Your book helped my dad find your channel. I walked into the living room and wondered how he had become a based unaboomer, but turns out he was just looking for a review on a book he'd read and yours was the only one he'd found. Lol
I read this book in December of 1987 and it knocked me out. I was so excited about it that I called Julian Jaynes at Princeton. We talked a couple of times and I mailed him my copy of his book to sign. I still have it.
I think in a smaller portion of the population the bicameral mind still exists as a vestigial cultural structure. I grew up Methodist, and among my parents' friends there were some genuinely very religious people. They would say things like "God told me this" and "I heard Jesus call out to me" in a literal sense, as in they had some sort of spiritual, and after my experience with psychedelics, I agree, hallucinogenic experience. I was always thinking in the back of my head "Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Not even an inkling of it." What really ties it together for me is my uncle killed himself when I was almost a teen, and my mom of course was distraught. The grieving process was really hard on her with how untimely and traumatic his death was for the family. She said that one time she was in a serious meeting for work and thought of him and as the sadness began to well up, she very clearly heard in his voice "Stop, {first_name}. It's okay." She didn't mean this as in she could imagine him saying this to her to calm her down. She meant this as in she almost looked over her shoulder to see who was there. Now I'm somewhat of a skeptical empiricist, so I don't have any way to confirm or deny her experience was supernatural or merely psychological. However, my own lived experience leads to me to believe this behavior is deeply ingrained as a psychological trait, as when I have had spiritual experiences they have been much more akin to my rational brain perceiving the existence of logos than a perceived manifestation of a person or deity. My theory is there is a cultural split in Western people's conscious minds even today, and you can roughly apply three main categories to Western people. You have people born and raised with partial bicamerality, where while there's not full separation like with the ancients, they still have moments where a conscious thought really feels to them like it originated outside their mind, such as how they feel about certain large life choices. Then you have your typical modern rationalist, who has no spiritual life to speak of. If they're religious, are religious in an abstract rational sense, much like many of the statesmen of the American Revolution and other deists. I've met many people who go to church for the community and moral teaching, and do believe in God, but don't really believe in God as anything more than a noumenous deity who exists beyond their lived reality. Then finally you have people like me, who I believe started out as rational thinkers with both hemispheres fully integrated psychologically, but then had a spiritual revelation (for me it was a psilocybin trip outdoors in nature, for others it might be a yoga and meditation practice) that has awoken them to a more intuitive and deeper understanding of the way our minds work through a lens that is spiritual, maybe even mystical in nature. My mind remains unicameral, but I've sort of discovered more of where thoughts originate and gotten a little taste of what a bicameral mind likely feels like. As my ego got quieter it was almost like I was seeing my thoughts turn the doorknob whereas before I only discovered them after I heard the door close and they were in the room. The spiritual feeling I would describe as a sense of a world spirit, not as an entity "a spirit", but more of that every living thing is trying to increase and propagate itself, and in doing so, is participating in a much broader system that ultimately links all life. A sort of Spinozist pantheism where the divine interweaves our reality. However, you might say I remain agnostic in that to me this might be a feature not of the universe, but of the human mind's interpretation of it. Understanding the linkages of the natural world on such a deeply spiritual level might be an evolved trait to make us better at living within it, not an understanding of reality as it is. But after that experience, I've been able to tap into that brain space without the use of substances, and it now remains as an "expanded" form of my consciousness. Ultimately, I think the point I'm trying to make is I think the atheist, deist, pantheist, monotheist, polytheist, etc. debate might have more to do with how our brains learn to form our consciousness (or fail to) than it does actual technical validity. This is subject to cultural teachings as well as lived experience, and might be why so many atheists can have mystical experiences yet remain atheists afterwards. In my life, my cultural upbringing led me more to deism, but after my experiences with hallucinogens, my understanding is more a hybrid of deist and pantheist belief, all with an agnostic detachment that says this is probably more to do with how my brain works than an actual outside reality.
This is a very insightful comment. Listen to the experiences I’ve had. I was born into religious fundamentalism and i knew it didn’t make sense to me as a child. But then I had an “encounter with God” on MDMA when I was 16 and had the revelation that it was real. I had 12 years worth of religious experiences but after a lot of traumatic stuff my reality crumbled. I started to here this same voice I always thought was God start explaining it was me. I got deeply into meditation to sort this stuff out. Weirdness ensured. But slowly I realized God was never speaking to me, it was just a piece of myself I’d wrongly thought was outside myself. Integrating that voice into my consciousness has been difficult but I think it is spoken of in a lot of different terms by a lot of different cultures.
@@macintoshimann9892 What would be the difference at that point? Your comment doesn't go into specifics, but there are certainly general commonalities in description of experience between both users of psychedelics and practitioners of meditation.
I think there's some merit to your theory. I was raised Catholic and would probably fit into the 'partially bicameral' category. Up until about the age of thirty, I would occasionally get a response to something I was praying about or my conscience warning me about something and I would experience it as though the thought was coming from somewhere outside myself. A few months before I turned thirty, I felt one of these responses to something I was praying about, but realized that the response, the thought, had come from me. They had always come from me. I had taken whatever problem or issue I was facing, filtering it through whatever my parents, church, school, etc. had taught me about god, created a response, and imagined that it has come from god. I considered that maybe this was the case for everyone who thought they had a relationship with god, that they were imagining it and not realizing it, and that would explain why there's so much disagreement over religion. I know some people who very much fit the bicameral model, where it seems that their communication with god is very real to them, and others who seem to completely lack any spiritual connection with the divine. Experiencing the vestiges of the bicameral system can be a real trip sometimes.
I think I have a similar psychological constitution as yours, and have had similar experiences that led me to similar "conclusions" or working suppositions if you like. It strikes me that prayer works for many people as a way to prompt the other side of the brain to speak to them, and that sometimes this is literally what they experience. Particularly if the prayer comes at a critical juncture in their lives, which would fit with Jaynes's theory. And then of course there are DREAMS, in which people, animals, and other entities are literally speaking with you. Dreams have always been an important source of aesthetic and meaningful material for me personally, and it seems to me that for other people this is not necessarily the case. For example, I have heard that some people dream in black-and-white, while my dreams are often achingly, emotionally colorful and immersive, and sometimes have highly suggestive symbolic content. Some people even say they never remember their dreams or "don't dream" at all, which is shocking to me. I have sometimes wondered if my vivid dreams may have something to do with vestigial bicamerality. IIRC, somewhere in the book Jaynes says that the "voice" one hears may not necessarily sound acoustically like speech, but would have the pulse or cadence of speech that feels the same as when a strongly intimate and authoritative voice speaks to you, but now it is internal. (For example, the way your mother or father sounded to you when you were very young.) I have (rarely) had dreams in which this sort of thing occurred; it was a voice but it didn't sound acoustic, it just seemed to reverberate in my headspace with a buzzing electricity. And the feeling of the voice was similar to the feeling of hypnagogic sleep paralysis episodes I have had, in which you feel a malign presence in the room and voices may also be heard. It makes sense to me that bicameral voices may have evolved to ingrain and internalize parental voices of authority and guidance, against the time when one's parents are deceased, or one is lost, etc. And that the oldest or most primitive religious practices are heavily concerned with ancestor worship and consulting with one's ancestors, because the parental connection was so important, and these parents can now only be accessed indirectly, in one's own brain.
My dad, who died 40 years ago, read this book when it first came out. I still have his copy and always felt proud of him for going deep into this topic.
Jaynes’ book and Jung’s “Man and His Symbols” were instrumental in changing my view of the relationship between brain and mind: I used to model the brain as the generator of mind but now I see brain as a receiver of thoughts, much like a radio. From there it seems like the localized self or “I” is a pattern of thought we tune into as isolated individuals while consensus reality is the pattern of thought we tune into collectively.
The bicameral mind is a lot like DOS which was the precursor to Windows. Dos still resides underneath Windows. This is why an normal person with consciousness can still hear audible voices in times of great stress or calamity. The best speech on the bicameral mind that I have heard in 2 years. Thank you for this
I know this is old, but DOS does not sit under modern Windows. It was the base of Windows 95, 98, and ME. Modern Windows comes from the NT lineage which has always been Windows from top to bottom.
I happened to have just read this about two months before season one of West World… When I found out the theory was a part of the storyline of season one, it was one of the most odd an exciting kind of synchronicities I’ve ever experienced.
I just binge watched season 1 again and this time I detected a whole lot more that hinged on or was derived from or related to the theory. (A theory I've found compelling since '79).
Indeed,I couldnt grasp the peculiarity of this "feeeling" WESTWORLD was giving me. Something was pulling me towards,I realize slowly which I believe. I just couldnt help it, it just made me question the essence of mind. Truly entice me to grind the gears of my mind,which I find it oddly satisfying and wanting for more.
@iwonnatube "I didn't see any Trump voters add 'lol' to their ballots". No, but you could hear them reciting , "From hell's heart I stab at thee", virtually speaking.
@iwonnatube It should by now be obvious to everyone that the multinational oligarchs, psychopaths whose lips are to the hilt on Mammon's cock, hoover up the wealth of nations with absolutely no care for the people; the flag draped, crucifix bedecked Trump/FoxNews simply the American tool of their despicable world wide deceit; other nations impoverished in proportion to their belief in magic, so, generally speaking, less.
I read this back in graduate school in '89, as I tried to avoid working on my thesis. It struck me powerfully then as I was grappling with problems of free will, human nature, etc. Today I look back at its crass materialism with a little smile, and chuckle at my naivety.
Thanks Luke. i just got a copy of this book and this was a good reminder to read it again. I first read Jayne's book in 1977, soon after it's initial release. I always considered it brilliant.
Really liked it. Keep 'em coming. I also really liked how you said "I recommend this book FOR READING" as if there could be some confusion about what to do with books.
Fifty + years ago my sister called me up and said she was rearranging her living room and asked if I could loan her some books that had gold, red, and green covers.
It would have taken the bicameral mind to build pyramids with such huge worked stone and soft tools. Like ants build their tunnels and dwelling places without any consciousness. Conscious man would have wanted workers comp and vacation days
My view on all of this is the thoughts that appear in our mind were at one time dissociated from the sense of the I. These thoughts were attributed to different characters that were designated a place "above" or "heaven". Words that reference the mind but suggest the higher or outer aspect of mind. These characters were then identified collectively and made into the Greek Gods. You could say that we were once automatons but the mind of nature/god was captured in language/alphabet/symbols and identified as archetypes. We have stolen the language of God and "fallen" to be able to see good from bad, garden of eden. Yes, there is a physical brain explanation through science but there is something more powerful when viewed in the symbolic aspect. That our original sin was to steal the fire of God so as to pear into this reality however divided from the original source that was unified and whole. You could argue that the ancients were closer to the universal mind before we moved away/detached from him and ultimately forgotten about him, confusing this "consciousness" or singularity aspect of self reference with our separate body. We basically are antennas walking around identifying with the higher mind and using it here in the lower realm. Ever seen ancient religious symbols of snake, tree of life, "spark" or fire etc? They spanned throughout all civilizations and those were archetypes of the higher mind that some ancients were able to identify. There was always a fear of language/spelling/words and image that was associated with divinity. That's because the higher mind was slowly extracted and there was fear of that awareness. Sorry for my ramble, but to conclude, we captured god's mind through metaphor/symbol and image. We were able to identify, compartmentalize and reduce his parts into pieces we call letters that we reconstructed to create a new inner map of our perceptions. This is the divine ability that humans stole in the flame. I believe it was Apollo who stole that flame. We do not generate thought, we receive information we identify as thought, and this information is not always ours. They are interpretations of stimuli, from the body, narrative of the external world or even others' thoughts/information. You can even see the mind behind the words we use. Always watching. This is the stolen one consciousness that we pulled apart to experience and be aware of the light.
