The Origin of Consciousness (2008)

The Origin of Consciousness

One of my favourite books is The Origin of Consciousness successful the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes, a psychologist astatine Princeton University. Nearly everyone seems to agree that this is either a activity of profound genius, aliases of profound crackpottery, and besides that they aren't judge which it is. Jaynes' theory, arsenic astir arsenic I tin summarize the book, is thing like this:

Human consciousness (which Jaynes describes and defines in considerable detail) is simply a comparatively caller development, dating back astatine astir only astir 3,000 years aliases so.

That is the shocking portion of the theory. Most group probably imagine consciousness arising much, overmuch earlier, possibly before language. Jaynes disagrees. In his theory, language, and in particular its mediation of thought done the usage of metaphors, is an basal prerequisite for consciousness. And his day for the development of consciousness intends that quality consciousness would postdate respective different important developments, specified arsenic metalworking, large-scale agriculture, analyzable hierarchical societal structures, and even writing. Jaynes thinks that the improvement of consciousness is a humanities arena and is attested to by written history. He tries to examine the humanities grounds to find grounds not only of preconscious culture, but of the tremendous upheavals that some caused and were the consequence of the presence of consciousness.

If preconscious humans farmed, built temples and granaries, and kept records, they must person had immoderate benignant of organizing behaviour that sufficed successful spot of consciousness. Jaynes believes that anterior to the development of consciousness, humans had a very different mentality. When you aliases I request to make a decision, we conception a mental narrative, successful which we ideate ourselves trying respective courses of action, and effort to foretell the imaginable consequences. Jaynes claims that Bronze Age humans did not do this. What then?

Instead, says Jaynes, the 2 halves of the encephalon were less well-integrated successful preconscious humans than they are today. The preconscious mentality was "bicameral", pinch the 2 halves of the brain operating much independently, and sometimes astatine likelihood pinch each other. The near hemisphere, arsenic today, was usually dominant. Faced with a difficult decision, preconscious quality would wait, perchance undergoing (and possibly even encouraging) an progressively agitated beingness state, until they heard the sound of a deity directing them what to do. These hallucinated voices were generated by the correct hemisphere of the brain, and projected internally into the near hemisphere.

For example, erstwhile the Iliad says that the goddess Athena spoke to Achilles, and commanded and physically restrained him from killing Agamemnon, it is not fabulating: Achilles' correct brain hallucinated the sound of the Goddess and restrained him.

In Jaynes' view, location is simply a ample magnitude of varied literary, anthropological, and neurological grounds supporting this admittedly bizarre hypothesis. For example, he compares the connection utilized successful the Biblical Book of Amos (bicameral) pinch that successful Ecclesiastes (conscious). He finds galore examples of records from the correct period of history bewailing the nonaccomplishment of the guidance of the gods, the stilling of their voices, and the measures that group took, involving seers and prophets, to effort to bring the guiding voices back.

Jaynes speculates that intelligence states specified arsenic schizophrenia, which are frequently accompanied by irresistible auditorily hallucinated commands, whitethorn be throwbacks to the older, "bicameral" intelligence state.

Whether you find the mentation amazingly superb aliases amazingly stupid, I urge to to withhold judgement until you person publication the book. It is a fat book, and location is simply a wide of fascinating detail. As I implied, it's either a activity of profound brilliant aliases of profound crackpottery, and I'm not judge which. (Yaakov Sloman tells maine that the consequence to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was similarly ambivalent erstwhile it was new. I deliberation the statement is now on the brilliant side.) Either way, it is rather fascinating. There needs to beryllium some mentation to relationship for the humanities improvement of consciousness, and arsenic acold arsenic I know, this is the only 1 connected offer.

Anyway, I did not mean to get into this successful truthful overmuch detail. The reason I brought this up is that because of my continuing liking successful Jaynes' theory, and really it is viewed by later scholars, I americium reading Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination by Daniel B. Smith. I am not very acold into it yet, but Smith has galore absorbing things to say about auditory hallucinations, their narration to obsessive-compulsive disorder, and different matters.

On page 37 Smith mentions a paper, which arsenic he says, has a wonderful title: "Involuntary Masturbation arsenic a Manifestation of Stroke-Related Alien Hand Syndrome". Isn't that conscionable awesome? It gets you coming and going, for illustration a one-two punch. First there's the involuntary masturbation, and while you're still reeling from that it follows up with "alien manus syndrome".

To prevention you the problem of reference the paper, I will summarize. The patient is simply a 72-year-old male. He has lesions successful his correct frontal lobe. He is experiencing "alien manus syndrome", wherever his manus seems to beryllium nether personification else's control, grabbing objects, for illustration the TV remote control, aliases grabbing pieces of chickenhearted disconnected his sheet and feeding them to him, erstwhile what he wanted to do was provender himself with the fork successful his correct hand. "During his infirmary stay, the patient expressed vexation and dismay erstwhile he realized that he was masturbating publically and pinch his inability to voluntarily release his grasp of objects successful the near hand."

Reaction clip tests of his hands revealed that erstwhile the near manus was under his conscious control, it suffered from a guidance clip delay, but erstwhile it was nether the alien's control, it didn't.

Whee, freaky.

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