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Discussion Membership
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Jaynes' View of Consciousness
Consciousness is not a native human trait. It has been evolving over the past 10,000 years. However, over the past 10,000 years, we have not all become conscious.
++++(sublink to timeline) Julian Jaynes, in Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind proposes that schizophrenics may be throwbacks to a time when the two halves of the brain functioned more independently of each other than they do today. He points to the speech centers in both halves of the brain and that humans don't seem to develop speech on the right half of the brain. To substantiate his position he cites the voices mentioned in writings that people used to hear. The voices were compelling. They could not be blocked out. He contends that the "voices" were one half of the brain communicating with the other. The voices were most often heard in times of stress and may have sounded not necessarily in their own voice. Frequently they sounded like elders, leaders or voices of others who were respected by the person who heard them. The voices continued to direct thoughts even after those whose voices were heard had died. Jaynes contends the concept of the Hereafter is lodged in the history of the development of our consciousness.
As consciousness progressed, the voices were heard less often. Records also indicate that the remaining "peculiar" people – those who continued to hear voices – who became "possessed" by the voices were persecuted. <dir> The consequences of the disappearance of auditory hallucinations from human mentality are profound and widespread, and occur on many different levels. One thing is the confusion of authority itself. What is authority? Rules without gods to guide them are fitful and unsure. They turn to omens and divination, which we shall take up shortly. And as I have mentioned earlier, cruelty and oppression become the ways in which a ruler imposes his rule upon his subjects in the absence of auditory hallucinations. Even the king's own authority in the absence of gods becomes questionable. Rebellion in the modern sense becomes possible.1 </dir>
Just as the age of modifiers coincides with the making of much superior tools, so the age of nouns for animals coincides with the beginning of drawing animals on the walls of caves or on horn implements.2 Time Line
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