Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking | Hacker News Reader

Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking

nautil.us

241 pointssamsolomon236 comments

I really like the article author's description of the subconscious:

> Focus is required to learn to put together puzzles or execute a tennis serve or even play the piano. But after a skill is mastered, it recedes below the horizon into the fuzzy world of the unconscious. Thinking about it makes it harder to do.

It makes me think of consciousness like training AI neural networks. Consciousness is akin to training a neural net by testing the result and triggering the reward function accordingly, whereas the subconscious is when you don't bother checking the result, you just "execute" the neural net from the control signal and take whatever result.

I'm sure the analogy breaks down quite heavily, but it works pretty well as a simplification: when you're learning you're constantly providing yourself feedback to try to strengthen the neural pathways that led to a positive result through a reward system ("good, that was the right note", "bad, that was the wrong note"). But presumably once those neural pathways are satisfactorily shaped, trying to use that reward system (ie. "thinking about" what you're doing) could serve to just mess you up. Because you don't want to modify those neural pathways further if they were already "good" to begin with. (Problem is, I don't think you're ever not conscious of whether your piano playing sounds right, so your brain is always going to be mutating those pathways whether you want to or not. But if you're already good at the piano, the less you can think about your playing, the better.)

The Brain is like XXXX technology, where XXXX is: 1) Clockwork (18th century) 2) Factory (19th century) 3) Computer (10th century) 4) Nueral Net (21st century) 5) None of the above! Ding Ding Ding

It would seem to be increasingly similar to each of those things in turn, not "none of the above".

Except a neural network is much like a simulation of neurons. So its not "like a computer," we're using computers to implement a model based roughly on the biological brain. Its an intentional implementation to mimick the brain.

That's a misconception. A neural net is just a mathematical algorithm, not any kind of simulation of the human brain.

I don't see the conflict here. Simulations are mathematical algorithms. The mathematical algorithms of neural networks were devised as a model of what we observed neurons doing and turned out to be quite good at some of the things brains are quite good at.

This is quite an overstatement, the electric potential of a neuron would be most accurately described by some pde, only approximately by the ode's that are usually used. Then it is another bunch of approximation down the line until you arrive at neural networks. It might be the case that certain types of neural networks accurately model the computational essence of what a brain does, but it does so in quite a different way.

The brain is quite literally a neural network (in a more traditional sense of the word "neural"). A biological brain (especially a simple one) could probably be modeled somewhat accurately and with reasonable efficiency by a cyclic NN.

Unless you have religious objections, it's also quite reasonable to call the brain a computer.

But how accurate would the simulation be? Real brains have latencies as well as action potential. I don't think it's obvious how memories are stored, as well.

I have no objections to brain being modeled through a bunch of linear algebra. I'm not sure that we have all the particular interactions required for a full model yet?

A model containing only neurons may be too simplistic - glial cells also seem to modulate cognition in ways that haven't yet been fully elucidated. Then you also have rather more asymmetric synaptic behaviours such as volume transmission, where the neurotransmitter is diffused across a less well-defined area, rather than being kept neatly within a shared synaptic cleft.

>Factory (19th century)

Specifically, a factory with a steam engine, hence the language of internal "drives" and so on.

The 21c part of this analogy should be "the internet," following the principle of us basing our mind-model on the newest technology around at the time.

I always thought it odd to say that our mind is like a computer, when we created computers in the image of our minds.

>I always thought it odd to say that our mind is like a computer, when we created computers in the image of our minds.

Only we didn't do that. We created computers as machines doing arithmetic. In the image of our abacuses would be a better description.

Can an abacus do arithmetic?

Before we had the mechanical implementations, "computer" was a human occupation.

You are arguing against argument by analogy with an analogy.

In any case none of those analogies are entirely wrong, they are just increasingly more accurate. An eighteenth century person couldn't have understood computers, so clockwork is the closest analogy.

I mean no disrespect, but you are making the same argument that those people did :) I think the more general truth is that we humans explain using analogy, and the brain is complex, so we use something else that isn't fully understood by most.

> but you are making the same argument that those people did

of course that person is. GP is saying "each model is a better approximation, but still an approximation" - and you are saying "they all said that, and they were all wrong."

but are they getting _less_ wrong over time?

Technically they're all the same Turing machine analogy. (Recurrent neural nets aren't really Turing complete, but they become Turing complete if you add repeatable state logic.)

It's just that the later analogies include some hint of emergent properties that are missing from the earlier ones.

Is the brain really a Turing machine? I doubt it's the right model, but obviously I have no way to prove this.

But here's a question - if the brain is a symbolic data processor, what exactly does it process? This sounds like it should have an obvious answer, but the more you think about it (ironically...) the less obvious the answer becomes.

>You are arguing against argument by analogy with an analogy

No, he's arguing against a specific argument by analogy with an analogy.

Or rather, he's not even doing that. He's arguing not against "argument by analogy" (in general) or a "specific argument by analogy" (in particular), but against an analogy bare from argument.

I'd imagine playing the piano as an expert is like typing as an expert.

You may think about what you want to do as an end result, but not necessarily how to place your fingers.

I like this analogy. It works with my experience of consciously retraining myself. If you want to change the way you think about or do something, you have to be totally focussed and present, ignoring subconscious messages and doing everything with conscious present focus. It's literally retraining the model of the action in your subconscious. That's brilliant.

I have seen this called "chunking" by folks who study learning http://smile.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra...

Conversely the conscious mind can also make it harder to learn things.

I refer to the "Inner Game of Tennis" by Tim Gallwey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieb1lmm9xHk

As a teacher he tries to distract the conscious mind so learning can take place.

This reminds me too of learning to draw. When I took drawing in college, we had to resist the urge to draw an apple in front of us like stick figure apples. We had a conscious idea of how an apple should look like, and we default to drawing that. Instead, we were to try to forget that it's an apple and see the shape as lines and the shade as gradient. Then, you reproduce the object better, once you learn to not lean on your conscious knowledge of what you're drawing.

In other words, you had to switch off the visual parsing model you already had for day-to-day interactions with aples, and form another, more useful for reproducing its images. One is a 'shapes and stick figures', another is 'spots and gradients'. Still I suspect they have a similar nature.

Interesting video. I'd be interested to see if that learning technique could be compared side-by-side with the same technique without the distractions, to see if the benefits come from distracting your conscious mind, or just from observing and mimicking the real tennis player.

I've been trying to find out how I learn best, and I really think I get the best results from pure repetition and imitation (ie. being shown examples of how things are done, over and over.) It's similar to what we do when we're young (when we can't speak enough language to be properly "taught" anything), which is definitely the time in our lifespan where we absorb and internalize novel information the most.

The supposed drawback to pure-imitation learning is that you don't get the "why" of what you're learning, you're just mimicking what you see. But I think our brains are really good at generalizing stimuli and making meaning on our own (or at least mine is), so if I'm able to just mimic something, I get the best of both worlds: my subconscious is busy mimicking and memorizing what I see, while my conscious mind is distracted by finding "meaning" behind the things I'm mimicking.

I think this can apply for anything from learning a new programming language (just let me read examples until I "get" it) to sports, to musical instruments. I've had piano instructors try to tell me what legato is, but it's so much faster and simpler to just watch a good piano player do it, and I'll just pretend to do it too until it sounds right. Same with any youtube "how to" video. I don't want to hear anybody's explanation, just show me you doing it, and I'll mimic it the best I can. I'll figure out on my own how close my action is to yours.

I wonder if there are any good sites out there that are geared towards this? A how-to site that's focused exclusively on video/text that just simply shows you how to do something, with no accompanying explanation. I know Rosetta Stone works this way, but I think it can work for more than just spoken languages.

Thing is, the limbic reward system can be pretty automatic, too. You're reward system can signal mistakes without conscious input, e.g., cutting yourself while routinely chopping vegetables.

The reward system can be involved consciously but doesn't have to be.

Ancient Hindu monks have pondered on the question of consciousness forever. Ancient Hindu texts elaborate on differences between Self, Consciousness, Experiences, Knowledge. Some of this is intertwined with the Hindu concept of souls. All of Hindu philosophy is based on the concept that Self (pure consciousness) and Brahman (total reality, universe) is the same if we dig deeper and our goal as a human being is to find that union. In Sanskrit, the term itself is similar to "same yet different" - Advaita Vedanta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta)

Lot of spirituality and even if you do not believe in those religious teachings, monks who wrote those texts thousands of years ago were conscious and questioning their consciousness.

And then Buddha arrived on the scene and argued that the Hindu concept of Self (Atman) doesn't even exist. The Buddha argued that no permanent, unchanging, "Self" can be found. All conditioned phenomena are subject to change, and therefore can't be taken to be an unchanging Self.

Instead, the Buddha explains the perceived continuity of the human personality by describing it as composed of five attributes (skandhas) none of which contain a permanent entity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha

The Hindu concept of Self (with a capital S) denotes Brahman. That is different from the more personal self (with a lowercase s) or Atman that the Buddha demolished. At least that is the convention that I've observed in books on Hinduism and Buddhism.

edit: I looked this up and now I'm more confused than when I started. There is a distinction made between the lowercase self and capital Self all right; I'm just not sure I understand the details.

sigh This is one of the problems that comes with trying to map these traditions into our common English vernacular. We end up inventing new words (like capital Self vs lowercase self) or worse (as is often the case in buddhist circles) we borrow terminology from Freud (ego) and reuse it in ways that would have the Austrian neurologist flabbergasted.

I think I can shed a little light on that distinction -- here's how I understand it. No serious formal study here, but a few classes and a lot of reading of Hindu texts under my belt:

The human "Self" -- capital S -- generally refers to Atman. Atman is a "shard" of Brahman. So Self does denote Brahman, but with the tacit understanding that Atman is itself composed of Brahman, like a small patch of a flowing stream. It's not its own separate entity, but rather a piece of the whole that is also representative of the whole (look up "Tat Tvam Asi" for more on this concept).

The self -- lowercase s -- is generally used to refer to the dual self that humans have: Atman and Jiva. The Atman is the Self as we discussed before (but the Self is also the divine, as Krishna claims throughout the Gita). The Jiva, however, is the discrete part of the self -- the ego, all wants/desires, attachments to sense-objects and the physical world. When in casual conversation we discuss ourselves, a Hindu would likely claim that we are in fact discussing the Jiva.

Thanks for the explanation.

In the Sabbasava Sutta of the Pali texts ( http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.002.than.html ), the Buddha says that there are six types of wrong view about the self:

> As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, or the view I have no self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will stay just as it is for eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.

So while it is important to continue to examine things to realize that each thing under examination isn't a self, isn't me, isn't mine, isn't unchanging, isn't eternal, that doesn't mean that there is a doctrine that there is no self. The Buddha explicitly refuses to answer the question of the existence of a self, and says that to hold either of the views "there is a self" or "there is no self" is unskillful, a fetter, an impediment to freedom.

cf "Selves & Not-self: The Buddhist Teaching on Anatta, Thanissaro Bhikkhu" http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selves...

So I just poked briefly through Wikipedia on the dates; your link suggests a time of ~200-300 BC for those writings, the Iliad ~760-710 BC. Given the slow rate of diffusion of ideas at the time, it strikes me as just as likely that even if this idea is true and the Iliad was written by humans with a profoundly different psychology than ours, it was some peculiarity of Greek culture rather than a universal human condition. The spread of consciousness at this time in history can hardly occurred that quickly.

(By no means am I claiming that these areas are entirely isolated from each other, but note the bandwidth of the cultural communication from the travel between them is so low that the net effect is that the various areas of the ancient world were basically unaware of each other. Even if some travelers occasionally made the hikes they didn't amount to much at the civilizational scale.)

And I find it far more parsimonious an explanation that this is just a crazy idea from a too-close reading of a work of literature that thematically chooses to be about "the gods" to imbue the work with mythic power, just the fact our culture has Star Trek does not mean that we have warp drive or that Gene Roddenberry's vision of happy coexistence has been realized. A fun idea, a great idea to build some sci-fi on, but not really a serious idea supported by the totality of the evidence we have from history, in which humans have been musing about the nature of consciousness for basically all of recorded history.

