Julian Jaynes/Origin of Consciousness
KRosser414
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" after having it
highly recommended by a friend, and I have to admit I'm a bit blown away
by the magnitude of what he suggests in this book, how it really forces
one to reconsider the motivating forces behind all of ancient history,
especially religion.
I'm afraid I haven't done much other reading on this topic, so I'm looking
for some context to place this theory in: how widely regarded and/or
accepted are some of Jaynes' ideas? Has there been an equally
well-written rebuttal? This edition was published fifteen years ago -
what's the latest word on any of this? Is there a better place to ask
this or any follow-up questions?
In general, I'd really love to hear what anyone else might have to say
about this book which right now has my head spinning with the possibilites
it suggests.
Thanks,
Ken
Ned Block
Dan Dennett holds a version of Jaynes' view. See his Consciousness Explained. My "What is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" talks abo
43-551.
>especially religion.
>
>
>it suggests.
>
>Thanks,
>Ken
>
>
<color><param>ffff,0000,0000</param>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
</color>Ned....@nyu.edu
Ned Block, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology
Department of Philosophy, New York University, Main Building Room 503E
100 Washington Square East, New York NY 10003
TEL: 212-998-8322, Phil Dept: 212-998-8320; FAX: 995-4179
Web site: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/
<color><param>ffff,0000,0000</param>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-</color>
Leonard Katz
On Wed, 23 Apr 1997, Ken <KRosser414> wrote:
> I'm about 2/3 of the way through Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of
> Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" . . .
>he suggests in this book . .. how . . . to reconsider the motivating forces
> behind all of ancient history, especially religion.
>
> how widely accepted are some of Jaynes' ideas? Has there been an equally
> well-written rebuttal? This edition was published fifteen years ago -
> what's the latest word on any of this? Is there a better place to ask
> this or any follow-up questions?
A partially similar, but much less sweeping, view according to which
Homeric Greeks were not conscious as we are, was put forward decades
earlier, I believe in the 1930s, by the German classicist Bruno Snell
(English translation, _The Discovery of the Mind_). This line is, I
think, clearly wrong; it is, as I recall, briefly but cogently criticized
by the philosopher Bernard Williams near the beginning of his fairly
recent book, _Shame and Necessity_. Such views take different
vocabularies for describing experience to evidence drastic differences,
and even the absence, of consciousness. (Compare the philosopher Richard
Rorty's views, according to which, roughly, consciousness was invented by
changes in seventeenth century philosophers' usage of words.)
As for Jaynes' book itself, which I read at least parts of long ago, I
found some ideas, especially about the role of religion in social
coordination in ancient societies, interesting and likely on the right
track, but the big picture of a big change in brain organization in
ancient times unsubstantiated and without any plausible mechanism for such
a change. (Everywhere? Only in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean?)
Neither does the method of Snell and Jaynes of using Western ancient texts
as primary evidence for the "birth of consciousness" seem appropriate. We
can better study the cognitive differences between people of different
cultures, both adults and children, literate and preliterate, who are
living today. That seems the way to really see what differences in brain
organization and in the many things we call "consciousness" differences,
in language, literacy and discourse about mind make. I assume that these
are the true causes of any change in "consciousness" in early antiquity
and that we can study them today.
The preceding is posted, in the absence of other responses, as my
remembered take on Jaynes' and similar views, from years ago. Others,
however, have studied it more thoroughy and recently. There was even
a major conference on it not that long ago. I look forward to being
corrected.
Leonard
Leonard D. Katz
lk...@fas.harvard.edu
John E Limber
You might look at Dennett's "Kinds of Minds which bears a family
resemblance to Jaynes. Also there is a second editionof Jaynes, about
1990, that is not much different from the original but it has some
references and summary of "recent" clinical cases of auditory
hallucinations I found very interesting.
John Limber
Department of Psychology
University of New Hampshire, Durham NH 03824, USA
email:j...@christa.unh.edu
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel (course information, etc.)
FAX (603)-862-4986
On Wed, 23 Apr 1997, KRosser414 wrote:
> I'm about 2/3 of the way through Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of
> Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" after having it
> highly recommended by a friend, and I have to admit I'm a bit blown away
> by the magnitude of what he suggests in this book, how it really forces
> one to reconsider the motivating forces behind all of ancient history,
> especially religion.
