http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Index.php Note 3 -- The concept of subjective consciousness was developed by Julian Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976). Subjective consciousness involves the ability to recognize yourself as seen by others -- an analog 'I' -- which is internalized and placed into the space of the imagination. This represented a new mental space based on a metaphorical displacement of the self, and had not been seen before about 1500 BC. (The 'space' suggested here is a concept predominently defined in Indo-European languages. People in cultures based on other languages have formed equivalent solutions.) You can look through the 'eyes' of this substitute 'I' or even observe yourself from afar in your mind. Biologically it involves separation of volition and consciousness in the speech centers of the brain. 'Memory' and 'self-awareness' are not subjective consciousness, they are simply aspects of consciousness. All animals have memories, all animals are aware of themself. Some people never achieve subjective consciousness, yet they appear fully functional. Pre-conscious people are almost indistinguishable from subjectively conscious people. Pre-subjectivly-conscious people can learn anything, including mathematics, and certainly they can joke, have emotions, and carry on convoluted dialogues with each other. However, they rely heavily on the learned admonitions of parents and authority figures ('oughts' and 'shoulds') and have difficulty with novel situations. Pre-conscious humans do not have the ability to imagine the reflective thinking of others, that is, how others might imagine them as thinking. The concepts are more fully developed on the text pages. short.php The fourth source has been Julian Jaynes' book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976). Jaynes makes the claim that subjective consciousness did not become part of human culture (in the Near East) until the first millennium BC. The overwhelming concerns of our ancestors with the Gods in earlier antiquity was suddenly explained. Additionally, the book is a gem of insight into how we think. Jaynes' book is independent of any of the above. Jaynes' thesis allow understanding ancient texts as they were meant to be read -- without reference to metaphors, such as we all too readily attribute to texts we do not understand. cos.php -- [http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html] Those familiar with the work of Julian Jaynes will recognize the syndrome. Anything learned before the age at which subjective consciousness is reached, 7 or 8 years, or what Fraser calls "prepubescence," is held as an absolute by the right brain, for facts received early in life have never been consciously examined or explored systematically by the left brain. There are no conceivable alternatives to these 'facts' and there will be no reinvestigation. Fraser deals with handed-down 'facts' of natural science. Some small percentage of students, he admits, can be convinced of the errors in reasoning. However, for handed-down 'facts' of religion and faith, there is no hope of ever changing a person's mind for there is no reasoning to correct. arch.php Thus I disagree with giving these people credit for "universal concepts" or for a developed mythological system and an attendent symbolism. Over the following chapters I will argue, based on the work of Julian Jaynes, that our ancestors were incapable of extending their imagination to abstract metaphorical thinking until perhaps 1500 BC. The Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian languages were "concrete from first to last," says Jaynes. So was their thinking. Only after about 1500 BC do we see an extensive use of similes, and with that the rise of the symbolic use of language through the use of metaphors. [note 38] The possibility of a people without the imagination (subjective consciousness) to conceive of symbolic equivalents or formulate a mythology to explain their existence -- as Leroi-Gourhan holds -- will be hard for many readers to comprehend, for all of our reasoning is by metaphors and we simply cannot imagine any other way of thinking. Symbols for us are the shorthand of abstract thought. [note 39] Our modern day 'image' of ourselves is based on a mirror-like concept of how we think other see us (Jaynes). We conceive of other humans in a like manner. Surprisingly, this does not seem to apply to three-dimensional representations, either in the European Gravettian or much later in Sumer or Egypt. The failure to make changes in the cave-art depictions -- over a period of 20,000 years -- is an additional sign of the lack of subjective consciousness. As Leroi-Gourhan suggested, the cave drawings were never reinvented. noah.php The much later 300 foot-high temple of Marduk at Babylon (built prior to 1800 BC, expanded in ca 700 BC, rebuilt in 680 BC) was called "Etemenanki" which transliterates as "The Temple [House] of the Receiving Platform between Heaven and Earth" (Jaynes). The living quarters of the God had been replaced with a landing pad. It is this last, the overwhelming obsession with the multiple Gods, spells, ceremonies, and religious practices, which remains foreign to us today. And, as Julian Jaynes notes in his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976), it is completely at odds with the expectation one would have for a people descended from Paleolithic hunters with their ever-expanding production of art and tools, or the ingenious farmer and villagers of the Neolithic who simultaneously developed fishing, herding, and farming. Yet, the preoccupation with the demands of the Gods remains the central issue of the later civilizations for over 3000 years. Is Jaynes on track? Something certainly was missing in Mesopotamia. "From its beginnings in Sumer before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, Mesopotamian science was characterized by endless, meticulous enumeration and ordering into columns and series, with the ultimate ideal of including all things in the world but without the wish or ability to synthesize and reduce the material to a system. Not a single general scientific law has been found, and only rarely has the use of analogy been found." -- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition We do have a few examples of analogies. One is the Mesopotamian use of tokens since 8500 BC to represent products and the use of bottle seals as signatures. Both of these are metaphorical displacements. But what is astounding is that it took 5000 years to take the next step -- that is, to map these three-dimensional objects to a flat plane and produce a script. The first step was to pictorially inscribe the content on the outside of sealed jars containing the tokens. These were used as bills of lading by trade caravans and ships. The conversion of these pictorial inscriptions to a usable script took much less time, and its development was predictable as an extension of the first efforts. The tokens were eventually discontinued. [note 41] This failure of a complete overview, the inability to simultaneously see the details and the complete picture, extends to art as well. It is apparent in the images of Sumer and also in the standardized Egyptian depiction of the human body on flat surfaces showing a frontal trunk but with the head and legs in profile. This was noted by Jaynes, who adds that this is also especially to be noted among early Greek two-dimensional figures, which are often shown as curiously disarticulated groupings of arms, legs, trunks, and heads. This does not extend to three dimensional art. Even the earliest Egyptian sculptures in the round were totally realistic, even if somewhat idealized. [note 42] Developing Consciousness The failure in imagination is a lack of subjective consciousness and this shows also in the languages of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Julian Jaynes notes that the Sumarian, Akkadian, and Egyptian languages were "concrete from first to last." The languages had no room for analogies or metaphors. The speakers could not imagine alternatives, perhaps could not imagine themselves. To imagine, one has to take a leap from the concrete. It requires the mental construction of imagined action beyond the exigency