A fun idea, a great idea to build some sci-fi on, but not really a serious idea supported by the totality of the evidence we have from history, in which humans have been musing about the nature of consciousness for basically all of recorded history.

Unfortunately this brings us to a bit of a circular argument, that recorded history began because consciousness began, and vice versa.

I could be wrong on this, as I'm too lazy to fact check, so I will offer these two "factoids" as hearsay for now:

1. I recall that the events described in the Illiad did not take place in Homer's lifetime, but much earlier.

2. The Bahagavad Gita, which is one of the texts the previous poster alluded to, is likewise a tale of events that allegedly unfolded long before its writing (some 5000 years ago allegedly).

>So I just poked briefly through Wikipedia on the dates; your link suggests a time of ~200-300 BC for those writings, the Iliad ~760-710 BC. Given the slow rate of diffusion of ideas at the time, it strikes me as just as likely that even if this idea is true and the Iliad was written by humans with a profoundly different psychology than ours, it was some peculiarity of Greek culture rather than a universal human condition. The spread of consciousness at this time in history can hardly occurred that quickly.

It didn't. The very idea that Ancient Greeks didn't have an inner self-consciouness (as proposed in the book) is invalid (even the article says so).

That said, what ancient civilizations didn't have, and was developed culturally and through time, is the kind of complex self-introspection we have now.

In a way the Ancient Greeks (and other people) were more like James Stewart (straightforward and simple) than Woody Allen or Orson Wells (full of clashing thoughts, ideas about guilt, sin, self-introspection etc). Their inner thoughts they externalized to some degree (which is also the basis behind the book). E.g. guilt was seen as external entities "haunting you" (e.g. "furies" in ancient greek tradegy). Of course in a degree they understood it was coming from them, but they didn't have a fully developed framework to talk and introspect those feelings.

A lof of those ideas only developed fully in the 2.5 centuries since then, and Christianism played some role in that, as did religions like Zen Budhism etc in the East, that re-examined and explored lots of things about the "inner self".

>in the 2.5 centuries since then

That would be "millenia".

So here's my takeaway from the article: concious thought is the evolutionary advantage of being able to modify our own subconscious thoughts. The simple fact that we are aware of our subconscious gives us the profound ability to actually change it - nothing else seems to be able to do this. An earthworm can't suddenly realize that all its day-to-day routines exist in a tangible sense and make an effort to change those. A dog can't do this, apes can't do this. They might exhibit strangely human behaviours sometimes because their subconscious can get quiet advanced, but they still can't change it, they have no control over it. When you think of it in those terms, that our concious thought is just this thin veneer that sits on top of our unconscious thoughts (which might make up more of our day to day choices than we expect), it's kinda creepy. Could we meet someone who seems human in nearly every way, but they have no awareness of their subconscious? Would that person be a concious being?

FWIW, humans usually have a very difficult time changing their habits and routines too. I think if you could observe humans in an unbiased way, you'd rarely see these types of changes. I think it's unfair to assume that chimps and dolphins have no ability to influence their subconscious at all. They might, or they might not, but we certainly don't know for sure.

For an ancient text dealing with the question of self-control and consciousness, look at a point before the story of the first murder in the pentateuch, where God talks to Cain about his state-of-mind before Cain murders Abel:

  Then the Lord said to Cain,
  “Why are you angry?
   Why is your face downcast?
   If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?
   But if you do not do what is right,
     sin is crouching at your door;
     it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

This text was composed into its current long after the mythical-or-real Cain existed, and probably written down only centuries after that. The original composition likely was before the 3K-years-ago dawn-of-consciousness that Jaynes stipulates.

The interesting thing about the passage is:

  * there's still an either-real-or-self-manufactured deity involved
  * Cain struggles in an apparent self-aware way with jealousy and rage
  * he's explicitly aware of the need to modify his perception
  * there's still a "bicameral mind" but it's integrated into consciousness

From either Cain's perspective, the author's perspective, or the ancient reader/hearer's perspective, I think this passage is fascinating.

I'm sure Jaynes would have made the same argument against your example that he did when others told him about examples of consciousness in The Iliad, "they are later additions or mistranslations."

A pretty convenient and unconvincing argument on his part.

What does it even mean to modify a subconscious thought? The notion of a subconscious thought is contradictory.

I am increasingly drawn to the idea that there is no difference between the so called conscious and subconscious mind. It seems more natural for me to think that experience literally is processing millions of tiny things at the same time. The idea is still muddy but the concept of a level of abstraction observing itself seems very compelling to me. Douglas Hofstadter explores this concept in his book "I Am a Strange Loop".

If I offered you bites of savoury meat, and halfway through the meal announced that you were eating my beloved horse (or dog...) would you get nausious?

A visceral reaction caused by cultural programming (e.g. taboos against consuming the flesh of certain animals) is a great example of subconscious thought.

I'm not sure I agree, it seems like more the absence of any thought is replaced by an unpleasant thought. It's not as if our subconscious is constantly churning unbeknownst to us over how the meat that we are eating is non horse meat.

>It's not as if our subconscious is constantly churning unbeknownst to us over how the meat that we are eating is non horse meat.

Actually, that is exactly what your subconscious does. You are literally thinking vocal thoughts to yourself constantly. You could be having a conversation at the dinner table while your subconscious mind vocally (internally) remarks about the colour of someone's tie and the taste of the meat you're eating all at the same time. You don't usually hear these thoughts or realize that you're thinking them. Through meditation anyone can come to hear the actual vocal versions of these subconscious streams of thought.

Psychotropic drugs can help too.

> You don't usually hear these thoughts or realize that you're thinking them.

So we can't sense them, but they exist? Seems questionable to me.

> Through meditation anyone can come to hear the actual vocal versions of these subconscious streams of thought.

Isn't it possible that meditation isn't "unlocking" our subconscious but rather just changing the process by which we think consciously?

A thought is something that is brought about by thinking, and thinking is something that is done consciously. A subconscious thought is a contradiction.

>thinking is something that is done consciously. A subconscious thought is a contradiction.

That is a ridiculous assertion. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22subconscious+t...

the book "slow, fast thinking" explored this concept well thoroughly. It's not myth anymore human has both thought. it seems it's more than an simple abstraction on subconscious, it's almost another brain is watching the animal brain of you.

I believe this effect is the additional cortex layer made us experienced.

I will have to check it out, thanks for the tip!

It's not that I don't think we have a "subconscious thought", it's just that I don't think it's reasonable to call it thought if it's not fully conscious. This is an issue of semantics, not neuroscience.

Read Blindsight by Peter Watts. Also one of the best hard Sci-fi books I've ever read, both for its ideas and writing quality.

What you're saying sounds a lot like the thesis in this paper: "Conscious Thought Is for Facilitating Social and Cultural Interactions: How Mental Simulations Serve the Animal–Culture Interface" http://users.wfu.edu/masicaej/BaumeisterMasicampo2010PsychRe...

What you're describing is the philosophical zombie (as opposed to the flesh-eating kind) and is a widespread conundrum in philosophy of consciousness. I.e., could there be an entity that appeared human to all outsiders, but had no internal experiences?

Bicameralism is no more than a difficult-to-test hypothesis at this point and should not be mistaken for factual. Jaynes' work is basically pure speculation. It happens to be speculation that has piqued the interest of some high-profile scientists, but until there's some hard evidence for or against the idea, it's basically useless.

There's a good amount of information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_%28psychology%29#R...

I don't think anyone anywhere regards it as fact. It's completely speculative, and acknowledged as such in the book. The evidence laid out in the book is narratively compelling but totally circumstantial. For example, the way it so perfectly explains the obsession with physical idols in such a huge and disparate array of cultures around the world is really profound, but of course is no proof at all.

It's just that it's one of the most utterly original and compelling bits of speculation ever written about the mind. It's almost certainly off-base, but I still think it's invaluable reading for anyone interested in consciousness and the mind, if only as an example of how strange a satisfactory explanation may end up being, and as a way of exposing one's own unstated assumptions about consciousness.

Fully agreed! I think Jaynes' book is like a marvelous house of cards. Its foundation is a bit flimsy, but what a fascinating and original read! He certainly knew how to engage the reader, and lot of what he said makes sense, even if I believe he was ultimately wrong.

>so perfectly explains the obsession with physical idols

Those primitives! (clutches cross around neck and looks out window at the towering skyscrapers, all of them flying American flags on the ground level).

Personally, I think the narrative of ancients being that different from us is fairly out there and deep into crackpot territory. Seems to me that a lot of STEM majors haven't read the ancient sources. The idea that Herodotus, Plutarch, or Aurelius had some pre-modern mind is asinine. I can't see how someone who sat down and read The Meditations would walk away with such a conclusion. Jayne's Illiad argument stating that every character has no freewill and playthings of the gods is super weak sauce. Greeks simply weren't that devout in real life, and stuff like he's seeing is a story telling narrative. Not understanding something that simple about the Greeks further discredits him. Imagine if our society and entire conscious structure was judged by the Twilight books.

Even if we step back another couple thousands years, Egypt had a full blown society with professional tradesmen, government, militaries, etc 2500BC. Before that, Mesopotamia had all those things in 3100 BC. The Code of Hammurabi invalidates this guy's thesis pretty easily, although I can imagine him weaseling a more technical and strict definition of "consciousness" to avoid being completely discredited, but at that point this is all useless sophistry.

Also, are we ignoring ancient Hinduism and Buddhism's near obsession with consciousness here?

> perfectly explains

I find geeks seeks out "perfect" and "simple" solutions, which make sense in code, but in the world of history, anthropology, etc are reductionist and wrong. There's also quite a bit of atheistic evangelism here, which I think is why its on HN and not in the dustbin of bad history.

There's no need to be so confrontational about this. Everyone agrees it is speculation; I think we need to have room for people to speculate and discuss speculation without being ridiculed about the fact that it's not fact (which of course everybody already knows).

Herodotus, Plutarch, and Aurelius all lived thousands of years after the period discussed by the book.

And a considerable portion of the book is devoted to exploring the possibility of consciousness being something very different from what we imagine it to be, yes; something not necessarily required for civilization or law. Calling that "useless sophistry" isn't really proof otherwise, it's just dismissing the idea out of hand.

Hinduism is made of a large array of different traditions evolving together over thousands of years. The early texts do not have that "obsession with consciousness" (and this, also, is discussed extensively in the book). Buddhism, also, post-dates his proposed "bicameral" period by millenia.

Nobody thinks this explanation is true, just extremely interesting and worthy of discussion.

>Herodotus, Plutarch, and Aurelius all lived thousands of years after the period discussed by the book.

The article cites him citing the Iliad as evidence of his theory. That's a 1200BC story. Homer lived around 800BC.

Jaynes uses the Odyssey as a post bicameralism work. The Odyssey was written well before any of those people were alive.

Article:

So he decides to read early texts, including The Iliad and The Odyssey, to look for signs of people who aren’t capable of introspection—people who are all sea, no rime. And he believes he sees that in The Iliad. He writes that the characters in The Iliad do not look inward, and they take no independent initiative. They only do what is suggested by the gods.

The Iliad is from 1200BC story, so that means he calling a good chunk of written history and those civilizations (Egypt, early Greece, Mesopotamia) as having this ridiculous pre-modern consciousness.

> So he decides to read early texts, including The Iliad and The Odyssey, to look for signs of people who aren’t capable of introspection—people who are all sea, no rime. And he believes he sees that in The Iliad.

Right, not in the Odyssey. And I've read the book; he specifically contrasts the Iliad with the Odyssey.

>The Iliad is from 1200BC story, so that means he calling a good chunk of written history and those civilizations (Egypt, early Greece, Mesopotamia) as having this ridiculous pre-modern consciousness.

Yes, that is correct. But not the people who you listed.

The article itself criticizes Jaynes' use of The Iliad as an example; he handwaved these criticisms away by saying that "consciousness" was added at a later date. The article is candidly critical of Jaynes and so are all the quoted scientists.

