I think in a smaller portion of the population the bicameral mind still exists as a vestigial cultural structure. I grew up Methodist, and among my parents' friends there were some genuinely very religious people. They would say things like "God told me this" and "I heard Jesus call out to me" in a literal sense, as in they had some sort of spiritual, and after my experience with psychedelics, I agree, hallucinogenic experience. I was always thinking in the back of my head "Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Not even an inkling of it." What really ties it together for me is my uncle killed himself when I was almost a teen, and my mom of course was distraught. The grieving process was really hard on her with how untimely and traumatic his death was for the family. She said that one time she was in a serious meeting for work and thought of him and as the sadness began to well up, she very clearly heard in his voice "Stop, {first_name}. It's okay." She didn't mean this as in she could imagine him saying this to her to calm her down. She meant this as in she almost looked over her shoulder to see who was there. Now I'm somewhat of a skeptical empiricist, so I don't have any way to confirm or deny her experience was supernatural or merely psychological. However, my own lived experience leads to me to believe this behavior is deeply ingrained as a psychological trait, as when I have had spiritual experiences they have been much more akin to my rational brain perceiving the existence of logos than a perceived manifestation of a person or deity. My theory is there is a cultural split in Western people's conscious minds even today, and you can roughly apply three main categories to Western people. You have people born and raised with partial bicamerality, where while there's not full separation like with the ancients, they still have moments where a conscious thought really feels to them like it originated outside their mind, such as how they feel about certain large life choices. Then you have your typical modern rationalist, who has no spiritual life to speak of. If they're religious, are religious in an abstract rational sense, much like many of the statesmen of the American Revolution and other deists. I've met many people who go to church for the community and moral teaching, and do believe in God, but don't really believe in God as anything more than a noumenous deity who exists beyond their lived reality. Then finally you have people like me, who I believe started out as rational thinkers with both hemispheres fully integrated psychologically, but then had a spiritual revelation (for me it was a psilocybin trip outdoors in nature, for others it might be a yoga and meditation practice) that has awoken them to a more intuitive and deeper understanding of the way our minds work through a lens that is spiritual, maybe even mystical in nature. My mind remains unicameral, but I've sort of discovered more of where thoughts originate and gotten a little taste of what a bicameral mind likely feels like. As my ego got quieter it was almost like I was seeing my thoughts turn the doorknob whereas before I only discovered them after I heard the door close and they were in the room. The spiritual feeling I would describe as a sense of a world spirit, not as an entity "a spirit", but more of that every living thing is trying to increase and propagate itself, and in doing so, is participating in a much broader system that ultimately links all life. A sort of Spinozist pantheism where the divine interweaves our reality. However, you might say I remain agnostic in that to me this might be a feature not of the universe, but of the human mind's interpretation of it. Understanding the linkages of the natural world on such a deeply spiritual level might be an evolved trait to make us better at living within it, not an understanding of reality as it is. But after that experience, I've been able to tap into that brain space without the use of substances, and it now remains as an "expanded" form of my consciousness. Ultimately, I think the point I'm trying to make is I think the atheist, deist, pantheist, monotheist, polytheist, etc. debate might have more to do with how our brains learn to form our consciousness (or fail to) than it does actual technical validity. This is subject to cultural teachings as well as lived experience, and might be why so many atheists can have mystical experiences yet remain atheists afterwards. In my life, my cultural upbringing led me more to deism, but after my experiences with hallucinogens, my understanding is more a hybrid of deist and pantheist belief, all with an agnostic detachment that says this is probably more to do with how my brain works than an actual outside reality.
This is a very insightful comment. Listen to the experiences I’ve had. I was born into religious fundamentalism and i knew it didn’t make sense to me as a child. But then I had an “encounter with God” on MDMA when I was 16 and had the revelation that it was real. I had 12 years worth of religious experiences but after a lot of traumatic stuff my reality crumbled. I started to here this same voice I always thought was God start explaining it was me. I got deeply into meditation to sort this stuff out. Weirdness ensured. But slowly I realized God was never speaking to me, it was just a piece of myself I’d wrongly thought was outside myself. Integrating that voice into my consciousness has been difficult but I think it is spoken of in a lot of different terms by a lot of different cultures.
@@macintoshimann9892 What would be the difference at that point? Your comment doesn't go into specifics, but there are certainly general commonalities in description of experience between both users of psychedelics and practitioners of meditation.
I think there's some merit to your theory. I was raised Catholic and would probably fit into the 'partially bicameral' category. Up until about the age of thirty, I would occasionally get a response to something I was praying about or my conscience warning me about something and I would experience it as though the thought was coming from somewhere outside myself. A few months before I turned thirty, I felt one of these responses to something I was praying about, but realized that the response, the thought, had come from me. They had always come from me. I had taken whatever problem or issue I was facing, filtering it through whatever my parents, church, school, etc. had taught me about god, created a response, and imagined that it has come from god. I considered that maybe this was the case for everyone who thought they had a relationship with god, that they were imagining it and not realizing it, and that would explain why there's so much disagreement over religion. I know some people who very much fit the bicameral model, where it seems that their communication with god is very real to them, and others who seem to completely lack any spiritual connection with the divine. Experiencing the vestiges of the bicameral system can be a real trip sometimes.
I think I have a similar psychological constitution as yours, and have had similar experiences that led me to similar "conclusions" or working suppositions if you like. It strikes me that prayer works for many people as a way to prompt the other side of the brain to speak to them, and that sometimes this is literally what they experience. Particularly if the prayer comes at a critical juncture in their lives, which would fit with Jaynes's theory. And then of course there are DREAMS, in which people, animals, and other entities are literally speaking with you. Dreams have always been an important source of aesthetic and meaningful material for me personally, and it seems to me that for other people this is not necessarily the case. For example, I have heard that some people dream in black-and-white, while my dreams are often achingly, emotionally colorful and immersive, and sometimes have highly suggestive symbolic content. Some people even say they never remember their dreams or "don't dream" at all, which is shocking to me. I have sometimes wondered if my vivid dreams may have something to do with vestigial bicamerality. IIRC, somewhere in the book Jaynes says that the "voice" one hears may not necessarily sound acoustically like speech, but would have the pulse or cadence of speech that feels the same as when a strongly intimate and authoritative voice speaks to you, but now it is internal. (For example, the way your mother or father sounded to you when you were very young.) I have (rarely) had dreams in which this sort of thing occurred; it was a voice but it didn't sound acoustic, it just seemed to reverberate in my headspace with a buzzing electricity. And the feeling of the voice was similar to the feeling of hypnagogic sleep paralysis episodes I have had, in which you feel a malign presence in the room and voices may also be heard. It makes sense to me that bicameral voices may have evolved to ingrain and internalize parental voices of authority and guidance, against the time when one's parents are deceased, or one is lost, etc. And that the oldest or most primitive religious practices are heavily concerned with ancestor worship and consulting with one's ancestors, because the parental connection was so important, and these parents can now only be accessed indirectly, in one's own brain.
Your book helped my dad find your channel. I walked into the living room and wondered how he had become a based unaboomer, but turns out he was just looking for a review on a book he'd read and yours was the only one he'd found. Lol
The bicameral mind is a lot like DOS which was the precursor to Windows. Dos still resides underneath Windows. This is why an normal person with consciousness can still hear audible voices in times of great stress or calamity. The best speech on the bicameral mind that I have heard in 2 years. Thank you for this
I know this is old, but DOS does not sit under modern Windows. It was the base of Windows 95, 98, and ME. Modern Windows comes from the NT lineage which has always been Windows from top to bottom.
Really liked it. Keep 'em coming. I also really liked how you said "I recommend this book FOR READING" as if there could be some confusion about what to do with books.
Fifty + years ago my sister called me up and said she was rearranging her living room and asked if I could loan her some books that had gold, red, and green covers.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were not primarily works of literature, but were instead supposed to be performed in front of an audience. The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts may simply be an effective and practical dramatic device, a way of conveying the thoughts of characters to the audience without the character standing there alone, boringly droning on about what was on their mind. I think that is a more convincing explanation than a completely new "theory" about prehistoric consciousness.
Most people, when first confronted by the question, "What is consciousness?" are conscious at the time of asking and respond, "What a stupid question. If you're asking you already know the answer". But being conscious does not automatically imbue one with the knowledge of how consciousness arises. Thus when asked to take an imaginative trip back in time they project faux knowledge onto ancestors of every backward succeeding generation until they arrive at the first living cell. When pushed to proceed into the originative chemistry they experience a faux epiphany and absurdly declare, "Matter itself and the whole universe is conscious". "The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts" is a pretty sophisticated and imaginative invention to be found in the first two plays ever to become famous. That it is a twenty five hundred year old artistic device is an assumption with no more foundation than the bicameral theory you are futilely resisting. lol. When do you suppose the concept of 'boring' first entered the human lexicon? How boring life MUST have been without a cell phone!
Indeed most actual scholars of the homeric epics would agree more with you than with Jaynes - Jaynes himself drawing very heavily on the work of Bruno Snell in the 1950s (as far as I can tell Jaynes likes to sell a lot of Snell's thoughts as his own ideas). Snell's work on this matter is titled "the discovery of the mind" (og German "Die Entdeckung des Geistes" and has been disproven many times in the decades since.