This is literally giving me goose bumps.. You're giving me so much to think about! Such a great interpretation! I'm not a religious person, but I feel like I need to reread those books to understand more.
I believe the rhyme in musical notes and repition does put you in a hypnotic state and this is why: Because by repetition there is a non literal experience of a "return to", a type of loop. It is a recreation of the vortex or the reference point of the I. Just how self awareness requires self reflection or to see oneself in relation to something else consciousness has a singularity that everything spins or revolves around and keeps returning to. It is the constant we have we call "I". The I itself is empty and void of form but everything in the experience revolving around the simulacrum space in this "mind/matrix" is only experienced from that central point. Metaphor, symbols, rhyming, can help humans bridge the distance to that singularity "the cave" or the subconscious. You can rhyme with imagery or sound. But the point is a return to source. In its purest form we call universal consciousness from which all experience comes from and from which we all share, there is only one I. It is the keyhole from which we peak through. The universe isn't material based, we're just so far removed from the source and hypnotized by our compartmentalization and boxing or separating. This is the bases of physical reality. The mind's representation of separation to experience through ego.
neonpop80 neonpop80 can you explain a little more about rhyming imagery and sound, and how it can help bridge the subconscious? Can you give some examples possibly? I like where (I think) you're going with this
The Iliad and the Odyssey were not primarily works of literature, but were instead supposed to be performed in front of an audience. The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts may simply be an effective and practical dramatic device, a way of conveying the thoughts of characters to the audience without the character standing there alone, boringly droning on about what was on their mind. I think that is a more convincing explanation than a completely new "theory" about prehistoric consciousness.
Most people, when first confronted by the question, "What is consciousness?" are conscious at the time of asking and respond, "What a stupid question. If you're asking you already know the answer". But being conscious does not automatically imbue one with the knowledge of how consciousness arises. Thus when asked to take an imaginative trip back in time they project faux knowledge onto ancestors of every backward succeeding generation until they arrive at the first living cell. When pushed to proceed into the originative chemistry they experience a faux epiphany and absurdly declare, "Matter itself and the whole universe is conscious". "The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts" is a pretty sophisticated and imaginative invention to be found in the first two plays ever to become famous. That it is a twenty five hundred year old artistic device is an assumption with no more foundation than the bicameral theory you are futilely resisting. lol. When do you suppose the concept of 'boring' first entered the human lexicon? How boring life MUST have been without a cell phone!
Indeed most actual scholars of the homeric epics would agree more with you than with Jaynes - Jaynes himself drawing very heavily on the work of Bruno Snell in the 1950s (as far as I can tell Jaynes likes to sell a lot of Snell's thoughts as his own ideas). Snell's work on this matter is titled "the discovery of the mind" (og German "Die Entdeckung des Geistes" and has been disproven many times in the decades since.
@@Thermalsquid360 "You have an embarrassing understanding..." What I wrote, "Most people... project faux knowledge... etc." reflects a theory about just one route that leads some people to reach panpsychist conclusions. It seems to me inappropriate for you to allow my reflection to evoke your feelings of embarrassment and disgust. "Realization of consciousness as the substrate of reality has absolutely nothing to do with material reductionism" Why do you assert that they are unrelated? Are they not both concerned with the nature of 'reality' and with the meaning of the word 'conscious'? Being conscious is self evidently a process. Can any process exist without a substrate? No. Can you see the possibility both, that being conscious is a process going on in a material substrate and that being conscious is the substrate of the apprehension of existence including the existence of the material substrate? Both, not one or the other. Process is an abstract notion. Thus the essence of the being-conscious-process is abstract. Abstract entities are immaterial. But without a specific relationship to material existence abstract entities are nothing, absolute nothing, nothing absolutely. Modulations of the being-conscious-process are what we call thoughts. Thoughts are analogical in essence by which I mean thoughts are 'about' 'things'. Obviously thoughts are not identical to the 'things' they are about. Obviously analogies are not identical to the 'things' they analogize. A representation is not the thing it represents. Matter, whatever its true nature, is everything that actually exists. Everything not matter is an abstraction. Movement, pattern, process, time, analogy, thought, mind and 'consciousness' are examples of abstractions. We cannot know 'reality' because minds are made entirely and only of thoughts and all thoughts are representations. You may believe representations are reality but the problems with that are obvious or should be. Sense organs convert impinging environmental energies into analogies encoded as neural discharge frequencies. Analogies and frequencies are abstract entities. And that's how matter serves as substrate for immaterial thoughts which themselves then become the substrate of the being-conscious-process. We use the word 'self' in place of 'being-conscious-process' because it means the same and is more efficient.
@@Thermalsquid360 "sub·stance /ˈsəbstəns/ noun: substance; plural noun: substances 1. a particular kind of matter with uniform properties. "a steel tube coated with a waxy substance" 2. the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence." So looks like we are in agreement.
As a psychiatrist anthropologist I really appreciate your synopsis. This came out when I was in high school. I did not make much sense of it though I did eventually go into those two areas.
@@chaos-fb5nk I was not aware that the rigveda was that old (I have now looked it up). Even if not historically true, I think there is still something to be learned from this perspective that you may miss out with if you assume that we are fully conscious at all times and none of our consciousness is a learned behavior
@@pabloarroyo1023 it's just a lot for me to reinterprate, so I'm tempted to reject it out of laziness. But I also think some of the vedic texts show high degrees of conscious awareness, maybe that's sort of esoteric modern consciousness bias. Like how horoscopes seem to fit, when each word is allowed to function extensively. You're right though
@@chaos-fb5nk Consider how nicely a biological bicameral function upgrade actually maps when you consider the Pre-Vedic Indus Valley Civilizations would have been experiencing these same Mythos-birthing voices and emergent consciousness with their own stylings based on their different environment.
On schizophrenia - I once came across an account of an explorer, who spent time with primitive tribes. He noticed that they have schizophrenic woman locked up in a hut. He asked why they locked her and the tribesman said that she hears voices and is possessed by spirits. The explorer asked "don't you all hear voices of the gods all the time and sometimes possessed", and the tribesman said "this is not the same". It means that even bicameral people who hear voices of the guiding spirits can distinguish between normal voices of normal mind and insanity.
Does that mean a newborn child is not conscious and 'develops' it as he ages? I certainly feel my early childhood years were me on some kind of autopilot and suddenly a switch was flipped sometime in teenage and I am now conscious of my decisions.
I've heard this described as the 'oceanic' state of consciousness. We all start as a blank slate and it usually takes several years for us to develop a sense of duality, individuality, etc. Abstract language/culture is thought to be a major driver in the transition from 'oceanic' to 'ego-driven' states of consciousness.
I have a distinct memory of when I first consciously realized I was an individual human being, self-contained. It hit really hard. I was about 5 years old, playing with my sister next to the lake where we had gone swimming that day. It's very hard to describe and hard to remember the feeling exactly. But I had started pacing around, thinking of my life as a kind of story. And it suddenly hit me that there are all these people in the world, like my dad here, and my sister..."And I'm one of them." I remember I said those words aloud to myself. It felt like a Eureka moment and I was so excited about it. And then I went back to playing with my sister. I'll never forget that day.
Still in the middle of this. Have you heard of Aphantasia? A relatively new subject. People lack an inner monologue and can’t imagine a simple apple (this is a spectrum as some people can imagine but the quality of the image is low). Up to 3% of people have this condition, but to me it seems that there are more people who have this and are just unaware.
I have wondered if I'm mildly aphantasiac. I can't visualize things well, and I've never heard a voice in my head except singers and music. When people say things like, "I read that in Tom Waits' voice" or whatever I can't relate.
Hi Luke. Great presentation on a topic with which I am well familiar. I first read Jaynes' book three years after he wrote it. I would love to discuss his theories in depth - are you still listening here in 2023? A few brief comments off the cuff: (1) I would not use the term "independent" to describe the way the hemispheres function. They do not now, and did not in bicameral times. Injured brains can be interesting studies when the hemispheres are forced to function independently. Indeed, Jaynes' theories describe the manner in which the hemispheres interact, why they interact that way, and how that interaction generates the phenomenon of consciousness. Incidentally, he describes quite clearly what he means by consciousness in the very first paragraph of his book. Nothing in the rest of the book supersedes that wonderful opening remark. (2) I would also push back on the notion that the ego is a property or construct of the left hemisphere. Indeed, I think that is a mistake built upon historical ideas as to what consciousness is. Rather, the left hemisphere is rote, and so it is home to the rote behaviors by which we have any such things as personal, characteristic behaviors at all, but the left hemisphere is not the home of the ego per se. The ego is an inhabitant of the mind-space. It is an imagined actor that can operate on and in that mind-space, and by extension upon the external world that mind perceives. (3) It is no coincidence that Jaynes' theories sound a lot like an episode of Ancient Aliens. The bicameral mind is a down-to-earth alternative to the preposterous theories presented on that show. Of course, that show and Jaynes' theories are both attempts to explain some pretty weird s***. I get that we both prefer Jaynes' explanations. Thanks for reading (I hope.)
... which fails as an argument for consciousness being an emergent phenomenon. The wetness of water can be predicted from the behaviour of the molecules that make it up. There is nothing about the behaviour of a brain or any of the levels of organisation below it that predict experience of any kind.
Jaynes' book is pretty speculative, and its argument fails in many ways. He cites the Iliad as his source text, referring to incidents where there are sudden breaks in the action, such as a god or goddess appearing out of nowhere in a way that doesn't fit the narrative. He ignores the possibility that, like pretty much every other ancient text, the Iliad as we receive it is a compendium of different versions, often incoherently spliced together. Secondly, in the Iliad itself, there is the phrase "enthade thumon", "within the heart", to specify when a monologue is internal. If memory serves, I believe he brushed this off as a modern interpolation. But, with Homer, phrases from older phases of the text tend to appear again and again, and "enthade thumon" does appear frequently. Then, he speaks of the Bronze Age collapse as the breaking point, when social structures collapsed and only people who had evolved a bicameral mind survived. Except what he would categorize as pre-bicameral thought - such as gods talking to you - continued to exist for another millennium, as we can see in the Hebrew Prophets. Two millennia if we count Islam. Finally, the Bronze Age was localized to the Eastern Mediterranean. What about East Asia? People there think to themselves, and have seemingly always done so.
I agree that some of the evidence Jaynes cites is not sufficient to explain the theory. I think he is still onto something, and that the Bronze Age Collapse was one of many events that may have jolted people closer and closer to the unicameral minds most modern people have now. Humans have been around for a long time, and doubtless there have been many catastrophic events that contributed to our evolving mentality.
He must've been someone else before he was born and named Luke Smith and will be someone else after he is Luke Smith. There is nevertheless something eternal within us that lives whether it inhabits a body or not.