A lot of people here seem to think this article is promoting Jaynes' arguments or hypothesis but it's not. I'm not surprised though, most hacker news posts on controversial topics are usually advocating for or against an idea; the faster you can write off the argument as bunk the more time you save for other worthy content.

This article is a discussion of speculative science, not an argument. How does it contribute and how does it fail? What does it mean that we choose to speculate or apply the scientific method? It gives perspective on how we research questions now and the role of religions and myths in the past.

>I think we need to have room for people to speculate and discuss speculation without being ridiculed about the fact that it's not fact (which of course everybody already knows).

Why? What you're saying amounts to "nobody should ever ridicule anyone else". To be fair, you haven't qualified what kinds of things you want to speculate over, but some ideas are dangerous and their discussion/spread should be avoided/ridiculed/marginalized - e.g. spreading/discussing/propagating the idea that vaccination is harmful to children without applying any scientific rigor.

In general, I would say that you cannot concede that the point you're making is pure speculation and then also be offended at someone dismissing the idea !!! Lots of things are interesting to lots of people and it is normal behavior to dismiss ideas that one does not find interesting - especially given their speculative nature. :-)

The difference is that it's a fact that vaccination is not harmful, while consciousness is more of an open problem.

> I don't think anyone anywhere regards it as fact.

nikendo says:

> It makes me think of consciousness like training AI neural networks. Consciousness is akin to training a neural net by testing the result and triggering the reward function accordingly, whereas the subconscious is when you don't bother checking the result, you just "execute" the neural net from the control signal and take whatever result.

nikendo goes on to admit that the analogy might break down, but then reasserts that it works as a simplification (even as a simplification it is only speculation):

> I'm sure the analogy breaks down quite heavily, but it works pretty well as a simplification:

laserdinosaur says:

> So here's my takeaway from the article: concious thought is the evolutionary advantage of being able to modify our own subconscious thoughts.

Both of these are highly-rated comments on this article, currently more highly-rated than my comment which you're responding to.

To take this one step further, there was an Ask HN thread a few weeks back where many people on Hacker News said that they valued the comments on Hacker News better than the articles, and often didn't even read the articles. Maybe you can argue that nikendo and laserdinosaur just forgot to qualify their statements as speculation and don't actually believe what they said. But how is an HN reader who only reads the comments to know that this is the case? Reading those comments they could only conclude that bicameralism is an accepted scientific theory.

Unscientific ideas can inspire useful and possibly prescient thoughts. To me that was the real subtext of this article.

The people you're quoting clearly read at least part of the article (they quoted or paraphrased it). I think it's fair to assume they thought anyone reading their comments would read them in the context of the article. The article itself is very critical of Jaynes' ideas and almost all the quoted professionals say "yes that's very interesting, but he has no proof and most of it is flat out wrong."

Anyway that's my long way of saying most articles aren't worth reading but this one is.

> The people you're quoting clearly read at least part of the article (they quoted or paraphrased it). I think it's fair to assume they thought anyone reading their comments would read them in the context of the article.

That's true, but it doesn't respond to either of my concerns:

1. Did the commenters gloss over the criticism? Do they understand that the criticism of bicameralism is more scientifically valid than the idea itself?

2. Could an HN reader who didn't read the article gather from the comments that bicameralism is not established scientific fact?

Speculation is not useless! We are at a complete loss, not only at how to explain consciousness, but also at figuring out which direction to move in. As long as we understand that speculation is not fact, it can be useful in helping us pick directions to do scientific research in.

That's actually not true anymore http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/528226/neurosc...

To the general public, this kind of speculation is useless. I'm certainly not going to be doing any exploratory research in this field, so having hypotheses to test isn't useful to me.

Further, there's some danger here. I agree that Jaynes is clear about the speculative nature of his ideas. Jayne and other scientists talking about his work use lots of words like "might", "maybe", "could", "possibly". But you don't have to look far to find people parroting Jaynes' ideas, and often these qualifiers are the first thing to be lost in a game of whisper down the lane. Some people actively dislike these qualifying words, viewing them as "weasel words". Interesting speculation tends to enter the public consciousness as if it were fact. And false "facts" like this inform beliefs, policies, ideologies, even after they are long disproven. In fact, sometimes people who believe these things become scientists to try to prove the hypothesis they already believe.

We have a chance when speculation like this comes up to nip these harmful societal ideas in the bud, to restate the only actual fact that we know, which is that we don't know, and that this speculation shouldn't be propagated and used.

I mostly agree with you, except that I don't see how specifically Jayne's work is wrong or harmful. It is inherently non-scientific and so cannot inform any rational decision we make, and it is important to make sure that people understand that, but beyond that, I don't see any harm in speculating.

> It is inherently non-scientific and so cannot inform any rational decision we make, and it is important to make sure that people understand that...

Yes, but I'm saying people don't understand that.

I find bicameralism interesting. When I was younger and religious I could experience a particularly pious state of mind where the internal monologue became more of a very pronounced internal dialogue. It was as if the primary conscious part of my brain could ask a question and get a linguistic (seeming) response from some other part of the brain.

The internal dialog wasn't smarter or supernatural or anything, but it was interesting. I would like to know if any research has been done to try to induce this state of mind, and then find a location (if one exists) of the internal dialogue using fMRI.

Get a book on Tarot (or the I Ching).

Get a set of cards.

Shuffle, Deal, Look.

Repeat.

Works on my machine!

Thank you for contributing exactly nothing to this thread. Go fuck yourself.

This is actually rather disturbing on multiple levels. Is there any actual basis for this science, or is the guy a crackpot? The article kinda seems vague on it, which makes me think the guy straddles that fine line between insanity and genius.

I mean, I'm sitting here rather terrified that I can't comprehend such a state without saying everyone back then was 100% schizoid (or whatever you'd call this in modern psychological medicine), and could be fixed with a few pills (in theory, anyways).

I know HN frowns on macro memes and all, but http://goo.gl/5FQ0kI, this is the only way I can currently describe my mental state.

It is not disturbing, you are disturbed. Ironic to me and others who do know the subject of this article. Maybe one day you will have the mind to comprehend, but, since you asked, as an example:

"[...] in the case of problem-solving, creative or otherwise, we give our minds the information we need to work through, but we are helpless to force an answer. Instead it comes to us later, in the shower or on a walk. Jaynes told a neighbor that his theory finally gelled while he was watching ice moving on the St. John River. Something that we are not aware of does the work."

Maybe you are trying too hard to grasp a concept that is not really about grasping, but rather about being. Sorry you had to ask your question in such a judgemental tone, though.

> straddles that fine line between insanity and genius

That sounds about right. In any case, I highly recommend reading Jaynes’s book for yourself.

Daniel Dennett: “I think first it is very important to understand Julian Jaynes’ project to see a little bit more about what the whole shape of it is, and delay the barrage of nitpicking objections and criticisms until we have seen what the edifice as a whole is. After all, on the face of it, it is preposterous, and I have found that in talking with other philosophers my main task is to convince them to take it seriously when they are very reluctant to do this. I take it very seriously, [...]” http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-arch...

Richard Dawkins: “either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between.” (in The God Delusion)

etc. (cf. http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-quotes-revi...)

> I can't comprehend such a state without saying everyone back then was 100% schizoid

Sounds more like a problem with “modern” models of consciousness and sanity, rather than a problem with past people. This was recently on Hacker News: http://priceonomics.com/how-culture-affects-hallucinations/

Semi-related, I like this blog post: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-m...

This is where the term 'Neurotypical' can be useful.

Some people with some forms of (what are labelled) 'mental health conditions' protest that it's not a deficiency at all - just a different way of being. Certainly it's easy to sympathise with this for conditions such as high-functioning Asperger's, ADHD and even some manifestations of bi-polar. (Stephen Fry famously said that he wouldn't change this aspect of himself even if he could).

Or that they are inevitable results of mild neurological deficiencies; similar to e.g. dyslexia but more strongly stigmatized.

If you believe that attribution of consciousness to only yourself is a culturally developed feature (which seems plausible given the existence of many mystics who don't seem to do so) then it is very possible that in some people the machinery that is required to do so doesn't work properly resulting in varying degrees of schizophrenia.

On the topic of Aspergers, i found a part of the article interesting.

"As Jaynes saw it, a great deal of what is happening to you right now does not seem to be part of your consciousness until your attention is drawn to it. Could you feel the chair pressing against your back a moment ago? Or do you only feel it now, now that you have asked yourself that question?"

A year or two ago i ran into an article that looked at autism/aspegers as "intense world" syndrome. This in that people with it do no shut out inputs that "neurotypicals" do by reflex.

I think for someone with that the idea of not being aware of the chair is borderline preposterous. It may only be valid when "in the zone", fully engaged and focused on some task, be it programming, gaming, or perhaps a good book.

You are now aware your tongue has weight and you can't find a comfortable place for it in your mouth.

I don't see how your your brain censoring unnecessary sensory information is preposterous. But once its drawn to your attention - it can be hard to stop thinking about it and get it "filtered" again.

What is disturbing, and what state are you referring to?

Jaynes' theory is more aptly described as fringe science, something far from the mainstream but without any of the obvious shortcomings of "crackpottery".

Personally I am a bit surprised by how most people are so dismissive of his theory. We really understand very little about consciousness and the human mind, and there's no archeological evidence that falsifies his theory, rather, it seems to provide support.

> saying everyone back then was 100% schizoid [...], and could be fixed with a few pills (in theory, anyways).

Not in theory and not in practice either. Psychiatry attempts to make symptoms go away, and we understand very little about how it does so. We know about neurotransmitters and genes that are implicated, but we don't have much more than such correlations. I think it's possible that everyone back then was 100% hearing voices and that it was adaptive at the time.

Ancient Sumerians had battle-tactics and formations around 3000 BC.

Which suggest that the soldiers of Bronze-Age Sumeria were _professional_ soldiers. Their Lapis Lazuli mosaics have stood the test of time, and we can see these artifacts 5000 years later.

Sumerians were a society, a true civilization with specialized jobs, training, and technology.

You can't have battle tactics without the "conscious" year long practice with your kinsmen. We may not know what the Acient Sumerian's battle tactics were exactly (those artists weren't exactly... good... at drawing what they saw). But we know that they had formations, and it sorta looked like a Phalanx. (Big Shield + Spear with everyone lined up)

------------

Another obvious "consciousness" bit is the Code of Hammurabi. Dated to 1754 BC (or roughly 4000 years ago), it demonstrates that the ancient Babylonians did in fact have law.

Kind-of-crappy law, but its law nonetheless. The Code of Hammurabi assigned justice to slanderers, thieves and murderers.

> "Another obvious "consciousness" bit is the Code of Hammurabi. Dated to 1754 BC (or roughly 4000 years ago), it demonstrates that the ancient Babylonians did in fact have law."

I recommend you read Jaynes' book, because it specifically addresses this. There is an entire chapter devoted to Hammurabi and his laws. If I remember correctly, he argues quite convincingly that Babylonians were indeed bicameral (surprisingly, in Jaynes' theory you don't need conscience to have laws, and the hallucinated words of your chieftain were the first "laws", which later gave way to the "voices of the gods"). I think according to Jaynes, Babylonia was already stretching it and bicameralism was starting to break down when meeting other civilizations. War is possible and even likely between smallish bicameral cultures; complex trade relations are way more difficult.

Jaynes' definition of "conscience" is quite technical, mind you. To him it's a relatively sparse act of "narrative introspection". I totally buy that you don't need conscience at all for the most part of your life! You don't need conscience to act, or even learn in some cases!

I think Jaynes was a crackpot. But his theory is a fascinating read nonetheless.

Sumerians were a society, a true civilization with specialized jobs, training, and technology.

You can't have battle tactics without the "conscious" year long practice with your kinsmen.

While interesting, this doesn't provide adequate refutation of the idea of late-emerging consciousness. Ants, flocks of birds, and packs of wolves are all capable of cooperative, specialized behavior, and we don't generally think of them as being self-aware.

The observation that conscious mind forms only a thin layer on top of our daily cognition is a fact, more or less I think. The special position that language holds on human neurological activity is a valuable notion.