of the moment and the needs of the everyday. [note 43] The method of overcoming this failure in imagination, Jaynes proposes, is through an extended use of metaphors. The primary trope is analogy, a space in the mind which is equivalent to the space in the real world. With the addition of an imagined self inhabiting this imagined space, we are suddenly presented with ever-expanding possibilities of imagined actions in these places, interpretations of the effects of the imagined actions, and even the design of tools imagined as solutions to problems. We, in our age, do this sort of mapping to a mental space with past, present, and future experiences, testing the efficacy of possible actions by stepping through them in our mind. We also lay out time and mathematical concepts as viewable 'spaces' in our mind. Jaynes' concept (in brief) of consciousness -- more precisely, subjective consciousness -- is exactly this placement of an imagined 'I' into imagined spaces in the mind. It is not actually 'you,' but a substitute, an analog. You can look through the 'eyes' of this substitute 'I' or even observe yourself from afar in your mind. If something in real space and time requires your attention, the 'I' will shift to be located directly behind your real eyes. Note that, as so defined, 'memories' (as we imagine recollections) and 'self-awareness' are not part of 'subjective consciousness.' These are biologically determined and are common to all animals. Jaynes suggests that historically, subjective consciousness was a late and learned acquisition for humans. Subjective consciousness is learned, and is culturally transmitted. Some people never learn it, yet they appear fully functional. The stupendous advantage of subjective consciousness is the ability of the mind (actually the speech areas in the left rear brain) to be able to analyze the outcomes of multiple alternative actions, to guess what others might think and do, and to understand how others see us. Our subjective consciousness is responsible for our analytical abilities. We use this with such facility that it is almost impossible to recognize the part of us which does things without 'thinking' about them, which includes all rote activities. [note 44] Just as language is learned by children from their parents, so is subjective consciousness. You can watch parents proposing 'what if' situations to small children. Learning subjective consciousness requires language as a base, the ability to use metaphors as a means, and the examples of others. Additionally, Jaynes places the development of subjective consciousness by individuals at about age 7 or 8. Subjective consciousness involves the ability to recognize yourself as seen by others -- an analog 'I' -- which is internalized and placed into the space of the imagination, and which enables you to vault through time. [note 46] And, if not from parents, how is such subjective consciousness learned? It is also learned from meeting strangers (not friends and familiar faces), an experience which forces upon you the idea that others see you, and thus suggests a narratized space in the mind where you can see yourself being looked at by others. This analog 'I' becomes the first spark to light up the enormity of possible analogical mind-spaces which comprise subjective consciousness. Subjective consciousness can be learned quickly. The same Inca army which, on November 16, 1532, walked into the trap set by 110 Spanish soldiers and lost 8000 men because there was no Divine Guidance on how to respond to the novelty of metal-clad men on horses, became engaged in guerilla warfare and laid ambushes for the Spanish within months after the death of the Emperor. [note 47] Jaynes claims that in the Middle East subjective consciousness didn't develop until after 1500 BC. In the two thousand years after the "Age of the Gods," which had still looked with certainty towards the beginnings, subjective consciousness simply was not needed. As long as nothing changed, life was predictable and safe. It took a number of world-wide catastrophes, which Jaynes does not address and is not aware of, to force a change. According to Jaynes, the Middle East started to wake up to consciousness with the arrival of 'strangers.' For Mesopotamia the strangers are the Indo-European invaders from the steppen of Russia and from India and Persia -- the Hittites (1600 to 1200 BC), who settled in Anatolia, but especially the later Medes and Persian invaders of Assyria in 500 BC, followed by Alexander's conquest of Persia somewhat later. Many of the Greeks, in fact, had already passed the consciousness horizon with their wide trade contacts with other peoples, and their near-wholesale rejection of the authority of kings. In contrast, Sparta, a Greek state which remained a kingdom through the Classical era, never produced anything of note except mindless warriers. [note 48] Their constitution has stood them well for 400 years. -- concerning Sparta, paraphrased from Herodotus, "The Histories" (ca 400 BC) We also have to wonder at the myths and legends which have come down to us, since the lack of subjective consciousness precludes detailed memories. We can all verify this for ourselves, for we remember little or nothing from the first few years of life -- when we lack language -- and little from before the age of seven or eight -- when we lack the imagination to embroider remembered experiences. This suggests that mankind would not be able to recall its early history, and further suggests that the myths and legends are fabrications of a later age. But, just as we remember some events from childhood if they are retold to us (or to ourselves), so humans would have been able to recall studendous past events if these were retold or replayed. Retold as myths from generation to generation and acted out in rituals and ceremonies, these past events became concrete tribal memories. The accuracy of the retelling would have been carefully protected. Note how small children will correct you if you diverge from the telling of a story that they already know. Ancient festivals reenacted the events, preserved the memories, and, at the same time, fleshed out the stories to fill those memories with details. [note 49] The stories ('myths' to us) and festivals spoke of the deeds of the Gods, copied their actions, and illustrated their appearance. Mexicans today still play a football game with a flaming ball called "Purepucha," recreating the creation events described in Michoacan myths. Through this dramatization everything displayed in the heavens becomes part of the earthly domain and localizes Gods to specific temples and cities. When mythologists today suggest that the Gods of mythology are only human heroes elevated to godly status, they have it backwards. We are seeing the celestial Gods made human. Which is also exactly how most of mythology reads today. [note 50] Bicameral Kingdoms The adoption of subjective consciousness seen in the Middle East beginning after 1500 BC is also accomplished in India and China at about the same time, and due to similar causes. Did anything like it happen in the Americas before AD 1500? The problem with finding an answer to that question is that we only know the story from the invaders. On the one hand, for Mesoamerica, we have a record of the dialog between Aztec philosophers of the Valley of Mexico and Spanish theologians, recorded by the 16th century historian Sahagún, which certainly attests to a well developed subjective consciousness. These theological discussions are only now being published. [note 51] On the other hand, Jaynes noted the striking similarities between the Middle East of 2000 or 1500 BC and the Incas of South America of AD 1500. The parallels between the Inca emperors of AD 1500 and the pharaohs of third millennium BC Egypt are astounding, despite a separation of 4000 years. For the Inca emperor, as for the pharaoh, the purpose of life was reunion with the Gods. When the Spanish threaten one of the Inca cities, the Incas flee, leaving behind their gold, belongings, and food, taking only the mummies of their past god-kings to hide them in the mountains. We see the same in Egypt where the priests frequently remove mummies and hide them elsewhere when threatened by grave robbers at times of unrest. Julian Jaynes proposes a generalized model of theocratic city states and empires, and calls these civilizations 'bicameral kingdoms.' 