>
> I'm afraid I haven't done much other reading on this topic, so I'm looking
> for some context to place this theory in: how widely regarded and/or
> accepted are some of Jaynes' ideas? Has there been an equally
> well-written rebuttal? This edition was published fifteen years ago -
> what's the latest word on any of this? Is there a better place to ask
> this or any follow-up questions?
>
Keith Sutherland
In message <19970423170...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, KRosser414
<kross...@aol.com> writes
>I'm afraid I haven't done much other reading on this topic, so I'm looking
>for some context to place this theory in: how widely regarded and/or
>accepted are some of Jaynes' ideas? Has there been an equally
>well-written rebuttal? This edition was published fifteen years ago -
>what's the latest word on any of this? Is there a better place to ask
>this or any follow-up questions?
I seem to remember asking exactly this question about a year ago -- the
only response I got at the time was that Jaynes has tended to play fast
and loose with the anthropological evidence. But I too would appreciate
a bibliography on this. I seem to remember Dennett had a commentary in
some Canadian anthropology journal, but never managed to track it down.
Would it be totally unfair to make a comparison with Freud -- although
the science has been mostly discredited he still has had a huge impact
on our thinking?
--
Keith Sutherland
ke...@imprint.co.uk
Brian J Flanagan
I spoke with Jaynes briefly, once. Very nice gent, a bit on the defensive
re: status of *Origins* as proper science, as opposed to merely popular
stuff. Lots of folks in academia are very jealous of their reputations,
of course, and I expect Jaynes was reacting to some sour notes from his
peers, following the success of this provocative work. I don't know how
much currency *Origins* has today.
You might very well enjoy Jameson's *Touched with Fire*, which has to do
with bipolar illness as inflected thru the lives of a number of our most
luminous artists and writers of more recent eras. The author tells us that
the connection between creativity and melancholia has been known since
antiquity, and long considered a "fine" or "divine" madness - and so you
have a nice dovetail with Jaynes' thoughts on shizophrenia and prophetic
speech.
Michael Schuerig
Keith Sutherland <ke...@imprint.co.uk> wrote:
> I seem to remember Dennett had a commentary in
> some Canadian anthropology journal, but never managed to track it down.
Daniel C. Dennett (1986)
Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology
Canadian Psychology 27(2):149-154
In the same issue are articles by J. Jaynes, Jonathan Miller, and George
Ojemann. Jaynes responds to them, and there's a transcript of a
discussion between all of them.
Michael
---
Michael Schuerig Nothing is as brilliantly adaptive
mailto:uzs...@uni-bonn.de as selective stupidity.
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs90z/ -Amelie O. Rorty
amyione
>On Wed, 23 Apr 1997, Ken <KRosser414> wrote:
>
>> I'm about 2/3 of the way through Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of
>> Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" . . .
>>he suggests in this book . .. how . . . to reconsider the motivating forces
>> behind all of ancient history, especially religion.
From: Leonard Katz <lk...@husc.harvard.edu>
>A partially similar, but much less sweeping, view according to which
>Homeric Greeks were not conscious as we are, was put forward decades
>earlier, I believe in the 1930s, by the German classicist Bruno Snell
>(English translation, _The Discovery of the Mind_). This line is, I
>think, clearly wrong; it is, as I recall, briefly but cogently criticized
>by the philosopher Bernard Williams near the beginning of his fairly
>recent book, _Shame and Necessity_. Such views take different
>vocabularies for describing experience to evidence drastic differences,
>and even the absence, of consciousness. (Compare the philosopher Richard
>Rorty's views, according to which, roughly, consciousness was invented by
>changes in seventeenth century philosophers' usage of words.)
>
Actually Snell (Snell, 1982) does use primary sources (Homer, the Greek
tragedians, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pindar, etc). In THE GREEK DISCOVERY OF
THE MIND Snell also mentions that his study began when he begin to think
about how and why Greek conceptual ideas changed dramatically from Homer to
Plato. Like Eric Havelock, (Havelock, 1986; Havelock, 1963), who also
studied the evolution of Greek views of the self, Snell offers what I
believe people on this list might categorize as an emergent view of
consciousness. To be sure, both Snell and Havelock are rather Eurocentric
in their presentation. Nonetheless, their views offer a stimulating
contrast to the Eurocentrism also a part of Jaynes' view, largely because
Jaynes too easily slides over many important aspects of ancient Greek
culture. Perhaps the question that brings Jaynes, Snell, and Havelock
together is the question of what language is (or represents), a question no
doubt tied up with our divergent views of intuition and revelation.