But the conclusions that are drawn from these on the evolution of the mind are more interesting than useful, IMO.

"and could be fixed with a few pills (in theory, anyways)."

What would you specifically fix if this condition existed? Not all human brains are alike, and many people suffer when their neurological structure does not fit societies norms and are forced to modulate their self just to fit into a square box.

> The special position that language holds on human neurological activity is a valuable notion.

Dunno. Apes seem quite capable of language once offered alternate modes of expression, like picking symbols on boards or screens.

Aren't those findings on apes heavily contested? I know there were a few cases of hoaxes/deluded researchers. Apes are quite capable of something, true, but is it language as we understand it?

You're correct, most linguists agree that what apes are capable of is not language.

I don't think it is a at all a fact that the conscious mind forms a thin layer on top of our daily cognition. We are in position right now where we are explaining behaviors left and right but we have made absolutely zero progress in the scientific study of consciousness. If anything, we are getting closer and closer to showing that we are not conscious. Wouldn't that be an interesting result.

I don't believe it is true. You would see some evidence of it, among the many isolated and recently contacted tribes.

There are lots of people in the Papuan rainforest who only joined civilisation in living memory. So we don't need to guess what life was like "before", we can just ask.

Do we have comprehensive observations on consciousness in recently contacted tribes? I believe we don't have evidence for or against the theory from recently contacted tribes. I read a book about the Piraha tribe and the observation that their simpler language correlates with their simpler world view was quite suggestive.

Try to answer this question: why Qualia exists and do you have it? what proof do we have that you are not a well implemented automata? how can we be sure you are not a philosophical zombie? what proof do we have that you are actually experiencing things inside you?

I don't think it's any wackier than faith in a supernatural creator/messiah/teacher. Most of today's theologists do indeed try to answer the questions posed by those with a more critical mindset, and those answers get pretty wacky, IMO. See [1] and [2].

If ancient civilizations believed in supernatural beings, then it stands to reason that perhaps their idea of a conscience was these beings speaking in their heads. I feel like the only exceptionally strange idea in this article is that humans weren't self-aware until these beings decided to STFU.

My own opinion is that we couldn't have organized into societies without self-awareness. And at some point, someone decided that societies needed rules, "higher purpose" was a bit abstract, so let's create beings to be feared ... and oh, yeah, that little voice in your head telling you not to do bad shit? The gods!

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transignification

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

Try working with the occult for a year. Specifically chaos magic. It focuses on using science to verify and disqualify claims and what can be done, given that your sample size is inherently 1; yourself.

There's something there, that's for sure. Don't believe me? You don't have to. Try it out yourself.

How do one account for placebo in all that? It seems to walk willingly into the traps that double blind testing is set up to avoid.

There really is no good answer to your question. You'd have to go down that path and experience it for yourself. Or you could trust someone else who is sensitive to these things... but you'll be in the same boat.

Or in other words, it's the placebo effect. Bugger, I was hoping it called upon the Golden Lord of Darkness who shines like gold upon the Sea of Chaos, the Lord of Nightmares who made the Four Worlds, and could destroy our entire plane of existence.

Oh, no wait, that's "chaos magic" from an anime series, in which there's actually such a thing as "chaos magic".

To play Devil's advocate for no good reason - the placebo effect can be quite powerful.

Maybe not "Shoggoth make me a sandwich" powerful, but still.

Even if you call "the placebo effect" what we call "magic", what he's trying to tell you is to try it yourself as opposed to just dismiss it based on nowadays views of the occult. You might wonder "Why would I do that? Science has all the answers, everything that is can be observed, therefore magic is bollocks!" and you're completely entitled to think that, but it's my belief that dismissing other world views simply because someone else told you so is kind of naive.

"Chaos magic" and any other type of faith-based system will require you to take that leap in order for it to work (as it did for Alan Moore, as another comment mentioned). If you don't want to because you don't want to embarrass yourself for trying some "wacky voodoo", it's alright, but again, as much as the world is increasingly secular and atheist it's still nice to respect other people's belief systems. What works for you might not work for them and viceversa. There's no need to demean beliefs if they do not affect you in any way and even if they do, I'd go as far as saying to start attacking them when they harm you in profound ways.

If you do try, though, hope it works out for you, it's a nice ride that gives understanding to many things including awareness/consciousness.

Alan Moore (he of Watchmen fame) invokes the Roman god Glycon in ceremonial magic, even though he knows Glycon was exposed as a sock puppet in the second century. Nonetheless, the magic works (for certain values, presumably ones meaningful to Mr Moore, of "works").

Well Moore is a character at best of times.

He certainly is. I like his story of how he's actually met John Constantine, twice. I'm almost jealous of his, erm, idiosyncratic perception of the world.

there are times i wonder if there is something on the water on that island, as there are number of people living there with some "interesting" takes on existence.

It's the tea. It sends us all bonkers in the end.

To me, just thinking philosophically about what you described, it sounds problematic even in your best case wouldn't you agree ? I mean lets say that you do somehow manage to convince your rational scientific mind that "there's something there". Now what ?

Wouldn't you then be stuck in the awkward position of engaging mysterious potentencies which impact your life but who's fundamental operations seem utterly mysterious to you ?

To me, philosophically speaking, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. The analogy that spring to mind is a tourist onboard a nuclear submarine who is jabbing his finger wildly at the controls without knowing what any of the buttons and levers do. I mean it sounds like good fun if thrill seeking is your cup of tea, and I can see how it might be possible to convince yourself there's "something there", but yet it's an inherently risky proposition is it not ?

I don't have any belief in the supernatural, but this suggestion intrigues me. Can you suggest an intro at the level of "Chaos Magic for Dummies"?

My apologies: I just saw your request. You also don't have an email published so I'm not able to send it to you directly.

I would heartily recommend Liber Null and Psychonaut. You may choose to buy it via Amazon, but below is the ebook download (multiple formats).

https://archive.org/details/LiberNullAndThePsychonaut

Please know that most of your change will happen inwards at first. Your goal is to control yourself before anything else. From there, you will learn how to control your environment. And your ethics will be challenged. Many people go crazy with this power, in what we call magus-itis. Read more about it here:

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usks&c=words&id=1083...

How is this useful: You will learn about yourself. You'll learn how to meditate, as well as how to use all 5 of your senses completely. If you wish to stop, stop. Nothing bad happens. Later on, when discussing things that aren't viewed, it does take some belief that they are happening. Things get weird when other people sense your 'hallucinations'. Do they, or do they not exist? I can't tell you. It's your path.

Historical: Many of the older spellcasting books since the 1700's used the name Liber [Something] as to denote it was a craft book. The 1700's through 1900 books were more of demonolatry and satanic worship. Think of them as mainly anti-Christian books of magic. There are other books outside this realm, but if you're interested, you'll find them soon enough.

The bicameral mind sounds a lot like how artificial neural networks work in machine learning. It's basically the "about-ness" problem from the standpoint of psychology, rather than computer science. When does something that can learn and compute become conscious? When can it think about a problem rather than act on training and instinct?

I wish to simplify your question: Is there any actual basis for this?

Or in other framework: I there an experiment that can prove that this theory is wrong? I this theory falsifiable? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

From the article:

> A psychology based on rats in mazes rather than the human mind, Jaynes wrote, was “bad poetry disguised as science.”

Ok, let's forget rats for a moment. Try to apply this to a closer relative: chimps

Does this theory imply that chimps are conscious xor they have gods? (Or chimps are too dumb for any of them?)

Chimps don't have language, so they cannot be used to test this theory.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. I truly enjoyed Jaynes' book, but I think you hit the mark. His theory is not falsifiable, and that's the biggest flaw. I don't think there's a single experiment we could make that could refute it, short of travelling back in time and... and I'm not even sure that would help. How would you check, upon meeting the ancient Greeks, whether they are bicameral? Definitely not by chatting with them, or even dissecting their brains!

I love the book, though. Even if you disagree with the premise, I really recommend you read it. It's an amazing (if inconclusive) thought experiment.

The trouble is that even if Jayne is right, none of the people who experienced life like this still exist. We've contaminated the pool of test subjects, 100%.

This isn't the same as being non-falsifiable, we understand what resources would be required to test it... we just don't have them available.

> How would you check, upon meeting the ancient Greeks, whether they are bicameral?

Interviews. Observation. There would be communication anomalies. Some would no doubt claim these were merely translation errors, but it would become increasingly apparent that explanation was insufficient.

It would probably filter through our preconcpcetions such that they were universally (and profoundly) mentally ill or defective.

The big trouble here is, having met them, we might only have a few years to study them. I suspect that our form of consciousness might be contagious, especially to their younger demographic. So by the time we would almost start understanding it, it would be gone.

> I there an experiment that can prove that this theory is wrong? I this theory falsifiable?

There may be, but it's important to remember that not all experiments can be conducted with live animals in a lab. There are entirely valid, falsifiable, scientific questions that can't be answered that way. For example, "Could T-Rex swim?" You can't get a live T-Rex and toss it in a pool beca use they're extinct.

Instead, you have to do what's called a "natural experiment"[1]. Lab experiments work like this:

1. Make a prediction. 2. Create a situation in a lab that generates new data. 3. See if the prediction predicts the data.

A natural experiment is:

1. Make a prediction. 2. Dig up old but previously unknown data. 3. See if the prediction predicts the data.

For Jayne's hypotheses, you need to unearth things created by early humans and see if ones older than his predicted point in time show bicameralism while newer ones don't.

This is challenging because we just don't discover artifacts with sufficient detail in that way very often. But difficult-to-falsify-because-of-lack-of-evidence does not mean it's not a valid scientific question.

It's entirely scientifically valid to wonder about the mating behavior of prehistoric soft-bodied organisms, but we'll likely not be successful simply because they're poorly preserved in the fossil record.

> Ok, let's forget rats for a moment. Try to apply this to a closer relative: chimps

Chimps are not the same thing as early humans. Experiments on them doesn't tell us any more than experiments on chickens tell us definitive things about dinosaurs.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment

If it were true, pills wouldn't have fixed it... consciousness would be some sort of contagious cultural norm, taught to children and so forth.

Not sure what's disturbing about it. Many times in my life I've met people who seem to be able to say the right things at the right time, but it feels like they're only some sort of clever parrot that recognizes that repeating that phrase is moderately relevant without actually understanding it.

Has that never happened to you?

Not to bag on artists but, sounds like a pretty apt description of the art world.

That's quite reasonable. There's definitely an analytical/technical dimension to art (of whatever kind), but the whimsical/inspirational component is important as well. That's why you hear so much about getting to a 'flow' state where your own consciousness goes into a more passive mode and you become a conduit for the muse. When I'm writing I'm often taken aback by what my characters say or do; I'll sit down and think 'OK, I've realized X went here to look for Y, so Z - you go there and look up Y in order to learn more about X.' Then instead of being sensible Y and Z get into a huge fight and both end up worse off than before.

I don't mean of course that they exist objectively in some parallel dimension or derive their existence from Platonic ideal forms (although either possibility is interesting to consider); certainly they're projections of my self and my knowledge about narrative structure that I cobble together retroactive narratives to explain. But it's not unusual to 'know' more about a character than one can consciously articulate to oneself, in the same way that we can reach out and catch a thrown ball faster than we can articulate the ballistic calculations involved in such a feat. So just as an athlete needs to get into the habit of catching or hitting a ball rather than thinking about its trajectory, as an artist you need to get into the habit of moving your body and whatever artistic tools you employ in a sort of mindless, passive fashion.

If you think about it too much it's either contrived or you get stuck. You know that situation where you watch a movie and everything flows along smoothly, but after you get up and walk around you realize the plot didn't make any sense - things happened at the same sort of pace they do in many good stories, but only because they were organized that way in advance rather than for fundamental reasons of character.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma

I think that also comes from being forced to discuss, express or summarize in words something that comes from an emotional or playful state and, excepting the literary arts, exists largely independent of language.

They've got to say something to sell a piece, or to convince people they had something intellectual to say if that's their goal career-wise, even if it's not their goal in making the art itself.