'Bicameral' refers to the separation of volition and consciousness in the speech centers of the brain. The start of activities is initiated almost exclusively by the right rear brain. This area of the brain is also responsible for generating speech which was not consciously thought out beforehand. Because of this, the right rear brain seems to be the location of the will. [note 52] Consciousness, on the other hand, is located almost entirely in the left rear brain, as are also the ability to understanding the speech of others and the ability to produce grammatically correct responses. The left brain is not aware of the right. This is, in fact, extensible to all right cerebral activities, most notable to mental failures, that is, dysfunctions. Oliver Sacks details this in case studies, in "The Man who Mistook his Wife for his Hat" (1970). We live in our consciousness, unaware of the input from the right hemisphere. Bicameral kingdoms have a number of features in common, including the following. First, there was either a city God, with the city and surrounding area operated as a theocracy, or a king, who was held to be the God or the Son of the God and was revered as such, even after his death. Theocracies included Sumer and, later, Akkad (in fact, all Mesopotamia remained as theocracies up to Persian times), India, China, and all of Mesoamerica. Societies under the direct rule of God or the Son of God included Egypt, Japan, and the Inca empire. Second, the dead in these societies were considered alive in some way, and in need of material goods, especially foods, to accompany them in their graves. This practice actually extends far back into more remote antiquity, but becomes obsessive with the bicameral kingdoms. The new kingdoms initially buried their kings complete with their retinue. This practice seldom lasted more than a few generations in Egypt and Sumer, but continued for 700 years under the Shang dynasty of China (and was only prohibited by the Chou after ca 1000 BC). The 200 year old Inca kingdom still practiced it in AD 1532 when the Spanish arrived. In bicameral kingdoms throughout the world, people (and certainly the elite) were believed to become Gods on their death. The enormous ceremonial center of Teotihuacan in Mexico (200 BC -- AD 700), at one time supporting 200,000 inhabitants, was known as "the Place Where Men Become Gods." [note 53] Third, the kingdoms of the 'God on Earth' were jealous of any competing Gods, including those which had come before, and would destroy all signs of the preceding Gods, just as the cities of Sumer and Akkad would readily attack their contemporaries and haul off the God statues from the temples of nearby cities. The destruction of all previous records by edict of the Emperor of China in 213 BC is a late example. The Aztecs destroyed all the manuscripts of their predecessors in the Valley of Mexico shortly after AD 1400. And, however subjectively conscious we may proudly think ourselves to be, it should be noted that the priests who followed the Spanish invaders into the Yucatan in the following century burned all the books of the Maya. Fourth, the citizens were incapable of deceit, or more fundamentaly, incapable of imagining the deceit of others. Not that these people could not lie or steal, but they were incapable of mentally 'narratizing' a complex series of deceptive actions either by others or by themselves. This is vividly illustrated with the Inca empire, which had subdued half the South American continent, only to fall to the deceit of a handful of Spanish soldiers. As a corollary it should also be noted that these people had no morals -- there was no such thing as good or bad. Actions were ordered and the humans responded like robots. The heroes of the "Iliad" (traditionally placed at 1200 BC) were motivated (if that is the right word) by glory and shame, without regard for their own life, as were the Spartans who held off the Persian army at Thermopylae in 480 BC. In the vacuum left by the departure of the Gods, religion had substituted prescribed duties for individual judgement and assumed the absolutist attitudes understood as the perogative of the earlier Gods. What is absolutely astounding is that these attitudes lasted over 4500 years -- as in the case of the Incas, for example. What we have in these civilizations are people desparately holding on to the past. They considered themselves "slaves of the Gods," only now it was the local God in residence at each temple who needed to be housed, fed, and adorned. Everyone was employed in the service of the Gods, and surplus produce and products from the countryside surrounding a temple were collected (as a tax) for the upkeep of the temple Gods, for redistribution to temple craftsmen, and for long distance trade for building materials and more exotic needs. All humans were as deeply invested in their assigned tasks as the drones of a bee hive. [note 54] Population explosions are certainly the mark of each of these empires, including those which did not appear until long after the departure of the Gods and Jaynes proposes that the elements of the bicameral kingdoms arise out of the need to control these large populations. But I question this. There is ample evidence that these kingdoms were voluntary societies where massive public works, whether draining swamps, digging irrigation canals, or monumental construction, were accomplished without coercion. This last becomes obvious with a closer look at the histories of Maya ceremonial centers. These were built with volunteer labor which depended only on the citizens' confidence in the leader's connection with the spirit world. [note 55] Jaynes suggests that these early civilizations were pre-conscious -- that is, not subjectively conscious. He suggests societies in which control was effected through auditory commands from the 'Gods' -- actually the remembered admonitions of the governing class. This kept everyone to their task, and kept all things in order. Jaynes' use of "hearing the commands of the Gods" is a shorthand for the admonishing voice (which we still hear today) generated by the right hemisphere of the brain. In essence, these people, and perhaps especially the ruling class, were hallucinating. This description has turned some people away from a careful consideration of Jaynes' theories even though it is an accepted fact that the speech center of the right hemisphere acts as a separate but unconscious entity. [note 56] But pre-subjective people are entirely functional humans. They can learn anything, including any skill, reading, and mathematics, they have the same sense of humor as the rest of us, they experience and express emotions, and they can converse with others in intricate details. It is difficult to distinguish bicameral humans from subjectively conscious humans. You will find yourself persuaded by each of the long soliloquies of the war chiefs of the "Iliad" when they meet in council -- yet no one among them takes action without receiving a command from a God. Bicameral humans seem normal. However, they rely heavily on the learned admonitions of parents and authority figures (blurting things out without any forethought, invariably in the context of 'ought' and 'should') and have difficulty with novel situations. New situations require the ability to imagine a number of alternative actions which might be taken and then to make a selection based on the imagined results. A pre-conscious human does not have the ability to imagine the thinking of others, especially reflectively, that is, how other might imagine them as thinking. Note 43 -- "Ideas such as objectified conceptions of a mind, or even the notion of something spiritual being manifested, are of much later development. It is generally agreed that the ancient Egyptian language, like the Sumerian, are concrete from first to last. To maintain that it is expressing abstract thoughts would seem to me an intrusion of the modern idea that men have always been the same." -- Julian Jaynes "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976) Note 47 -- I would suspect that the delay in subjective consciousness in the Americas might