend to have many different things in mind when we talk about consciousness. :-) Jaynes gets very precise about what he means by "consciousness" before he introduces his theory. Within the scope of his narrow definition, I find compelling his argument that consciousness developed after and as a result of language. Also, for those who are also familiar with and fans of Tim Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis you should note that Gallwey first published a few years before Jaynes.
• imakesnowflakes 11y ago
  I just made this up. Feel free to downvote because this is complete speculation....he he.. May be each incarnation of a non trivial consciousness (soul) is invocations of some kind of recursive function call in some cosmic machinery. Nirvana is attained when the base case is reached and there wont be any more incarnations of the soul, and the result goes all the way back to the source of the call.. And may be our bodies are like a main function in Haskell where the IO operations of the result of some computations are just carried out. That would explain the concept of fate... hehe..I always loved to think about this stuff...
  • gerbilly 11y ago
    You may like this: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/resonance.html http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/resona...
• A_COMPUTER 11y ago
  The Greek oracles had all fallen silent. The final voice heard by the bicameral mind was "the great god Pan is dead." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_%28god%29#The_.22Death.22_of_Pan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_%28god%29#The_.22Death.22_...
• mrb 11y ago
  Here is an interesting thought experiment that came to me: some persons live with only half a brain, for example after a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy. And they can sometimes still execute actions that the missing hemisphere was normally responsible for, like speech or motor control, because the other hemisphere learns how to do it due to plasticity. What if we had the medical ability to take the hemisphere that is removed from person A and to transplant it into another person, B? Would the consciousness of the original person now be 2 independently functioning consciousnesses, A and B? Would your memories be split, eg. person A remembering half of your life, and person B remembering the other half? Would A and B feel they have the same consciousness? Could we go further and split a brain in 4? Would splitting a brain more and more progressively degrade the quality/complexity of consciousness? If so what is the smallest part of the brain that can still be capable of self-awareness, introspection, etc? So many questions... On an unrelated note, I have a crazy idea, but bear with me for a second: A central point of the New Testament is that the "Holy Spirit" was given to men when Jesus died. Could the "Holy Spirit" be a term used by people to describe what it felt like to have consciousness appear in their mind? Jaynes says consciousness appeared ~3000 years ago, but if he is right, if society caused consciousness to appear, then it did so at different points in time for different societies, because each society develops at a different pace. So it could be that to the people living around Jerusalem consciousness appeared 2000, not 3000, years ago.
• laserDinosaur 11y ago
  So here's my takeaway from the article: concious thought is the evolutionary advantage of being able to modify our own subconscious thoughts. The simple fact that we are aware of our subconscious gives us the profound ability to actually change it - nothing else seems to be able to do this. An earthworm can't suddenly realize that all its day-to-day routines exist in a tangible sense and make an effort to change those. A dog can't do this, apes can't do this. They might exhibit strangely human behaviours sometimes because their subconscious can get quiet advanced, but they still can't change it, they have no control over it. When you think of it in those terms, that our concious thought is just this thin veneer that sits on top of our unconscious thoughts (which might make up more of our day to day choices than we expect), it's kinda creepy. Could we meet someone who seems human in nearly every way, but they have no awareness of their subconscious? Would that person be a concious being?
  • namlem 11y ago
    FWIW, humans usually have a very difficult time changing their habits and routines too. I think if you could observe humans in an unbiased way, you'd rarely see these types of changes. I think it's unfair to assume that chimps and dolphins have no ability to influence their subconscious at all. They might, or they might not, but we certainly don't know for sure.
  • nwatson 11y ago
    For an ancient text dealing with the question of self-control and consciousness, look at a point before the story of the first murder in the pentateuch, where God talks to Cain about his state-of-mind before Cain murders Abel: Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” This text was composed into its current long after the mythical-or-real Cain existed, and probably written down only centuries after that. The original composition likely was before the 3K-years-ago dawn-of-consciousness that Jaynes stipulates. The interesting thing about the passage is: * there's still an either-real-or-self-manufactured deity involved * Cain struggles in an apparent self-aware way with jealousy and rage * he's explicitly aware of the need to modify his perception * there's still a "bicameral mind" but it's integrated into consciousness From either Cain's perspective, the author's perspective, or the ancient reader/hearer's perspective, I think this passage is fascinating.
• astrocyte 11y ago
  I propose a thought : If, as the sciences would have us believe, consciousness is born out of the unique biological structuring of matter in that jelly atop your shoulders, would it not seem logical that there are varied degrees of consciousness formed among us? Magnify a blade of grass to its 'simplest' form and you'll see incongruency ? Then why not across the landscape of human consciousness formed by even more complex structuring ? and then what....
  • gipp 11y ago
    There's nothing about the idea of physical consciousness that says it has to be a continuum -- there could just be some critical mass or qualitative attribute of brains that puts us "over the threshold", so to speak. Nobody can give any kind of a definitive answer. For ideas about a "continuum" of consciousness, you might read Phi: http://www.amazon.com/Phi-A-Voyage-Brain-Soul-ebook/dp/B0078XCPQY http://www.amazon.com/Phi-A-Voyage-Brain-Soul-ebook/dp/B0078... Or for other views, you might check out V.S Ramachandran (neuroscience): http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Human-Consciousness-Impostor/dp/0131872788 http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Human-Consciousness-Imposto... Jeff Hawkins (computer science): http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/0805078533 http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507... Hofstadter (mathematics, cognitive science): http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567 http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/... Those are some of my favorite popular-press books on the subject.