Roughly 50% of the time in my economics class, listening to my professor. The weird thing is, on things not directly related to the material, he sort of wakes up and turns into a real human. Probably he's just a nice guy and bad teacher, but it's a little unnerving to watch, especially after reading Peter Watts' work.

You speak with yourself inside your brain, right? And show yourself pictures, video and audio files that you stored around in there, commenting on them each time? So how is this any weirder? :-)

> And show yourself pictures, video and audio files that you stored around in there, commenting on them each time?

As best i can tell we don't so much replay a video file as recreate it using random bits of sound and imagery we find strewn about.

This in turn makes witness testimony much less reliable than the weight it is current given in court would suggest.

Consciousness is one of those areas where you probably can't validate scientifically what it really is because it's more than the sum of it's parts.

So instead of thinking about whether it's scientifically validated I think it's helpful to think about it as a perspective and then ask yourself whether thats a more useful perspective on consciousness than the others out there.

I happen to think his views are a better perspective than most others only maybe rivaled by Bateson.

>This is actually rather disturbing on multiple levels. Is there any actual basis for this science, or is the guy a crackpot? The article kinda seems vague on it, which makes me think the guy straddles that fine line between insanity and genius.

Here's what we do know: 1) It's a fact that pre-modern humans didn't just believe in deities but interpreted their world through them. If you were Ancient Greek and feeling love it was because Eros or Aphrodite was causing it. This is true across cultures. Judaism has a saying about how there is an "Angel" behind every blade of grass. The saying is implying that there is an anthropomorphic entity behind every object and action in the world.

2) You see this anthropomorphic interpretation of the world at the pre-operational stage of child development. Toddlers anthropomorphize the world in a similar way which suggests that this way of seeing the world is not socialized but a biological stage most of us go through.

With that said I don't know what a "Bicameral" mind is. People will have different ways to interpret these data points.

Nobody knows; the conjecture is really too big to test, and we don't have reliable markers for a lot of psychiatric problems right now. I came across it some 20 years ago and have read it 8 or 10 times since. I don't believe it, but but I don't disbelieve it either - it's become a permanent part of my mental toolbox.

Yes, it's quite a disorienting read at first, and indeed on subsequent readings.

Unmentioned in the article, but quite possibly the most enjoyable consequence of Jayne's work, is that it provided the back story for Snow Crash [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

As I was reading about bicameralism, I thought "Huh, this sounds like Snow Crash". Guess I was right!

I loved Snow Crash, but Peter Watts' more recent Blindsight is a fascinating and more direct exploration of this theme.

>humans were not fully conscious until about 3,000 years ago, instead relying on a two-part, or bicameral, mind, with one half speaking to the other in the voice of the gods with guidance whenever a difficult situation presented itself

Sounds well nuts to me.

Indeed, I find it hard to believe that unconscious beings would be capable of art and self-reflection.

Have you ever tried to create art through conscious effort? It's ineffective to the point of masochism.

What I meant is, you don't create art if you are not conscious of your existence and of your mind in the first place.

Why? And is religious/burial/ceremonial art "art" in the sense you mean it? Maybe ancient people didn't think they were creating "art". And what beauty we find in it -- and they found it too, I'm sure -- can be quite unconscious! You don't need to be aware of your own mind in that case.

You can create something beautiful out of inner impulses, without "thinking" about it or even intending it. Maybe it is religious awe for someone, and artistic beauty for another, but the end result is the same!

Fish create art on ocean floors, yet these animals are not conscious of their existence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbssnFfTcqI

Oh yes you do. You just think it's magic.

Wasn't ineffective for me. I think the final work would come out nothing like how I want it if I didn't put in conscious effort.

Rereading that statement, it's far too strong. I originally had "purely through conscious effort" but changed it for some reason.

It basically discounts "consciousness" from ancient Bronze-Age civilizations like Sumeria. (Things that happened 5000 years ago around 3000 BC).

Did the bicameral mind ever exist in Polynesia? If it didn't, why not? If it did, then when and how did it disappear? Are Polynesians actually conscious after all? If consciousness is an artifact induced by "cultural development and knowledge about the world", then are people born into deprived circumstances perhaps not as conscious as the rest of us? If consciousness is a psychological development induced by specific linguistic features, then what are those features? Are people capable of consciousness if they can only speak an insufficiently advanced language?

>If consciousness is a psychological development induced by specific linguistic features, then what are those features? Are people capable of consciousness if they can only speak an insufficiently advanced language?

Developmental psychology has alot to say on this topic. For one you need the linguistic structure of "I" and pronouns in general(I/We/It). Pronouns are a universal linguistic structure and represent the ability to shift between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspective. A pretty amazing cognitive ability if you think about it.

If pronouns are a universal linguistic structure, then doesn't that suggest that the cognition that they reference is innate rather than linguistically acquired? How does one determine that consciousness requires the linguistic category, rather than the other way around?

I can see how, in children, the development of consciousness and the meaningful use of pronouns might coincide, and that the two might be conflated in a description of normative developmental psychology.

If one strictly regards consciousness as emerging from language development, however, the suggestion is that a child that was never capable of speech or language comprehension would never actually become conscious.

It also leaves as an open (and rather curious) question whether an adult would continue to be conscious after the onset of any of the more serious categories of aphasia.

I agree. That's just his take on the data.

This is my issue with the theory - it's very euro centric. Somewhere like Papua New Guinea where the millions of highlanders had no contact with the rest of the world until the 1930s just don't fit the theory. Presumably they'd have to be bicameral before and in a very small period of time full conscious - doesn't sound plausible.

Or the various tribes, such as those in the Andaman Islands, who have NEVER been contacted. Do they have no consciousness at all, even now?

It seems possible, but if so one would expect some indirect indications from those Westerners who've written of their experiences with "first" contacts. There probably haven't been many neurologists among them, but one would at least expect a number of linguists, who could have been expected to notice something.

Well, in many instances the primary source material we have for initial Western contacts with ethnic groups in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific refer to them as "primitive savages" or "unthinking brutes," and historically, such peoples were generally regarded as sub-human by many of the Westerners most familiar with them. So if a lack of consciousness on the part of those not previously contacted by Westerners is something that seems possible to you, then these might be the sources of evidence you were looking for.

I've described this to someone as "The most interesting wrong idea I've ever heard".

Just about everything I've read about this book has gotten it wrong in the particulars. Jaynes's is a nuanced argument, with many caveats and exceptions. It may be impossible to do justice to it with a summary.

Anybody interested should just read Part I of the book. Parts II and III are where he starts to run off the rails a bit.

Although not a neuroscientist, my understanding is that a quite a few of his observations in Part I have been reproduced, along with a few of his speculative hypotheses.

In my experience, the main benefit of reading the book was in gaining a more precise definition of consciousness. We tend to have many different things in mind when we talk about consciousness. :-) Jaynes gets very precise about what he means by "consciousness" before he introduces his theory. Within the scope of his narrow definition, I find compelling his argument that consciousness developed after and as a result of language.

Also, for those who are also familiar with and fans of Tim Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis you should note that Gallwey first published a few years before Jaynes.

If you're interested in an (even more) heavily fictionalized version of this sort of thing (specifically a historical transition from following gods' orders to independent conscious thought), it's the primary subject of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

The bicameral mind sounds a lot like an early type of consciousness. I think Jaynes' timelines are off, but it is possible that our consciousness worked differently back in the day. After all, we've seen how much humanity changed after switching to agriculture and farming.

Also "The picture Jaynes paints is that consciousness is only a very thin rime of ice atop a sea of habit, instinct, or some other process that is capable of taking care of much more than we tend to give it credit for"

Isn't this more or less the current theory of what consciousness is?

That it's a small part of the brain, and has little direct control over the brain/body, instead controlling it through indirect means such as habits, reflexes, instincts and other subconscious activities?

I mean, excluding all the "soul" and "God" theories, of course.

> The bicameral mind sounds a lot like an early type of consciousness. I think Jaynes' timelines are off, but it is possible that our consciousness worked differently back in the day.

I agree, I see no reason that consciousness wouldn't follow evolutionary processes over time.

I think one thing one must be careful off is to think everyone woke up one day and was conscious.

It may well be that early writers etc was first on the scene so to speak, perhaps standing one leg in each group for quite some time.

It could very well be that what made Buddha special is for everyone today, but be do not recognize it because it is so common and we don't expend effort to reach it.

The majority of people in this day and age are still not conscious most of the time (if you consider consciousness as self awareness or awareness that one is conscious).

Generally people act out of habit, conditioning, or mechanical stimulus/response. This lack of actual consciousness is the cause of many tragedies, accidents, cruel behaviors and downright stupid decisions.

Maybe the evolution of consciousness is just getting started. I hope anyway.

hahahaha

agreed

I'd say the lack of actual consciousness is something we aspire too - we want to get in the zone for that game or for the work task - we want to perform automatically where time flies by. We want to be untroubled by conscious thought which causes worry and fear and escape via entertainment, or yoga, or sex etc.

Richard Dawkins about "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind": "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets." Whoa !

Also, used as the premise to Neal Stephenson's early novel "The Big U" and part of the plot for "Snow Crash."

And the excellent "Wake, watch, wonder"-trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer.

Here is an interesting thought experiment that came to me: some persons live with only half a brain, for example after a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy. And they can sometimes still execute actions that the missing hemisphere was normally responsible for, like speech or motor control, because the other hemisphere learns how to do it due to plasticity. What if we had the medical ability to take the hemisphere that is removed from person A and to transplant it into another person, B? Would the consciousness of the original person now be 2 independently functioning consciousnesses, A and B? Would your memories be split, eg. person A remembering half of your life, and person B remembering the other half? Would A and B feel they have the same consciousness? Could we go further and split a brain in 4? Would splitting a brain more and more progressively degrade the quality/complexity of consciousness? If so what is the smallest part of the brain that can still be capable of self-awareness, introspection, etc?

So many questions...

On an unrelated note, I have a crazy idea, but bear with me for a second:

A central point of the New Testament is that the "Holy Spirit" was given to men when Jesus died. Could the "Holy Spirit" be a term used by people to describe what it felt like to have consciousness appear in their mind? Jaynes says consciousness appeared ~3000 years ago, but if he is right, if society caused consciousness to appear, then it did so at different points in time for different societies, because each society develops at a different pace. So it could be that to the people living around Jerusalem consciousness appeared 2000, not 3000, years ago.

One of the most interesting books I have ever read. If nothing else it helped me change perspective on how I think about consciousness.

Or maybe gods providing directions was the narrative structure of the time.

I do like the idea that consciousness is learned and that it replaced a less effective system, if only because it allows us to imagine a system better beyond what we have now...

Reading that brings to mind Peter Watts' Blindsight.

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Watts seems to have a real obsession with consciousness.

Peter Watts is certainly aware of Julian Jaynes work http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=104 and the sequal to Blindsight seems to be more specifically about this: http://www.rifters.com/echopraxia/enemywithin.htm which has probably generated interest in Julian Jaynes and so I suspect Echopraxia is partially responsible for the commissioning of the submitted article.

Seems he gave up on reading it after some pages (if that).

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=104#comment-1346

It was a kook idea then and is still one now. No scientific support, just conjecture.

If you're interested in a more rigorous analysis of what is known about consciousness today, I'd recommend the book Consciousness and the Brain: http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-...

This is very interesting, in large part for the reason the author of the article mentions -- it's not the sort of thing most of us think about very often. And when we do, we usually leave off having no more insight than when we started.

Anyway, I've seen some other comments here wondering about how "consciousness as an evolutionary adaptation" could have spread so rapidly, or going so far as to suggest that they've met people who were (to paraphrase) "less evolved".

I wonder if rather than it having been an evolutionary process, consciousness may have been meme-like in its' spread. That is, perhaps humans had the brains required to handle consciousness for many generations before it really sprang up, and when it did, it occurred because of the spreading of the idea of consciousness, and not some particular set of genes.