Excellent podcast, Luke. Have you read Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy? The dionysian and apollonian concepts as portrayed in the book definitely seem bicameral and hallucinogenic
No, I think an application of these ideas to The Birth of Tragedy would be interesting to see. The Socratic view could be related to the rise of consciousness and the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy could be worth discussing from Jayne's point of view. PT
It’s been ten years since I read this, but I seem to remember Jaynes does mention that the Iliad and Odyssey are only written down after the Bronze Age Collapse which would also be during the Axial Period which recognized some form of profound change in human consciousness and that would greatly effect Jaynes source of evidence assuming these works were Bronze Age even though the events are. In the Iliad Achilles says, “The god are jealous of us BECAUSE we are mortal.” This statement sounds very post Axial Age and does seem to me to conform to Jaynes’ theory. Did Jaynes have anything to say about the Axial Period revolution in human perspective? This change in just about all literate cultures, seems to place responsibility on the individual. PLEASE COMMENT.
Thank you for a great synopsis. I confess to not having read the book yet although it's on my list but I think that the change identified by Jaynes might simply have been the beginning of the idea of self that may have caught on like any other meme (in the sense in which Dawkins meant it). The definition of ‘conscious’ used by Jaynes is very particular, as far as I can tell, and refers specifically to what might be called reflexive self-awareness today. Clearly, the ‘pre-conscious’ humans of the Iliad, for example, had a full experience of the world and they had language with which to describe it. However, it seems that two ideas which were absent from their world view were that of the self and of a realm called mind. Mind is just an idea we have about where thoughts exist and it hardly seems to relate to non-humans where the idea of thought doesn’t seem to be in evidence. Brian McVeigh’s idea of interiority might be seen as a further idea arising from ideas of self and mind but it could not be conceived in their absence. Imagine if you did not have an idea of mind and you heard or saw a thought. How would you understand your experience? Might you reason that the world was full of invisible entities who spoke to you or apparitions that floated before your eyes, or that you had briefly journeyed to some other realm? Isn’t this maybe what happens when children have imaginary friends before they learn to believe that the conversations are taking place inside some imaginary space called their own mind? Also consider that if you heard a disembodied voice speaking to you (a verbal thought) you would expect that others could hear it too. When you discovered that they couldn’t how could you understand what happened unless you considered that the disembodied entity was speaking to you in particular? To this day, people with schizoid trait experience thoughts which are so vivid to them that they cannot distinguish them from shared experience. However, for most of us mental imagery and verbal thoughts have a more diffuse quality which enables us to identify them as idiosyncratic. We attribute the differences to brain function as Jaynes did but was the necessarily the case in the past? To this day we don’t really know where thoughts take place but we rationalise it using an idea of mind which we also conflate with the brain because we believe that the mental space is inside our head. However that is just the shared world view we learned from our parents and that we give to our children. Luke’s suggestion that we have a model for our mental experience is spot on. The idea of mind as a container of thoughts is only an idea. The idea of a self is only an idea. All of our ideas about the world are deployed (extremely quickly) in the post-processing of our experience as a sort of rationalisation. They do not change the experience at all, only the way we understand it and what we think it tells us about the world.
Nowadays there are people who have no internal voice and people that can not visualize anything inside their minds, they are completely functional human beings, in fact they do not realize other people are different than them a lot of the time. There are advantages to their way of thinking. For example grief doesn't affect them as much.
@@victoriap1561 Would you say that's a positive thing? I think no grief is the start of a pure predator mentality, psychopathy, but I don't think psychopathy is a sustainable way to be. It's proven such, psychopaths can't keep relations and if they get found, they get expelled from the community, socially. Even then, psychopaths think. I think a vacuous mind as such is that of an animal, but even animals feel emotions such as grief. I wonder if blanker minds need excess external stimulation, because I'm sure you'd be absolutely bored with nothing going on upstairs. Notice how a cornerstone of mental health is the internalization and independency of peace.
The only question that I have after listening to this is whether there is actual biological/evolutionary evidence for this? Because if this theory were true, then we would see that the great apes which are our closest ancestors, would most likely not have this "mediator" part in their brain which facilitates exchange of information between the hemispheres. I guess I'll have to actually read the book to find it out now
Thank you for this, you're voice for this breakdown is great. We have the book but wife is unable to read anymore due to her illness. Do you have part #2 coming?
One can argue whether or not such things as 'philosophical zombies' exist. The argument being that a person can carry out everyday functions just as well without having any accompanying subjective experience. And one can argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies. But a philosophical zombie does not dream (by definition). Dreaming is the one activity that consists almost entirely of consciousness and subjective experience. And the Iliad makes many references to dreams and dreaming. So, it doesn't follow that the human brain had not developed consciousness in the age when the Iliad was conceived.
You cannot "argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies" based on Jaynes' theory. A bicameral consciousness is vastly different from a philosophical zombie's complete lack of consciousness.
Previous comment needs expansion: Imagine a consciousness like your own but with two differences. 1. No thought in a bicameral mind contains any reference to self. The concept of self is absent from bicameral minds. 2. In moments of stress an auditory directive is heard and automatically obeyed.
I would advise that if you are trying to bring publicity to The Bicameral mind argument, then you should cut out the unneeded personal info we spend 10-20 minutes listening to you talk about, smack dab in the middle of the video. But I really do appreciate all your work, and opinions on college and whatnot.
I read this when it was first published and bought copies and gave it to doctors and and psychiatrists that I knew. None could refute it hypothesis and some even considered it a threat. The ideas in the book complete shatter the foundations of religion and religious belief even though that was not the purpose of what Jaynes set out to do. Jaynes also illustrates the power of language. All language is indeed based on metaphor. Our very emotions are rooted in metaphor. It's what is exactly missing in artificial intelligence. Nice explaination.
One can understand it's lack of widespread distribution in a society where the religious majority are quite upset to see the source of their delusions so clearly vivisected.
As an overly conscious person, it seems as though im attracted to consooming media more than the average person because it unlocks that unconscious state way easier for me. Definitely working on cutting back though..
Great job, Luke, thx! Perhaps the best explanation of Jayne's work I've seen yet. Would also be interesting to discuss his theories within the context of Sperry & Gazzaniga's famous 'Split Brain' research.
When I was young I learned that Egyptions thought the heart controlled the body, or was the source of the mind. I always thought that was a strange thing to presume.
This is similar to how I've always perceived legends and the world. I don't know if it was taught but certainly my upbringing had some part in it. It comes naturally to me, but that seems to be rare in others. I feel some validation that someone else sees things similarly.
It's a spooky feeling for sure. I know all too well what you mean. It's like we were born with some special perspective, and it's easy to have illusions of grandeur with such a realization. Raised right, as they say, at least when it comes to this.
Conciousness is everything . You use it every moment because we are gods waiting to be ressurected. Some are just not ready to graduate from beyond lower frequencies.
Go to college for Music,Art, Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and Religion. Never pay your debts back just go off the grid. Then you'll actually learn something.
I've heard Jayne's preconscious people described as existing in a dreamlike mindset, which kind of makes sense to me. If they had their boundaries between "self" and "other" in different places than we do (one of which being right down the middle of the brain!) then daily life may have had some qualities we would consider dreamlike. I think I've experienced something like the bicameral mindset in particularly vivid dreams. I can look at something or someone in a dream and wonder internally a question about the person or thing, and as soon as I ask the question I know the answer with absolute certainty. In one instance it included wondering about a person who wasn't in my field of vision. I wondered about him, and we were both suddenly aware of each other's minds. He was a violent criminal, so the dream quickly turned into a nightmare from there ._. What was interesting about it for this theory, though, was that it didn't feel like a superpower. It felt like a boundary between me and the outside world had dissolved, and everything in the world was as immediately knowable to me as my own conscious thoughts. I guess I was as transparent to the world as it was to me, too, judging by the dream character remotely perceiving me. I've since wondered if this is how bicameral people who hadn't figured out deception perceived their world.
I suspect the 'man' side of the bicameral mind was very much like yours and mine except none of 'his' thoughts would exist in relation to a self or self concept which in bicameral minds did not exist. According to the theory, humanity became conscious after the concept of the self was invented. This makes sense since it is my self who is conscious.
I tried to read this when it came out but only got about halfway. Thank you for filling in the rest! It's pretty far out there but still more believable and more useful than Integrated Information Theory.
A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess. "An equation for me has no meaning," he once said, "unless it expresses a thought of God." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
I actually had this notion too upon cross-culture study of mysticism before I even heard of this book existing. I'm just saying it's something that is reasonable to arrive at after enough study
There's a confusion in some people. One thing is Consciousness (a self-experience, in 1st person, a subjective feeling of 'I am') and another is the conscious (related to the Freudian and jungian concepts about subconscious and unconscious). I cannot know if other people are conscious of themselves (they may be philosophical zombies). I can guess that they could reason similarly. It's even more complex if we acknowledge it's impossible to know how an animal, plant or bacteria see themselves. We could even regard molecules and atoms as having a simple consciousness (a perception of their environment). [Note awareness means perception (a part of Consciousness), being the feeling of our senses, which, by the way, are not five but tens of things that provides information about the exterior to our brain]. Beyond that, it sounds a bit anthropocentric to talk about ancient humans (homo sapiens) being non-conscious, though i suppose it's possible that the conscious-subconscious-and-unconscious have evolved over times. It has sense if that evolution has something to do with a collective unconscious (Jung-Sheldrake) shaping the conscious emergence.
We tend to overasume too much about how our ancestors perceived themselves and the world around them. A bicameral mind is only possible after the developing of an articulated fonetic language. Likewise, we don't know if before that they made any rational correlation between sex and procreation; because for that you need to know at least how to count and have a concept of time. Probably art, reading and writing; had also very strange effecs on the minds of people, suggesting that a part of someone's spirit could be trapped forever in material form. And probably the after-effects of that still permates much of our understanding of history and society
I read the book when it was first published in 1976. I gave away a dozen copies to psychiatrists, scholars, doctors, smart people and any of them who actually read the book could not come up with one shred of rationale to refute it. As far as I'm concerned it remains so. Of course it is ignored and probably forever will be (in my lifetime) because it destroys so many assumptions about existence.
I guess this explains the origin of the muses. Surely "I" could not be writing this music/story/history since it seems to flow through "me," so it must be a supernatural force exterior to my own brain.
Interesting idea to be sure and I‘m sure that a case could be made for this to be an evolved trait in humans. However, I think drawing the line at the bronze age collapse is arbitrary, and having such traits evolve in a whole tribe or society would probably take a very long time to complete. The historical evidence seems like a „just so“-story. We have to question the veracity of the bronze age collapse itself, as it is a narrative with only very little Egyptian writing to support it and involves societies that seemingly collapsed within more than a hundred years of each other. One could easily construct two or three separate narratives and view these societal declines in isolation, just as we pretty much view the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War in total separation.
I heard about Julian Jaynes from Dr Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetic Therapy & character analysis. Everybody hated both Lowen & Jaynes theories. Mainstream P-docs & especially 1970’s feminists & gays. In the groups I was in for some reason there were a lot of gay women. Character analysis was regarded almost like updated phrenology.
I heard of this book when studying and practicing mysticism/metaphysics and I eventually did have an experience of God and in some ways it was in terms that this book speaks as well as through psychological perspectives, though those where just the readily accessible frameworks I could understand.