@@Thermalsquid360 "You have an embarrassing understanding..." What I wrote, "Most people... project faux knowledge... etc." reflects a theory about just one route that leads some people to reach panpsychist conclusions. It seems to me inappropriate for you to allow my reflection to evoke your feelings of embarrassment and disgust. "Realization of consciousness as the substrate of reality has absolutely nothing to do with material reductionism" Why do you assert that they are unrelated? Are they not both concerned with the nature of 'reality' and with the meaning of the word 'conscious'? Being conscious is self evidently a process. Can any process exist without a substrate? No. Can you see the possibility both, that being conscious is a process going on in a material substrate and that being conscious is the substrate of the apprehension of existence including the existence of the material substrate? Both, not one or the other. Process is an abstract notion. Thus the essence of the being-conscious-process is abstract. Abstract entities are immaterial. But without a specific relationship to material existence abstract entities are nothing, absolute nothing, nothing absolutely. Modulations of the being-conscious-process are what we call thoughts. Thoughts are analogical in essence by which I mean thoughts are 'about' 'things'. Obviously thoughts are not identical to the 'things' they are about. Obviously analogies are not identical to the 'things' they analogize. A representation is not the thing it represents. Matter, whatever its true nature, is everything that actually exists. Everything not matter is an abstraction. Movement, pattern, process, time, analogy, thought, mind and 'consciousness' are examples of abstractions. We cannot know 'reality' because minds are made entirely and only of thoughts and all thoughts are representations. You may believe representations are reality but the problems with that are obvious or should be. Sense organs convert impinging environmental energies into analogies encoded as neural discharge frequencies. Analogies and frequencies are abstract entities. And that's how matter serves as substrate for immaterial thoughts which themselves then become the substrate of the being-conscious-process. We use the word 'self' in place of 'being-conscious-process' because it means the same and is more efficient.
@@Thermalsquid360 "sub·stance /ˈsəbstəns/ noun: substance; plural noun: substances 1. a particular kind of matter with uniform properties. "a steel tube coated with a waxy substance" 2. the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence." So looks like we are in agreement.
@@chaos-fb5nk I was not aware that the rigveda was that old (I have now looked it up). Even if not historically true, I think there is still something to be learned from this perspective that you may miss out with if you assume that we are fully conscious at all times and none of our consciousness is a learned behavior
@@pabloarroyo1023 it's just a lot for me to reinterprate, so I'm tempted to reject it out of laziness. But I also think some of the vedic texts show high degrees of conscious awareness, maybe that's sort of esoteric modern consciousness bias. Like how horoscopes seem to fit, when each word is allowed to function extensively. You're right though
@@chaos-fb5nk Consider how nicely a biological bicameral function upgrade actually maps when you consider the Pre-Vedic Indus Valley Civilizations would have been experiencing these same Mythos-birthing voices and emergent consciousness with their own stylings based on their different environment.
Still in the middle of this. Have you heard of Aphantasia? A relatively new subject. People lack an inner monologue and can’t imagine a simple apple (this is a spectrum as some people can imagine but the quality of the image is low). Up to 3% of people have this condition, but to me it seems that there are more people who have this and are just unaware.
I have wondered if I'm mildly aphantasiac. I can't visualize things well, and I've never heard a voice in my head except singers and music. When people say things like, "I read that in Tom Waits' voice" or whatever I can't relate.
... which fails as an argument for consciousness being an emergent phenomenon. The wetness of water can be predicted from the behaviour of the molecules that make it up. There is nothing about the behaviour of a brain or any of the levels of organisation below it that predict experience of any kind.
Thank you for this, you're voice for this breakdown is great. We have the book but wife is unable to read anymore due to her illness. Do you have part #2 coming?
Does that mean a newborn child is not conscious and 'develops' it as he ages? I certainly feel my early childhood years were me on some kind of autopilot and suddenly a switch was flipped sometime in teenage and I am now conscious of my decisions.
I've heard this described as the 'oceanic' state of consciousness. We all start as a blank slate and it usually takes several years for us to develop a sense of duality, individuality, etc. Abstract language/culture is thought to be a major driver in the transition from 'oceanic' to 'ego-driven' states of consciousness.
I have a distinct memory of when I first consciously realized I was an individual human being, self-contained. It hit really hard. I was about 5 years old, playing with my sister next to the lake where we had gone swimming that day. It's very hard to describe and hard to remember the feeling exactly. But I had started pacing around, thinking of my life as a kind of story. And it suddenly hit me that there are all these people in the world, like my dad here, and my sister..."And I'm one of them." I remember I said those words aloud to myself. It felt like a Eureka moment and I was so excited about it. And then I went back to playing with my sister. I'll never forget that day.
Hi Luke. Great presentation on a topic with which I am well familiar. I first read Jaynes' book three years after he wrote it. I would love to discuss his theories in depth - are you still listening here in 2023? A few brief comments off the cuff: (1) I would not use the term "independent" to describe the way the hemispheres function. They do not now, and did not in bicameral times. Injured brains can be interesting studies when the hemispheres are forced to function independently. Indeed, Jaynes' theories describe the manner in which the hemispheres interact, why they interact that way, and how that interaction generates the phenomenon of consciousness. Incidentally, he describes quite clearly what he means by consciousness in the very first paragraph of his book. Nothing in the rest of the book supersedes that wonderful opening remark. (2) I would also push back on the notion that the ego is a property or construct of the left hemisphere. Indeed, I think that is a mistake built upon historical ideas as to what consciousness is. Rather, the left hemisphere is rote, and so it is home to the rote behaviors by which we have any such things as personal, characteristic behaviors at all, but the left hemisphere is not the home of the ego per se. The ego is an inhabitant of the mind-space. It is an imagined actor that can operate on and in that mind-space, and by extension upon the external world that mind perceives. (3) It is no coincidence that Jaynes' theories sound a lot like an episode of Ancient Aliens. The bicameral mind is a down-to-earth alternative to the preposterous theories presented on that show. Of course, that show and Jaynes' theories are both attempts to explain some pretty weird s***. I get that we both prefer Jaynes' explanations. Thanks for reading (I hope.)
We tend to overasume too much about how our ancestors perceived themselves and the world around them. A bicameral mind is only possible after the developing of an articulated fonetic language. Likewise, we don't know if before that they made any rational correlation between sex and procreation; because for that you need to know at least how to count and have a concept of time. Probably art, reading and writing; had also very strange effecs on the minds of people, suggesting that a part of someone's spirit could be trapped forever in material form. And probably the after-effects of that still permates much of our understanding of history and society
isnt the self a stand-in for the bicameral voice? our very own personal divinity maybe the bicameral mind hasnt disappeared but was simply replaced with our self
Jaynes' book is pretty speculative, and its argument fails in many ways. He cites the Iliad as his source text, referring to incidents where there are sudden breaks in the action, such as a god or goddess appearing out of nowhere in a way that doesn't fit the narrative. He ignores the possibility that, like pretty much every other ancient text, the Iliad as we receive it is a compendium of different versions, often incoherently spliced together. Secondly, in the Iliad itself, there is the phrase "enthade thumon", "within the heart", to specify when a monologue is internal. If memory serves, I believe he brushed this off as a modern interpolation. But, with Homer, phrases from older phases of the text tend to appear again and again, and "enthade thumon" does appear frequently. Then, he speaks of the Bronze Age collapse as the breaking point, when social structures collapsed and only people who had evolved a bicameral mind survived. Except what he would categorize as pre-bicameral thought - such as gods talking to you - continued to exist for another millennium, as we can see in the Hebrew Prophets. Two millennia if we count Islam. Finally, the Bronze Age was localized to the Eastern Mediterranean. What about East Asia? People there think to themselves, and have seemingly always done so.
I agree that some of the evidence Jaynes cites is not sufficient to explain the theory. I think he is still onto something, and that the Bronze Age Collapse was one of many events that may have jolted people closer and closer to the unicameral minds most modern people have now. Humans have been around for a long time, and doubtless there have been many catastrophic events that contributed to our evolving mentality.
This is similar to how I've always perceived legends and the world. I don't know if it was taught but certainly my upbringing had some part in it. It comes naturally to me, but that seems to be rare in others. I feel some validation that someone else sees things similarly.
It's a spooky feeling for sure. I know all too well what you mean. It's like we were born with some special perspective, and it's easy to have illusions of grandeur with such a realization. Raised right, as they say, at least when it comes to this.
I would advise that if you are trying to bring publicity to The Bicameral mind argument, then you should cut out the unneeded personal info we spend 10-20 minutes listening to you talk about, smack dab in the middle of the video. But I really do appreciate all your work, and opinions on college and whatnot.
I guess this explains the origin of the muses. Surely "I" could not be writing this music/story/history since it seems to flow through "me," so it must be a supernatural force exterior to my own brain.
When I was young I learned that Egyptions thought the heart controlled the body, or was the source of the mind. I always thought that was a strange thing to presume.
