The Bicameral Mind, the Voice of God, & the Terrifying Origin of Consciousness | Hacker News Reader

The Bicameral Mind, the Voice of God, & the Terrifying Origin of Consciousness

philosopheasy.com

6 pointsdsego6 comments

> Imagine losing the guiding voices you’d always relied on and suddenly being forced to invent an “I,” a subjective self, to navigate a chaotic world.

I first heard this idea a few days ago. Seems far fetched as a general idea already. The idea that this is also something that suddenly happened to every individual at once is ridiculous.

Indeed, interesting idea, but better seen as a far fetched thought experiment. It seems to capture the attention of hackers however, gets posted here every so often.

The bicameral hypothesis seems impossible to me. Consciousness must precede language, no? The invention and use of the latter is impossible without some theory of mind, which requires first a theory of self. Therefore language cannot be integral to the advent of consciousness.

Like Strauss-Howe "generational theory" or astrology, Jaynes ideas are fun to think about.

I like the idea of a recent history of human evolution where inner voices were not united as a sense of a common self.

I've heard of a science of bi-lateral hemispheric partitioning in cognition, and a science that the conscious intentional self is not a cause of action but a manifestation of awareness over subconscious agency.

Such science seems at least loosely related to Jayne's speculations.

But I have also heard there's no science of such and that Jaynes views are generally regarded as having been debunked.

I personally like the McGilchrist-Jaynes exchange on this topic and I find McGilchrist's idea actually fascinating.

> McGilchrist likely felt compelled to go out of his way to criticize Jaynes’s theory because McGilchrist is arguing for the exact opposite case as Jaynes: that rather than our brain hemispheres being more integrated today than in the distant past, he argues that they are now less integrated, and that our brains have essentially been hijacked by our left hemispheres. Further, according to McGilchrist, this left hemispheric dominance is the cause of most of the ills of Western civilization. For all of these sweeping claims, he presents shockingly little evidence.

https://www.julianjaynes.org/about/about-jaynes-theory/criti...

> left hemispheric dominance is the cause of most of the ills of Western civilization

Marshall McLuhan was influenced by hemispheric science and Jaynes in his observations about cognition and media.

McLuhan never claimed any theories, he "probed" and free associated to develop the idea that the phonetic alphabet and visual (spatial) continuity led to our cultural bias towards discrete, highly linear thought. He speculated that the work of Euclid could not have appeared without the phonetic alphabet.

McLuhan also proposed a brain hemispheric bias of mental adaptation between the Occident and the Orient: that as electronic media (particularly TV and telephone) was inducing a shift of western adaptation towards the East, the phonetic alphabet and mechanical media (printing press / copy machine) were doing the reverse in the East.

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