I must add that I disagree with Bernard Williams' rejection of Snell's
work. In my opinion, Williams sees the linguistic analysis within Snell's
work and misses the emergent quality. By this I mean that Williams does not
conceptualize that Snell's whole point was to show that some kinds of
revelations allow an individual -- as well as a culture -- to embody a
deeper sense of whatever it is the person or the culture is trying to
understand. This kind of "knowing" is not specific to science or religion,
which is perhaps why there are so many debates among consciousness
theorists about what it is. Moreover, as Williams' points out, his
criticism of Snell's work is not a consensual one. The issues are still
being debated among classicists.
>As for Jaynes' book itself, which I read at least parts of long ago, I
>found some ideas, especially about the role of religion in social
>coordination in ancient societies, interesting and likely on the right
>track, but the big picture of a big change in brain organization in
>ancient times unsubstantiated and without any plausible mechanism for such
>a change. (Everywhere? Only in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean?)
>Neither does the method of Snell and Jaynes of using Western ancient texts
>as primary evidence for the "birth of consciousness" seem appropriate. We
>can better study the cognitive differences between people of different
>cultures, both adults and children, literate and preliterate, who are
>living today. That seems the way to really see what differences in brain
>organization and in the many things we call "consciousness" differences,
>in language, literacy and discourse about mind make. I assume that these
>are the true causes of any change in "consciousness" in early antiquity
>and that we can study them today.
I agree we should frame these ideas broadly and must admit I have been
somewhat disappointed with the results to date. In my cross-cultural
research, (Ione, 1995), I have discovered that the coordinated changes in
cultural consciousness Jaynes, Snell, and Havelock describe -- changes in
our views about personhood, nature, and culture -- are not specific to the
West. For example, if we look at Indian and Chinese culture we find that
these cultures also have socially constructed ideas about personhood,
nature, and culture. In these cultures, despite their religiously biased
(rather than scientifically biased) philosophies, the people still had to
address social questions about values, education, and society. Their
culturally constructed solutions differ from those found in the West, yet
still had their own sets of problems. In sum, looking at how different
cultures merge idealism and reality continually reminds me that social
blinders interface with theories of consciousness in many ways that are not
specific to the West.
If I may digress a bit from the focus of this list, I would like to point
out that much of the blindness within other cultures has remained
academically invisible for a variety of reasons. If one reaches back to a
period comparable to the time Jaynes discusses, for example, if we look at
a the Indian tradition starting around 1200 BCE, review the primary sources
of that time, look at how the texts of the people evolved, and read the
scholarly work based on these texts, we can see that the culture evolved
religious/philosophical ideas that radically altered the cultural
experience and cultural conclusions about personhood, the self, nature, and
society.
A more specific example of this is that the ideas of karma and moksha are
hardly whispered in the Rig Veda (c. 1200-900 BCE) and yet become clearly
evident as the Upanishads are "revealed" (c. 800-600 BCE). In other words,
there are points where these concepts do not exist and, as many scholars
have shown, (e.g, Chapple, 1986; O'Flaherty, 1980; Reichenbach, 1990; Tull,
1989), these ideas eventually became a part of the tradition and came to be
foundational to many metaphysically different Indian traditions that
evolved. I cannot say how this relates to our studies of the brain or
whatever, but I do think it relates to the study of consciousness.
I apologize for the length of this message, but do want to offer one more
thought. It seems clear to me that our scientific and cultural studies
cannot really address consciousness if they are confined to the cognitive
examples of people living today, regardless of how large our sample is. The
ways in which cultures often solve problems over time shows that knowing
how to solve certain types of problems often results in asking solvable
questions. Living cultures are subject to this as well. My point is that
this kind of resolution to problem soloving leads to a form of blindness,
even in scientific investigations, that should be acknowledged -- simply
because it is an intergenerational problem. When we teach our methods and
our conclusions to our children they will pick and choose what they believe
should be questioned. As history shows, many cultural ideas become learned,
implicit, and unquestioned assumptions. The longer they remain
unquestioned, the more certain everyone is of their validity.
The other value in including other time periods in our discussions is that
we can see that information does change over time and consider if this
speaks of an emergent (in the sense of evolutionary) quality of
consciousness.