I heard of this book when studying and practicing mysticism/metaphysics and I eventually did have an experience of God and in some ways it was in terms that this book speaks as well as through psychological perspectives, though those where just the readily accessible frameworks I could understand.
Your point on music I found interesting. Believe it or not there were early church theologians who thought before the fall Adam and Eve spoke to God in song.
Interesting idea to be sure and I‘m sure that a case could be made for this to be an evolved trait in humans. However, I think drawing the line at the bronze age collapse is arbitrary, and having such traits evolve in a whole tribe or society would probably take a very long time to complete. The historical evidence seems like a „just so“-story. We have to question the veracity of the bronze age collapse itself, as it is a narrative with only very little Egyptian writing to support it and involves societies that seemingly collapsed within more than a hundred years of each other. One could easily construct two or three separate narratives and view these societal declines in isolation, just as we pretty much view the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War in total separation.
I read the book when it was first published in 1976. I gave away a dozen copies to psychiatrists, scholars, doctors, smart people and any of them who actually read the book could not come up with one shred of rationale to refute it. As far as I'm concerned it remains so. Of course it is ignored and probably forever will be (in my lifetime) because it destroys so many assumptions about existence.
There's a confusion in some people. One thing is Consciousness (a self-experience, in 1st person, a subjective feeling of 'I am') and another is the conscious (related to the Freudian and jungian concepts about subconscious and unconscious). I cannot know if other people are conscious of themselves (they may be philosophical zombies). I can guess that they could reason similarly. It's even more complex if we acknowledge it's impossible to know how an animal, plant or bacteria see themselves. We could even regard molecules and atoms as having a simple consciousness (a perception of their environment). [Note awareness means perception (a part of Consciousness), being the feeling of our senses, which, by the way, are not five but tens of things that provides information about the exterior to our brain]. Beyond that, it sounds a bit anthropocentric to talk about ancient humans (homo sapiens) being non-conscious, though i suppose it's possible that the conscious-subconscious-and-unconscious have evolved over times. It has sense if that evolution has something to do with a collective unconscious (Jung-Sheldrake) shaping the conscious emergence.
One can argue whether or not such things as 'philosophical zombies' exist. The argument being that a person can carry out everyday functions just as well without having any accompanying subjective experience. And one can argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies. But a philosophical zombie does not dream (by definition). Dreaming is the one activity that consists almost entirely of consciousness and subjective experience. And the Iliad makes many references to dreams and dreaming. So, it doesn't follow that the human brain had not developed consciousness in the age when the Iliad was conceived.
You cannot "argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies" based on Jaynes' theory. A bicameral consciousness is vastly different from a philosophical zombie's complete lack of consciousness.
Previous comment needs expansion: Imagine a consciousness like your own but with two differences. 1. No thought in a bicameral mind contains any reference to self. The concept of self is absent from bicameral minds. 2. In moments of stress an auditory directive is heard and automatically obeyed.
the bi-cameral mind , as nhe is talking about , is still now to be found , in schizophrenia ,(& n, mediumship ,) , & was once a requirement found in people accussed off witchcraft ,
Sensory apparatuses change at each level of consciousness as we evolve and are likely only understood to be as conscious as that level of consciousness understands consciousness. Though each level of consciousness moves on, it only understands at its own understanding and does not take previous understandings with it. As it evolves, it leaves behind even the awareness of self that it possibly had. To say a rock isn't conscious s we know is obvious, to even say it isn't because of ow we defined it is obvious but to assume a version of it didn't exist is wrong as well.
When people talk about rocks and sticks being conscious, they generally just mean simple non-manifold awareness. Not self awareness, not an internal monologue. Like bicameral awareness, minus the hallucinatory interference from a higher mind.
I wouldn't say consciousness is a biproduct that doesn't do anything. Consciousnessly engaging in addictive behaviours makes you less likely to do it. Unconscious behaviours are good for repetitive things like driving or playing the guitar. Consciousness is good for selecting which impulse to follow. Which is why it gets harder to play guitar when you're consciousnessly thinking about your hand placement.
This is pretty centered on ONE area of "civilization". Doesn't really talk about the Indus valley cultures or Pacific islander cultures or Native American cultures... Is this not just another old theory that ignores the ideas and cultures of other civilizations?
Typical modern day analysis: every single human group is not included, therefore, theory is invalid. As for engaging the actual POINTS of the theory: forget about it. You're so hyper-obsessed with inclusion, that your analytic and comprehensive capacity has been impeded. Now, if you wanted, you could take the theory presented in Jaynes' book and apply its points to ANY OF THE HUMAN GROUPS you mentioned up there, and witness for yourself how they might apply. Or you could just keep dismissing things because "MuH rEpReSeNtAtIoN aIn'T cOmPlEtE!"
The book is not about "the ideas and cultures" of any civilization. It is a sketch of a theory of the evolution of consciousness that uses a few civilizations for illustrative purposes. It's a stand-alone accomplishment in the same way the film "The Matrix" is. (It blew our minds, the sequels not so much). Having been introduced to the theory it's the job of others to explore it. If the book is a sketch how much more sketchy is a review like this one. For the ultimate in sketchy here's the book compressed to a single phrase: consciousness as we know it, was the solution nature evolved to solve the serious problem of social collapse being experienced by civilizations whenever their agriculture driven reproductive success generated social complexity beyond the ability of their unconscious minds to manage. Cheers!
I could be wrong but I would assume that by the time language, art, and agriculture were widespread, consciousness would have been more than just bicameral unconsciousness at least as late as 12,000 years ago. This doesn’t mean that self-consciousness, ego consciousness, and the beginnings of separation from nature/animism can’t explain the first civilizations and writing, but consciousness itself has to be older than 4,000 years. Creation stories, shamanism, the vedas, can all easily be traced back 5-10k years ago, and I would argue these require a state of proto-consciousness. My point is I probably believe Jaynes on the Bronze Age stories to be perspectival shifts, but I think we can look back much further for the origins.
What about starting out by looking at consciousness as a product of the interaction between complex creature with their environment? Consciousness as a continuum that needs to be approached from an evolutionary biology perspective. For instance - How many characters of consciousness might there be in the animal kingdom? Back to humans, change in awareness between looking at broken rocks and making connections, slowly realizing one could control the way rocks fractured, or later learning to master fire, boat making and sailing off into the unknown, transitioning from hunting gathering to farming, then trade and math, then notation, accounting before language before literature, then creating our gods from our experiences, on to learning how to do law, and political structures, and then learning how to do science - every step requiring a huge leap in consciousness.
Consciousness v. self awareness ? Oh, incidentally Luke, are you familiar with the work of Dr. Mark Solms? The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, etc . RUclips has lots of good Mark Solms talks. Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town
32:27 Anyone who says that going to University is useless is themselves, showing their ignorance. Not everyone can handle going to a great learning institution. There are So many skills and life lessons and interactions there that builds rigor in a way that only college CAN. It is precious. Anytime I meet someone who says this, I immediately know they are not "conscious" and that they are quite ignorant.
If you have not learned the concept of cause and effect, and your belief system supports it, I can see misinterpreting your own internal thoughts as the voice of God. I don't think that's a structural issue with the brain. It seems to be more of a cultural issue.
This is an excellent commentary. However, I take issue with your comments about college. It seems to me that you might be falling prey to your own criticism of economics. You seem to be taking a small amount of information, namely your experience and perhaps the experience of some other people you know, and extrapolating out into a general rule. I am confident I would never have escaped my sheltered southern upbringing had it not been for college and graduate school. Also, I don’t see how I could have attained the mastery of physics and of the study of religion on my own with out the structure of higher education. I do think that a number of my classes were a complete waste of time. Perhaps higher education could be structured better. And, I do think that it is way too expensive
I come to conclusion then do resurch to see if I'm any where close to the truth and your podcast talks about so many of my ideas but you haven't titled this so you can find them so easy love the content btw when I get payed I'll defo subscribe
The mental model is "reality" as far as knowing goes. The physical environment is theoretical, a projection, a construct whose building blocks consist of A. the patterns impressed on the neurons that connect the senses to the brain and B. the logical processing done by the neurons in the brain. And yet the sensors and the neurons and the brain are all elements of the physical environment, a construct. It's kind of a circular conundrum which some respond to by saying they're the 'same'.
My first thought was on my first birthday.. it was like... o goddammit I'm a baby.. it's ok... be cool.. don't let them know I know... omg what the hell are they doing?
Great video, super fascinating. And I also agree on what you said about college, the only thing you get from it is relationships that might help you later, other than that just the experience of being amongst your peers, going to parties bla bla. P.S.: I love your voice btw.
Wherever university misconceives itself as business, it sins. The same is true of governments. Business is not a democratic enterprise, employees obey or are eliminated. Business reflects the world when it was dominated by kings and those who strive to destroy democracy and restore conservative reign insult the memory of our ancestors who suffered outrageously and died in revolutions that we all might have a say in our own organization, free of arbitrary coercion, as much as possible given the natural constraints imposed by our groupish nature. The purpose of our modern consciousness is to enable our collectivity to better organize itself that we might achieve vastly greater numbers and thereby more adequately fill our ecological niche and satisfy the evolutionary imperative.
