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.)
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
Thing is, the limbic reward system can be pretty automatic, too. You're reward system can signal mistakes without conscious input, e.g., cutting yourself while routinely chopping vegetables.
The reward system can be involved consciously but doesn't have to be.
I like this analogy. It works with my experience of consciously retraining myself. If you want to change the way you think about or do something, you have to be totally focussed and present, ignoring subconscious messages and doing everything with conscious present focus. It's literally retraining the model of the action in your subconscious. That's brilliant.
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)
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.
So I just poked briefly through Wikipedia on the dates; your link suggests a time of ~200-300 BC for those writings, the Iliad ~760-710 BC. Given the slow rate of diffusion of ideas at the time, it strikes me as just as likely that even if this idea is true and the Iliad was written by humans with a profoundly different psychology than ours, it was some peculiarity of Greek culture rather than a universal human condition. The spread of consciousness at this time in history can hardly occurred that quickly.
(By no means am I claiming that these areas are entirely isolated from each other, but note the bandwidth of the cultural communication from the travel between them is so low that the net effect is that the various areas of the ancient world were basically unaware of each other. Even if some travelers occasionally made the hikes they didn't amount to much at the civilizational scale.)
And I find it far more parsimonious an explanation that this is just a crazy idea from a too-close reading of a work of literature that thematically chooses to be about "the gods" to imbue the work with mythic power, just the fact our culture has Star Trek does not mean that we have warp drive or that Gene Roddenberry's vision of happy coexistence has been realized. A fun idea, a great idea to build some sci-fi on, but not really a serious idea supported by the totality of the evidence we have from history, in which humans have been musing about the nature of consciousness for basically all of recorded history.
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.
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?
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.
What does it even mean to modify a subconscious thought? The notion of a subconscious thought is contradictory.
I am increasingly drawn to the idea that there is no difference between the so called conscious and subconscious mind. It seems more natural for me to think that experience literally is processing millions of tiny things at the same time. The idea is still muddy but the concept of a level of abstraction observing itself seems very compelling to me. Douglas Hofstadter explores this concept in his book "I Am a Strange Loop".
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.
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.
I find bicameralism interesting. When I was younger and religious I could experience a particularly pious state of mind where the internal monologue became more of a very pronounced internal dialogue. It was as if the primary conscious part of my brain could ask a question and get a linguistic (seeming) response from some other part of the brain.
The internal dialog wasn't smarter or supernatural or anything, but it was interesting. I would like to know if any research has been done to try to induce this state of mind, and then find a location (if one exists) of the internal dialogue using fMRI.
Speculation is not useless! We are at a complete loss, not only at how to explain consciousness, but also at figuring out which direction to move in. As long as we understand that speculation is not fact, it can be useful in helping us pick directions to do scientific research in.
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, this is the only way I can currently describe my mental state.
> 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-arch...
Richard Dawkins: “either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between.” (in The God Delusion)
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
>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.
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.
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? :-)
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
>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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 !
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. 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.
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...
[+] [-] ninkendo|10 years ago|reply
> 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|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepnet|10 years ago|reply
I refer to the "Inner Game of Tennis" by Tim Gallwey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieb1lmm9xHk
As a teacher he tries to distract the conscious mind so learning can take place.
[+] [-] true_religion|10 years ago|reply
You may think about what you want to do as an end result, but not necessarily how to place your fingers.
[+] [-] KingMob|10 years ago|reply
The reward system can be involved consciously but doesn't have to be.
[+] [-] afro88|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riemannzeta|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mystique|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jerf|10 years ago|reply
(By no means am I claiming that these areas are entirely isolated from each other, but note the bandwidth of the cultural communication from the travel between them is so low that the net effect is that the various areas of the ancient world were basically unaware of each other. Even if some travelers occasionally made the hikes they didn't amount to much at the civilizational scale.)
And I find it far more parsimonious an explanation that this is just a crazy idea from a too-close reading of a work of literature that thematically chooses to be about "the gods" to imbue the work with mythic power, just the fact our culture has Star Trek does not mean that we have warp drive or that Gene Roddenberry's vision of happy coexistence has been realized. A fun idea, a great idea to build some sci-fi on, but not really a serious idea supported by the totality of the evidence we have from history, in which humans have been musing about the nature of consciousness for basically all of recorded history.
[+] [-] code_reuse|10 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] laserDinosaur|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwatson|10 years ago|reply
The interesting thing about the passage is:
From either Cain's perspective, the author's perspective, or the ancient reader/hearer's perspective, I think this passage is fascinating.[+] [-] bweitzman|10 years ago|reply
I am increasingly drawn to the idea that there is no difference between the so called conscious and subconscious mind. It seems more natural for me to think that experience literally is processing millions of tiny things at the same time. The idea is still muddy but the concept of a level of abstraction observing itself seems very compelling to me. Douglas Hofstadter explores this concept in his book "I Am a Strange Loop".
[+] [-] api|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] copsarebastards|10 years ago|reply
There's a good amount of information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29#R...
[+] [-] gipp|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nitrogen|10 years ago|reply
The internal dialog wasn't smarter or supernatural or anything, but it was interesting. I would like to know if any research has been done to try to induce this state of mind, and then find a location (if one exists) of the internal dialogue using fMRI.
[+] [-] bweitzman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theVirginian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiabloD3|10 years ago|reply
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, this is the only way I can currently describe my mental state.
[+] [-] jacobolus|10 years ago|reply
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-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-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/
Semi-related, I like this blog post: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-m...
[+] [-] andreasvc|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fsloth|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] andybak|10 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] delinka|10 years ago|reply
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
2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation
[+] [-] NoMoreNicksLeft|10 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] s_baby|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gus_massa|10 years ago|reply
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
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?)
[+] [-] alextgordon|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jotm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|10 years ago|reply
Yes, it's quite a disorienting read at first, and indeed on subsequent readings.
[+] [-] sebastianconcpt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tormeh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voidz|10 years ago|reply
"[...] 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.
[+] [-] T-A|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
[+] [-] tim333|10 years ago|reply
Sounds well nuts to me.
[+] [-] escape_goat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riemannzeta|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] superuser2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jotm|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jqm|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] leaveyou|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrb|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ThomPete|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|10 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] digi_owl|10 years ago|reply
http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
Watts seems to have a real obsession with consciousness.
[+] [-] peter303|10 years ago|reply