    • astrocyte 11y ago
      * Read Jeff Hawkins (On intelligence) * Have GEB (Covered enough of it) My point was to bring out the implicit belief that there is : > Some critical mass or qualitative attribute of brains that puts us "over the threshold" > If consciousness is indeed a variable quantity, then every single able bodied adult human has more "units" of consciousness than, say, a dog. > The variation within a species is also probably pretty small compared to the gap between species. None of which are proven in any scientific way yet many believe it to be the truth. We haven't even resolved what consciousness let alone its range of existence. > Just like intelligence, the amount of consciousness that a person has is not a measure of their value. And yet, one draws lines to distinguish human intelligence/consciousness from that say of a dog.
• superuser2 11y ago
  If you're interested in an (even more) heavily fictionalized version of this sort of thing (specifically a historical transition from following gods' orders to independent conscious thought), it's the primary subject of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
• araes 11y ago
  In the beginning, unthinking man existed, on Earth below the heavens. To man's eye, the Earth was without form and void, darkness covered the well of mans potential for he held no words to name it, but was lifted when man came to the water's edge. And the God Voice on the water, saw the light of the morning, saw it was good, and separated the light from the darkness in man's mind. The light was named "day", the dark was named "night", and man was concious of morning, and concious of night - aware of the first day as a thinking being. -- Neat, that was a quick 0. I ought to build a probabilistic post measurement tool to evaluate the response to taboo language among apes. Perhaps scrape and measure behavior and activity inside this virtual environment. How strongly does topic manifest upward / downward vote velocity vs chosen virtual expression environment? How is level of taboo evaluated in their little bone casings? Can I manipulate and influence their level of taboo response through word choice, telegraphing, inflammation method, or meta-level domino puppetry? Requires more thought.
• rictic 11y ago
  If you're interested in a more rigorous analysis of what is known about consciousness today, I'd recommend the book Consciousness and the Brain: http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-Thoughts/dp/0143126261 http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-...
• jordan0day 11y ago
  This is very interesting, in large part for the reason the author of the article mentions -- it's not the sort of thing most of us think about very often. And when we do, we usually leave off having no more insight than when we started. Anyway, I've seen some other comments here wondering about how "consciousness as an evolutionary adaptation" could have spread so rapidly, or going so far as to suggest that they've met people who were (to paraphrase) "less evolved". I wonder if rather than it having been an evolutionary process, consciousness may have been meme-like in its' spread. That is, perhaps humans had the brains required to handle consciousness for many generations before it really sprang up, and when it did, it occurred because of the spreading of the idea of consciousness, and not some particular set of genes.
• JackFr 11y ago
  Despite its non-falsifiablity, Jaynes will still be read when every hopelessly vapid and uninspired fMRI 'breakthrough' is long forgotten. Modern neuroscience assumes the brain is like a computer and proceeds from there, failing to see that that itself is a hypothesis.
  • musicaldope 11y ago
    I don't think any modern neuroscientist "fails to see" that modeling the brain as a computer is a hypothesis. Many wouldn't even subscribe to that theory, and those who do undoubtedly treat it as a working model.
• crimsonalucard 11y ago
  The Gods began when consciousness created them.
• carapat_virulat 11y ago
  Now the markets speak instead of the gods.
• anon4 11y ago
  His theory may be bunk, but it ties into something that's been bugging me for a while. How come every recorded or reconstructed earlier version of every language spoken today is more complex than the contemporary version? It's completely illogical, language couldn't have come out fully formed with a case system, gender system, definite/indefinite forms of words, dual forms, a ton of verb tenses, etc. How come we only have a record of languages losing features and never gaining them?
  • cryptophreak 11y ago
    The following is layman speculation: Computer languages are constructed by a single party, with a logic and purpose behind every feature, and the flexibility to make unilateral decisions about their design. It’s reasonable that they should start simply and grow in complexity. Spoken languages, by contrast, evolve out of a behavior soup. There are no rules, particularly in the early days—just look at how long English spelling went without standardization. In an environment without rules, an unnecessarily large number of solutions to a small set of problems will develop; everyone is re-inventing the wheel. As culture solidifies, rules emerge. Best practices and linguistic “cow paths” are formed, and something resembling design emerges from the muck.
  • KingMob 11y ago
    I'm not a linguist, but it's possibly because the timeline of language did not develop in isolation. E.g., when villages were more separated from each other and few people could read, idiosyncrasies flourished. But with the advent of strong nation-states, the printing press, and widespread literacy, languages standardized and became simpler. In this case, it's not that languages naturally simplified, but that there were external forces driving it.
    • stan_rogers 11y ago
      In linguistics, the terms are esoteric and exoteric. And it helps to remember that reconstructed languages only take us back so far (where they can be reconstructed at all); there's no reason not to believe that language (as opposed to "mere" communication) has been around at least as long as the species has been, so it's had a lot of time to fester, grammaticalize common concepts, overgrow, rot, have chance encounters with other, equally-esoteric languages at levels below those that would force simplification, etc. (We only have to go back to the 15th century to find William Caxton complaining that "English" was really a set of almost mutually-incomprehensible languages, and realising that he would be guiding the language in one way or another by the words he chose when making his translations.) Language may have started out simple, but it rarely stays that way unless it needs to be shared with "outsiders". Cree, Tsez or Nama/Khoekhoe would melt the average adult American's or European's brain, but their native speakers can handle them while tired, ill and intoxicated. If by some fluke of history any of them were to become a dominant language learned by outsiders (after childhood), they'd become a whole lot less, um, interesting.
• juliend2 11y ago
  God once told me (not audibly, but "uploaded" to my mind is a more appropriate way of saying it) precise things I didn't know before. Facts that I validated later to be exact. I also felt a strong feeling ("Powerful" is the closest word to describe how it felt) of God's presence during that moment.
• MichaelDunne 11y ago
  Human consciousness is a reflection of the only conscious entity that exists. That consciousness is able to perceive life as it happens in the present moment. Something impossible for a corpse, the body, to do. We are each, one of the infinite reflections.