@@monio.9444 I have finished watching. Strikes me as a pretty good analysis. I was already familiar with most of the leading characters from 'Introduction to Psychology' courses taken 40 years ago. Unfortunately, at the time, I had no framework for understanding and insufficient intellect to find it useful. But now I understand why so many Westerners seem to be quite immune to purely rational arguments. Yep, even when I see the truth about advertising and politics get through to a corespondent, the response is often an emotion based retreat into a silo of more agreeable opinion, as implemented, for instance, by setting blocks in Facebook. How you doin?
Jaynes is partial to the idea that schizophrenia is in large part a reversion to the bicameral mode of cognition. Does the literature about Joan of Arc reveal any indications that she might have been schizophrenic?
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL I kinda remember hearing a theory like that in a documentary about her years ago, but i can t say i ve read much about her regarding this so i can t really tell. It was just a guess. I would have to read more ro be able to have an opinion on it. But if the theory existed, it would be so interesting.
It's not uncommon in medieval history to read about people having visions, but most of them seem way to high functioning to have schizophrenia to such a degree.
Listening to this shizzle on yt rather than podcast because Luke insists on the ridiculous ogg nonsense and that forces me to leave my phone screen on or else it stutters lol smh
FYI....I have listened to old Julian Jaynes pod casts...and discussions of his work. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. You seem all over the place. So now I leave you.
Couldn't be that literature was a new thing and it wasn't as developed at the time? Also ancient people being wacky also applies to medieval people, early modern people etc. They are very different from us.
Bro lost me as soon as he said it's a theory of consciousness that almost has the feel of Ancient Aliens. Not a great sales pitch if you're tryna be taken seriously.
Julian Jaynes Bicameral Mind theory is so fascinating & compelling that one could easily make the case that the historical *_Jesus of Nazareth_* only represented the conscious *_Ego personality,_* of the Jewish Preacher. *_God the Father,_* a highly integrated personality of *_the Self_* and originating from the right hemisphere of the brain which not only spoke but commanded his conscious Ego personality located in the left hemisphere. The phenomenon of Christ produced an individual that was likely a rare amalgamation of stratospheric intelligence, schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder.
That's an interesting theory. I have one of my own, related, which goes like this... The time of Jesus was precisely at the end of the great thousand year transiliation from bicameral consciousness to our modern mode. It seems to me quite natural and understandable that the first attempts to devise new social control systems to manage conscious people should be based on violence and physical coercion. Yes? But those who were often at the sharp end of the stick really didn't like it and so convened a series of secret meetings. In these meetings there were perhaps some sociological geniuses who, during the brainstorming component, invented Jesus, his story and a way to spread it. Looks today like their scheme worked pretty well.
So does this idea extend to the "cosmic consciousness" (cc) or "enlightenment" of Buddhism and Vedic religion? Is cc to consciousness as consciousness is to preconsciousness?
Read Iain McGilchrist's extraordinary and seminal 2009 work "The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World." The book offers a deep and intelligent neuroscientific and philosophical augmentation and synthesis of Jayne's 1976 work. Also, look into Lakoff and Johnson's 1980 "Metaphors We Live By" and Lakoff's elaboration on this book's thesis in his subsequent works. These books will give you pause when you attempt to answer the question "What is reality?" Then look over Donald Hoffman's 2020 "The Case Against Reality" and the compementary works of Bernardo Kastrup. And, finally, finish up with the transcendently metamorphic "Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom" (Thomas Cleary, 1988) and you will likely be equipped to give an informed and useful answer.
David yes this is a good list. McGilchrist picks up on some of what Jaynes touches on. I wonder why Jaynes work doesn’t come up much in discussions between philosophers of mind.
I’m glad someone is talking about Julian’s profound idea. But I still don’t understand what is meant by “consciousness” for you or Julian. Consciousness means the experience itself to many. But it seems like Julian refers to it as self awareness. Recognizing the experience is self awareness but is not consciousness itself.
I read this book in December of 1987 and it knocked me out. I was so excited about it that I called Julian Jaynes at Princeton. We talked a couple of times and I mailed him my copy of his book to sign. I still have it.
It would have taken the bicameral mind to build pyramids with such huge worked stone and soft tools. Like ants build their tunnels and dwelling places without any consciousness. Conscious man would have wanted workers comp and vacation days
My dad, who died 40 years ago, read this book when it first came out. I still have his copy and always felt proud of him for going deep into this topic.
I happened to have just read this about two months before season one of West World… When I found out the theory was a part of the storyline of season one, it was one of the most odd an exciting kind of synchronicities I’ve ever experienced.
I just binge watched season 1 again and this time I detected a whole lot more that hinged on or was derived from or related to the theory. (A theory I've found compelling since '79).
Indeed,I couldnt grasp the peculiarity of this "feeeling" WESTWORLD was giving me. Something was pulling me towards,I realize slowly which I believe. I just couldnt help it, it just made me question the essence of mind. Truly entice me to grind the gears of my mind,which I find it oddly satisfying and wanting for more.
@iwonnatube "I didn't see any Trump voters add 'lol' to their ballots". No, but you could hear them reciting , "From hell's heart I stab at thee", virtually speaking.
@iwonnatube It should by now be obvious to everyone that the multinational oligarchs, psychopaths whose lips are to the hilt on Mammon's cock, hoover up the wealth of nations with absolutely no care for the people; the flag draped, crucifix bedecked Trump/FoxNews simply the American tool of their despicable world wide deceit; other nations impoverished in proportion to their belief in magic, so, generally speaking, less.
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
I think in a smaller portion of the population the bicameral mind still exists as a vestigial cultural structure. I grew up Methodist, and among my parents' friends there were some genuinely very religious people. They would say things like "God told me this" and "I heard Jesus call out to me" in a literal sense, as in they had some sort of spiritual, and after my experience with psychedelics, I agree, hallucinogenic experience. I was always thinking in the back of my head "Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Not even an inkling of it."
What really ties it together for me is my uncle killed himself when I was almost a teen, and my mom of course was distraught. The grieving process was really hard on her with how untimely and traumatic his death was for the family. She said that one time she was in a serious meeting for work and thought of him and as the sadness began to well up, she very clearly heard in his voice "Stop, {first_name}. It's okay." She didn't mean this as in she could imagine him saying this to her to calm her down. She meant this as in she almost looked over her shoulder to see who was there. Now I'm somewhat of a skeptical empiricist, so I don't have any way to confirm or deny her experience was supernatural or merely psychological. However, my own lived experience leads to me to believe this behavior is deeply ingrained as a psychological trait, as when I have had spiritual experiences they have been much more akin to my rational brain perceiving the existence of logos than a perceived manifestation of a person or deity.
My theory is there is a cultural split in Western people's conscious minds even today, and you can roughly apply three main categories to Western people. You have people born and raised with partial bicamerality, where while there's not full separation like with the ancients, they still have moments where a conscious thought really feels to them like it originated outside their mind, such as how they feel about certain large life choices. Then you have your typical modern rationalist, who has no spiritual life to speak of. If they're religious, are religious in an abstract rational sense, much like many of the statesmen of the American Revolution and other deists. I've met many people who go to church for the community and moral teaching, and do believe in God, but don't really believe in God as anything more than a noumenous deity who exists beyond their lived reality. Then finally you have people like me, who I believe started out as rational thinkers with both hemispheres fully integrated psychologically, but then had a spiritual revelation (for me it was a psilocybin trip outdoors in nature, for others it might be a yoga and meditation practice) that has awoken them to a more intuitive and deeper understanding of the way our minds work through a lens that is spiritual, maybe even mystical in nature. My mind remains unicameral, but I've sort of discovered more of where thoughts originate and gotten a little taste of what a bicameral mind likely feels like. As my ego got quieter it was almost like I was seeing my thoughts turn the doorknob whereas before I only discovered them after I heard the door close and they were in the room. The spiritual feeling I would describe as a sense of a world spirit, not as an entity "a spirit", but more of that every living thing is trying to increase and propagate itself, and in doing so, is participating in a much broader system that ultimately links all life. A sort of Spinozist pantheism where the divine interweaves our reality. However, you might say I remain agnostic in that to me this might be a feature not of the universe, but of the human mind's interpretation of it. Understanding the linkages of the natural world on such a deeply spiritual level might be an evolved trait to make us better at living within it, not an understanding of reality as it is. But after that experience, I've been able to tap into that brain space without the use of substances, and it now remains as an "expanded" form of my consciousness.
Ultimately, I think the point I'm trying to make is I think the atheist, deist, pantheist, monotheist, polytheist, etc. debate might have more to do with how our brains learn to form our consciousness (or fail to) than it does actual technical validity. This is subject to cultural teachings as well as lived experience, and might be why so many atheists can have mystical experiences yet remain atheists afterwards. In my life, my cultural upbringing led me more to deism, but after my experiences with hallucinogens, my understanding is more a hybrid of deist and pantheist belief, all with an agnostic detachment that says this is probably more to do with how my brain works than an actual outside reality.
