The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Hey TOTJO!

So a friend of mine reccomended a great book to me by Dr Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) called 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' , published in 1976. In it, Dr Jaynes states that he believes humans evolved modern consciousness around 2000-3000 years ago, and prior to that, executive decisions were made by auditory hallucinated voices (mostly of gods and similar authority figures), a concept he calls 'bicameral mind theory'. He goes into a great deal of background research on how he came to believe these, all of which is quite illuminating. He states that humans evolved out of this type of consciousness around the same time that writing began to be more widely used throughout civilizations of the time.

I find this concept fascinating. That modern sentient humans evolved from other types of beings we must first take as a scientific given. Then that humans thought, acted and behaved differently than modern humans, a concept that Dr Jaynes illustrates through ancient writings such as the Odyssey and Iliad, the epic of Gilgamesh, and others even older.

Anyway, I was hoping some other Jedi had read this as well, and what they thought of the book and its hypotheses. I highly recommend it if you have an interest in psychology or similar.

I read it circa 1995 for a paper on the phenomenology of solipsism. (It wasn't all that closely related to what I was writing about, but I did manage to tie in the basic theory somehow.) It's an interesting hypothesis, that God used to speak to people more frequently because their hemispheres were more closely connected, allowing them to right-brain the hallucination of God into existence in a way that felt real. Probably not provable, but I suspect it's meant to be contemplated more than it's meant to be proved anyway.

I guess the broader point, that humans used to think and behave differently even in comparatively recent history, is just as intriguing. We're used to seeing evolution as this long, drawn-out process showing progress only after tens of thousands of years, so the suggestion that it might actually happen more suddenly, and more recently, than we have heretofore suspected is fun to contemplate.

It is an interesting book. A worthy read. I don't think it has found many converts among philosophers. I encounter references to it in the footnotes only on rare occasions.

The main problem with the book and it's central hypothesis is that we cannot go back in time and directly test it, thus it will always be mostly conjecture. That said, we have the scientific ability now thru fMRI and the like to test those experiencing active auditory hallucinations and note the location of the brain from which they seem to originate . Members of the Julian Jaynes Society have published this research, which seems to validate Dr Jaynes ' hypothesis.

Frustratingly there isn't a kindle version available (if someone has an ebook version please let me know where to get one). What does Jaynes mean by Consciousness? Consciousness as something which didn't previously exist and did as a result of writing? Or consciousness which did exist and was altered by the invention of writing? How does the notion of writing differ from cave paintings? Does Jaynes suppose there were fundamental changes in brain structure? Or is consciousness more a development of the complexity of how brain regions process new information (which would be more prevalent once encoded in writing).

Akkarin wrote: Frustratingly there isn't a kindle version available (if someone has an ebook version please let me know where to get one). What does Jaynes mean by Consciousness? Consciousness as something which didn't previously exist and did as a result of writing? Or consciousness which did exist and was altered by the invention of writing? How does the notion of writing differ from cave paintings? Does Jaynes suppose there were fundamental changes in brain structure? Or is consciousness more a development of the complexity of how brain regions process new information (which would be more prevalent once encoded in writing).

Does this work Akkarin ? Book

* thank you for the read!

A Brief Summary of ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’, by Dr. Julian Jaynes
10/10/2016

I found Julian Jaynes’ masterpiece ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’ to be a fascinating work on the evolution of modern human psychology.

It began at the beginning, so to speak, with the very distant and earliest of recorded human history. Archaeological evidence showed early ritual burials and entombed kings, which became the origin of temples such as ziggurats and pyramids. This was around the same time that humans started naming each other and spoken language became more and more well developed. Dr. Jaynes lays out the evidence for his theory over the course of several chapters, primarily referencing ancient tests from Sumeria, Greece and so forth that seem to indicate men in conversation with the gods.

Over time, these direct conversations stopped. This seems to take place gradually throughout the world, at different times and in different places, but seems to track closely the advent of the written word. The speech center of the right brain, most likely the origin of the god authority voices, became dormant, except in rare cases such as schizophrenia.

Though not directly discussed, Bicameral Theory could have a lot to do with a personal question of mine, why there is such a difference between the Old Testament Christian God and the New Testament One. When seen through the lense of Bicameral Theory, we see that the authors of the OT still ‘talked with’ or ‘listened to’ God, while in the New Testament (written in the first millennium AD, when bicameral men had faded out) God was distant and unheard, except in the attributed physical embodiment of Jesus (itself questionable as to the veracity of His statements or even if He existed at all).

Written in 1976, Dr. Jaynes and his peers did not have access to modern scientific instruments in which to test aspects of the theory, such as fMRI and CAT scan machines. The Julian Jaynes Society (found at julianjaynes.org) addresses some of the findings of modern science in relation to the activation of the right hemisphere of actively hallucinating individuals. The short answer is that the current scientific evidence seems to support Bicameral Theory.

Over all, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Jaynes’ work, and highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in evolutionary psychology (why we think the we way we think), origin of god mythologies and or theories of the mind in general.