largely be due to the limited exposure to new people. The eastern Mediterranean, in contrast, was constantly overrun by foreign tribes seeking better environments, especially after both 1500 BC and 800 BC. The same is true of China. Consciousness also insinuated itself for totally different reasons, dating from after 2000 BC, as writing came into greater use. Trade would have been an immense influence (meeting different people), as would the increased use of scripts for state administration. Jaynes, in fact, claims that the use of the scripts of the "talking tablets" displaced the voice of a person to an object, driving spoken commands into silence, and requiring the reader to listen to the tablet, rather than imagining a person dictating the text. The communications of Hammurabi (ca 1700 BC) to his distant government officials were addressed not to them, but to the tablets he wrote (in his own hand!). See Appendix A, "Chronology," for more details. Note 51 -- The note about Sahagún is from Charles Mann, "1491, New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" (2006). Mann uses this to demonstrate that the Aztec were hardly 'savages.' The Aztec philosophers, by the way, seem to have bested the Spanish in the discussions. Admittedly, a complex theology is not sufficient to suggest subjective consciousness, for we see the same in Egypt of the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom before 1500 BC. The status of consciousness ought to be sought in the accommodation of the Aztec to the religious environment of the central Mexican region, which they invaded 200 years before the Spanish arrived, and their subsequent relationship to the Spanish. This should be considered, despite the fact that their relationship to the Gods was one of control (which reflected also in their relationship with other tribes) rather than the Mediterranean concept of having to placate God. Mesoamerica shows all the signs of having developed an intricate philosophical system which deals in metaphorical constructs after 600 BC. Linda Schele and David Freidel, in "Maya Cosmos" (1993) attribute the collapse of the Maya in AD 900 to internecine warfare, not on a religious collapse (which would be an index of the lack of subjective consciousness), as Jaynes suggested 30 years ago, based on information available to Jaynes at that time. Similarly the destruction of ceremonial sites in the Valley of Mexico were not always accomplished for religious reasons. Many centers were destroyed by marauding invaders. However, it is important to emphasise that pre-conscious people are almost indistinguishable from subjectively conscious people, and the only real hint pointing to a lack of subjective consciousness is the inability to deal with new situations. This was not true of the Maya and the Mexicans at the time of the Spanish invasion, but I will go with Jaynes' opinion in the case of the Inca empire, although this is influenced by my lack of knowledge of the specifics of the change in South America from indigenous religions to Christianity. The Maya and Mexica, on the other hand seem to have integrated local traditions (or, more importantly, their philosophy) and Christianity. [return to text] Note 55 -- The Maya never supported standing armies, or a police force. I disagree with Jaynes' contention that "authority" was needed to "control" groups of people through leadership, especially large groups. A look at the Plains Indians shows this is not so. See, for instance, Robert Utley, "The Lance and the Shield, The life and Times of Sitting Bull" (1993) or see Linda Schele and David Freidel "A Forest of Kings" (1990) on the Maya. The need for authority is necessary to gregarious species, like us humans. But it need not be a matter of imposed control, and all indications from graves and houses before 3100 BC in Egypt and the Near East is that there was no leadership elite. [return to text] Note 56 -- Jaynes admits that perhaps people whose role was closest to the upper levels of leadership would be most under the influence of the hallucinating voices of the Gods. It should be remembered that the concept of "free will" does not develop philosophically until the Classical Age of Greece and the concept of "chance" remains forbidden well into the Middle Ages of Europe. Even today we see, as an example, that 'moral development' -- a term designating the ability to make independent ethical judgements -- correlates inversely with religiosity, a belief in the importance of law, and in general with conservative beliefs. See Lee Wilkins "The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics" (2005). moses.php The Psychosis of Yahweh De Grazia dismisses the concepts of a developing subjective consciousness during this period expressed by Julian Jaynes in "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". De Grazia writes, "Jaynes was not able to cope with the historical materials, largely because he relied upon conventional chronology." De Grazia dismisses the whole concept of the bicameral mind. As he states.. [note 32] "In reality it was the catastrophes of the world whose terrible stresses made hallucinatory leaders out of borderline cases and staunch believers out of normal people." -- Alfred de Grazia This serves to support de Grazia's extensive analysis of the politics of the Exodus and the psychology of Moses. But as Jaynes had warned, de Grazia is unable to distinguish a bicameral mind from a fully functional human and de Grazia's description of Yahweh reads almost exactly like a bicameral Moses. Yahweh is Moses, but as the separate right hemisphere of his mind. In effect Moses had a split personality. This is, in fact, how Jaynes defines the bicamerality of the mind -- the independence of the right hemisphere which can guide the verbal left hemisphere and which, in earlier times, would order the other half around verbally. Even today the right hemisphere imposes itself completely on schizophrenic individuals. The rest of us, having learned to silence the voices, still frequently hear the right hemisphere as the unvoiced utterings of oughts and shoulds -- "close the door", "turn off the light", "do you have your keys?" Moses, as a pre-conscious human, was guided in what he did by the right hemisphere of his mind and experienced this as a separate 'being' who spoke to him. When de Grazia writes, as above, "it was the catastrophes [which] made hallucinatory leaders out of borderline cases," he is entirely correct in that the events of the period were certainly stressful, but those are also the conditions which foster subjective consciousness. Jaynes has noted (without any reference to world-wide catastrophes) that this period saw the first light of subjective consciousness in individuals, first in bemoaning the failing presence of the Gods and their guidance, and then as a reaction to the press of strangers. These were only two facets in the series of unpredictable events and novel conditions which changed us as humans. The only 'evolutionary' solution was to engender the ability to imagine what might happen in these new situations. Moses certainly had the imagination and ability to organize the exodus from Egypt of a large group of people and keep it organized under exceedingly difficult conditions. (Josephus claimed, in the first century AD, that Moses had previously led a military expedition to Ethiopia.) The only thing that he failed to imagine, much later, was the actual entry into Caanan and the whole new set of problems and conditions to be dealt with in the conquest and settlement of this new land. Forty years earlier the voice of Yahweh had driven him; by the time he reached Canaan, Yahweh had gone silent. Moses dawdled endlessly, and eventually it cost him his life. [note 33] Allow me to quote from de Grazia extensively, for his source document, the second chapter of Exodus, is important. The writing in Exodus is personal without being self-serving, and is a rare window on an age which changed humanity. The nexus of catastrophe and the human mind, desperately seeking to resolve the unpredictable, is key to understanding how we, within the next thousand years, became fully human -- that is, how we evolved subjective consciousness and started teaching this to our children, silencing the demanding and controlling right hemisphere, and, most importantly, how we came to rely upon the imagined spaces of consciousness in the left hemisphere to help us live in the changing world. "The abrupt commands of Yahweh, his great noises, curses, and marvelously clear consultative advice enrich the verses of the Books of Moses. The lack of explanation is typical of both hallucinatory voices and of Yahweh's words." "Yahweh says and Yahweh does. What he says consists of describing himself, expressing his emotions, relating what he has done, instructing as to what must be done, and foretelling what he will do." "All that Yahweh says is in an absolutely authoritative mode. This includes those expressions which comment upon behavior that is against his will or interests." "What Yahweh does, supplementing what he says, is to cause all things to happen, even expressions of disobedience coming out of 'free will,' in the sense that if he wished to do so, he could make people will what he wanted them to will." "He even asserts a power to be bad, to do evil. He is not bound by notions of good or evil. 