This is a very insightful comment. Listen to the experiences I’ve had.
I was born into religious fundamentalism and i knew it didn’t make sense to me as a child. But then I had an “encounter with God” on MDMA when I was 16 and had the revelation that it was real.
I had 12 years worth of religious experiences but after a lot of traumatic stuff my reality crumbled. I started to here this same voice I always thought was God start explaining it was me.
I got deeply into meditation to sort this stuff out. Weirdness ensured. But slowly I realized God was never speaking to me, it was just a piece of myself I’d wrongly thought was outside myself. Integrating that voice into my consciousness has been difficult but I think it is spoken of in a lot of different terms by a lot of different cultures.
@@macintoshimann9892 What would be the difference at that point? Your comment doesn't go into specifics, but there are certainly general commonalities in description of experience between both users of psychedelics and practitioners of meditation.
I think there's some merit to your theory. I was raised Catholic and would probably fit into the 'partially bicameral' category. Up until about the age of thirty, I would occasionally get a response to something I was praying about or my conscience warning me about something and I would experience it as though the thought was coming from somewhere outside myself. A few months before I turned thirty, I felt one of these responses to something I was praying about, but realized that the response, the thought, had come from me. They had always come from me. I had taken whatever problem or issue I was facing, filtering it through whatever my parents, church, school, etc. had taught me about god, created a response, and imagined that it has come from god. I considered that maybe this was the case for everyone who thought they had a relationship with god, that they were imagining it and not realizing it, and that would explain why there's so much disagreement over religion.
I know some people who very much fit the bicameral model, where it seems that their communication with god is very real to them, and others who seem to completely lack any spiritual connection with the divine.
Experiencing the vestiges of the bicameral system can be a real trip sometimes.
I think I have a similar psychological constitution as yours, and have had similar experiences that led me to similar "conclusions" or working suppositions if you like.
It strikes me that prayer works for many people as a way to prompt the other side of the brain to speak to them, and that sometimes this is literally what they experience. Particularly if the prayer comes at a critical juncture in their lives, which would fit with Jaynes's theory.
And then of course there are DREAMS, in which people, animals, and other entities are literally speaking with you. Dreams have always been an important source of aesthetic and meaningful material for me personally, and it seems to me that for other people this is not necessarily the case. For example, I have heard that some people dream in black-and-white, while my dreams are often achingly, emotionally colorful and immersive, and sometimes have highly suggestive symbolic content. Some people even say they never remember their dreams or "don't dream" at all, which is shocking to me. I have sometimes wondered if my vivid dreams may have something to do with vestigial bicamerality.
IIRC, somewhere in the book Jaynes says that the "voice" one hears may not necessarily sound acoustically like speech, but would have the pulse or cadence of speech that feels the same as when a strongly intimate and authoritative voice speaks to you, but now it is internal. (For example, the way your mother or father sounded to you when you were very young.) I have (rarely) had dreams in which this sort of thing occurred; it was a voice but it didn't sound acoustic, it just seemed to reverberate in my headspace with a buzzing electricity. And the feeling of the voice was similar to the feeling of hypnagogic sleep paralysis episodes I have had, in which you feel a malign presence in the room and voices may also be heard.
It makes sense to me that bicameral voices may have evolved to ingrain and internalize parental voices of authority and guidance, against the time when one's parents are deceased, or one is lost, etc. And that the oldest or most primitive religious practices are heavily concerned with ancestor worship and consulting with one's ancestors, because the parental connection was so important, and these parents can now only be accessed indirectly, in one's own brain.
This comment is more informative than the video that brought me to it.
Your book helped my dad find your channel. I walked into the living room and wondered how he had become a based unaboomer, but turns out he was just looking for a review on a book he'd read and yours was the only one he'd found. Lol
What book?
@@papasitoman unaboomer is the most funny word i heard this week! thanks man!
The idea that human consciousness was not evolved but is a learned behaviour through language. To call it controversial is an understatement.
Such a post modern and reductive way to think of consciousness
The bicameral mind is a lot like DOS which was the precursor to Windows. Dos still resides underneath Windows. This is why an normal person with consciousness can still hear audible voices in times of great stress or calamity.
The best speech on the bicameral mind that I have heard in 2 years. Thank you for this
>windows
Intriguing analogy, which would make Consciousness simply our 'GUI'?
How ironic this message sent two years ago?
I know this is old, but DOS does not sit under modern Windows. It was the base of Windows 95, 98, and ME. Modern Windows comes from the NT lineage which has always been Windows from top to bottom.
@Right Wing Safety Squad just bring up the c: prompt and DOS is there for administrators. It's how windows was designed. To ride ontop of Windows.
Really liked it. Keep 'em coming. I also really liked how you said "I recommend this book FOR READING" as if there could be some confusion about what to do with books.
There are people who buy books only to look smart ;)
Buying a book for flexing on kids.
Fifty + years ago my sister called me up and said she was rearranging her living room and asked if I could loan her some books that had gold, red, and green covers.
I covered this book in my philosophy thesis 25 years ago. It’s is really “out there”!
Ooooh! I'd love to read it. Is it available on line?
The Iliad and the Odyssey were not primarily works of literature, but were instead supposed to be performed in front of an audience. The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts may simply be an effective and practical dramatic device, a way of conveying the thoughts of characters to the audience without the character standing there alone, boringly droning on about what was on their mind. I think that is a more convincing explanation than a completely new "theory" about prehistoric consciousness.
Most people, when first confronted by the question, "What is consciousness?" are conscious at the time of asking and respond, "What a stupid question. If you're asking you already know the answer". But being conscious does not automatically imbue one with the knowledge of how consciousness arises. Thus when asked to take an imaginative trip back in time they project faux knowledge onto ancestors of every backward succeeding generation until they arrive at the first living cell. When pushed to proceed into the originative chemistry they experience a faux epiphany and absurdly declare, "Matter itself and the whole universe is conscious".
"The usage of deities to represent inner monologues and thoughts" is a pretty sophisticated and imaginative invention to be found in the first two plays ever to become famous. That it is a twenty five hundred year old artistic device is an assumption with no more foundation than the bicameral theory you are futilely resisting. lol.
When do you suppose the concept of 'boring' first entered the human lexicon? How boring life MUST have been without a cell phone!
Indeed most actual scholars of the homeric epics would agree more with you than with Jaynes - Jaynes himself drawing very heavily on the work of Bruno Snell in the 1950s (as far as I can tell Jaynes likes to sell a lot of Snell's thoughts as his own ideas). Snell's work on this matter is titled "the discovery of the mind" (og German "Die Entdeckung des Geistes" and has been disproven many times in the decades since.
@@Thermalsquid360
"You have an embarrassing understanding..."
What I wrote,
"Most people... project faux knowledge... etc."
reflects a theory about just one route that
leads some people to reach panpsychist conclusions.
It seems to me inappropriate for you to allow my reflection
to evoke your feelings of embarrassment and disgust.
"Realization of consciousness as the substrate of reality has absolutely nothing to do with material reductionism"
Why do you assert that they are unrelated?
Are they not both concerned with the nature of 'reality' and
with the meaning of the word 'conscious'?
Being conscious is self evidently a process.
Can any process exist without a substrate?
No.
Can you see the possibility both,
that being conscious is a process going on in a material substrate
and
that being conscious is the substrate of the apprehension of existence
including the existence of the material substrate?
Both, not one or the other.
Process is an abstract notion.
Thus the essence of the being-conscious-process is abstract.
Abstract entities are immaterial.
But without a specific relationship to material existence
abstract entities are nothing, absolute nothing, nothing absolutely.
Modulations of the being-conscious-process are what we call thoughts.
Thoughts are analogical in essence by which I mean
thoughts are 'about' 'things'.
Obviously thoughts are not identical to the 'things' they are about.
Obviously analogies are not identical to the 'things' they analogize.
A representation is not the thing it represents.
Matter, whatever its true nature, is everything that actually exists.
Everything not matter is an abstraction.
Movement, pattern, process, time, analogy, thought, mind and
'consciousness' are examples of abstractions.
We cannot know 'reality' because
minds are made entirely and only of thoughts and
all thoughts are representations.
You may believe representations are reality but
the problems with that are obvious or should be.
Sense organs convert impinging environmental energies
into analogies encoded as neural discharge frequencies.
Analogies and frequencies are abstract entities.
And that's how matter serves as substrate for immaterial thoughts
which themselves then become
the substrate of the being-conscious-process.
We use the word 'self' in place of 'being-conscious-process' because
it means the same and is more efficient.
@@Thermalsquid360
"Consciousness is not process, its substance."
What is substance?
@@Thermalsquid360 "sub·stance
/ˈsəbstəns/
noun: substance; plural noun: substances
1.
a particular kind of matter with uniform properties.
"a steel tube coated with a waxy substance"
2.
the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence."