If conversations with gods are negatively correlated with the written word, how come all records of such conversations we have are found in written form from all that time ago? Some of the oldest remains of written language we have are from the fourth millennium BCE, rendering them about twice as old as Dr. Jaynes' dating of the fading away of hallucinated voices. Meanwhile undiagnosed though quite literate people report talking to their gods or to the spirits of their ancestors or deceased loved ones in shockingly great numbers to this very day.
Now, I'm no expert on either evolution or on psychology or on any of the ways philosophy departments try to inject themselves into the scientific discussion through what little remains of respectable psychology anymore, but it would seem to me that if at any point there was a selective pressure that favoured such errors of perception, we should expect to find evidence of that in other modern animals and their behaviour, specifically in other apes and their cultural quirks or at the very least in the works of other human species that are now extinct. We should further be able, now that the human genome project is concluded, to identify what parts of our genome were responsible for it and what about them changed and when. Of course, I haven't read the book yet, and neither did anybody else say that they agree with any part of it or why, so I apologize if I am beginning to discuss what nobody was interested in discussing.

As to the written word part, early writing was mostly localized to scribes and the like for a long time, not the general population. So had little bearing on he Bicameral nature of the general population. Dr Jaynes lays his theory out very well, with a great deal of backing information over the course of 9 chapters organized in three books. This is just a brief summary.

"Meanwhile undiagnosed though quite literate people report talking to their gods or to the spirits of their ancestors or deceased loved ones in shockingly great numbers to this very day."
In the cases of people literally hearing the voices of Gods, most if not all would be considered psychotic or hallucinating and not taken seriously. Also, citation needed. In my 6 years in the mental health field, no one personally informed me they literally spoke to gods or an ancestors. I don't believe it's 'shockingly great numbers' that they do.

You should read it , gisteron . You'd probably like it. At least check out the Amazon page and whatnot for a bit more info on it first.

dont know if you care to hear from me but this is an interesting idea and there are a lot of mythologies which portray humans as having once been closer to god or at least closer to perfection than we are now

heres a wili for anyone interested

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age

i understand that the theory times the breakdown of the bichameral mind as around the same time as the develoment of written language, but does he actually have a hypothesis of why we evolved away from the bichameral state?

of what evolutionary factors pushed us away?

If you're interested in the phenomena of Hearing Voices, I think you'll find the following book an excellent read on the subject matter. It happens to talk about the Bicameral Mind and the theory that it is a hold over from our primate days.

https://www.amazon.com/Hearing-Voices-Common-Human-Experience/dp/0855723904/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1476239001&sr=8-2&keywords=Hearing+Voices

"but does he actually have a hypothesis of why we evolved away from the bichameral state?"

He does. A combination of societal pressures , such as Bicameral men being feared and shunned ( he references a verse from the Bible , late old testament, ordering parents to 'run through '/ stab children who prophesy , or hear the voice of Gods ) . And as more people became literate, the words of the gods were able to be read a d interpreted by more and more people, atrophying the right temporal lobe center of auditory hallucinations. He goes into a great deal more depth than that, and presents excellent source material. But I have a cat on me, and can't get to the book at the moment.

Suffice it to say, I found it eye opening as to the early Advent of religion across multiple early human societies, all sharing many similar paths of development giving rise to a shared brain origination, and Bicameral theory.

Edit: the verse on question is Zechariah 13:3. Here it is, King James version (the 'real' one in my opinion):

And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord : and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.
Zechariah 13:3 KJV
http://bible.com/1/zec.13.3.KJV

This is of course not the only instance even just within the Bible of 'prophesiers' being killed. There is another verse regarding a king of old rounding up Bicameral men by the hundreds and slaying them. Please remind me tomorrow and I will post it.

Broad scale literacy among the general population didn't really come about until well after the invention of the printing press. While not necessarily inconsistent with the hypothesis, I think it is somewhat of a cheat to refer to Bible passages that seem to indicate that at some point there was a prejudice against people who hear voices in their heads, meanwhile omitting all of the prejudices in their favour, like all of the Jewish prophets that hear the right voice of the true God. If it had been a normal thing in the distant past, people who had that "gift" would not be viewed as special, as enlightened or as prophets or as a threat. The fact that we find that they were to me speaks to this having been a rather rare thing at the time and it is not inconceivable to me that while at the beginnings of writing it was revered and considered a blessing, that as time showed more examples of unpredictable or dangerous behaviour, or false prophesies, or attributions of the voices to gods people around didn't acknowledge quite enough, people came to shun the 'gifted', or at least some of them, and view them as cursed or sick or possessed instead. Neither perception betrays it having been a normal thing.

As to my earlier remark about shocking numbers of people still communicating with gods or spirits, I must admit I did not look up the exact numbers as I didn't consider it to be a controversial proposition. I am thus willing to retract it pending further information, and reduce it to my personal anecdotal account for now. I have heard an unspecified number of mostly religious people reporting to speak to their respective god or gods regularly and frequently and receiving answers, too. Granted, few would admit to having had an auditory experience of their gods' response when pressed, more often they report that their prayers are answered in feeling they couldn't put into words or through events in their lives. Nobody admits that the conversation is wholly one-sided at first, and almost nobody admits it later on, when pressed.

I will probably read this book at some point but some more thoughts.

Those who claim to hear voices could be lying. Further what about cultures in which writing was never developed?, or developed very late. Writing didn't exist in South America until it was brought there by explorers from Western Europe. If there was a thinning of the bicameral population it wouldn't be nearly as extensive. Wouldn't greater numbers of bicameral individuals live in such societies? There are Inuit, African and Amazon societies which never had writing?