Despite its non-falsifiablity, Jaynes will still be read when every hopelessly vapid and uninspired fMRI 'breakthrough' is long forgotten. Modern neuroscience assumes the brain is like a computer and proceeds from there, failing to see that that itself is a hypothesis.

I don't think any modern neuroscientist "fails to see" that modeling the brain as a computer is a hypothesis. Many wouldn't even subscribe to that theory, and those who do undoubtedly treat it as a working model.

Well, there is no proof of Consciousness as Epiphenomenon that's why Panpsiquism is gaining traction. If Consciousness is not Computation, then we need a better framework.

http://youtu.be/hTIk9MN3T6w

The classical argument against an immaterial soul is that something material CAN NOT interact with something material. BUT, we don't know what matter is. Attributing properties of supposedly immaterial substances to material substances is just as bad. One has to account for why matter has those properties, that is, the contingency of the fact that electrons are capable of posting cat pictures on the on the internet.

I believe that the contingency of the matter itself points to intelligence, thus consciousness, metaphisically prior to matter. But this comment box is not sufficient for me to prove this novel statement of mine, made for the first time in history.

do you have a blog? are you theist?

I don't quite follow where the contingency comes from. In fact, most scientists seem to subscribe to naturalism which posits that the world is fully deterministic. Also, in case you're not being facetious, these are pretty long running debates so you're probably not the first in history to claim something like that.

"probably not the first in history to claim something like that"

Certainly not. The idea that consciousness preceded matter and exists independently of matter is a central tenant of many religions. It's a view I don't agree with but that's beside the point.

Hah, hope you're being sarcastic. Consciousness/thought existing prior to matter is the foundation of most ancient philosophy.

In fact, it's only become increasingly fashionable in the last couple centuries to posit matter as a "root-level" metaphysical construct (or actually, to make the claim that there is no metaphysics, just physics.)

The interactionist problem was solved by Berkeley when he proved, without refutation, that matter is the fiction while mind is the obvious empirical fact.

Quantum mechanics came along and re-confirmed what he already proved.

"Matter"--something solid, mechanical, deterministic--is nothing but an ancient Greek myth. There is nothing in nature that has the properties of matter, therefore nothing is matter, therefore matter doesn't exist.

Quantum randomness is not deterministic. Bosons refute materialism. The wave-function itself refutes materialism.

Materialism is an ancient greek faith-based religion. Berkeley killed it a long time ago but people were so shocked they still haven't accepted that their God is Dead.

Nonsense.

Anyone who believes the state of consciousness exists independent of matter should put their theory to test with a bottle of vodka.

It's not that consciousness exists independent of matter, it is that what materialists keep calling matter... does... not... exist...

Matter just doesn't exist. In what way is the quantum wavefunction material? It's not deterministic, it's random. It's not solid, you can have two bosons in the same place at once. It doesn't have precise position or momentum but exists as a kind of smudge. It doesn't even move through time in the way that matter is defined as moving.

"Matter" has mass, yet photons don't even have mass. Massless particles take up no space. Matter takes up space. Therefore massless particles are not matter. Massless particles underpin all of reality, yet people want to say reality is made up of matter.

Wavefunctions are not matter. Photons are not matter. Electrons are not matter--they behave like waves and the properties of waves are incompatible with matter.

So where is this matter? It's just a fiction. Berkeley already called it in 1830. There is no way you can be an empiricist materialist these days, without being ignorant.

This is so confused and ignorant of modern physics. Yet matter has precise definition in physics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter

Of course physical fields or bosons aren't matter, no one said they were (this is a strawman, if I ever saw one). By the way, electrons do have mass and charge and occupy space (i.e. have volume).

You can't resolve the interactionist problem by just fuzzing the definition of matter.

Materialism is the philosophy that all things are matter.

Quantum physics refutes the philosophy of materialism because it's incompatible with the philosophy of materialism.

If photons are not matter, then something is not matter, and if something is not matter, then materialism is wrong.

From that Wikipedia page:

'there is no single universally agreed scientific meaning of the word "matter". Scientifically, the term "mass" is well-defined, but "matter" is not. Sometimes in the field of physics "matter" is simply equated with particles that exhibit rest mass (i.e., that cannot travel at the speed of light), such as quarks and leptons. However, in both physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality.'

Modern physics does not actually define matter. Matter was once synonymous with mass, but redefining mass to include properties that are incompatible with matter/materialism does not bolster matter/materialism's existence.

If mass is defined in such a way that it is incompatible with matter, then either mass or matter have lost their meaning. In fact, it is the word "mass" that has lost its meaning, while the word "matter" has been dropped by science.

It's not me that is confused, it is the materialists who are confused.

Quantum physicists and popularizers of science go around claiming to be materialists when quantum physics is completely incompatible with materialism and nothing in quantum physics behaves like matter. Feynman 'sum over histories' applies to all things, both macro and micro, and anything that behaves in that way is incompatible with the properties of matter. Since all things behave like quantum wave-particles, all things have properties that are incompatible with the properties of matter. If all things have properties that are incompatible with the necessary properties of matter, then no things can have sufficient properties for those things to be matter. If no things can have the properties of matter, then no things can be matter. If no things can be matter, then no things are matter. If no things are matter, then matter doesn't exist. If matter doesn't exist, then materialism is wholly refuted.

The logic against materialism is bullet proof from every angle. People just keep it up out of inertia.

I think you are getting to hang up on technicalities of definition of matter.

Is your thesis that there are things that are non-physical? If so what evidence is there for that thesis?

The technicalities are the entire point!

If the fundamental nature of reality can't be analyzed technically, what can be?

The evidence that things are non-physical is quantum physics experiments showing that the fundamental components of existence lack the properties of physical things.

The two slit experiment shows that photons behave in non-physical ways.

The indeterministic wave function shows that reality does not depend on strict physical laws but on randomness, and randomness is not mechanisitic. Materialism is based on mechanics but quantum strangeness violates mechanics, therefore mechanics is empirically wrong.

The Schrodinger's cat situation shows that reality is dependent on observers--but matter is said to exist without regard to observers at all. The physical moon still exists when you aren't looking at it. The Schrodinger's moon does not--just as Berkeley claimed in 1713.

Bosons show that two objects can take up the same space at the same time.... but physical things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. This is like saying that you can drive a bulldozer into a house but the bulldozer and house don't have to destroy each other, that they have the option of happily occupying the same space. The materialism hypothesis would say this is impossible. "Physical" things do not behave like bosons, therefore bosons aren't physical things.

The evidence that the materialism hypothesis is wrong is quantum physics, where things don't behave in the ways that the materialism hypothesis claims they should. Therefore the materialism hypothesis has been falsified and refuted and is wrong.

Entire quantum physics is a mathematical model of physical things by definition. Quantum wave function is a physical object as are all the other fundamental fields we know about. Photons behave in very physical ways, just not in classical ways like you would expect them based on experience with macroscopic objects we face every day. Likewise, bosons are physical objects that have physical and measurable/observable properties (but they don't have volume) etc.

So now you are getting a bit confused here.

>Entire quantum physics is a mathematical model of physical things by definition.

Quantum physics doesn't follow from definition, it follows from experiment. You are confusing a priori statements with a posteriori statements.

>Photons behave in very physical ways, just not in classical ways

What are "physical ways"? What are the properties of "physical ways"? When confronted with a hypothetical 'way', how can we know if that 'way' is physical or non-physical?

The answer is that physicists assume that all existents are physical and then conclude, based on that assumption, that materialism is correct. This is circular logic because materialism is simply the doctrine that everything is physical. So all they have done is assume that materialism is correct and then conclude that, because materialism is correct, materialism is correct.

In order to argue that materialism is correct you first have to define what materialism is, and what it is not. Is the materialism hypothesis even falsifiable? Or is it the kind of hypothesis that changes as soon as it is refuted?

Actually quantum mechanics can be formalized and derived entirely from a few simple and reasonable axioms (that allow for negative probabilities), but yes historically quantum mechanics has been developed through empirical experiments. After all physics is (empirical) science unlike mathematics.

What I meant to convey was that all elements of the theory like quantum wave function, elementary particles (bosons, fermions etc), are elements of that physical model and hence real in that model by definition. It kind of makes no sense to talk about model independent reality, as quantum mechanics so nicely demonstrates.

This is why your statement that bosons are not physical is nonsensical.

In any case most real scientists are entirely open to new evidence of what you would call non-physical things (historically these were usually spirits, souls, demons, gods etc), but historically no convincing evidence has ever been provided for these. On the contrary each time mysterious phenomena turned out to be completely physical and explainable within normal physical framework, and in other cases clearly dreamed up.

It really isn't correct to say materialism or science is doctrinal. After it is not required to believe everything has to be material or explainable within our current framework (it would be akin to saying we already know everything).

However, opposite of materialism is dogmatically imposed in a lot of religions. It is a tenet of Catholic Church for example that materialism can not be true since souls and spirits must exist. This is not open for debate you must accept this to be a catholic. Just so we understand distinction between dogmatism and experience that everything we ever encountered so far has turned out to be physical. I will take evidence over dogma any day.

Well science has to be technically precise so fuzzying definitions doesn't exactly make a point.

I don't think that there are non-physical things, but I'm sure the are lots of non-material things: time, space, a magnetic field, gravity ... many things and I wouldn't discard Consciousness as one of them.

You're repeating a classic human error.

    1. Hmm, there seems to be a phenomenon here. Let's call it X.
    2. Hmm, I think I must be caused by Y.
    3. Ah, here's some proof that Y is not the cause of X.
    4. X DOESN'T EXIST!

I do not understand the appeal of the argument, it's completely illogical, but it's very popular. But, what you proved is that your old conception of matter is wrong. You have not proved that there is no such thing as matter. The rational answer is to update your understanding of X and move on, not get stuck on your first thought and never move on ever again.

Still, you are in good company. This is a staggeringly common logic failure in the philosophical arena.

What I call matter does exist, to within the limits of our observation... you see, I've updated my understanding in the light of the evidence. So all the arguments you have marshaled against the old definition don't affect me at all, and trying to convince me that I really mean some other definition so that you can salvage your arguments is a waste of time. I tell you what my definitions are, not the other way around. Update your arguments, which, in this case, probably consists of discarding them.

>I tell you what my definitions are, not the other way around. Update your arguments, which, in this case, probably consists of discarding them.

I've never spoken to you in my life.

The definition of materialism has been established since 450 BC. It has nothing to do with you.

You can't say that 1=0 just because you define it that way. You have to actually prove that they're the same.

Using your tactic I can prove unicorns exist by redefining unicorns to not have horns. Under my new definition of unicorns, unicorns exist, and I'm going to go around shouting from the rooftop that unicorns exist and I've proved they exist. Anyone who tells me that unicorns don't exist is guilty of failing to recognize my private definition of unicorns. But this argument is absurd, just as your argument that matter exists because you have redefined matter in a new way that is incompatible with the previous definition of matter is absurd.

If your new definition of matter is incompatible with your old definition of matter, then why are you using the same word? It's not matter. It's something else. So use a new word. It's not a unicorn, it's a horse--something that has already been claimed to exist by the philosophers of horses.

You can't say that you've refuted the philosophy of horses and proved that only unicorns exist by redefining unicorns to not have any horns and then pointing at horses as proof of your unicorn theory. This is how crazy materialists sound. Completely illogical.

Materialists in 2015 are going to barns and pointing at horses to prove that unicorns exist, because they've redefined unicorns to now be without a horn. It would be funny if it wasn't so popular.

Berkeley didn't refute Jerf-Materialism. I was arguing against normal materialism, which holds that all things are matter, and that matter is a deterministic, solid, stable, extended substance that has mass, takes up space, is made up of smaller bits of matter, has an exclusion principle with the space that it takes up, interacts with neighboring matter through contact, and so on. This is still what most people think of as matter. Even the people who discovered the empirical evidence that refutes the existence of matter still claim to believe in matter, it's just odd.

Guess what guys! If it doesn't walk like a duck, doesn't talk like a duck, doesn't quack like a duck... it's NOT a duck!

And your private language is not relevant to this discussion.

"And your private language is not relevant to this discussion."