So looks like we are in agreement.
i dont think this theory is wacky at all, it makes a lot of sense to me
Check out the Master and His Emissary, it is a different take on this same idea
I think it's really bad take. Read the rigveda, people in past were very conscious
@@chaos-fb5nk I was not aware that the rigveda was that old (I have now looked it up). Even if not historically true, I think there is still something to be learned from this perspective that you may miss out with if you assume that we are fully conscious at all times and none of our consciousness is a learned behavior
@@pabloarroyo1023 it's just a lot for me to reinterprate, so I'm tempted to reject it out of laziness. But I also think some of the vedic texts show high degrees of conscious awareness, maybe that's sort of esoteric modern consciousness bias. Like how horoscopes seem to fit, when each word is allowed to function extensively. You're right though
@@chaos-fb5nk Consider how nicely a biological bicameral function upgrade actually maps when you consider the Pre-Vedic Indus Valley Civilizations would have been experiencing these same Mythos-birthing voices and emergent consciousness with their own stylings based on their different environment.
Still in the middle of this. Have you heard of Aphantasia? A relatively new subject. People lack an inner monologue and can’t imagine a simple apple (this is a spectrum as some people can imagine but the quality of the image is low). Up to 3% of people have this condition, but to me it seems that there are more people who have this and are just unaware.
I have wondered if I'm mildly aphantasiac. I can't visualize things well, and I've never heard a voice in my head except singers and music. When people say things like, "I read that in Tom Waits' voice" or whatever I can't relate.
It would be fascinating to see Aphantasia broken down by education, sex and culture to see if that impacts it in any way.
OMG, that explains many things in my life in my mind and in what I see around me
27:27 Luke weighs in on the "Is water wet?" meme.
Woke my ass up from a dead sleep he did
... which fails as an argument for consciousness being an emergent phenomenon. The wetness of water can be predicted from the behaviour of the molecules that make it up. There is nothing about the behaviour of a brain or any of the levels of organisation below it that predict experience of any kind.
Thank you for this, you're voice for this breakdown is great. We have the book but wife is unable to read anymore due to her illness. Do you have part #2 coming?
Does that mean a newborn child is not conscious and 'develops' it as he ages? I certainly feel my early childhood years were me on some kind of autopilot and suddenly a switch was flipped sometime in teenage and I am now conscious of my decisions.
yeah, me too. I actually REALLY felt like something changed one day, and before that it was like I was in a trance state.
Nah you just don't have memories
I've heard this described as the 'oceanic' state of consciousness. We all start as a blank slate and it usually takes several years for us to develop a sense of duality, individuality, etc. Abstract language/culture is thought to be a major driver in the transition from 'oceanic' to 'ego-driven' states of consciousness.
I have a distinct memory of when I first consciously realized I was an individual human being, self-contained. It hit really hard. I was about 5 years old, playing with my sister next to the lake where we had gone swimming that day. It's very hard to describe and hard to remember the feeling exactly. But I had started pacing around, thinking of my life as a kind of story. And it suddenly hit me that there are all these people in the world, like my dad here, and my sister..."And I'm one of them." I remember I said those words aloud to myself. It felt like a Eureka moment and I was so excited about it. And then I went back to playing with my sister. I'll never forget that day.
@@Ardepark I also had something like, I felt it at my fifth birthday celebration. I became, so to speak, a real thing.
Hi Luke. Great presentation on a topic with which I am well familiar. I first read Jaynes' book three years after he wrote it. I would love to discuss his theories in depth - are you still listening here in 2023? A few brief comments off the cuff:
(1) I would not use the term "independent" to describe the way the hemispheres function. They do not now, and did not in bicameral times. Injured brains can be interesting studies when the hemispheres are forced to function independently. Indeed, Jaynes' theories describe the manner in which the hemispheres interact, why they interact that way, and how that interaction generates the phenomenon of consciousness. Incidentally, he describes quite clearly what he means by consciousness in the very first paragraph of his book. Nothing in the rest of the book supersedes that wonderful opening remark.
(2) I would also push back on the notion that the ego is a property or construct of the left hemisphere. Indeed, I think that is a mistake built upon historical ideas as to what consciousness is. Rather, the left hemisphere is rote, and so it is home to the rote behaviors by which we have any such things as personal, characteristic behaviors at all, but the left hemisphere is not the home of the ego per se. The ego is an inhabitant of the mind-space. It is an imagined actor that can operate on and in that mind-space, and by extension upon the external world that mind perceives.
(3) It is no coincidence that Jaynes' theories sound a lot like an episode of Ancient Aliens. The bicameral mind is a down-to-earth alternative to the preposterous theories presented on that show. Of course, that show and Jaynes' theories are both attempts to explain some pretty weird s***. I get that we both prefer Jaynes' explanations.
Thanks for reading (I hope.)
My favorite G nigga!!! Welcome Luke!
We tend to overasume too much about how our ancestors perceived themselves and the world around them. A bicameral mind is only possible after the developing of an articulated fonetic language. Likewise, we don't know if before that they made any rational correlation between sex and procreation; because for that you need to know at least how to count and have a concept of time. Probably art, reading and writing; had also very strange effecs on the minds of people, suggesting that a part of someone's spirit could be trapped forever in material form. And probably the after-effects of that still permates much of our understanding of history and society
isnt the self a stand-in for the bicameral voice? our very own personal divinity
maybe the bicameral mind hasnt disappeared but was simply replaced with our self
To be BICAMERAL is to understand the worls in AM and FM- we just know with our right brain-thank you so much
Jaynes' book is pretty speculative, and its argument fails in many ways. He cites the Iliad as his source text, referring to incidents where there are sudden breaks in the action, such as a god or goddess appearing out of nowhere in a way that doesn't fit the narrative. He ignores the possibility that, like pretty much every other ancient text, the Iliad as we receive it is a compendium of different versions, often incoherently spliced together. Secondly, in the Iliad itself, there is the phrase "enthade thumon", "within the heart", to specify when a monologue is internal. If memory serves, I believe he brushed this off as a modern interpolation. But, with Homer, phrases from older phases of the text tend to appear again and again, and "enthade thumon" does appear frequently. Then, he speaks of the Bronze Age collapse as the breaking point, when social structures collapsed and only people who had evolved a bicameral mind survived. Except what he would categorize as pre-bicameral thought - such as gods talking to you - continued to exist for another millennium, as we can see in the Hebrew Prophets. Two millennia if we count Islam. Finally, the Bronze Age was localized to the Eastern Mediterranean. What about East Asia? People there think to themselves, and have seemingly always done so.
I agree that some of the evidence Jaynes cites is not sufficient to explain the theory. I think he is still onto something, and that the Bronze Age Collapse was one of many events that may have jolted people closer and closer to the unicameral minds most modern people have now. Humans have been around for a long time, and doubtless there have been many catastrophic events that contributed to our evolving mentality.
This is similar to how I've always perceived legends and the world. I don't know if it was taught but certainly my upbringing had some part in it. It comes naturally to me, but that seems to be rare in others. I feel some validation that someone else sees things similarly.
It's a spooky feeling for sure. I know all too well what you mean. It's like we were born with some special perspective, and it's easy to have illusions of grandeur with such a realization. Raised right, as they say, at least when it comes to this.
@@stationorange clearly
@@stationorange whatever you say 😏
@@stationorange nice
@@stationorange the main character is the one who is least free
33:40
"I have a white monster energy on my desk"
Luke is Boomer confirmed.
I would advise that if you are trying to bring publicity to The Bicameral mind argument, then you should cut out the unneeded personal info we spend 10-20 minutes listening to you talk about, smack dab in the middle of the video. But I really do appreciate all your work, and opinions on college and whatnot.
I guess this explains the origin of the muses. Surely "I" could not be writing this music/story/history since it seems to flow through "me," so it must be a supernatural force exterior to my own brain.
When I was young I learned that Egyptions thought the heart controlled the body, or was the source of the mind. I always thought that was a strange thing to presume.
According to some random study that I have no citations for, there are nueral pathways in the heart, just like in the brain
@@hidragon91 There are neurons in the stomach, as well. This is why we feel certain emotions in our gut; our stomach gets a headache.
I heard of this book when studying and practicing mysticism/metaphysics and I eventually did have an experience of God and in some ways it was in terms that this book speaks as well as through psychological perspectives, though those where just the readily accessible frameworks I could understand.
Your point on music I found interesting. Believe it or not there were early church theologians who thought before the fall Adam and Eve spoke to God in song.
Interesting idea to be sure and I‘m sure that a case could be made for this to be an evolved trait in humans. However, I think drawing the line at the bronze age collapse is arbitrary, and having such traits evolve in a whole tribe or society would probably take a very long time to complete. The historical evidence seems like a „just so“-story.
We have to question the veracity of the bronze age collapse itself, as it is a narrative with only very little Egyptian writing to support it and involves societies that seemingly collapsed within more than a hundred years of each other. One could easily construct two or three separate narratives and view these societal declines in isolation, just as we pretty much view the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War in total separation.
I read the book when it was first published in 1976. I gave away a dozen copies to psychiatrists, scholars, doctors, smart people and any of them who actually read the book could not come up with one shred of rationale to refute it. As far as I'm concerned it remains so. Of course it is ignored and probably forever will be (in my lifetime) because it destroys so many assumptions about existence.