'Who makes peace and creates evil, I Yahweh do all this.'" These observations by de Grazia are completely archetypal and descriptive of the right hemisphere of the brain, and you will recognize them instantly if you are familiar with Jaynes' research on schizophrenia, hypnosis, talking in tongues, complex automatic activities, and the narratives of antiquity. "Yahweh writes; he organizes lists or rules; he keeps books; and little else that is technical; he is the product, not the fountainhead of the science of Moses." "Write this in your book," Yahweh commands Moses. The organization of lists and rules is also archetypal of schizophrenia, but the phrase "little else that is technical" is not quite fair. Typical of a right hemispherical presence -- the hallucinating voice -- Yahweh is quite accomplished technically. He explains to Moses the new calendar. Moses has to return to Yahweh with questions, for he does not understand. It is Yahweh who designs the Ark, and sets all the safety requirements for the attending priests, their clothes, the procedures, the curtained tents, and all the altar appurtenances. However, it is certainly correct to say that Yahweh was "the product of the science of Moses." As with us, the right hemisphere of Moses' brain had access to all that he had learned, and as with us, the right hemisphere could draw together physical concepts and synthesize disparate parts into a working whole -- in short, solve problems -- and then deliver the solutions to the conscious left hemisphere, as if out of thin air. And Yahweh is quite well aware of what problems Moses is capable of solving without help. At one point Yahweh demands an Ark design with red, blue, black, and white fire. Moses asks how this might be done, and Yahweh, in a fashion absolutely typical of the annoyance often displayed by the right hemisphere today, answers, "I fabricate my glory; you make your own colors." De Grazia took this anecdote from a secondary source which quoted some Midrash tradition. The Midrash is the collected Jewish commentary on the Bible, originally oral, but reduced to writing after the second century AD. It thus constitutes a comment some 1600 years after the Exodus. In fact, I would think that it describes the world conditions surrounding the Exodus, but not an aspect of Moses or Yahweh, despite the fact that it 'fits' comfortably into the narrative and the characterizations of Exodus. As Jaynes points out, it is a transitional period. The attendent visual hallucinations have disappeared -- God no longer strolls with Adam in the Garden in the cool of the evening. Yahweh has become an disembodied voice. Only one time does Moses speak face to face with Yahweh. Fifty years later Joshua is spoken at, rather than spoken to by Yahweh. "At times Joshua is so uncertain he has to cast lots." [note 34] Note 32 -- This quote by de Grazia relates to Jaynes' use of the traditionally accepted dating of the event of the battle at Troy to ca 1200 BC (attributable to a hasty comment by Herodotus) and the later writing of the "Iliad" to ca 700 BC. The Asiatic Greeks have disagreed with the early date of the war since 400 BC. (See also the endnotes to Chapter 11, "The Death of Quetzalcoatl," on the dating question.) However, the late date of authorship of the "Iliad" is unquestionable. .......... Note 34 -- I copied these last two lines verbatim from de Grazia who transcribed them exactly from Jaynes. [return to text] Note 39 -- This is also the period of the first appearance of the oracle inscriptions of the Shang dynasty in China. The "I Ching" is of a later date. Textual analysis places it after 700 BC, although the trigrams probably date to before 3100 BC. people.php The lack of metaphorical thinking in remote antiquity is critical to understanding what we are told by our forebears. The languages in which the first observations of the heavens were rendered was specific and concrete -- as Jaynes suggests, "end to end." These people were not creating symbols or dealing in mystical religious philosophies; what we are told of was exactly what was seen and experienced. This is, in fact, what Jaynes proposes, that metaphorical thinking dates only from about 1500 BC. Jaynes demonstrates this through examples and details from the earliest historical texts and through an analysis of cult objects of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Of course, nothing is proven, for nothing can be proven about the mentality of an era we did not participate in. But enough striking examples are brought forward to suggest that his hypothesis is correct. I should point out that Jaynes was completely unawares of the catastrophism developed in this text. What is more significant is that Jaynes' concepts of subjective consciousness is based on a working model of the mind which has very large predictive value. This is also why there has been no follow-up to Jaynes' model. Besides stepping away from mainstream psychology in writing "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (1976), Jaynes' model, which locates consciousness exclusivly in the left hemisphere of the brain and delegates volition to the right half, in effect closed the door to further research, despite the fact that vast behavioral areas remained to be explored, for the basis of the model was largely philosophical, it was not clinical. Current stock psychological research, as with neurological research, is based entirely on stringing together data from endless clinical studies. It also tends to be reductive, equating conclusions from clinical data to elements of computer models and electrical circuitry, despite the fact that the interrupt-based set-asides of computer processing has no equivalent to the simultaneous capabilities of the brain -- the only true multi-processing system. You will also see a reductiveness to named parts of the brain as if 'firing order' and 'activity' are causally meaningful. They are not. The dependence of the limits of clinical data is equivalent to where the study of language arrived at decades ago -- a reduction of words to sounds and phonemes without a single notion of how to jump from there to the obvious, grammar. But despite the turn by profesionals to the academic minutia of clinical studies, the broad concepts of separate left and right brain are alive in popular culture. Separate qualities are often ascribed to the two hemispheres, which are, however, generally totally wrong. To say that the left hemisphere is capable of speech, for example, is completely correct, for we are aware of this faculty. To say that the left hemisphere is logical and the right hemisphere is intuitive is completely bogus. Nothing which may be accomplished by the right hemisphere is accessible to consciousness, so that nothing can be said about the workings of the right hemisphere except by inference. And the inferences come from feelings, from words (often inappropriate) which spring to mind, and from image that impose themselves on consciousness. [note 3] Malcolm Gladwell, 2005 A book by Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink" (2005), relates the ephemeral nature of the communication of the right brain with the conscious left. The book