I am so incredibly excited that I got to watch this video. It synergizes well with thoughts of my own. I have come to believe that consciousness is a phenomenon emergent entirely from complex linguistic processing. What I mean by that is, I suspect consciousness is a routine run in the brain, one that samples inputs on the current states of various different brain areas at all times and passes their input through the linguistic centers of the brain. These centers compress the information into words and output a description of that mental state (e.g. output "red" or "happiness.") That description can then be sent to memory, where it's maintained both in volatile working memory and long-term memory. It seems to me like this stream of data could be all that consciousness is comprised of. Another good point of synergy with this material is that my interpretation requires complex language processing to predate consciousness, just as Jaynes argues it does. What shocks me is that Jaynes places the timing of the change as near as he does. I am very excited to read this book and see how else it might shift my perspective.
Your point on music I found interesting. Believe it or not there were early church theologians who thought before the fall Adam and Eve spoke to God in song.
On that last point, which I only heard after I posted the comments below, a starting point might be Physiological Effects of Transcendental Meditation, available on sch-hub. There is much more research on this topic out there.
Hi there. I have a question that I'm just interested to hear your opinion on even though this theory is Julian Jaynes' theory and not yours... So firstly, I was aware of the Bicameral Mind Theory, but came across your video after failing to be able to communicate this idea to a friend, we started listening to your video to help me teach this theory to my friend. Anyway, there was something interesting you mentioned, about language and lack of consciousness which, as a student of French for nine years, I can very much relate to what you were saying. For example, in French, yes, I do consciously think, what do I need to do to conjugate this verb into the past tense, for example, because I'm not fluent. In English, obviously I do not. With some more commonly used verbs in French that have more regular conjugational patterning, I also need very little thought or effort in order to use them in any tense or case I would like. My question is this - clearly ancient people often travelled the globe and took the time to become proficient and then eventually fluent in many different languages. For example, in Ephesus in the second century AD, most Jews spoke, Koine Greek as the lingua franca of the area, Hebrew as their native spoken language from home/the synogogue, and then the second standard community language spoken was Aramaic. Now obviously the second century AD is many years after the fall of the Bronze Age, but this was the best example I could think of off the top of my head for an ancient society where multi-language learning and most likely a standard method of learning bilingualism was a regular behavior that people frequently participated in. So, if we go back further to say, you know, people building Gobekli Tempe or Stonehenge or Abraham viewing the burning bush and hearing the voice of God (and supposedly he deals with Philistines, Canaanites, Egyptians and more, so somehow these people at this time were learning to be multi-lingual also) or even fictionally, Odysseus having conversations with people in all the various different lands he goes and visits, obviously these people communicated in many different languages in these historical times... Do you think that they used a form of modern like consciousness when they were learning languages to self-assess everything from pronunciation to conjugation and case, or do you think that they probably must have just learned languages in some sort of immersive methodology in which everything was still just a continuum of how they kind of operated on autopilot and then when they needed to rationalize a decision, they'd hear a voice from a God, versus as from the self. I.e. Instead of hearing in your head, "That guy just cut me off! Fuck that! Time to get a little revenge!" Instead, they would hear something like, "Abraham... Wake up! This is the Lord your God. Your neighbor has cut off your chariot while you travel the road to the Euphrates River. It is my command of you that you protect yourself by seeking revenge on this discourteous fool!" I mean, gosh, it's so weird to think about, but yes, did you have any ideas while contemplating all this on how they could have possibly been learning all these other languages, only without a self observant consciousness of what it was they were learning and doing precisely at the time? It's too bad Jaynes is passed away... I would have liked to have asked him his thoughts on this...
This is pretty centered on ONE area of "civilization". Doesn't really talk about the Indus valley cultures or Pacific islander cultures or Native American cultures... Is this not just another old theory that ignores the ideas and cultures of other civilizations?
Typical modern day analysis: every single human group is not included, therefore, theory is invalid. As for engaging the actual POINTS of the theory: forget about it. You're so hyper-obsessed with inclusion, that your analytic and comprehensive capacity has been impeded. Now, if you wanted, you could take the theory presented in Jaynes' book and apply its points to ANY OF THE HUMAN GROUPS you mentioned up there, and witness for yourself how they might apply. Or you could just keep dismissing things because "MuH rEpReSeNtAtIoN aIn'T cOmPlEtE!"
The book is not about "the ideas and cultures" of any civilization. It is a sketch of a theory of the evolution of consciousness that uses a few civilizations for illustrative purposes. It's a stand-alone accomplishment in the same way the film "The Matrix" is. (It blew our minds, the sequels not so much). Having been introduced to the theory it's the job of others to explore it. If the book is a sketch how much more sketchy is a review like this one. For the ultimate in sketchy here's the book compressed to a single phrase: consciousness as we know it, was the solution nature evolved to solve the serious problem of social collapse being experienced by civilizations whenever their agriculture driven reproductive success generated social complexity beyond the ability of their unconscious minds to manage. Cheers!
I’ve been kicking around the idea for the last couple weeks that quantum computing is similar to divination (ie reading tea leaves or cracks in a turtle shell) Any of you big brains have any thoughts on that?
What about starting out by looking at consciousness as a product of the interaction between complex creature with their environment? Consciousness as a continuum that needs to be approached from an evolutionary biology perspective. For instance - How many characters of consciousness might there be in the animal kingdom? Back to humans, change in awareness between looking at broken rocks and making connections, slowly realizing one could control the way rocks fractured, or later learning to master fire, boat making and sailing off into the unknown, transitioning from hunting gathering to farming, then trade and math, then notation, accounting before language before literature, then creating our gods from our experiences, on to learning how to do law, and political structures, and then learning how to do science - every step requiring a huge leap in consciousness.
Consciousness v. self awareness ? Oh, incidentally Luke, are you familiar with the work of Dr. Mark Solms? The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, etc . CZcams has lots of good Mark Solms talks. Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town
the bi-cameral mind , as nhe is talking about , is still now to be found , in schizophrenia ,(& n, mediumship ,) , & was once a requirement found in people accussed off witchcraft ,
If the purpose of the great transiliation, retrospectively speaking, was to enable civilizations to grow beyond the million member limit then we might expect today to see some signs of another transformation as the crowding pushes us towards Earth's limits. Do I see in cell phones and the internet the nascent elements of a central nervous system that will soon culminate in the awakening of unconscious Gaia?
When people talk about rocks and sticks being conscious, they generally just mean simple non-manifold awareness. Not self awareness, not an internal monologue. Like bicameral awareness, minus the hallucinatory interference from a higher mind.
At time of writing I see ten thumbs up. ? Does that mean Yay! Rubbish or genius. Yay! or Yay! Richard Dawkins said something indecisive. Yay! So I hereby request of all who clicked 'thumb up' please leave a comment containing your vote: Rubbish or Genius. (A few paragraphs explaining yer choice bound to be interesting). I vote: consummate genius. Jaynes' work in conjunction with Darwin, Dawkins, Frazer, Jung and Hofstadter make for a very comfortable sense of knowing what's what.
32:27 Anyone who says that going to University is useless is themselves, showing their ignorance. Not everyone can handle going to a great learning institution. There are So many skills and life lessons and interactions there that builds rigor in a way that only college CAN. It is precious. Anytime I meet someone who says this, I immediately know they are not "conscious" and that they are quite ignorant.
If you have not learned the concept of cause and effect, and your belief system supports it, I can see misinterpreting your own internal thoughts as the voice of God. I don't think that's a structural issue with the brain. It seems to be more of a cultural issue.
Your book helped my dad find your channel. I walked into the living room and wondered how he had become a based unaboomer, but turns out he was just looking for a review on a book he'd read and yours was the only one he'd found. Lol
What book?
@@papasitoman unaboomer is the most funny word i heard this week! thanks man!
I read this book in December of 1987 and it knocked me out. I was so excited about it that I called Julian Jaynes at Princeton. We talked a couple of times and I mailed him my copy of his book to sign. I still have it.
wow, that's like a year before I was born - congrats for not missing the opportunity!
@@yuriythebest Thanks. He had planned on writing a sequel. He told me in 1988 that it was "at least two years away." He died in 1997.
@@bridgebum826 yeah I read about that, it was supposed to contain more proof and stuff.
@@bridgebum826 So what happened to it?
@@pseudoplotinus I still have it. It's sitting on one of my bookshelves.
I think in a smaller portion of the population the bicameral mind still exists as a vestigial cultural structure. I grew up Methodist, and among my parents' friends there were some genuinely very religious people. They would say things like "God told me this" and "I heard Jesus call out to me" in a literal sense, as in they had some sort of spiritual, and after my experience with psychedelics, I agree, hallucinogenic experience. I was always thinking in the back of my head "Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Not even an inkling of it."
What really ties it together for me is my uncle killed himself when I was almost a teen, and my mom of course was distraught. The grieving process was really hard on her with how untimely and traumatic his death was for the family. She said that one time she was in a serious meeting for work and thought of him and as the sadness began to well up, she very clearly heard in his voice "Stop, {first_name}. It's okay." She didn't mean this as in she could imagine him saying this to her to calm her down. She meant this as in she almost looked over her shoulder to see who was there. Now I'm somewhat of a skeptical empiricist, so I don't have any way to confirm or deny her experience was supernatural or merely psychological. However, my own lived experience leads to me to believe this behavior is deeply ingrained as a psychological trait, as when I have had spiritual experiences they have been much more akin to my rational brain perceiving the existence of logos than a perceived manifestation of a person or deity.
My theory is there is a cultural split in Western people's conscious minds even today, and you can roughly apply three main categories to Western people. You have people born and raised with partial bicamerality, where while there's not full separation like with the ancients, they still have moments where a conscious thought really feels to them like it originated outside their mind, such as how they feel about certain large life choices. Then you have your typical modern rationalist, who has no spiritual life to speak of. If they're religious, are religious in an abstract rational sense, much like many of the statesmen of the American Revolution and other deists. I've met many people who go to church for the community and moral teaching, and do believe in God, but don't really believe in God as anything more than a noumenous deity who exists beyond their lived reality. Then finally you have people like me, who I believe started out as rational thinkers with both hemispheres fully integrated psychologically, but then had a spiritual revelation (for me it was a psilocybin trip outdoors in nature, for others it might be a yoga and meditation practice) that has awoken them to a more intuitive and deeper understanding of the way our minds work through a lens that is spiritual, maybe even mystical in nature. My mind remains unicameral, but I've sort of discovered more of where thoughts originate and gotten a little taste of what a bicameral mind likely feels like. As my ego got quieter it was almost like I was seeing my thoughts turn the doorknob whereas before I only discovered them after I heard the door close and they were in the room. The spiritual feeling I would describe as a sense of a world spirit, not as an entity "a spirit", but more of that every living thing is trying to increase and propagate itself, and in doing so, is participating in a much broader system that ultimately links all life. A sort of Spinozist pantheism where the divine interweaves our reality. However, you might say I remain agnostic in that to me this might be a feature not of the universe, but of the human mind's interpretation of it. Understanding the linkages of the natural world on such a deeply spiritual level might be an evolved trait to make us better at living within it, not an understanding of reality as it is. But after that experience, I've been able to tap into that brain space without the use of substances, and it now remains as an "expanded" form of my consciousness.