Guys see Westworld season. It's based on this book
There's a confusion in some people. One thing is Consciousness (a self-experience, in 1st person, a subjective feeling of 'I am') and another is the conscious (related to the Freudian and jungian concepts about subconscious and unconscious).
I cannot know if other people are conscious of themselves (they may be philosophical zombies). I can guess that they could reason similarly. It's even more complex if we acknowledge it's impossible to know how an animal, plant or bacteria see themselves. We could even regard molecules and atoms as having a simple consciousness (a perception of their environment). [Note awareness means perception (a part of Consciousness), being the feeling of our senses, which, by the way, are not five but tens of things that provides information about the exterior to our brain].
Beyond that, it sounds a bit anthropocentric to talk about ancient humans (homo sapiens) being non-conscious, though i suppose it's possible that the conscious-subconscious-and-unconscious have evolved over times. It has sense if that evolution has something to do with a collective unconscious (Jung-Sheldrake) shaping the conscious emergence.
One can argue whether or not such things as 'philosophical zombies' exist. The argument being that a person can carry out everyday functions just as well without having any accompanying subjective experience. And one can argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies. But a philosophical zombie does not dream (by definition). Dreaming is the one activity that consists almost entirely of consciousness and subjective experience. And the Iliad makes many references to dreams and dreaming. So, it doesn't follow that the human brain had not developed consciousness in the age when the Iliad was conceived.
You cannot "argue that in the age when the story of the Iliad was conceived, all humans were philosophical zombies" based on Jaynes' theory. A bicameral consciousness is vastly different from a philosophical zombie's complete lack of consciousness.
Previous comment needs expansion:
Imagine a consciousness like your own but with two differences.
1. No thought in a bicameral mind contains any reference to self. The concept of self is absent from bicameral minds.
2. In moments of stress an auditory directive is heard and automatically obeyed.
Do you think there is a way to "lose" consciousness, or in other words revert to the bicameral mind through social factors or otherwise?
There are stories of children raised by animals etc. They often act more like animals than humans, i.e. by instinct rather than consious decisions.
the bi-cameral mind , as nhe is talking about , is still now to be found , in schizophrenia ,(& n, mediumship ,) , & was once a requirement found in people accussed off witchcraft ,
Half the world still has some form of bicameralism. Nobody is completely conscious even yet
i,m happy to be bi-cameral, least way,s , like this i have some people who are not insane i can talk with , n who are worthwhile .
start writing in a diary. start recording voice memos, the gods will come back to you :)
Thank you for this episode. I really enjoyed it, going to read the book.
Sensory apparatuses change at each level of consciousness as we evolve and are likely only understood to be as conscious as that level of consciousness understands consciousness. Though each level of consciousness moves on, it only understands at its own understanding and does not take previous understandings with it. As it evolves, it leaves behind even the awareness of self that it possibly had. To say a rock isn't conscious s we know is obvious, to even say it isn't because of ow we defined it is obvious but to assume a version of it didn't exist is wrong as well.
Looking at the title, I thought this was a black metal album.
Also pls do more pods like this really love it might donate
This video needs a few more temu commercials...
Wettness worth nothing without some1 perceives it. What percieve consciousness?
Thanks for sharing
so as a tulpa, we always thought that systems were a progression of human consciousness not a regression. interesting theory tho.
When people talk about rocks and sticks being conscious, they generally just mean simple non-manifold awareness. Not self awareness, not an internal monologue. Like bicameral awareness, minus the hallucinatory interference from a higher mind.
terry davis was bicameral
I wouldn't say consciousness is a biproduct that doesn't do anything. Consciousnessly engaging in addictive behaviours makes you less likely to do it. Unconscious behaviours are good for repetitive things like driving or playing the guitar. Consciousness is good for selecting which impulse to follow. Which is why it gets harder to play guitar when you're consciousnessly thinking about your hand placement.
This is pretty centered on ONE area of "civilization". Doesn't really talk about the Indus valley cultures or Pacific islander cultures or Native American cultures... Is this not just another old theory that ignores the ideas and cultures of other civilizations?
Typical modern day analysis: every single human group is not included, therefore, theory is invalid.
As for engaging the actual POINTS of the theory: forget about it. You're so hyper-obsessed with inclusion, that your analytic and comprehensive capacity has been impeded.
Now, if you wanted, you could take the theory presented in Jaynes' book and apply its points to ANY OF THE HUMAN GROUPS you mentioned up there, and witness for yourself how they might apply.
Or you could just keep dismissing things because "MuH rEpReSeNtAtIoN aIn'T cOmPlEtE!"
The book is not about "the ideas and cultures" of any civilization. It is a sketch of a theory of the evolution of consciousness that uses a few civilizations for illustrative purposes. It's a stand-alone accomplishment in the same way the film "The Matrix" is. (It blew our minds, the sequels not so much). Having been introduced to the theory it's the job of others to explore it.
If the book is a sketch how much more sketchy is a review like this one.
For the ultimate in sketchy here's the book compressed to a single phrase: consciousness as we know it, was the solution nature evolved to solve the serious problem of social collapse being experienced by civilizations whenever their agriculture driven reproductive success generated social complexity beyond the ability of their unconscious minds to manage.
Cheers!
Great to see a programmer talk about this theory
I came up with this hypothesis back in 2019 sucks he beat me to it by a long shot lol
I could be wrong but I would assume that by the time language, art, and agriculture were widespread, consciousness would have been more than just bicameral unconsciousness at least as late as 12,000 years ago. This doesn’t mean that self-consciousness, ego consciousness, and the beginnings of separation from nature/animism can’t explain the first civilizations and writing, but consciousness itself has to be older than 4,000 years. Creation stories, shamanism, the vedas, can all easily be traced back 5-10k years ago, and I would argue these require a state of proto-consciousness. My point is I probably believe Jaynes on the Bronze Age stories to be perspectival shifts, but I think we can look back much further for the origins.
What about starting out by looking at consciousness as a product of the interaction between complex creature with their environment? Consciousness as a continuum that needs to be approached from an evolutionary biology perspective. For instance - How many characters of consciousness might there be in the animal kingdom?
Back to humans, change in awareness between looking at broken rocks and making connections, slowly realizing one could control the way rocks fractured, or later learning to master fire, boat making and sailing off into the unknown, transitioning from hunting gathering to farming, then trade and math, then notation, accounting before language before literature, then creating our gods from our experiences, on to learning how to do law, and political structures, and then learning how to do science - every step requiring a huge leap in consciousness.
Consciousness v. self awareness ? Oh, incidentally Luke, are you familiar with the work of Dr. Mark Solms? The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, etc . RUclips has lots of good Mark Solms talks. Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town
8 ads in 22 minutes... I appreciate the content, but it's almost unwatchable
AMAZING BRO. LOVED THE IN DEPTH TALK
I only got to 8th minute and I'm already wtf'ing so hard like never before
32:27 Anyone who says that going to University is useless is themselves, showing their ignorance. Not everyone can handle going to a great learning institution. There are So many skills and life lessons and interactions there that builds rigor in a way that only college CAN. It is precious. Anytime I meet someone who says this, I immediately know they are not "conscious" and that they are quite ignorant.
Agreed. Opinion has no place here. The irony is strong here…
If you have not learned the concept of cause and effect, and your belief system supports it, I can see misinterpreting your own internal thoughts as the voice of God. I don't think that's a structural issue with the brain. It seems to be more of a cultural issue.
Humans were inconscious virgin ubunoobs. Then, they installed Arch and became Chad ricers.
some people have jokingly argued, due to its infinite complexity, the number PI is also concious
Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke predicted the coming of a 3rd consciousness in humans
The talking brain, and the writing brain. Two totally different types of language.
This is an excellent commentary. However, I take issue with your comments about college. It seems to me that you might be falling prey to your own criticism of economics. You seem to be taking a small amount of information, namely your experience and perhaps the experience of some other people you know, and extrapolating out into a general rule. I am confident I would never have escaped my sheltered southern upbringing had it not been for college and graduate school. Also, I don’t see how I could have attained the mastery of physics and of the study of religion on my own with out the structure of higher education. I do think that a number of my classes were a complete waste of time. Perhaps higher education could be structured better. And, I do think that it is way too expensive
Does not start until 3:52
im here cause david bowie said this is fire
I come to conclusion then do resurch to see if I'm any where close to the truth and your podcast talks about so many of my ideas but you haven't titled this so you can find them so easy love the content btw when I get payed I'll defo subscribe
I agree. I colleges could be more just like petri dishes rather than these sheep farms for corps and states.
They didn't start that way. Blame conservative philosophy that's still trying to restore kings.
Excellent. Thanks a lot
Nowadays the reverse is true: all these impulses are internalised so that you're the storyteller and there is none above you. Saklas.
18:40 what is then the difference between the mental model and the physical environment?
The mental model is "reality" as far as knowing goes. The physical environment is theoretical, a projection, a construct whose building blocks consist of A. the patterns impressed on the neurons that connect the senses to the brain and B. the logical processing done by the neurons in the brain.
