“There Is Only Awe” – on Julian Jaynes | Hacker News Reader

“There Is Only Awe” – on Julian Jaynes

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61 pointsgwern14 comments

Melting Asphalt has a great little essay series on Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness here: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/series/ It's fairly brief and well worth the read.

In some regards I can certainly see Jayne's theory as correct with regards to the arising of consciousness as a mechanical function between the self and the environment in which the self exists, which results in a symbolic translation that expresses varying degrees of dissonance and harmony.

But there is also a clearly defined conceptual boundary which humans have surpassed, which is the capacity to not merely react to their environment, but to act as an equally dominating force of it. The nature of the reflective mind contained in it's environment; reacting and translating what is observed into what is perceived: it is one of dissonance and harmony, and results in uncontrollable chaos. Man is a function of his environment, instead of defining the environment.

It is the will to exceed one's own expectations, as an creature of nature, and as a consciousness. When we have crafted an entire networked world that begins on a completely conceptual level, I think the question of what we are, and what we have become, and the control we have over that, deserves more than a cursory thought.

It's that looping around the argument that causes it to collapse. I use my mind to explain my mind. The model doesn't fit the current data, only all the data leading up to it.

The book Closure by Hilary Lawson is a heroic effort to resolve the problem of self-reference. He doesn't address all the questions you raise but offers a framework for considering them.

His book is called 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.' It's precisely the maladaptive aspects of bicameralism in the encounters with increasingly complex social environments that Jaynes postulates as the reason for its evolutionary deprecation.

Man is a function of his environment, instead of defining the environment.

Neither of these is true (I realize you are arguing against the first position). We are in constant interaction with our environments, neither simply acted-upon nor possessed of god-like powers of manipulation from whose consequences we are immune. I feel you must not have read Jaynes' book, since he postulated bicameralism at work in tasks such as agricultural planting, which by definition alter the environment. If you haven't read it, then I urge not to rely on the summary explanation that can fit in a blog article or even a longish essay. Jaynes' articulation of his theory is elaborate and discursive, but also rigorous and well-qualified (in terms of acknowledging limitations and the difficulties of falsifiability).

I don't think you can prove that neither is true, but I rarely agree with myself to begin with.

I will not rely on the summary explanation, I can assure you of that.

I wonder if he read Bruno Snell's "The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought." A lot of what's described in the article about the Greeks and the Iliad/Odyssey is akin to Snell's approach. Though Snell didn't use the idea of the bicameral mind he traced the origins of conscious thought through the Greeks very similarly.

He cites it twice, but notes that he and Snell came to quite different conclusions although their lines of inquiry overlap significantly.

I read this book 18 years ago. Definitely interesting and logical take on human behavior. Looks like a revisit of the book has been done. Years ago this crazy self published book series called NeoTech mentioned Jayne's book and some other good titles. I'm embarrassed to have spent cash on NeoTech but pleased I read some of the titles recommended in it.

http://leftinthedark.org.uk/book [0] is a take on Jayne's ideas, going much farther in one particular direction. Supposed to be well backed by references - I didn't try to follow them (the reference style leaves much to be desired, and is on its own a signal of low scientific quality). But it is extremely interesting and thought provoking.

[0] I read the first edition. I don't know how the recent one differs, if at all.

I read that. A lot of the biology is nonsense. (While Jaynes is also unlikely to be true, there it's more that it's a daring idea confined to high-level description and speculation, rather than incoherent gibberish about DNA and fruits.)

If there's anything we've learned as AI moves forward, it's that introspecting about how the human mind works doesn't help much. We're just not wired for enough internal access to look at how our own minds work.

Machine learning is starting to demonstrate that something that starts to look semi-intelligent can be built, using rather simple techniques and enough compute power. Convolutional neural networks don't take much code to implement. They just hammer hard on a simple numerical computation. The amazing thing is that it works.

> We're just not wired for enough internal access to look at how our own minds work.

How can you justify saying this, given we (as a species) are less than 100 years into the exploration of our own minds? At best, you could argue that we do not yet have the vocabulary to argue how our minds work. It's a bit early to suggest we "are not wired" to understand our own cognition.

Well half of those years we've been using additional "wires" (computers) and ramping up dramatically our reliance on our cyborg halves in the pursuit, so I don't think it's crazy to suggest he original pre-cyborg wiring was inadequate to he task.

I remember the book (it's fascinating), end also why I read it: Because of one intriguing phrase I read in a Dawkins or Dawkins/Dennett book that was something like "The most brilliant(ly put)? hypothesis that is probably not true".

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