Since you've been trying to claim the right to define matter for all of us, and then philosophically force conclusions based on those definitions down our throats over our objections about how those aren't our definitions, it rather is.

Tu quoque. Your post is its own refutation. You can't insist on being the only person allowed to play definition games, and that everyone else is doing it wrong if they try because you know the definitions they are secretly using... or, rather, you can, but don't expect me to take you seriously as a result. Your thinking here is so solipsistic you appear to be just barely aware that there are other opinions, but you are not capable of engaging with them, only shouting at them to "shut up!" and then get back to the point you're trying to make regardless.

I'm not solipsistic at all... I'm using the socially established definition. I'm engaging in the 2500 year old tradition and usage of the word. I'm using the word in the same way it was used by Thales, Democritus, Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Locke, and all scientists before the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, and most scientists still today.

I'm using the word in the same way that most non-physicists still use it--where for instance biologists in crafting their theories assume that lifeforms obey classical materialist principles despite the findings of quantum physics that those principles are wrong.

You can't claim that I invented the definition of materialism anymore than you can claim that I invented 1+1=2.

I'm not the parent but I'll stop considering myself a "materialist" then. I'm not wedded to the term. What should I call myself? A physicalist?

I'll try to describe the position that I (and I think most of the people you're debating with here) hold, without leaving too many terms undefined.

There exist reliably measurable external, non-mental, things. Ok, the physicalist says, consciousness does not arise from little material billiard balls bumping into one another. We have a more complex picture now of the composition of the external world, and so consciousness arises from that. This position does not rely on determinism; it can comfortably coexist with the kind of structured randomness seen in quantum physics.

It also doesn't logically exclude dualism, but as far as we know, only permits a kind of one-way dualism where some conscious substance exists as a consequent but not a cause of physical processes. Put another way, I don't believe we have discovered anything about the external world that requires the kind of explanation that consciousness can provide.

I understand your annoyance – I feel the same way about people who say they aren't "atheist", then go on to describe their textbook atheist beliefs. Though I end up doing it more than I'd like, it doesn't help to reprimand those people for what I see as a misuse of words, any more than you calling people "completely illogical" helps here. Arriving at different conclusions based on different definitions of terms is entirely logical. It's more constructive to find common ground in what people mean than to argue about definitions.

Most human beings don't consider themselves logical. 80%+ of people consider their most meaningful and important beliefs to be faith based.

So I have no problem with those people claiming to believe in matter. It's the materialists who also claim to be rational that make no sense.

It's nice that you aren't wedded to the ancient and refuted superstition that is tied to the word "materialism". But you are mistaken if you think your peers aren't... most self-proclaimed materialists, if asked to describe their beliefs, will describe them inline with the classic Newtonian or Cartesian formulation of matter. They will say the world is deterministic, stable, extended, takes up space, etc.

Most self-proclaimed atheists claim to be materialists and profess a belief in this old type of materialism. Very few of them will say they aren't wedded to the word like you do. I completely respect your rejection of the word--it shows me that you are a logical person who has developed a more sophisticated worldview than the simple materialism that most non-theists still claim is true.

Physicalism grew out of materialism with the success of the physical sciences in explaining observed phenomena. The terms are often used interchangeably, although they are sometimes distinguished.

> most self-proclaimed materialists, if asked to describe their beliefs, will describe them inline with the classic Newtonian or Cartesian formulation of matter.

I suspect many self-proclaimed materialists might do that, but more likely in an imprecise expression of vague support for a scientific worldview that they haven't learned or thought about too much than in an active rejection of established principles of quantum physics.

I'm just the same; I don't pretend to have a deep and detailed understanding of quantum physics, but I accept it as true because I believe at least that an internally consistent external world exists and a global conspiracy of physicists doesn't. If you quizzed me, at some level of detail I'd have to start guessing. My incorrect guesses shouldn't be mistaken for intentional rejection of established theories.

>because I believe at least that an internally consistent external world exists and a global conspiracy of physicists doesn't.

The assertion that the world must be internally consistent is quintessential rationalism, not materialism or empiricism at all. Science's core value is empiricism, NOT rationalism. Empiricism and rationalism are at odds with one another and make incompatible claims.

>I'm just the same; I don't pretend to have a deep and detailed understanding of quantum physics, but I accept it as true because I believe at least that an internally consistent external world exists and a global conspiracy of physicists doesn't. If you quizzed me, at some level of detail I'd have to start guessing. My incorrect guesses shouldn't be mistaken for intentional rejection of established theories.

This is one of the weakest epistemic arguments I've ever heard. But also very honest.

You're basically saying that your central ontological conviction is that a group of humans called physicists are the ontological authorities, but you can't actually tell us what ontology it is that those authorities advocate, but whatever it is, you're sure they're right and their opponents are wrong.

This is a brutally honest admission: most fans of science have no idea what science is actually saying and couldn't survive a brief cross-examination of their "scientific" worldview. They would keep getting tripped up and go back to "I agree with what Joe says, and even though I can't explain what it is that Joe says, I am sure he is right and you are wrong, and I'm sure that Joe would have great arguments to defeat you with."

Of course, this is an illogical argument and completely fails. If you can't describe the position of the authority (PoA) that you trust in, then you can't compare the position of the authority (PoA) to the position of others (PoO).

If you don't know PoA, then you don't know that PoO is not equal to PoA. You can't, on your own, determine if PoA == PoO or if PoA != PoO. Since you can't make this comparison, you can't make any argument at all and can't make any meaningful statements about PoO. You can't even claim that someone's argument conflicts with your authority's argument, because it's impossible to know that PoA != PoO when you don't know what PoA is.

The only epistemic position you are left with is to robotically repeat the profession of the faith:

"There is no truth but physics and physicists are that truth's prophets."

Most self-proclaimed atheists are in the same boat as you, but far less aware of their ignorance of their own doctrines.

Most atheists totally fail to articulate an internally consistent scientism, and also fail to articulate a scientism that is compatible with the scientism that physicists articulate.

Again and again they fall back on "the prophet is right, but I don't know what he is right about."

Their ontology and epistemology is a "I'll believe what they're believing" kind of finger-pointing.

So now you see why philosophers like me think "New Atheists" are anti-intellectuals--and why we have criticized New Atheists of having the same religious ignorance and fervor that is common among Christians. To rationalists, Christians and New Atheists look like two authority-based religions with different prophets.

Interesting.

> The assertion that the world must be internally consistent is quintessential rationalism, not materialism or empiricism at all. Science's core value is empiricism, NOT rationalism.

I don't assert that the world must be internally consistent. I merely believe that it is, for the entirely boring reason that there's a mountain of evidence that seems to say so. Empiricism may be the core value of science, but I think it's fair to say the scientific method also assumes the world to be consistent – that's the property that makes it worth hypothesising about.

If the external world isn't consistent, we will at some point run into some phenomenon that the scientific method simply can't accommodate, and there'll be no way to know when that's happened. Maybe it's happened already and consciousness is that problem. In any case, overall I think that puts me on the empiricist side of the fence, right?

> This is one of the weakest epistemic arguments I've ever heard. But also very honest.

> If you can't describe the position of the authority (PoA) that you trust in

> most fans of science have no idea what science is actually saying and couldn't survive a brief cross-examination of their "scientific" worldview

I do okay, but literally nobody could survive a brief cross-examination of their "scientific" worldview if you pick the right questions. I believe that the world exists outside my mind, so I have to accept that there are truths about the world that I don't know. All I'm saying is that I believe that other people know more of them than I do.

You have used quantum physics to justify your position elsewhere in this thread, so I take it you can justify this kind of belief-delegation as well.

> So now you see why philosophers like me think "New Atheists" are anti-intellectuals ... having the same religious ignorance and fervor that is common among Christians.

This is only superficially true. The whole "because science!" meme is annoying and a bit cultish. But although you've clearly thought about it in much more detail, the same logic that allows you to use quantum physics to support your arguments is what affords these people their beliefs. Even the most unthinking atheists grasp the structural difference between religious faith and so-called faith in science, that "God" is an empty expression whereas "Max Planck" refers to a human being not unlike themselves, etc.

(My source of frustration is that many people on the science train don't apply the mindset to themselves at all – generally giving their personal perceptions and intuitions, particular concerning causal relationships, far more weight than can be justified.)

At this point matter is almost a supersition and it's exciting.

That would explain mind as dependent on matter (and I agree on that) but that would not say anything about Consciousness.

Are you an automaton? If not, why Qualia? Why Consciousness exists? In a material Universe it doesn't make absolutely any sense and, in such Universe, it is not even needed.

And yet I know that I can experience red and sounds, etc. in ways that are beyond just receptors and neurotransmitters. Does that happen to you too?

Why? Why Qualia?!

Oh dear. More quantum mumbo jumbo and obvious fallacy.

1. Quantum mechanics tells us that matter obeys the Schrodinger equation and has wave properties. Therefore, the classical definition of matter is slightly wrong. This in no way implies that matter doesn't exist.

You're right that "matter" as imagined by many classical scientists doesn't exist (because they didn't fully understand it), but you're ignoring the fact that it obviously still exists independently of how classical scientists imagined it to work.

Quantum (in)determinism is still up in the air. We don't know exactly how it works. Anyone who uses it for philosophical arguments is probably not making a good argument.

In what way do bosons refute materialism? Is helium-4 immaterial? Obviously not. I can hold it in a bottle. I can feel it on my skin. I can fill my lungs with this boson and talk in a squeaky voice.

>Oh dear. More quantum mumbo jumbo and obvious fallacy.

If you were a philosopher you could actually refute my so-called fallacies with logic rather than insults :\

>1. Quantum mechanics tells us that matter obeys the Schrodinger equation and has wave properties. Therefore, the classical definition of matter is slightly wrong. This in no way implies that matter doesn't exist.

It's not "slightly wrong"... it's TOTALLY wrong. Schrodinger's cat is completely incompatible with classical materialism. You can't just be "slightly wrong" at this.

>You're right that "matter" as imagined by many classical scientists doesn't exist (because they didn't fully understand it), but you're ignoring the fact that it obviously still exists independently of how classical scientists imagined it to work.

It doesn't exist but it obviously exists???

It either exists or it doesn't, or we don't know either way. "Matter" is no longer treated by science, the concept has been dropped by physics. Science has "mass" but this mass behaves nothing like "matter."

>Quantum (in)determinism is still up in the air. We don't know exactly how it works. Anyone who uses it for philosophical arguments is probably not making a good argument.

Tell that to every physicists who speaks in public then. All of them try to reason about quantum physics and this is a major area of interest. I agree that it is "up in the air" but... philosophy has ALWAYS been about stuff that is up in the air. So to say that quantum physics is somehow off-limits to philosophical argument is just absurd.

>In what way do bosons refute materialism? Is helium-4 immaterial? Obviously not. I can hold it in a bottle. I can feel it on my skin. I can fill my lungs with this boson and talk in a squeaky voice.

Well you are just flat out not familiar with the standard philosophical canon, because none of those empirical phenomena depend on matter to be explained. They can all be explained by, for instance, empiricist idealists like Berkeley. No empiricist is claiming that sense perceptions don't exist. We are claiming that sense perceptions are not underpinned or explained by matter, that is to say, we are saying that materialism does not actually explain those things at all and that materialism can't be right. Materialism being a 2500 year old philosophy that everything is deterministic, solid, extended, based on atoms, etc etc.

The fact that we (the empiricist idealists) made these arguments before quantum mechanics proved us right is just grist for the comedy mill. When all of reality is shown to be underpinned by substances that have none of the classical properties of matter/materialism, then that philosophy is debunked.

But for some reason people still cling to the word and want to then redefine the word to mean its 180 degree opposite.

Shrug

Just a note to some people replying to 'bkst: what Berkeley developed was a kind of monistic (not dualistic) system. Some may be committing a kind of false dychotomy by thinking "huh someone is saying consciousness is separate from matter, must be a dualist" (or if they're not aware of the history of Cartesian etc thought, automatically assign some kind of vague "theist" property to that person); when in fact Berkeley wanted to do away with the concept of matter altogether (in a manner of speaking - at the very least to diffuse the ontological charge normally associated with that term.) Just a (possibly confusing) clarification re. Berkeley and dualism.