And yet the sensors and the neurons and the brain are all elements of the physical environment, a construct.
It's kind of a circular conundrum which
some respond to by saying they're the 'same'.
My first thought was on my first birthday.. it was like... o goddammit I'm a baby.. it's ok... be cool.. don't let them know I know... omg what the hell are they doing?
i liked this alot. also thanks for the free dl
it's called being "in the zone"
I wish I wasn't conscious let me be automata
how hard is it to give your self a lobotomy?
pi3ec fof fw vvrwovjddddddddddddddd
@@scriminamp hearbeat in the brain
I wanted to watch this video to get a detail explanation about the theory , the stupid comment section made it so painful to watch ,
great content!
Great video, super fascinating. And I also agree on what you said about college, the only thing you get from it is relationships that might help you later, other than that just the experience of being amongst your peers, going to parties bla bla. P.S.: I love your voice btw.
Wherever university misconceives itself as business, it sins. The same is true of governments. Business is not a democratic enterprise, employees obey or are eliminated. Business reflects the world when it was dominated by kings and those who strive to destroy democracy and restore conservative reign insult the memory of our ancestors who suffered outrageously and died in revolutions that we all might have a say in our own organization, free of arbitrary coercion, as much as possible given the natural constraints imposed by our groupish nature.
The purpose of our modern consciousness is to enable our collectivity to better organize itself that we might achieve vastly greater numbers and thereby more adequately fill our ecological niche and satisfy the evolutionary imperative.
Replication!
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL This reminds me of a documentary i started watching a few days ago called The century of the self
@@monio.9444 Thanks for the tip, I started watching and am half an hour in. Fascinating! It's long. I'll get back to you when done.
@@monio.9444 I have finished watching. Strikes me as a pretty good analysis. I was already familiar with most of the leading characters from 'Introduction to Psychology' courses taken 40 years ago. Unfortunately, at the time, I had no framework for understanding and insufficient intellect to find it useful. But now I understand why so many Westerners seem to be quite immune to purely rational arguments. Yep, even when I see the truth about advertising and politics get through to a corespondent, the response is often an emotion based retreat into a silo of more agreeable opinion, as implemented, for instance, by setting blocks in Facebook.
How you doin?
Do you think the Jane of Ark case was the same? Like, when she said God spoke to her.
Jaynes is partial to the idea that schizophrenia is in large part a reversion to the bicameral mode of cognition. Does the literature about Joan of Arc reveal any indications that she might have been schizophrenic?
@@REDPUMPERNICKEL I kinda remember hearing a theory like that in a documentary about her years ago, but i can t say i ve read much about her regarding this so i can t really tell. It was just a guess. I would have to read more ro be able to have an opinion on it. But if the theory existed, it would be so interesting.
It's not uncommon in medieval history to read about people having visions, but most of them seem way to high functioning to have schizophrenia to such a degree.
What are the career opportunities for linguists?
there's always a need for cunning linguists.
Listening to this shizzle on yt rather than podcast because Luke insists on the ridiculous ogg nonsense and that forces me to leave my phone screen on or else it stutters lol smh
there are also people who have been born with only one side of the brain and they are still consciousness. you can't even really tell.
I think it is incorrect to assume most people are conscious, even in modern society.
Huge fan of the book. Not sure i agree with your conclusions so far...not far into the video yet..
FYI....I have listened to old Julian Jaynes pod casts...and discussions of his work. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. You seem all over the place. So now I leave you.
Couldn't be that literature was a new thing and it wasn't as developed at the time?
Also ancient people being wacky also applies to medieval people, early modern people etc. They are very different from us.
I think I think, therefore I'm not. 🤔
Bro lost me as soon as he said it's a theory of consciousness that almost has the feel of Ancient Aliens. Not a great sales pitch if you're tryna be taken seriously.
Julian Jaynes Bicameral Mind theory is so fascinating & compelling that one could easily make the case that the historical *_Jesus of Nazareth_* only represented the conscious *_Ego personality,_* of the Jewish Preacher.
*_God the Father,_* a highly integrated personality of *_the Self_* and originating from the right hemisphere of the brain which not only spoke but commanded his conscious Ego personality located in the left hemisphere.
The phenomenon of Christ produced an individual that was likely a rare amalgamation of stratospheric intelligence, schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder.
That's an interesting theory. I have one of my own, related, which goes like this...
The time of Jesus was precisely at the end of the great thousand year transiliation from bicameral consciousness to our modern mode. It seems to me quite natural and understandable that the first attempts to devise new social control systems to manage conscious people should be based on violence and physical coercion. Yes? But those who were often at the sharp end of the stick really didn't like it and so convened a series of secret meetings. In these meetings there were perhaps some sociological geniuses who, during the brainstorming component, invented Jesus, his story and a way to spread it. Looks today like their scheme worked pretty well.
Lukicious Luky Luke, why is your pretty face missing? 😅😥😪😫😭😢😲😔🙁😧😩😨😰🤯😤🤔😁
based
Here at 68,482 views.
So does this idea extend to the "cosmic consciousness" (cc) or "enlightenment" of Buddhism and Vedic religion? Is cc to consciousness as consciousness is to preconsciousness?
Read Iain McGilchrist's extraordinary and seminal 2009 work "The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World." The book offers a deep and intelligent neuroscientific and philosophical augmentation and synthesis of Jayne's 1976 work. Also, look into Lakoff and Johnson's 1980 "Metaphors We Live By" and Lakoff's elaboration on this book's thesis in his subsequent works. These books will give you pause when you attempt to answer the question "What is reality?"
Then look over Donald Hoffman's 2020 "The Case Against Reality" and the compementary works of Bernardo Kastrup. And, finally, finish up with the transcendently metamorphic "Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom" (Thomas Cleary, 1988) and you will likely be equipped to give an informed and useful answer.
David yes this is a good list. McGilchrist picks up on some of what Jaynes touches on. I wonder why Jaynes work doesn’t come up much in discussions between philosophers of mind.
So what is your answer if you have read all of these books?
All this and a dollar ten will get you a cup of coffee at your local McDonald's.
Maaaaan.
Luuuuuke.
Please look up Skinner, maaaaaan. You'll be sssssooooooo interested.
Verbal behavior. Radical behaviorism in general.
I was 16 literally more than a decade ago.
I’m glad someone is talking about Julian’s profound idea. But I still don’t understand what is meant by “consciousness” for you or Julian. Consciousness means the experience itself to many. But it seems like Julian refers to it as self awareness. Recognizing the experience is self awareness but is not consciousness itself.
If you think that's an out there idea then you'll love macroevolution.net.
The Holy Spirit is an "internal voice", which is in the new testament.
I read this book in December of 1987 and it knocked me out. I was so excited about it that I called Julian Jaynes at Princeton. We talked a couple of times and I mailed him my copy of his book to sign. I still have it.
wow, that's like a year before I was born - congrats for not missing the opportunity!
@@yuriythebest Thanks. He had planned on writing a sequel. He told me in 1988 that it was "at least two years away." He died in 1997.
@@bridgebum826 yeah I read about that, it was supposed to contain more proof and stuff.
@@bridgebum826 So what happened to it?
@@pseudoplotinus I still have it. It's sitting on one of my bookshelves.
Beast was reading this in Uncanny X-Men 134, in 1980.
It would have taken the bicameral mind to build pyramids with such huge worked stone and soft tools. Like ants build their tunnels and dwelling places without any consciousness. Conscious man would have wanted workers comp and vacation days
Surely, work done by internal compulsion is not slavery.
im too much of a brainlet to appreciate this
My dad, who died 40 years ago, read this book when it first came out. I still have his copy and always felt proud of him for going deep into this topic.
my dad aint dead nor into reading these things but damn its a small world he's still living i haven't read this book but the dad thing hit me.
Consider make opus files instead of mp3 for freedom and maximum efficiency
He now does
I happened to have just read this about two months before season one of West World… When I found out the theory was a part of the storyline of season one, it was one of the most odd an exciting kind of synchronicities I’ve ever experienced.
@iwonnatube That's pretty funny but yer supposed to add lol at the end.
I just binge watched season 1 again and this time I detected a whole lot more that hinged on or was derived from or related to the theory. (A theory I've found compelling since '79).
Indeed,I couldnt grasp the peculiarity of this "feeeling" WESTWORLD was giving me. Something was pulling me towards,I realize slowly which I believe. I just couldnt help it, it just made me question the essence of mind. Truly entice me to grind the gears of my mind,which I find it oddly satisfying and wanting for more.
@iwonnatube "I didn't see any Trump voters add 'lol' to their ballots". No, but you could hear them reciting , "From hell's heart I stab at thee", virtually speaking.
@iwonnatube It should by now be obvious to everyone that the multinational oligarchs, psychopaths whose lips are to the hilt on Mammon's cock, hoover up the wealth of nations with absolutely no care for the people; the flag draped, crucifix bedecked Trump/FoxNews simply the American tool of their despicable world wide deceit; other nations impoverished in proportion to their belief in magic, so, generally speaking, less.
Could our sense of intuition be us silently contacting our "other half", so to speak?