Ultimately, I think the point I'm trying to make is I think the atheist, deist, pantheist, monotheist, polytheist, etc. debate might have more to do with how our brains learn to form our consciousness (or fail to) than it does actual technical validity. This is subject to cultural teachings as well as lived experience, and might be why so many atheists can have mystical experiences yet remain atheists afterwards. In my life, my cultural upbringing led me more to deism, but after my experiences with hallucinogens, my understanding is more a hybrid of deist and pantheist belief, all with an agnostic detachment that says this is probably more to do with how my brain works than an actual outside reality.
This is a very insightful comment. Listen to the experiences I’ve had.
I was born into religious fundamentalism and i knew it didn’t make sense to me as a child. But then I had an “encounter with God” on MDMA when I was 16 and had the revelation that it was real.
I had 12 years worth of religious experiences but after a lot of traumatic stuff my reality crumbled. I started to here this same voice I always thought was God start explaining it was me.
I got deeply into meditation to sort this stuff out. Weirdness ensured. But slowly I realized God was never speaking to me, it was just a piece of myself I’d wrongly thought was outside myself. Integrating that voice into my consciousness has been difficult but I think it is spoken of in a lot of different terms by a lot of different cultures.
@@macintoshimann9892 What would be the difference at that point? Your comment doesn't go into specifics, but there are certainly general commonalities in description of experience between both users of psychedelics and practitioners of meditation.
I think there's some merit to your theory. I was raised Catholic and would probably fit into the 'partially bicameral' category. Up until about the age of thirty, I would occasionally get a response to something I was praying about or my conscience warning me about something and I would experience it as though the thought was coming from somewhere outside myself. A few months before I turned thirty, I felt one of these responses to something I was praying about, but realized that the response, the thought, had come from me. They had always come from me. I had taken whatever problem or issue I was facing, filtering it through whatever my parents, church, school, etc. had taught me about god, created a response, and imagined that it has come from god. I considered that maybe this was the case for everyone who thought they had a relationship with god, that they were imagining it and not realizing it, and that would explain why there's so much disagreement over religion.
I know some people who very much fit the bicameral model, where it seems that their communication with god is very real to them, and others who seem to completely lack any spiritual connection with the divine.
Experiencing the vestiges of the bicameral system can be a real trip sometimes.
I think I have a similar psychological constitution as yours, and have had similar experiences that led me to similar "conclusions" or working suppositions if you like.
It strikes me that prayer works for many people as a way to prompt the other side of the brain to speak to them, and that sometimes this is literally what they experience. Particularly if the prayer comes at a critical juncture in their lives, which would fit with Jaynes's theory.
And then of course there are DREAMS, in which people, animals, and other entities are literally speaking with you. Dreams have always been an important source of aesthetic and meaningful material for me personally, and it seems to me that for other people this is not necessarily the case. For example, I have heard that some people dream in black-and-white, while my dreams are often achingly, emotionally colorful and immersive, and sometimes have highly suggestive symbolic content. Some people even say they never remember their dreams or "don't dream" at all, which is shocking to me. I have sometimes wondered if my vivid dreams may have something to do with vestigial bicamerality.
IIRC, somewhere in the book Jaynes says that the "voice" one hears may not necessarily sound acoustically like speech, but would have the pulse or cadence of speech that feels the same as when a strongly intimate and authoritative voice speaks to you, but now it is internal. (For example, the way your mother or father sounded to you when you were very young.) I have (rarely) had dreams in which this sort of thing occurred; it was a voice but it didn't sound acoustic, it just seemed to reverberate in my headspace with a buzzing electricity. And the feeling of the voice was similar to the feeling of hypnagogic sleep paralysis episodes I have had, in which you feel a malign presence in the room and voices may also be heard.
It makes sense to me that bicameral voices may have evolved to ingrain and internalize parental voices of authority and guidance, against the time when one's parents are deceased, or one is lost, etc. And that the oldest or most primitive religious practices are heavily concerned with ancestor worship and consulting with one's ancestors, because the parental connection was so important, and these parents can now only be accessed indirectly, in one's own brain.
My dad, who died 40 years ago, read this book when it first came out. I still have his copy and always felt proud of him for going deep into this topic.
my dad aint dead nor into reading these things but damn its a small world he's still living i haven't read this book but the dad thing hit me.
Jaynes’ book and Jung’s “Man and His Symbols” were instrumental in changing my view of the relationship between brain and mind: I used to model the brain as the generator of mind but now I see brain as a receiver of thoughts, much like a radio. From there it seems like the localized self or “I” is a pattern of thought we tune into as isolated individuals while consensus reality is the pattern of thought we tune into collectively.
What does it mean to tune into ? What is the transmitter of thoughts if the brain is the radio ?
It's a gray matter ;p
Perhaps the transmitter is outside consciousness, thus, creating the electrical connections ~
The bicameral mind is a lot like DOS which was the precursor to Windows. Dos still resides underneath Windows. This is why an normal person with consciousness can still hear audible voices in times of great stress or calamity.
The best speech on the bicameral mind that I have heard in 2 years. Thank you for this
>windows
Intriguing analogy, which would make Consciousness simply our 'GUI'?
How ironic this message sent two years ago?
I know this is old, but DOS does not sit under modern Windows. It was the base of Windows 95, 98, and ME. Modern Windows comes from the NT lineage which has always been Windows from top to bottom.
@Right Wing Safety Squad just bring up the c: prompt and DOS is there for administrators. It's how windows was designed. To ride ontop of Windows.
I happened to have just read this about two months before season one of West World… When I found out the theory was a part of the storyline of season one, it was one of the most odd an exciting kind of synchronicities I’ve ever experienced.
@iwonnatube That's pretty funny but yer supposed to add lol at the end.
I just binge watched season 1 again and this time I detected a whole lot more that hinged on or was derived from or related to the theory. (A theory I've found compelling since '79).
Indeed,I couldnt grasp the peculiarity of this "feeeling" WESTWORLD was giving me. Something was pulling me towards,I realize slowly which I believe. I just couldnt help it, it just made me question the essence of mind. Truly entice me to grind the gears of my mind,which I find it oddly satisfying and wanting for more.
@iwonnatube "I didn't see any Trump voters add 'lol' to their ballots". No, but you could hear them reciting , "From hell's heart I stab at thee", virtually speaking.
@iwonnatube It should by now be obvious to everyone that the multinational oligarchs, psychopaths whose lips are to the hilt on Mammon's cock, hoover up the wealth of nations with absolutely no care for the people; the flag draped, crucifix bedecked Trump/FoxNews simply the American tool of their despicable world wide deceit; other nations impoverished in proportion to their belief in magic, so, generally speaking, less.
I read this back in graduate school in '89, as I tried to avoid working on my thesis. It struck me powerfully then as I was grappling with problems of free will, human nature, etc. Today I look back at its crass materialism with a little smile, and chuckle at my naivety.
The idea that human consciousness was not evolved but is a learned behaviour through language. To call it controversial is an understatement.
Thanks Luke. i just got a copy of this book and this was a good reminder to read it again. I first read Jayne's book in 1977, soon after it's initial release. I always considered it brilliant.
Really liked it. Keep 'em coming. I also really liked how you said "I recommend this book FOR READING" as if there could be some confusion about what to do with books.
There are people who buy books only to look smart ;)
Buying a book for flexing on kids.
Fifty + years ago my sister called me up and said she was rearranging her living room and asked if I could loan her some books that had gold, red, and green covers.
It would have taken the bicameral mind to build pyramids with such huge worked stone and soft tools. Like ants build their tunnels and dwelling places without any consciousness. Conscious man would have wanted workers comp and vacation days
Surely, work done by internal compulsion is not slavery.
My view on all of this is the thoughts that appear in our mind were at one time dissociated from the sense of the I. These thoughts were attributed to different characters that were designated a place "above" or "heaven". Words that reference the mind but suggest the higher or outer aspect of mind. These characters were then identified collectively and made into the Greek Gods. You could say that we were once automatons but the mind of nature/god was captured in language/alphabet/symbols and identified as archetypes. We have stolen the language of God and "fallen" to be able to see good from bad, garden of eden. Yes, there is a physical brain explanation through science but there is something more powerful when viewed in the symbolic aspect. That our original sin was to steal the fire of God so as to pear into this reality however divided from the original source that was unified and whole. You could argue that the ancients were closer to the universal mind before we moved away/detached from him and ultimately forgotten about him, confusing this "consciousness" or singularity aspect of self reference with our separate body. We basically are antennas walking around identifying with the higher mind and using it here in the lower realm. Ever seen ancient religious symbols of snake, tree of life, "spark" or fire etc? They spanned throughout all civilizations and those were archetypes of the higher mind that some ancients were able to identify. There was always a fear of language/spelling/words and image that was associated with divinity. That's because the higher mind was slowly extracted and there was fear of that awareness.
Sorry for my ramble, but to conclude, we captured god's mind through metaphor/symbol and image. We were able to identify, compartmentalize and reduce his parts into pieces we call letters that we reconstructed to create a new inner map of our perceptions. This is the divine ability that humans stole in the flame. I believe it was Apollo who stole that flame. We do not generate thought, we receive information we identify as thought, and this information is not always ours. They are interpretations of stimuli, from the body, narrative of the external world or even others' thoughts/information. You can even see the mind behind the words we use. Always watching. This is the stolen one consciousness that we pulled apart to experience and be aware of the light.
This is literally giving me goose bumps.. You're giving me so much to think about! Such a great interpretation! I'm not a religious person, but I feel like I need to reread those books to understand more.
neonpop80 you may like this: czcams.com/video/OJGW2UANWRE/video.html
yes it's all connected. Also the 2 devils that come out of the caves in the land of the Gergesenes.
that was the iceage collaspe bruhhh
Prometheus stole the flame.
im too much of a brainlet to appreciate this
I covered this book in my philosophy thesis 25 years ago. It’s is really “out there”!
Ooooh! I'd love to read it. Is it available on line?
I believe the rhyme in musical notes and repition does put you in a hypnotic state and this is why: Because by repetition there is a non literal experience of a "return to", a type of loop. It is a recreation of the vortex or the reference point of the I. Just how self awareness requires self reflection or to see oneself in relation to something else consciousness has a singularity that everything spins or revolves around and keeps returning to. It is the constant we have we call "I". The I itself is empty and void of form but everything in the experience revolving around the simulacrum space in this "mind/matrix" is only experienced from that central point. Metaphor, symbols, rhyming, can help humans bridge the distance to that singularity "the cave" or the subconscious. You can rhyme with imagery or sound. But the point is a return to source. In its purest form we call universal consciousness from which all experience comes from and from which we all share, there is only one I. It is the keyhole from which we peak through. The universe isn't material based, we're just so far removed from the source and hypnotized by our compartmentalization and boxing or separating. This is the bases of physical reality. The mind's representation of separation to experience through ego.
neonpop80 neonpop80 can you explain a little more about rhyming imagery and sound, and how it can help bridge the subconscious? Can you give some examples possibly? I like where (I think) you're going with this
The Iliad and the Odyssey were not primarily works of literature, but were instead supposed to be performed in front of an audience. The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts may simply be an effective and practical dramatic device, a way of conveying the thoughts of characters to the audience without the character standing there alone, boringly droning on about what was on their mind. I think that is a more convincing explanation than a completely new "theory" about prehistoric consciousness.