I propose a thought : If, as the sciences would have us believe, consciousness is born out of the unique biological structuring of matter in that jelly atop your shoulders, would it not seem logical that there are varied degrees of consciousness formed among us? Magnify a blade of grass to its 'simplest' form and you'll see incongruency ? Then why not across the landscape of human consciousness formed by even more complex structuring ?

and then what....

There's nothing about the idea of physical consciousness that says it has to be a continuum -- there could just be some critical mass or qualitative attribute of brains that puts us "over the threshold", so to speak. Nobody can give any kind of a definitive answer. For ideas about a "continuum" of consciousness, you might read Phi:

http://www.amazon.com/Phi-A-Voyage-Brain-Soul-ebook/dp/B0078...

Or for other views, you might check out V.S Ramachandran (neuroscience): http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Human-Consciousness-Imposto...

Jeff Hawkins (computer science): http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Hofstadter (mathematics, cognitive science): http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/...

Those are some of my favorite popular-press books on the subject.

* Read Jeff Hawkins (On intelligence)

* Have GEB (Covered enough of it)

My point was to bring out the implicit belief that there is :

> Some critical mass or qualitative attribute of brains that puts us "over the threshold"

> If consciousness is indeed a variable quantity, then every single able bodied adult human has more "units" of consciousness than, say, a dog.

> The variation within a species is also probably pretty small compared to the gap between species.

None of which are proven in any scientific way yet many believe it to be the truth. We haven't even resolved what consciousness let alone its range of existence.

> Just like intelligence, the amount of consciousness that a person has is not a measure of their value.

And yet, one draws lines to distinguish human intelligence/consciousness from that say of a dog.

I don't think it's an unreasonable thought at all, but I think there are a few very import things to considers:

* If consciousness is indeed a variable quantity, then every single able bodied adult human has more "units" of consciousness than, say, a dog. The variation within a species is also probably pretty small compared to the gap between species.

* Just like intelligence, the amount of consciousness that a person has is not a measure of their value.

> Statement #1 is pointless w/o first defining what consciousness is. We don't know what it is and yet, via our own limited and vivid perspective, we speak as though we do.

> Nothing is a measure of value if you really want to extend that. You'd have to understand a larger portion of the Universe and system to begin speaking in these terms.

In any event, it's important sometimes to highlight the gaping holes in core views people carry on with.

The gradient of consciousness between one human being and another could be as relatively vast as the one between ourselves and a newt and there is no scientifically grounded argument against it until you define what consciousness is.

I heard Jaynes speak in the early 1970s when I was a grad student at Dalhousie, and I bought the book when it came out. At the time it sounded crazy but it was also inspiring. The behaviourism of the time was suffocating and his ideas told us we could dream and think big. I hope to reread the book when I am retired, but as great literature, not science.

God once told me (not audibly, but "uploaded" to my mind is a more appropriate way of saying it) precise things I didn't know before. Facts that I validated later to be exact. I also felt a strong feeling ("Powerful" is the closest word to describe how it felt) of God's presence during that moment.

The Greek oracles had all fallen silent. The final voice heard by the bicameral mind was "the great god Pan is dead."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_%28god%29#The_.22Death.22_...

In the beginning, unthinking man existed, on Earth below the heavens. To man's eye, the Earth was without form and void, darkness covered the well of mans potential for he held no words to name it, but was lifted when man came to the water's edge.

And the God Voice on the water, saw the light of the morning, saw it was good, and separated the light from the darkness in man's mind. The light was named "day", the dark was named "night", and man was concious of morning, and concious of night - aware of the first day as a thinking being.

Neat, that was a quick 0. I ought to build a probabilistic post measurement tool to evaluate the response to taboo language among apes. Perhaps scrape and measure behavior and activity inside this virtual environment. How strongly does topic manifest upward / downward vote velocity vs chosen virtual expression environment? How is level of taboo evaluated in their little bone casings? Can I manipulate and influence their level of taboo response through word choice, telegraphing, inflammation method, or meta-level domino puppetry? Requires more thought.

There is a must read series on Julian Jaynes's ideas here, the concept of the 'selfish neuron' in particular is fascinating http://www.meltingasphalt.com/series/

Human consciousness is a reflection of the only conscious entity that exists. That consciousness is able to perceive life as it happens in the present moment. Something impossible for a corpse, the body, to do. We are each, one of the infinite reflections.

The Gods began when consciousness created them.

I don't understand this big mystery around consciousness.

Here is my take. The brain simulates the reality. That is we don't see or hear directly but instead the electro-chemical impulses go to our brain from our eyes and our ears. Our brain is big enough to simulate ourselves. Our brain is capable of noticing that the simulation of "me" is distinct from the surrounding simulation of the reality.

The theory is that humans have not always noticed that "me" is different from the surroundings.

I don't see the big deal either.

Our brain is able to observe some of its own functioning and that is called consciousness. We can only observe a tiny fraction of that functioning, mind you.

Practising Buddhists, who train at observing the mind, have categorized the same 5 senses as the western tradition does, but they also add a sixth sense that perceives 'mental formations.' The sixth sense isn't more magical than sight or smell, or hearing.

With training one can extend the range of the internal brain mechanisms we can observe. It's called 'expanding your consciousness' a really straightforward concept. Not some wishy washy trippy experience.

Now the markets speak instead of the gods.

His theory may be bunk, but it ties into something that's been bugging me for a while. How come every recorded or reconstructed earlier version of every language spoken today is more complex than the contemporary version? It's completely illogical, language couldn't have come out fully formed with a case system, gender system, definite/indefinite forms of words, dual forms, a ton of verb tenses, etc. How come we only have a record of languages losing features and never gaining them?

The following is layman speculation:

Computer languages are constructed by a single party, with a logic and purpose behind every feature, and the flexibility to make unilateral decisions about their design. It’s reasonable that they should start simply and grow in complexity.

Spoken languages, by contrast, evolve out of a behavior soup. There are no rules, particularly in the early days—just look at how long English spelling went without standardization. In an environment without rules, an unnecessarily large number of solutions to a small set of problems will develop; everyone is re-inventing the wheel. As culture solidifies, rules emerge. Best practices and linguistic “cow paths” are formed, and something resembling design emerges from the muck.

I'm not a linguist, but it's possibly because the timeline of language did not develop in isolation. E.g., when villages were more separated from each other and few people could read, idiosyncrasies flourished. But with the advent of strong nation-states, the printing press, and widespread literacy, languages standardized and became simpler.

In this case, it's not that languages naturally simplified, but that there were external forces driving it.

In linguistics, the terms are esoteric and exoteric.

And it helps to remember that reconstructed languages only take us back so far (where they can be reconstructed at all); there's no reason not to believe that language (as opposed to "mere" communication) has been around at least as long as the species has been, so it's had a lot of time to fester, grammaticalize common concepts, overgrow, rot, have chance encounters with other, equally-esoteric languages at levels below those that would force simplification, etc. (We only have to go back to the 15th century to find William Caxton complaining that "English" was really a set of almost mutually-incomprehensible languages, and realising that he would be guiding the language in one way or another by the words he chose when making his translations.)

Language may have started out simple, but it rarely stays that way unless it needs to be shared with "outsiders". Cree, Tsez or Nama/Khoekhoe would melt the average adult American's or European's brain, but their native speakers can handle them while tired, ill and intoxicated. If by some fluke of history any of them were to become a dominant language learned by outsiders (after childhood), they'd become a whole lot less, um, interesting.

By case system, do you mean upper case and lower case? If so, it looks like we do have a record of it evolving:

http://blog.dictionary.com/capitals/

He/she probably means grammatical case declension for subjects, objects, possessives and whatnot. _Der_ Hund beißt _den_ Mann. _Der_ Mann gibt _dem_ Taxifahrer _das_ Geld.

German has four cases, Polish seven(?), Russian six(?). In English it's mostly gone, but we occasionally have to go to the effort of distinguishing between subject and object (I/me, he/him, she/her).

There is some evidence of languages gaining features, pidgins become creoles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language

They end up with features that are separate from the parent languages.

I guess it is not without controversy, but there is a somewhat famous case of children inventing a language (re what you are getting at, the later children added things like verb agreement):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

> How come every recorded or reconstructed earlier version of every language spoken today is more complex than the contemporary version?

This is a) not true, b) the transition to writing has a large effect on the language, not the contact with the western world, and c) I suspect you meant "analytic"/"syntactic" rather than "simple"/"complex". Neither is strictly more complex than the other, although syntactic languages typically require memorizing more forms.

A few notes. First, analytic languages seem simpler but require just as much understanding of how the words interact; this learning is not typically reflected in terms of memorization. Second, there is no obvious complexity gradient at ALL—even in languages that appear to drop "features", it's typically because of absorption and/or emergence of other features. For example, look at english—some parts are very "simple", but the language as a whole is about as complex as it gets and is NOT easy to learn. In contrast, a highly syntactic language (e.g. most early PIE languages—polyphonic greek, sanskrit, classical latin) seems more complex because so much memorization is necessary to use features together, but the lack of irregularities through loan words compensate.

In addition, it's far easier to learn complex forms by listening rather than writing. IMHO syntactic languages get a bad rep because of this.

Expressed in this way it sounds like devolution, but is the larger goal of language really complexity? What about efficacy? You could also express it in terms of losing excess baggage and gaining virtue.

For example I can't think of a programming language that is being praised for mere added complexity. Rather the opposite.

Maybe it's not a case of simplification over time, but of abstraction: the gradual comprehension that, say, canis in canis virum mordet ("the dog bites the man") and canem in vir canem mordet ("the man bites the dog") are not two distinct (if related) concepts, but the same concept performing different roles.

I just happen to be cramming for my English 3001 midterm tomorrow so I'll give this a go.

So firstly. Syntactically speaking, languages generally have become more complex over time.

When it comes to sound change (phonology) though, things are getting simpler. This is due to external (language interaction) and internal change. Internally, we tend to ease articulation over time, we tend to evolve words to increase perceptual clarity and we tend to introduce sound systems with symmetry. By symmetry I mean, for example, sounds which activate your larynx (AKA "voiced" as in "b" in "boy") naturally create room for an unvoiced pairing like "p" in "pair". Or a vowel sound from the lower back of your mouth like "a" in "father" will incentivize a lower front sound like "a" in "sat". A high back sound like "oo" in "pool" will lead the way for use of a high front sound like "ea" in "seat".

Lots of internal as well as external processes at play which tend to evolve things towards a more efficient and simple phonological system.

On a more complicated level we have the interaction between morphological (word formation) and syntactic (word arrangement) components. According to my notes the motivating force behind morphological change (and to a lesser extent, syntactic change) is analogy. Not analogy as in the common definition; but analogy as in the process in which one form becomes like another form with which it's associated. For example, "kine" has been replaced by "cows" so that it better conforms to expected pluralization practices. Think of the mistakes children make saying things like "foots" and consider this an untainted window into our brain's natural grammar system. Analogy here serves to remove irregularities and this might be what has you thinking things are getting less complex.

You also might be interested in the evolution of English from a more inflection based language to a more analytic one. Inflection languages create grammatical distinctions with morphological affixes. Like prefixes or suffixes, they are attached to words for things like tense. An analytic language like Modern English has lost a lot of it's inflection and uses word order and function words (prepositions, articles, conjunctions) to indicate grammatical relationships.

I've got a 70% right now and the guy beside me has a 95%... so that's the best I can do in this moment. Thanks for forcing my procrastination into productivity.

I just made this up. Feel free to downvote because this is complete speculation....he he..

May be each incarnation of a non trivial consciousness (soul) is invocations of some kind of recursive function call in some cosmic machinery. Nirvana is attained when the base case is reached and there wont be any more incarnations of the soul, and the result goes all the way back to the source of the call..

And may be our bodies are like a main function in Haskell where the IO operations of the result of some computations are just carried out. That would explain the concept of fate...

hehe..I always loved to think about this stuff...