opens with attempts of the Getty Museum in California to verify the authenticity of a Greek statue, a kouros, dating from 500 BC which had been offered for sale to the Getty. The investigation, which included stylistic considerations, the provenance of prior ownership, the source of the material, and the evidence of 2000 years of aging, took 14 months. In 1986, at the completion of the investgation, the kuoros was viewed by a number of experts in ancient Greek sculpture. Frederico Zeri (on the Getty's board), stared at the kouro's fingernails when unveiled -- they looked wrong. Evelyn Harrison (independent) felt something was amiss and recommended against purchase. Thomas Hoving (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) recalled that the word that jumped into his mind at the first sight of the kouros was, "fresh," hardly appropriate for a statue reputed to be 2500 years old. Hoving also recommended against purchase. The Getty shipped the kouros to Greece and called a conference of experts. Here are additional responses: George Despinis (Acropolis Museum, Athens), to quote Gladwell, "took one look at the kouros and blanched." Georgios Dontas (Archaeological Society, Athens), saw the statue and felt cold, he felt "as though there was glass between me and the work." Angelos Delivorrias (Benaki Museum, Athens) felt a wave of "intuitive repulsion" at the first sight of the sculpture. The experts were eventually vindicated; the kouros was indeed a fake. But now look at the broad base of opinions of the experts: All of them made up their mind within one or two seconds after first seeing the kouros. Not one of them could articulate the reasons for their opinion or 'revulsion.' Note that the feeling of incorrectness seemed to be universal, but also note the words which entered their minds, and the image of the glass. These were all articulate people, yet they were stumped to explain their 'feelings.' What is most amazing is that some inarticulate part of the brains of these curators managed to come to a conclusion in under two seconds, when the Getty had managed to get the wrong answer after 14 months of expert investigations. The speed is phenominal, but the inarticulateness and terseness of communication to the conscious mind is a definite drawback. Gladwell, following current theories, writes, "The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions like this is called the adaptive unconscious, and the study of this kind of decision making is one of the most important new fields in psychology." Daniel Goleman, 2006 As a second example of the reduction of Jaynes's left rear and right rear hemispheres to smaller constituent parts of the brain, consider Daniel Goleman's book "Social Intelligence" (2006). Goleman uses both sociological and neurological clinical sources in an attempt to define social interactions as dependent on pattern recognition. Here the high speed recognition, which he calls the "low road," at least has a clear method of communicating its findings to the conscious left brain. On recognizing an emotion in others, the observer will duplicate this in his own body. Goleman calls it "emotional contagion." "Emotional contagion exemplifies what can be called the brain's 'low road' at work. The low road is circuitry that operates beneath our awareness, automatically and effortlessly, with immense speed. Most of what we do seems to be piloted by massive neural networks operating via the low road -- particularly in our emotional life." The "high road," writes Goleman... ".. in contrast runs through neural systems that work more methodically and step by step, with deliberate effort. We are aware of the high road, and it gives us at least some control over our inner life, which the low road denies us." The "immense speed" of the low road, however, is relative. The brain can operate at an immense speed with familiar material. All of us have been looking at faces and associating the expressions with emotions since we were a month old. The same operation "beneath our awareness" takes hold in typing or playing a musical instrument. But ask yourself a difficult question, and it may take weeks or months before an answer "pops into your mind." It is the same 'unawares' right brain functions which will have reviewed all the data that you have consciously accumulated. Goleman lists (after Matthew Lieberman) some brain areas involved in processes which escape conscious awareness, as, the amygdala, basal ganglia, lateral temporal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. It is a long list. I would be more comfortable with Jaynes' model, which posits a fully functional second mind, but one which has almost no control over speech, and whose operation remains completely inaccessible to consciousness. It is equivalent to being inhabited by another psyche, and, as has been observed, one who is smart, fast thinking, correct in most situations, but also willfull, impatient, and quickly annoyed. Michael Gazzaniga, 2008 The third example is a book by Michael Gazzaniga, "Human: The Science behind What Makes Us Unique" (2008), which discusses split-brain (commissureotomized) patients. 'Being inhabited' is a concern specifically addressed. Gazzaniga writes.. "Why don't split-brain patients have dual consciousness? Why aren't the two halves of the brain conflicting over which half is in charge? ... Are consciousness and the sense of self actually located in one half of the brain?" [note 4] Gazzaniga points out that attention remains fixed on a single spatial location after the brain has been split, as if the two halves were still working together. He also notes Paul Broca's research (of years ago) which located the center for speech on the left hemisphere, writing, "A split-brain patient's left hemisphere and language centers have no access to the information that is being fed to the right brain." Information can visually be fed separately to each hemisphere by showing separate images to the left and right eye. (There is some loss of information, since the optical nerves of the eyes each split the field of view between the left and right hemispheres.) Under this condition the left and right hemisphere can be asked to respond appropriately to the separate images, and this will be accomplished, for both the left and right brain can understand speech. Since the hands and fingers are almost totally under control of either the right or left brain, the response (like picking an appropriate object) will reflect the decisions of a single hemisphere. This has led Gazzaniga to some conclusions about the separate hemispheres (I'll note the right as silent, the left as verbal), as follows. "Although the [silent] right hemisphere remains superior to the isolated [verbal] left hemisphere for some perceptual and attentional skills, and perhaps also emotions, it is poor at problem solving and many other mental activities" This badly short-changes the right brain. Goleman, in the previously quoted book, in essence suggested that the right brain, or the parts of the brain unavailable to consciousness or introspection, is superb at gaging emotions. Gazzaniga call it "face recognition." The silent right is also capable of completely logical analysis of data, unlike the left brain which tends to make up even incorrect theories, as the author points out, seemingly because it is driven to create order, as, for example, "to find patterns in sequences of events even when they [the subjects] are told that the sequences are random." About the verbal left hemisphere Gazzaniga writes.. "The [verbal] left hemisphere, on the other hand engages in the human tendency to find order in chaos and persists in forming hypotheses about the sequence of events [in this example] even in the face of evidence that no pattern exists: slot machines, for instance." The use of the phrase "human tendency" takes us beyond speculation. Now calling the left brain with its apparent inherent need to come up with theories, "the interpreter," Gazzaniga finishes his analysis on a poetic rather than a scientific note.. "How is that two isolated hemispheres give rise to a single consciousness? The left-hemisphere interpreter may be the answer. The interpreter is driven to generate explanations and hypotheses regardless of circumstances. The