Most people, when first confronted by the question, "What is consciousness?" are conscious at the time of asking and respond, "What a stupid question. If you're asking you already know the answer". But being conscious does not automatically imbue one with the knowledge of how consciousness arises. Thus when asked to take an imaginative trip back in time they project faux knowledge onto ancestors of every backward succeeding generation until they arrive at the first living cell. When pushed to proceed into the originative chemistry they experience a faux epiphany and absurdly declare, "Matter itself and the whole universe is conscious".
"The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts" is a pretty sophisticated and imaginative invention to be found in the first two plays ever to become famous. That it is a twenty five hundred year old artistic device is an assumption with no more foundation than the bicameral theory you are futilely resisting. lol.
When do you suppose the concept of 'boring' first entered the human lexicon? How boring life MUST have been without a cell phone!
Indeed most actual scholars of the homeric epics would agree more with you than with Jaynes - Jaynes himself drawing very heavily on the work of Bruno Snell in the 1950s (as far as I can tell Jaynes likes to sell a lot of Snell's thoughts as his own ideas). Snell's work on this matter is titled "the discovery of the mind" (og German "Die Entdeckung des Geistes" and has been disproven many times in the decades since.
@@Thermalsquid360
"You have an embarrassing understanding..."
What I wrote,
"Most people... project faux knowledge... etc."
reflects a theory about just one route that
leads some people to reach panpsychist conclusions.
It seems to me inappropriate for you to allow my reflection
to evoke your feelings of embarrassment and disgust.
"Realization of consciousness as the substrate of reality has absolutely nothing to do with material reductionism"
Why do you assert that they are unrelated?
Are they not both concerned with the nature of 'reality' and
with the meaning of the word 'conscious'?
Being conscious is self evidently a process.
Can any process exist without a substrate?
No.
Can you see the possibility both,
that being conscious is a process going on in a material substrate
and
that being conscious is the substrate of the apprehension of existence
including the existence of the material substrate?
Both, not one or the other.
Process is an abstract notion.
Thus the essence of the being-conscious-process is abstract.
Abstract entities are immaterial.
But without a specific relationship to material existence
abstract entities are nothing, absolute nothing, nothing absolutely.
Modulations of the being-conscious-process are what we call thoughts.
Thoughts are analogical in essence by which I mean
thoughts are 'about' 'things'.
Obviously thoughts are not identical to the 'things' they are about.
Obviously analogies are not identical to the 'things' they analogize.
A representation is not the thing it represents.
Matter, whatever its true nature, is everything that actually exists.
Everything not matter is an abstraction.
Movement, pattern, process, time, analogy, thought, mind and
'consciousness' are examples of abstractions.
We cannot know 'reality' because
minds are made entirely and only of thoughts and
all thoughts are representations.
You may believe representations are reality but
the problems with that are obvious or should be.
Sense organs convert impinging environmental energies
into analogies encoded as neural discharge frequencies.
Analogies and frequencies are abstract entities.
And that's how matter serves as substrate for immaterial thoughts
which themselves then become
the substrate of the being-conscious-process.
We use the word 'self' in place of 'being-conscious-process' because
it means the same and is more efficient.
@@Thermalsquid360
"Consciousness is not process, its substance."
What is substance?
@@Thermalsquid360 "sub·stance
/ˈsəbstəns/
noun: substance; plural noun: substances
1.
a particular kind of matter with uniform properties.
"a steel tube coated with a waxy substance"
2.
the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence."
So looks like we are in agreement.
As a psychiatrist anthropologist I really appreciate your synopsis. This came out when I was in high school. I did not make much sense of it though I did eventually go into those two areas.
researching into schizophrenia this has been very useful
Wow! Fascinating!
I'm sure this sort of thing doesn't get the views your other content does, but I'd love to see more cognitive science vids.
i dont think this theory is wacky at all, it makes a lot of sense to me
Check out the Master and His Emissary, it is a different take on this same idea
I think it's really bad take. Read the rigveda, people in past were very conscious
@@chaos-fb5nk I was not aware that the rigveda was that old (I have now looked it up). Even if not historically true, I think there is still something to be learned from this perspective that you may miss out with if you assume that we are fully conscious at all times and none of our consciousness is a learned behavior
@@pabloarroyo1023 it's just a lot for me to reinterprate, so I'm tempted to reject it out of laziness. But I also think some of the vedic texts show high degrees of conscious awareness, maybe that's sort of esoteric modern consciousness bias. Like how horoscopes seem to fit, when each word is allowed to function extensively. You're right though
@@chaos-fb5nk Consider how nicely a biological bicameral function upgrade actually maps when you consider the Pre-Vedic Indus Valley Civilizations would have been experiencing these same Mythos-birthing voices and emergent consciousness with their own stylings based on their different environment.
On schizophrenia - I once came across an account of an explorer, who spent time with primitive tribes. He noticed that they have schizophrenic woman locked up in a hut. He asked why they locked her and the tribesman said that she hears voices and is possessed by spirits. The explorer asked "don't you all hear voices of the gods all the time and sometimes possessed", and the tribesman said "this is not the same". It means that even bicameral people who hear voices of the guiding spirits can distinguish between normal voices of normal mind and insanity.
Does that mean a newborn child is not conscious and 'develops' it as he ages? I certainly feel my early childhood years were me on some kind of autopilot and suddenly a switch was flipped sometime in teenage and I am now conscious of my decisions.
yeah, me too. I actually REALLY felt like something changed one day, and before that it was like I was in a trance state.
Nah you just don't have memories
I've heard this described as the 'oceanic' state of consciousness. We all start as a blank slate and it usually takes several years for us to develop a sense of duality, individuality, etc. Abstract language/culture is thought to be a major driver in the transition from 'oceanic' to 'ego-driven' states of consciousness.
I have a distinct memory of when I first consciously realized I was an individual human being, self-contained. It hit really hard. I was about 5 years old, playing with my sister next to the lake where we had gone swimming that day. It's very hard to describe and hard to remember the feeling exactly. But I had started pacing around, thinking of my life as a kind of story. And it suddenly hit me that there are all these people in the world, like my dad here, and my sister..."And I'm one of them." I remember I said those words aloud to myself. It felt like a Eureka moment and I was so excited about it. And then I went back to playing with my sister. I'll never forget that day.
Still in the middle of this. Have you heard of Aphantasia? A relatively new subject. People lack an inner monologue and can’t imagine a simple apple (this is a spectrum as some people can imagine but the quality of the image is low). Up to 3% of people have this condition, but to me it seems that there are more people who have this and are just unaware.
I have wondered if I'm mildly aphantasiac. I can't visualize things well, and I've never heard a voice in my head except singers and music. When people say things like, "I read that in Tom Waits' voice" or whatever I can't relate.
It would be fascinating to see Aphantasia broken down by education, sex and culture to see if that impacts it in any way.
Hi Luke. Great presentation on a topic with which I am well familiar. I first read Jaynes' book three years after he wrote it. I would love to discuss his theories in depth - are you still listening here in 2023? A few brief comments off the cuff:
(1) I would not use the term "independent" to describe the way the hemispheres function. They do not now, and did not in bicameral times. Injured brains can be interesting studies when the hemispheres are forced to function independently. Indeed, Jaynes' theories describe the manner in which the hemispheres interact, why they interact that way, and how that interaction generates the phenomenon of consciousness. Incidentally, he describes quite clearly what he means by consciousness in the very first paragraph of his book. Nothing in the rest of the book supersedes that wonderful opening remark.
(2) I would also push back on the notion that the ego is a property or construct of the left hemisphere. Indeed, I think that is a mistake built upon historical ideas as to what consciousness is. Rather, the left hemisphere is rote, and so it is home to the rote behaviors by which we have any such things as personal, characteristic behaviors at all, but the left hemisphere is not the home of the ego per se. The ego is an inhabitant of the mind-space. It is an imagined actor that can operate on and in that mind-space, and by extension upon the external world that mind perceives.
(3) It is no coincidence that Jaynes' theories sound a lot like an episode of Ancient Aliens. The bicameral mind is a down-to-earth alternative to the preposterous theories presented on that show. Of course, that show and Jaynes' theories are both attempts to explain some pretty weird s***. I get that we both prefer Jaynes' explanations.
Thanks for reading (I hope.)
Interesting topic, I'll save this one for a binge.
Covid says it's time to binge. Here is the book...
s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Julian_Jaynes_The_Origin_of_Consciousness.pdf
Could our sense of intuition be us silently contacting our "other half", so to speak?
27:27 Luke weighs in on the "Is water wet?" meme.
Woke my ass up from a dead sleep he did
... which fails as an argument for consciousness being an emergent phenomenon. The wetness of water can be predicted from the behaviour of the molecules that make it up. There is nothing about the behaviour of a brain or any of the levels of organisation below it that predict experience of any kind.
33:40
"I have a white monster energy on my desk"
Luke is Boomer confirmed.
Enlightenment is a rather mundane example of a third example. Creating custom states of consciousness has huge implications. Interesting indeed.
OMG, that explains many things in my life in my mind and in what I see around me
Jaynes' book is pretty speculative, and its argument fails in many ways. He cites the Iliad as his source text, referring to incidents where there are sudden breaks in the action, such as a god or goddess appearing out of nowhere in a way that doesn't fit the narrative. He ignores the possibility that, like pretty much every other ancient text, the Iliad as we receive it is a compendium of different versions, often incoherently spliced together. Secondly, in the Iliad itself, there is the phrase "enthade thumon", "within the heart", to specify when a monologue is internal. If memory serves, I believe he brushed this off as a modern interpolation. But, with Homer, phrases from older phases of the text tend to appear again and again, and "enthade thumon" does appear frequently. Then, he speaks of the Bronze Age collapse as the breaking point, when social structures collapsed and only people who had evolved a bicameral mind survived. Except what he would categorize as pre-bicameral thought - such as gods talking to you - continued to exist for another millennium, as we can see in the Hebrew Prophets. Two millennia if we count Islam. Finally, the Bronze Age was localized to the Eastern Mediterranean. What about East Asia? People there think to themselves, and have seemingly always done so.
I agree that some of the evidence Jaynes cites is not sufficient to explain the theory. I think he is still onto something, and that the Bronze Age Collapse was one of many events that may have jolted people closer and closer to the unicameral minds most modern people have now. Humans have been around for a long time, and doubtless there have been many catastrophic events that contributed to our evolving mentality.
0:42 I as always am Luke Smith.
Have you ever not being Luke Smith, Luke?
No, he said he always is
He must've been someone else before he was born and named Luke Smith and will be someone else after he is Luke Smith. There is nevertheless something eternal within us that lives whether it inhabits a body or not.
occasionally he's been "Pierre Delecto."
Consider make opus files instead of mp3 for freedom and maximum efficiency
He now does
this was great. i look forward to the next one
Excellent podcast, Luke. Have you read Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy? The dionysian and apollonian concepts as portrayed in the book definitely seem bicameral and hallucinogenic
You sound like you're making fun of him, even though you're not. Also, BR?
No, I think an application of these ideas to The Birth of Tragedy would be interesting to see. The Socratic view could be related to the rise of consciousness and the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy could be worth discussing from Jayne's point of view. PT
I was thinking about this after reading about this theory. What if divine instincts are referring to the bicameral mind?
