Incredible insight into consciousness | The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind...

A new take on hallucination | The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind | Julian Jaynes

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	• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes Mariner Books, 2000 - 512 pages average customer review:based on 141 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fascinating and controversial speculation

Julian Jaynes' speculations in this unusual work are both fascinating and controversial. His thesis is extremely interesting. Essentially, Jaynes speculates that until at most a few thousand years ago human beings did not possess consciousness of the kind possessed by humans today. He believes that until relatively recently, humans had a form of bicameral mind, in which one side of the brain communicated with the other by creating illusions both visual and auditory--such that people actually believed that they heard voices telling them how to behave. Such commands, originating within each person's own mind, directed behavior much as our own conscious decision-making does so today. Jaynes argues that this "bicameral mind" explains why virtually all ancient religions feature human beings speaking directly with and otherwise interacting with "gods" on more or less a regular basis--something that does not happen today, at least in most people's experience. Jaynes analyzes ancient texts, primarily the Iliad, and notes that the persons written of in such texts are directed by "gods" and do not appear to explain their actions in terms of conscious experience. Put simply, according to Jaynes ancient humans were automatons who obeyed commands deriving from within their own minds, which commands appeared to them as real external forces ("gods").

Jaynes believes that modern consciousness is just another form of learned behavior which arose because it evidently had survival value as human society became more complex, and environmental stresses occurred. Thus, humans learned more advanced behavior as opposed to the earlier "bicameral" mind. Pretty interesting speculation. I am certainly not qualified to say whether Jaynes is correct or not.

The book itself is a very hard slog and most of it is not particularly well-written, but it rewards the reader with some excellent portions of good writing and ingenious speculation. For example, Jaynes describes modern consciousness as being like a flashlight beam in a dark cellar. To the viewer, only the illuminated portion of the cellar is visible (which he likens to the conscious part of a person's mind) while most of it is dark, and unperceived. As Jaynes points out, it is impossible to be conscious of that which is not within our consciousness, which is most of our mind and behavior. According to Jaynes, ancient humans simply lacked the narrow flashlight beam, and substituted bicameralism for it. Which, of course, raises the question--just as consciousness is arguably a higher mental state than bicameralism, is there a higher mental plane than consciousness?

My layman's guess is that most of Jaynes' speculation about historical bicameralism is incorrect, but notwithstanding that, this work contains some of the most interesting analysis concerning the nature of consciousness that one is likely to find. And it is quite possible (and Jaynes makes out a good case) that ancient humans did have a significantly different form of consciousness than do modern persons. One wonders what post-conscious human beings will be like.

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Incredible insight into consciousness

Anyone interested in learning how we as a civilization got here to this place in time must read this book.

A new take on hallucination

Whether you are a psychologist or anthropologist, spiritual or atheist, this expository look at the evolution of human consciousness is truly astonishing. During a course I recently took on the history of medicine and religion (aka "official magic"), Jaynes' work was introduced to support historical material evidence in man's changing attitudes towards his gods, from Neolithic shamans to Mesopotamian god-kings, and Judaic talking fire bushes. Hearing voices? Hold off on the medication; you may not be crazy, after all. Julian Jaynes was light years ahead of his time. Check this book out!

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Mind-blowing

It's not an easy read but this book blew my mind away.

Dozens of other reviewers have already explained the content in a more eloquent way that I am able to do so I'll just summarize to say that Jaynes presents an amazing theory that breaks with common sense, explains central aspects of human behavior and culture, as well as specific phenomena such as hallucinations and hypnosis.

Independently of whether the theory is correct or not, it's very impressive when an individual dares to combine different fields such as psychololgy, neuroscience, archeology, and ancient history to form a revolutionary and convincing thesis that completely breaks with common sense.

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Dated, but good

Recently I've been delving in to such matters as consciousness & religiosity- prompted by supplications from friends & acquaintances. I was snookered in to reading the book Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer, by my best friend- an atheist- who longed to hear me praise the fallow & plodding tome. I did not, as my review of the book attests, because although I agreed with many of its takes on religion's modern place in society, its theory was full of holes, & the writing was too self-congratulatory & dull. In turn, this led to my devoting a recent Omniversica radio show to the subject. During the show my co-host (or cohort?) Art Durkee mentioned a book he felt did alot better job at sorting out religion than the Boyer book did. The book he mentioned (& loaned to me to read) was Julian Jaynes' The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind (henceforth abbreviated as OCBM).... An argument that has been thrown out as proof of a change in human consciousness is the slowness that humans have applied technology they have discovered. Or, as some have stated: `If they used their heads the same way that we do then they would have built computers & starships 1000s of years ago.' But this shows a lack of modern chaos theory, complexity, & emergent properties. Yet this learning by slowly evolving rote mimicry is how many feel human consciousness once was- similar to the way a baby learns to speak- by absorption. It was only a certain complexity point of no return that changed the human mind- that change being cultural, not biological. This has strong appeal- even in our genetically-obsessed age- but, again, has been superseded by facts.
As I see it, there seems to be 1 major flaw to JJ's theories- apart & aside from the smaller points I made earlier, & the examples given of facts now known that JJ was oblivious to when the book was published. The flaw is 2fold: 1) Real consciousness seems to extend alot farther down the food chain (so to speak) than we have thought- & this does not even include things such as emotional IQ (well-known to exist in many mammals & some birds), etc., that was little thought of 3 decades ago. 2) Perhaps, rather than consciousness, JJ should have called his book The Origin Of Sentience In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind, because sentience is more culturally & technologically-specific than consciousness. & that seems to be a bit more in line with JJ's argument.
Still, now- as then- the book is awash in wonderful writing. Much interest was anticipated back in the fateful year of 1984 for the sequel `The Consequences of Consciousness', but- for whatever reasons- it never happened. Whether or not JJ saw the theory's flaws, or just could not work out a grander theory, I do not know.
But, his book is chock with gems- be they pithy witticisms- `Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does not know everyone else.' or `Abstract words are ancient coins whose concrete images in the busy give-and-take of talk have worn away with use.'- or the profound- `Because in our brief lives we catch so little of the vastness of history, we tend too much to think of language as being solid as a dictionary, with a granite-like permanence, rather than as the rampant restless sea of metaphor which it is.'- or the discredited- `Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics....Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository....If consciousness is this invention of an analog world even as the world of mathematics parallels the world of quantities of things, what then can we say about its origin? Consciousness comes after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.'- or the exceedingly thought-provoking- `The terms theory and model, incidentally, are sometimes used interchangeably. But really they should not be. A theory is a relationship of the model to the things the model is supposed to represent. The Bohr model of the atom is that of a proton surrounded by orbiting electrons. It is something like the pattern of the solar system, and that is indeed one of its metaphoric sources. Bohr's theory was that all atoms were similar to his model. The theory, with the more recent discovery of new particles and complicated interatomic relationships, has turned out not to be true. But the model remains. A model is neither true nor false; only the theory of its similarity to what it represents.
A theory is thus a metaphor between a model and data. And understanding in science is the feeling of similarity between complicated data and a familiar model.'
My hope is that another JJ is lurking out there (be it in whatever scientific field necessary to move the discussion of consciousness forward), ready to apply his/her own Negative Capability, or bicameralism, to the greater range of facts accumulated since OCBM's initial publication. That combination might be a real synergy on par with that proposed 1 by JJ, in regards to consciousness & the origins of religiosity, all those years ago.

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At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.