left hemisphere of split-brain patients does not hesitate to offer explanations for behaviours that are generated by the right hemisphere. In neurologically intact individuals, the interpreter does not hesitate to generate spurious explanations for sympathetic nervous system arousal. In these ways, the left-hemisphere interpreter may generate a feeling in all of us that we are integrated and unified." The waters have been seriously muddied. Jaynes covered all this 30 years earlier, and without recourse to vapid generalizations about consciousness. Let me start over at the beginning, and review what we know. ........... You have to admit that techniques like making button-hole borers, detachable harpoons, or pressure-flaked serrated knives are not biological 'evolutions' -- they are cultural evolutions. The sudden development and variety of Cromagnon's toolkit is absolutely astounding compared to the million years that Homo Erectus used a single general purpose bi-faced hand-ax as their only tool, or the uniformly sized flint 'side scrapers' fabricated by Neanderthals for 200,000 years. There are other parallel developments that are less easy to trace. Making cords, knotting nets, spinning, and weaving -- all point to a genesis in remote antiquity of about the same date. Mixing and compounding colorants were definitely within the scope of Cromagnon, as witnessed by the decorated caves of France and Spain and elsewhere. The first pottery dates from about the same time, in Japan. [note 12] You would expect that language had something to do with that, but it is nearly impossible to describe in words how to knap flint or proceed with pressure flaking. In fact, language is not needed to pass on the knowledge of flint manufacturing or spinning but rather language is used to come up with the ideas for the uses of flint or threads. Language is descriptive, and any one description develops another, by way of metaphorical extension. "The grand and vigorous function of metaphor is the generation of new language as it is needed... " "[Metaphors] literally create new objects. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication." -- Julian Jaynes From language came ideas -- suddenly and in wild profusion. That is where all the new tools came from. They were "made to order." A single human with language is capable of generating a range of ideas far beyond anything the whole rest of the mammal world was able to think of collectively in a billion years -- or Homo Erectus was able to generate in over a million years. ........... I have introduced the concept of subjective consciousness as culturally acquired in earlier text, and made reference to Julian Jaynes. Perhaps a very brief review of his work would be helpful here. I would urge anyone to read Jaynes, at a minimum in order to reach an understanding of how we think -- through metaphors, narratization, and spatial fantasizing -- and also how many judgements and solutions to problems are reasoned out without consciousness -- without conscious awareness, that is, without what we would otherwise consider as 'thinking.' As noted by Jaynes, actual 'conscious thinking' represents a thimbleful of the gross volume of all that we would consider as 'thoughts.' Jaynes spend the first chapter of his book in telling what consciousness is not. It is not a copy of what we experience; it is not the source of concepts; it is not needed for learning; and it is not necessary for thinking or reasoning. It is a difficult chapter, for much of what we hold dearly as the core of our innermost mentality is removed as support of consciouness. ... Basis of Consciousness Language is an absolute prerequisite for subjective consciousness. Language is a system of naming which begets other names. It is ever-expansive, especially because the names for anything new are metaphorically related to things already known (and named). But language is not enough for consciousness. After all, many animals use languages but can only conceive of the present tense, "Let's play; let's eat; let's screw." "Arf arf, arf arf arf, the mailman is at the door, he is going to kill us all." -- the dog Here the dog, in her limited consciousness, is imagining the worst for next few moments, as dogs have done for 100,000 years, be it marauding bears invading a campsite or evil mailmen tampering with the mailslot. But the imagined future for a dog does not extend much further ahead. We, on the other hand, can displace our 'thinking' far beyond the present or into the past, reconstructing remembered or imagined spaces. But most importantly, our minds can race through many alternatives (of "who is at the door?") and make rapid evaluations -- all based on placing a substitute for ourselves into these alternative spaces. But what are these mental 'spaces?' The spaces of subjective consciousness, like language, are also created metaphorically. The general metaphor is the analog, where every part of the 'real world' is represented by a corresponding part in the analogical model -- here the mental space of subjective consciousness. It is like a map: the map reduces real world geography to marks on a paper, and the map in turn can be inspected to determine spacial relationships of the real world. These spaces are constructed and 'observed' by us, as if we are situated within them, and are thus inhabited by a copy of ourselves, an analog 'I'. You can even step back to see the "I" from some distance as an analog "me". So, to complete the definition of subjective consciousness, it requires the individual creation of an analog 'I' in the expanded mind space. It is a facility so familiar to us that it difficult to think of yourself actually engaging in 'subjective consciousness.' 'Subjective consciousness' is to be distinguished from 'self-consciousness' or 'self-awareness' which is observable in many animals. Now we have subjective consciousness as we understand it: a focus on the specifics of a space or an action, seemingly located in the mind, specifically in the left hemisphere, and using an 'I' which is able to move about through actualities and possibilities and evaluate alternative courses of action based on probable outcomes. And in these spaces we can shift time. We can determine future actions (as yet uncompleted) and also review past actions (making up the elements of an operating space called 'memory') These evaluations are the level of 'judgement' of which the left brain is capable -- and at which it is very good. Subjective consciousness is a focus which completely knits over the chasms between spatial locations (or times) in your mind -- to make it seamless to the point of not ever being able to be conscious of not being conscious. It reorganizes memories to make them seem like 'looked at' spaces, rather than actual sensory impressions. It forces you to 'remember' anything you have done by taking an exterior spatial view of the activity. Even mathematical concepts are evaluated as spatial relationships. Jaynes claims there is no subjective consciousness except that which is represented by imagined spaces accompanied by the analogs of normal human actions -- we view, review, fit, weigh, and manipulate concepts, but all as actions. Time is also viewed spatially, as a continuous space of differing gradations. [note 21] Subjective consciousness is a focus which only occasionally actually includes awareness of sensory experience. Not that you cannot shift your consciousness to something that catches your attention or become acutely aware of some part of your body -- but it is another (unconscious) part of the brain which tips you off, and then you shift to inhabit an analog 'real' space, moving your analog 'I' to just behind the eyes. [note 22] More importantly, and despite what you think occurs in your mind, subjective consciousness excludes the formation of concepts, so-called reasoning, and most judgements about physical objects and other people. There is no recollection, for example, of how you managed to drive your car home, and there is awareness, but no 'thinking' involved in panic reactions. A later review of a newly constructed memory will add all the 'reasoning' that determined your actions. All immediate 'thinking' is done in the background, unconsciously, and by the right brain. You don't have