Amy Ione
io...@demog.berkeley.edu
References:
Chapple, C. (1986). Karma and creativity. Albany: State University Press of
New York.
Havelock, E. A. (1986). The muse learns to write. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press.
Havelock, E. C. (1963). Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Massachusetts and
London, England: The Belknap Press.
Ione, A. (1995). Nature exposed to our method of questioning. Unpublished
manuscript.
O'Flaherty, W. D. (Ed.). (1980). Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian
Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reichenbach, B. R. (1990). The Law of Karma: A Philosophical Study.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Snell, B. (1982). The discovery of the mind in early Greek philosophy and
literature (Rosenmeyer, T.G., Trans.). New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Tull, H. W. (1989). The Vedic origins of karma: cosmos as man in ancient
Indian myth and ritual. Albany: State University of New York.
------------------------------------------
Amy Ione
PO Box 12742
Berkeley CA 94712
email: io...@demog.berkeley.edu
amy...@uclink4.berkeley.edu
fax: (510) 643-8558
phone: (510) 548-2052
URL: http://demog.berkeley.edu/~ione
Jesse S. Cook III
On 25 April 1997, Keith Sutherland wrote:
>I seem to remember Dennett had a commentary in
>some Canadian anthropology journal, but never managed to track it down.
Here is what you were looking for:
Jaynes, Julian; "Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind"; *Canadian
Psychology*; 27:2 (1986), 128-148
Dennett, Daniel; "Julian Jaynes' Software Archaeology"; ibid., 149-154
Jaynes, Julian; "Response to the Discussants"; ibid., 169-173
Also, you wanted a bibliography. In the light of postings by Bernard
Williams, Leonard Katz, and Amy Ione, I offer the following (in no
particular order and omitting the Snell and the two Havelock books listed by
Amy Ione):
Ong, Walter J.; *Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word*;
Methuen, London; 1982
Bloom, Alfred; *The linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study of the Impact of
Language on Thinking...*; Erlbaum, Hillside (New Jersey); 1981
Carroll, John B., ed.; *Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of
Benjamin Lee Whorf*; MIT Press, Cambridge; 1956
Jaynes, Julian; "The Evolution of Language in the Early Pleistocene" in
*Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech*; Steven R. Harnad,
et al., eds.; New York Academy of Sciences, New York; 1976
Jaynes, Julian; "How Old Is Consciousness?" in *Exploring the Concept of
Mind*; Richard M. Caplan, ed.; Univ. of Iowa Press, Iowa City; 1986
Bottero, Jean; *Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods*; Zainab
Bahrani and Marc Van De Mieroop, trans.; University of Chicago Press,
Chicago; 1992
Havelock, Eric A.; *Origins of Western Literacy*; Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education, Toronto; 1976
Havelock, Eric A.; *The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural
Consequences*; Princeton University Press, Princeton; 1982
Havelock, Eric A.; "Linguistic Task of the Presocratics" in *Language and
Thought in Early Greek Philosophy*; Kevin Robb, ed.; Hegeler Institute,
LaSalle (Illinois); 1983
Havelock, Eric A.; "The Oral-Literate Equation: A Formula for the Modern
Mind" in *Literacy and Orality*; David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance,
eds.; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 1991
Ong, Walter J.; *Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of
Consciousness and Culture*; Cornell Univ. Press, Ithica (N. Y.); 1977
Ong, Walter J.; "Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought" in *The
Written Word: Literacy in Transition*; Gerd Baumann, ed.; Clarendon,
Oxford; 1986
Robb, Kevin; "Poetic Sources of the Greek Alphabet" in *Communication Arts
in the Ancient World*; Eric A. Havelock and Jackson P. Hershbell, eds.;
Hastings, New York; 1978
Ong, Walter J.; *The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and
Religious History*: Yale university Press, New Haven; 1967
Logan, Robert K.; *The Alphabet Effect: The Impact of the Phonetic Alphabet
on the Development of Western Civilization*; Morrow, New York; 1986
Martin, Henri-Jean; *The History and Power of Writing*; Lydia G. Cochrane,
trans.; University of Chicago Press, Chicago; 1994
Jesse S. Cook III E-Mail: jc...@awod.com
Post Office Box 40984 or
Charleston, SC 29485 USA 201-...@mcimail.com
"There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other
particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants
if only he tries. This is the general rule, The particular rule is that
every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule."--Samuel
Butler (1835-1902)
"There are two statements about human beings that are true:
that all human beings are alike, and that all are different.