Martim Costa r
@@martimcosta5645 I'd like to see it too. Should we ask Jordan Peterson to be the author? He did such a great job analyzing Pinocchio.
This reminds me of Jung's concept of the modern man
I would say this is pretty much the same as what Carl Jung theorized in his later works.
It’s been ten years since I read this, but I seem to remember Jaynes does mention that the Iliad and Odyssey are only written down after the Bronze Age Collapse which would also be during the Axial Period which recognized some form of profound change in human consciousness and that would greatly effect Jaynes source of evidence assuming these works were Bronze Age even though the events are.
In the Iliad Achilles says, “The god are jealous of us BECAUSE we are mortal.” This statement sounds very post Axial Age and does seem to me to conform to Jaynes’ theory. Did Jaynes have anything to say about the Axial Period revolution in human perspective? This change in just about all literate cultures, seems to place responsibility on the individual. PLEASE COMMENT.
Thank you for a great synopsis. I confess to not having read the book yet although it's on my list but I think that the change identified by Jaynes might simply have been the beginning of the idea of self that may have caught on like any other meme (in the sense in which Dawkins meant it).
The definition of ‘conscious’ used by Jaynes is very particular, as far as I can tell, and refers specifically to what might be called reflexive self-awareness today. Clearly, the ‘pre-conscious’ humans of the Iliad, for example, had a full experience of the world and they had language with which to describe it. However, it seems that two ideas which were absent from their world view were that of the self and of a realm called mind. Mind is just an idea we have about where thoughts exist and it hardly seems to relate to non-humans where the idea of thought doesn’t seem to be in evidence. Brian McVeigh’s idea of interiority might be seen as a further idea arising from ideas of self and mind but it could not be conceived in their absence.
Imagine if you did not have an idea of mind and you heard or saw a thought. How would you understand your experience? Might you reason that the world was full of invisible entities who spoke to you or apparitions that floated before your eyes, or that you had briefly journeyed to some other realm? Isn’t this maybe what happens when children have imaginary friends before they learn to believe that the conversations are taking place inside some imaginary space called their own mind? Also consider that if you heard a disembodied voice speaking to you (a verbal thought) you would expect that others could hear it too. When you discovered that they couldn’t how could you understand what happened unless you considered that the disembodied entity was speaking to you in particular?
To this day, people with schizoid trait experience thoughts which are so vivid to them that they cannot distinguish them from shared experience. However, for most of us mental imagery and verbal thoughts have a more diffuse quality which enables us to identify them as idiosyncratic. We attribute the differences to brain function as Jaynes did but was the necessarily the case in the past?
To this day we don’t really know where thoughts take place but we rationalise it using an idea of mind which we also conflate with the brain because we believe that the mental space is inside our head. However that is just the shared world view we learned from our parents and that we give to our children.
Luke’s suggestion that we have a model for our mental experience is spot on. The idea of mind as a container of thoughts is only an idea. The idea of a self is only an idea. All of our ideas about the world are deployed (extremely quickly) in the post-processing of our experience as a sort of rationalisation. They do not change the experience at all, only the way we understand it and what we think it tells us about the world.
Nowadays there are people who have no internal voice and people that can not visualize anything inside their minds, they are completely functional human beings, in fact they do not realize other people are different than them a lot of the time. There are advantages to their way of thinking. For example grief doesn't affect them as much.
@@victoriap1561 Would you say that's a positive thing? I think no grief is the start of a pure predator mentality, psychopathy, but I don't think psychopathy is a sustainable way to be. It's proven such, psychopaths can't keep relations and if they get found, they get expelled from the community, socially. Even then, psychopaths think.
I think a vacuous mind as such is that of an animal, but even animals feel emotions such as grief. I wonder if blanker minds need excess external stimulation, because I'm sure you'd be absolutely bored with nothing going on upstairs. Notice how a cornerstone of mental health is the internalization and independency of peace.
I had some similar thoughts; though you put them together much better. Thanks for the insightful comment!
Shoutout to Robert Sawyer. I picked up the WWW trilogy expecting silly story about blind girls and monkeys and instead he made me ponder my humanity
The only question that I have after listening to this is whether there is actual biological/evolutionary evidence for this? Because if this theory were true, then we would see that the great apes which are our closest ancestors, would most likely not have this "mediator" part in their brain which facilitates exchange of information between the hemispheres. I guess I'll have to actually read the book to find it out now
Thank you for this, you're voice for this breakdown is great. We have the book but wife is unable to read anymore due to her illness. Do you have part #2 coming?
One can argue whether or not such things as 'philosophical zombies' exist. The argument being that a person can carry out everyday functions just as well without having any accompanying subjective experience. And one can argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies. But a philosophical zombie does not dream (by definition). Dreaming is the one activity that consists almost entirely of consciousness and subjective experience. And the Iliad makes many references to dreams and dreaming. So, it doesn't follow that the human brain had not developed consciousness in the age when the Iliad was conceived.
You cannot "argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies" based on Jaynes' theory. A bicameral consciousness is vastly different from a philosophical zombie's complete lack of consciousness.
Previous comment needs expansion:
Imagine a consciousness like your own but with two differences.
1. No thought in a bicameral mind contains any reference to self. The concept of self is absent from bicameral minds.
2. In moments of stress an auditory directive is heard and automatically obeyed.
Perhaps the change is not a physical one, but the language itself changing the way people relate to themselves and the world.
I would advise that if you are trying to bring publicity to The Bicameral mind argument, then you should cut out the unneeded personal info we spend 10-20 minutes listening to you talk about, smack dab in the middle of the video. But I really do appreciate all your work, and opinions on college and whatnot.
I read this when it was first published and bought copies and gave it to doctors and and psychiatrists that I knew. None could refute it hypothesis and some even considered it a threat. The ideas in the book complete shatter the foundations of religion and religious belief even though that was not the purpose of what Jaynes set out to do. Jaynes also illustrates the power of language. All language is indeed based on metaphor. Our very emotions are rooted in metaphor. It's what is exactly missing in artificial intelligence. Nice explaination.
One can understand it's lack of widespread distribution in a society where the religious majority are quite upset to see the source of their delusions so clearly vivisected.
As an overly conscious person, it seems as though im attracted to consooming media more than the average person because it unlocks that unconscious state way easier for me. Definitely working on cutting back though..
I appreciate the digression from gnu+linux
To be BICAMERAL is to understand the worls in AM and FM- we just know with our right brain-thank you so much
My favorite G nigga!!! Welcome Luke!
To be honest, consciousness is kinda cringe
Imagine how cool would it be to hear the gods
They never existed.
Great job, Luke, thx! Perhaps the best explanation of Jayne's work I've seen yet. Would also be interesting to discuss his theories within the context of Sperry & Gazzaniga's famous 'Split Brain' research.
Mateo yes this would be interesting. Also McGilchrist’s the master and his emissary which picks up on Jaynes work.
When I was young I learned that Egyptions thought the heart controlled the body, or was the source of the mind. I always thought that was a strange thing to presume.
According to some random study that I have no citations for, there are nueral pathways in the heart, just like in the brain
@@hidragon91 There are neurons in the stomach, as well. This is why we feel certain emotions in our gut; our stomach gets a headache.
This is similar to how I've always perceived legends and the world. I don't know if it was taught but certainly my upbringing had some part in it. It comes naturally to me, but that seems to be rare in others. I feel some validation that someone else sees things similarly.
It's a spooky feeling for sure. I know all too well what you mean. It's like we were born with some special perspective, and it's easy to have illusions of grandeur with such a realization. Raised right, as they say, at least when it comes to this.
@@stationorange clearly
@@stationorange whatever you say 😏
@@stationorange nice
@@stationorange the main character is the one who is least free
Conciousness is everything . You use it every moment because we are gods waiting to be ressurected. Some are just not ready to graduate from beyond lower frequencies.
We use consciousness every minute? Then what the hell are you when you pass the freeway exit you needed to take?
Go to college for Music,Art, Philosophy, Science, Mathematics and Religion. Never pay your debts back just go off the grid. Then you'll actually learn something.
I could never get my brain around “The Bicameral Mind.” Hopefully you’ll explain it better than my professor!
I've heard Jayne's preconscious people described as existing in a dreamlike mindset, which kind of makes sense to me. If they had their boundaries between "self" and "other" in different places than we do (one of which being right down the middle of the brain!) then daily life may have had some qualities we would consider dreamlike.
I think I've experienced something like the bicameral mindset in particularly vivid dreams. I can look at something or someone in a dream and wonder internally a question about the person or thing, and as soon as I ask the question I know the answer with absolute certainty. In one instance it included wondering about a person who wasn't in my field of vision. I wondered about him, and we were both suddenly aware of each other's minds. He was a violent criminal, so the dream quickly turned into a nightmare from there ._.
What was interesting about it for this theory, though, was that it didn't feel like a superpower. It felt like a boundary between me and the outside world had dissolved, and everything in the world was as immediately knowable to me as my own conscious thoughts. I guess I was as transparent to the world as it was to me, too, judging by the dream character remotely perceiving me.
I've since wondered if this is how bicameral people who hadn't figured out deception perceived their world.
I wonder what the next advantage of concussion will be
I suspect the 'man' side of the bicameral mind
was very much like yours and mine
except none of 'his' thoughts would exist
in relation to a self or self concept
which in bicameral minds did not exist.
According to the theory,
humanity became conscious after the concept of the self was invented.
This makes sense since
it is my self who is conscious.
I tried to read this when it came out but only got about halfway. Thank you for filling in the rest!
It's pretty far out there but still more believable and more useful than Integrated Information Theory.
This is incredible, I want to read the book
Download it search this book title and file type:pdf
listening to this with the mario 64 file select music in the background
Good panflutes tbh
A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess. "An equation for me has no meaning," he once said, "unless it expresses a thought of God."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
Strange, didn't think I would see that name here
Beast was reading this in Uncanny X-Men 134, in 1980.
terry davis was bicameral
I actually had this notion too upon cross-culture study of mysticism before I even heard of this book existing. I'm just saying it's something that is reasonable to arrive at after enough study
There's a confusion in some people. One thing is Consciousness (a self-experience, in 1st person, a subjective feeling of 'I am') and another is the conscious (related to the Freudian and jungian concepts about subconscious and unconscious).
I cannot know if other people are conscious of themselves (they may be philosophical zombies). I can guess that they could reason similarly. It's even more complex if we acknowledge it's impossible to know how an animal, plant or bacteria see themselves. We could even regard molecules and atoms as having a simple consciousness (a perception of their environment). [Note awareness means perception (a part of Consciousness), being the feeling of our senses, which, by the way, are not five but tens of things that provides information about the exterior to our brain].
Beyond that, it sounds a bit anthropocentric to talk about ancient humans (homo sapiens) being non-conscious, though i suppose it's possible that the conscious-subconscious-and-unconscious have evolved over times. It has sense if that evolution has something to do with a collective unconscious (Jung-Sheldrake) shaping the conscious emergence.
This book changed my thinking for the better. Also Darwin's survival of the fittest.
We tend to overasume too much about how our ancestors perceived themselves and the world around them. A bicameral mind is only possible after the developing of an articulated fonetic language. Likewise, we don't know if before that they made any rational correlation between sex and procreation; because for that you need to know at least how to count and have a concept of time. Probably art, reading and writing; had also very strange effecs on the minds of people, suggesting that a part of someone's spirit could be trapped forever in material form. And probably the after-effects of that still permates much of our understanding of history and society
I read the book when it was first published in 1976. I gave away a dozen copies to psychiatrists, scholars, doctors, smart people and any of them who actually read the book could not come up with one shred of rationale to refute it. As far as I'm concerned it remains so. Of course it is ignored and probably forever will be (in my lifetime) because it destroys so many assumptions about existence.
Looking at the title, I thought this was a black metal album.
I guess this explains the origin of the muses. Surely "I" could not be writing this music/story/history since it seems to flow through "me," so it must be a supernatural force exterior to my own brain.
Interesting idea to be sure and I‘m sure that a case could be made for this to be an evolved trait in humans. However, I think drawing the line at the bronze age collapse is arbitrary, and having such traits evolve in a whole tribe or society would probably take a very long time to complete. The historical evidence seems like a „just so“-story.
We have to question the veracity of the bronze age collapse itself, as it is a narrative with only very little Egyptian writing to support it and involves societies that seemingly collapsed within more than a hundred years of each other. One could easily construct two or three separate narratives and view these societal declines in isolation, just as we pretty much view the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War in total separation.
I enjoyed this video. thanks. (ordering the book now)
Hey thanks. Very interesting. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for this episode. I really enjoyed it, going to read the book.
Also pls do more pods like this really love it might donate
I heard about Julian Jaynes from Dr Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetic Therapy & character analysis. Everybody hated both Lowen & Jaynes theories. Mainstream P-docs & especially 1970’s feminists & gays. In the groups I was in for some reason there were a lot of gay women. Character analysis was regarded almost like updated phrenology.
I heard of this book when studying and practicing mysticism/metaphysics and I eventually did have an experience of God and in some ways it was in terms that this book speaks as well as through psychological perspectives, though those where just the readily accessible frameworks I could understand.
I am so incredibly excited that I got to watch this video. It synergizes well with thoughts of my own. I have come to believe that consciousness is a phenomenon emergent entirely from complex linguistic processing. What I mean by that is, I suspect consciousness is a routine run in the brain, one that samples inputs on the current states of various different brain areas at all times and passes their input through the linguistic centers of the brain. These centers compress the information into words and output a description of that mental state (e.g. output "red" or "happiness.") That description can then be sent to memory, where it's maintained both in volatile working memory and long-term memory. It seems to me like this stream of data could be all that consciousness is comprised of.
Another good point of synergy with this material is that my interpretation requires complex language processing to predate consciousness, just as Jaynes argues it does. What shocks me is that Jaynes places the timing of the change as near as he does. I am very excited to read this book and see how else it might shift my perspective.
I see your comment is marked '1 year ago'.
Have your read it?
Did you find it as interesting as promised?
Please i would like to know
Have you read the book by now?
bro this is just computational theory of mind...
Guys see Westworld season. It's based on this book
Your point on music I found interesting. Believe it or not there were early church theologians who thought before the fall Adam and Eve spoke to God in song.
On that last point, which I only heard after I posted the comments below, a starting point might be Physiological Effects of Transcendental Meditation, available on sch-hub. There is much more research on this topic out there.
This video needs a few more temu commercials...
I only got to 8th minute and I'm already wtf'ing so hard like never before
Hi there. I have a question that I'm just interested to hear your opinion on even though this theory is Julian Jaynes' theory and not yours... So firstly, I was aware of the Bicameral Mind Theory, but came across your video after failing to be able to communicate this idea to a friend, we started listening to your video to help me teach this theory to my friend. Anyway, there was something interesting you mentioned, about language and lack of consciousness which, as a student of French for nine years, I can very much relate to what you were saying. For example, in French, yes, I do consciously think, what do I need to do to conjugate this verb into the past tense, for example, because I'm not fluent. In English, obviously I do not. With some more commonly used verbs in French that have more regular conjugational patterning, I also need very little thought or effort in order to use them in any tense or case I would like. My question is this - clearly ancient people often travelled the globe and took the time to become proficient and then eventually fluent in many different languages. For example, in Ephesus in the second century AD, most Jews spoke, Koine Greek as the lingua franca of the area, Hebrew as their native spoken language from home/the synogogue, and then the second standard community language spoken was Aramaic. Now obviously the second century AD is many years after the fall of the Bronze Age, but this was the best example I could think of off the top of my head for an ancient society where multi-language learning and most likely a standard method of learning bilingualism was a regular behavior that people frequently participated in. So, if we go back further to say, you know, people building Gobekli Tempe or Stonehenge or Abraham viewing the burning bush and hearing the voice of God (and supposedly he deals with Philistines, Canaanites, Egyptians and more, so somehow these people at this time were learning to be multi-lingual also) or even fictionally, Odysseus having conversations with people in all the various different lands he goes and visits, obviously these people communicated in many different languages in these historical times... Do you think that they used a form of modern like consciousness when they were learning languages to self-assess everything from pronunciation to conjugation and case, or do you think that they probably must have just learned languages in some sort of immersive methodology in which everything was still just a continuum of how they kind of operated on autopilot and then when they needed to rationalize a decision, they'd hear a voice from a God, versus as from the self. I.e. Instead of hearing in your head, "That guy just cut me off! Fuck that! Time to get a little revenge!" Instead, they would hear something like, "Abraham... Wake up! This is the Lord your God. Your neighbor has cut off your chariot while you travel the road to the Euphrates River. It is my command of you that you protect yourself by seeking revenge on this discourteous fool!" I mean, gosh, it's so weird to think about, but yes, did you have any ideas while contemplating all this on how they could have possibly been learning all these other languages, only without a self observant consciousness of what it was they were learning and doing precisely at the time? It's too bad Jaynes is passed away... I would have liked to have asked him his thoughts on this...
Gosh dawg girl, learn how to paragraph.
This is pretty centered on ONE area of "civilization". Doesn't really talk about the Indus valley cultures or Pacific islander cultures or Native American cultures... Is this not just another old theory that ignores the ideas and cultures of other civilizations?
Typical modern day analysis: every single human group is not included, therefore, theory is invalid.
As for engaging the actual POINTS of the theory: forget about it. You're so hyper-obsessed with inclusion, that your analytic and comprehensive capacity has been impeded.
Now, if you wanted, you could take the theory presented in Jaynes' book and apply its points to ANY OF THE HUMAN GROUPS you mentioned up there, and witness for yourself how they might apply.
Or you could just keep dismissing things because "MuH rEpReSeNtAtIoN aIn'T cOmPlEtE!"
The book is not about "the ideas and cultures" of any civilization. It is a sketch of a theory of the evolution of consciousness that uses a few civilizations for illustrative purposes. It's a stand-alone accomplishment in the same way the film "The Matrix" is. (It blew our minds, the sequels not so much). Having been introduced to the theory it's the job of others to explore it.
If the book is a sketch how much more sketchy is a review like this one.
For the ultimate in sketchy here's the book compressed to a single phrase: consciousness as we know it, was the solution nature evolved to solve the serious problem of social collapse being experienced by civilizations whenever their agriculture driven reproductive success generated social complexity beyond the ability of their unconscious minds to manage.
Cheers!
Thanks for sharing
I’ve been kicking around the idea for the last couple weeks that quantum computing is similar to divination (ie reading tea leaves or cracks in a turtle shell)
Any of you big brains have any thoughts on that?
Humans were inconscious virgin ubunoobs. Then, they installed Arch and became Chad ricers.
Fascinating, kinda reminds me of Jean Gebser’s structures of consciousness
Is there more videos like this? On this book?
What about starting out by looking at consciousness as a product of the interaction between complex creature with their environment? Consciousness as a continuum that needs to be approached from an evolutionary biology perspective. For instance - How many characters of consciousness might there be in the animal kingdom?
Back to humans, change in awareness between looking at broken rocks and making connections, slowly realizing one could control the way rocks fractured, or later learning to master fire, boat making and sailing off into the unknown, transitioning from hunting gathering to farming, then trade and math, then notation, accounting before language before literature, then creating our gods from our experiences, on to learning how to do law, and political structures, and then learning how to do science - every step requiring a huge leap in consciousness.
Consciousness v. self awareness ? Oh, incidentally Luke, are you familiar with the work of Dr. Mark Solms? The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, etc . CZcams has lots of good Mark Solms talks. Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town
Do you think there is a way to "lose" consciousness, or in other words revert to the bicameral mind through social factors or otherwise?
There are stories of children raised by animals etc. They often act more like animals than humans, i.e. by instinct rather than consious decisions.
the bi-cameral mind , as nhe is talking about , is still now to be found , in schizophrenia ,(& n, mediumship ,) , & was once a requirement found in people accussed off witchcraft ,
Half the world still has some form of bicameralism. Nobody is completely conscious even yet
i,m happy to be bi-cameral, least way,s , like this i have some people who are not insane i can talk with , n who are worthwhile .
start writing in a diary. start recording voice memos, the gods will come back to you :)
Unfortunately, an artificial hivemind, linked in to godlike AI supercomputer(s) will probably be the next stage of human consciousness.
See Neonpop80's comment, it basically used to be this way, but in the future we will get our thoughts from supercomputers, Not from the Gods
If the purpose of the great transiliation, retrospectively speaking, was to enable civilizations to grow beyond the million member limit then we might expect today to see some signs of another transformation as the crowding pushes us towards Earth's limits. Do I see in cell phones and the internet the nascent elements of a central nervous system that will soon culminate in the awakening of unconscious Gaia?
Or are we merely on the verge of entering the Matrix?
My thoughts exactly
When people talk about rocks and sticks being conscious, they generally just mean simple non-manifold awareness. Not self awareness, not an internal monologue. Like bicameral awareness, minus the hallucinatory interference from a higher mind.
Great to see a programmer talk about this theory
The eminent biologist Richard Dawkins once said of Jaynes' hypothesis that it's "either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius.”
At time of writing I see ten thumbs up. ?
Does that mean
Yay! Rubbish or genius. Yay!
or
Yay! Richard Dawkins said something indecisive. Yay!
So I hereby request of all who clicked 'thumb up'
please leave a comment containing your vote: Rubbish or Genius.
(A few paragraphs explaining yer choice bound to be interesting).
I vote: consummate genius.
Jaynes' work in conjunction with Darwin, Dawkins, Frazer, Jung and Hofstadter make for a very comfortable sense of knowing what's what.
Eminent biologist?
Richard Dawkins is regarded as a journalist in the academic circle, he had his moments but he is not an "eminent biologist".
@@Baraa.K.Mohammad I suggest criticizing the statement rather than its source. yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
@@Baraa.K.MohammadWrong. He was a great biologist.
32:27 Anyone who says that going to University is useless is themselves, showing their ignorance. Not everyone can handle going to a great learning institution. There are So many skills and life lessons and interactions there that builds rigor in a way that only college CAN. It is precious. Anytime I meet someone who says this, I immediately know they are not "conscious" and that they are quite ignorant.
Agreed. Opinion has no place here. The irony is strong here…
If you have not learned the concept of cause and effect, and your belief system supports it, I can see misinterpreting your own internal thoughts as the voice of God. I don't think that's a structural issue with the brain. It seems to be more of a cultural issue.
The talking brain, and the writing brain. Two totally different types of language.