On these two facts, all human wisdom is founded."
--Mark Van Doren (1894-1972)
Michael Schuerig
Ned Block <nb...@is5.nyu.edu> wrote:
> Dan Dennett holds a version of Jaynes' view. See his Consciousness
> Explained. My "What is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" talks abo 43-551.
That's all that survived to me of Ned Block's post. He's referring to
his article in Philosophical Topics (1994) vol. 22 no. 1 & 2, 23-40. The
whole (double) issue is devoted to "The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett"
appropriately including replies by DD.
Here's my summary of Block's article and Dennett's reply:
In this paper Block criticizes Dennett for his adoption of the idea that
consciousness is a cultural construction.
Block's starting point is his taxonomy of "consciousnesses" (Block
1994a, 1995). He goes through several kinds of consciousness to see
whether any of them could plausibly -- and interestingly! -- be
culturally constructed. He accuses Dennett of using an unanalyzed notion
of consciousness (more on this below) and thereby mixing things up. Most
notably Block sees Dennett as unplausibly treating phenomenal
consciousness as access-consciousness.
Phenomenal consciousness denotes the felt properties of our experiences,
the "what it is like"-aspect of undergoing something or being someone.
Now, could this be a cultural construction? Exist purely in virtue of
our culture? Obviously not, says Block. Of course culture does exert an
influence on our experiences, but it is not constitutive of them. Thus
"We should not take seriously the idea that each of us would have been a
zombie if not for specific cultural injections when we were growing up."
(1994a, 25).
How about access-consciousness, then? This is the kind of consciousness
that accrues to states that figure in reasoning and control of behavior.
Also, according to Block this is the kind of consciousness that Dennett
is putting forward in _Consciousness Explained_ and takes to cater for
phenomenal consciousness. But again, "Surely it is nothing other than a
biological fact about people--not a cultural construction--that some
brain representations persevere enough to affect memory, control
behavior, etc." (27)
The same for monitoring consciousness and self-consciousness. Both of
them are at least rudimentarily given by our biological equipment.
May there be a more "intellectual" sense of self-consciousness that is
indeed some kind of cultural construction? Block agress with Dennett
that what we ordinarily consider selves are in fact composed of a slew
of sub-selves. Culture doesn't come into play here, either. But of
course it enters when we start thinking about ourselves. It is a product
of culture if we think of ourselves as made (not) up of sub-selves.
Alas, this is a banality says Block.
What would not be banal is if consciousness would depend on the concept
consciousness. This is what Block takes Dennett to have claimed. And
this is obviously false.
After checking Dennett against the various concepts of consciousness
Block concludes that the notion of a culturally constructed
consciousness is either false--mother nature cares for this herself--or
banal (35).
Dennett, in his reply (1994), claims that Block has yet to get the point
he has been trying to make all the time. What Block takes to be a
biological given isn't given from Dennett's point of view. For him it
takes culture to integrate the various sub-selves into the single self
we are used to. Put differently, without culture there may well be
nobody at home. To feel something there has got to be someone. So unless
there is a self there is no-one who could feel anything. Also, there
would not be some single subject to ascribe intentional states to.
References
Block, Ned. 1994a. "What is Dennett's Theory a Theory *of*?".
_Philosophical Topics_ 22(1&2):23-40. [published after Block 1995!]
Block, Ned. 1994b. "Consciousness". In Samuel Guttenplan, _A Companion
to the Philosophy of Mind_. Oxford: Blackwell.
Block, Ned. 1995. "On a Confusion about Consciousness". _Behavioral and
Brain Sciences_ 18(2):227-247.
Dennett, Daniel. 1991. _Consciousness Explained_. Boston: Little, Brown.
Dennett, Daniel. 1994. "Get Real". _Philosophical Topics_ 22(1&2):505-68
Dennett, Daniel. 1995. "The Path not Taken". _Behavioral and Brain
Sciences_ 18(2):252-3.
BTW, does anyone beside me wonder why Block and Dennett don't sort this
out in a phone call?
Michael Schuerig
---
Michael Schuerig
mailto:uzs...@uni-bonn.de
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs90z/