any awareness of this until the conclusion are transmitted to the subjective consciousness of the left side. [note 23] We only apply logic (as 'reasoning') after the fact. Similarly, ask any artist where ideas come from -- they appear out of thin air. Ask Einstein where his concepts came from -- they came from no-where, usually while shaving. Einstein remarked that he shaved very carefully, for new ideas would pop into his mind and often startle him. This happened during other mundane activities also. "I thought of that while riding my bike." -- AE None of consciousness is anything like what a wolf does to chase down an elk, which is totally automatic, involves quick judgements and pre-guessing the moves of his prey, and who knows what else. If you or I did something as automatic we would make all the right moves and never be 'conscious' of them. What we would be conscious of is the overview of the real space we are operating in (chasing an elk), but seen as if we were watching a movie, with ourselves simultaneously as actor and viewer. Our 'consciousness' could be elsewhere while we were chasing the elk. This condition is easily recognized in driving a car, where we make all the right adjustments to traffic, yet are "lost in thought" most of the time, lost that is, in our left-brain consciousness. We could be considering the opening notes of some piece of music. The car trip (or elk chase) would still be completed with the same efficiency -- our body would still make the correct decisions on how to move, where to turn, when to stop. And none of it would involve "thinking" as we commonly understand it. The right brain can perform any 'learned' activity blindly, like playing a piano, or driving a car. But it has trouble with new situations. Evaluating anything new is the task of subjective consciousness. In fact, subjective consciousness will hinder automatic activity. Try becoming aware of your fingers while typing. You will start making mistakes or even come to a halt. Become aware of someone looking at you while you are walking and your step will falter and your shoes will scuff the floor. Development of Subjective Consciousness What Jaynes next suggests is that subjective consciousness is learned by children at about age 7 or 8. It involves recognizing themselves as seen by others -- an analog 'I' which is then internalized and placed into the spaces of the imagination. This analog can move around, perform actions, evaluate results, and can even vault through time. Parents constantly guide small children through numerous 'what if' situations and badger them with metaphorical constructions and reminders of remembered events, in effect teaching them subjective consciousness. It also teaches the child what others might be thinking. Since it is learned, it is cultural, not biological. And, Jaynes claims, because subjective consciousness is language-based, it is easily learned by children as soon as they gain some facility with the expansion of language into metaphors. [note 24] Subjective consciousness is deeply imbedded in the teaching of subjective consciousness. It is as if we could say that the 'expression of subjective consciousness' is the 'teaching of subjective consciousness.' In this respect it is no different from our teaching use of language skills. Historically, Jaynes places the creation of the internal "I" after the development of written texts. It was also in response to a population expansion of the Middle East because the other source of subjective consciousness is meeting new people -- not those familiar to us. For the most part we don't look at those familiar to us, nor do we question how they see us. Having to meet strangers causes you to wonder how they are seeing you and this results in the creation of an analog 'I' as the way you imagine others see you. By reflection this then becomes the way you imagine yourself. [note 25] The quality of subjective consciousness changes over time. Since it is cultural, there is no biological evolution involved, but subjective consciousness does evolve. Jaynes has documented the radical changes over the span of a few hundred years during the first millennium BC in Greece and the Levant, and noted the changes in South America over the span of a few months. The quality of subjective consciousness will be different from one person to another, although any social group with the same language and a common culture will for the most part share a common subjective consciousness. Both the left and right hemisphere of the brain can understand speech. However, only the left brain can speak. The right brain specializes in seeing objects in context and has a sense of spatial relationships. The left brain concentrates on specific objects but is able to apprehend and order linear patterns, including, of course, speech and stories. [note 26] That is a sort of shorthand, for the right hemisphere is also involved in speech -- operating the mouth and vocal cords. And the right brain can talk to the left brain in 'voices' which are either heard silently in consciousness of the left hemisphere, or pass right through and are spoken. You will see yourself doing this, for example, in greeting familiar people, but you will also find yourself mouthing off at the most inopportune moments. The 'voices' from the right brain are the remembered admonitions of your parents, and later, your superiors. It is your right brain that brings to mind such things as "it is time to go," or "close the door." It is the right brain that always has the seamingly appropriate solutions, for it 'sees' things in the overall 'familiar' context and knows what to do in any situation which is not novel. It is also the more creative -- solutions to many 'computable' problems come from the right. The left brain concentrates on individual objects often to the total exclusion of context, but works easily in linear format -- like remembering phone numbers as one unit (which is but a larger decontextualized object), remembering songs and stories, and putting all the words into the right order when you speak. The left is verbal, linear, and, because of the imagined spaces that can be examined, analytical. But in actuality it probably spends most of the time just meandering. The only conscious 'thinking' we do is musing and reflecting -- always by means of imagined actions in imagined spaces. The right brain often gets annoyed with the left, and you will hear yourself muttering comments on your lack of directed thinking or your behaviour. Jaynes points to the left brain as the center of our consciousness: we are 'aware' of left brain activities, but never of the right-brain. When the left brain gets into a bind on a problem, it is the right brain which often spits out an answer to the left-brain's consciousness. "It popped into my mind." In an age before written texts, or before reflection on the self as seen by others, the right brain 'spoke' -- actual words were heard by the left side. We still hear these admonitions today, but mostly silently, "close the door." The wonderfully common-sense right hemisphere at times has to warn the left half of something, or get its attention. Jaynes suggests that using heard speech might have been a shorthand used by the right brain because the rear commissure connecting the two halves is only a few millimeters in diameter. By comparison, the olfactory commissure (which we do not have at all) in dogs and rodents is, as I mentioned, 10 times that diameter, thus 100 times the area. These animals integrate left and right brain functions surrounding smell much better than we integrate our verbal functions. Our right to left communication today is often in visual concepts, I suspect, rather than words, although we still hear our mind 'say' things -- silently. It can be guaranteed that almost all statements of 'correct behavior' which jump out of our mouth are initiated in the right brain. However, frequently they are inappropriate. The right brain does not deal with anything novel and cannot analyze the nuances of a new situation and peruse the alternate possibilities which the left brain can imagine. Often you will find yourself saying, "My first thought was... but upon further consideration..." ... Instructions from God Throughout the "Age of the Gods" and for 2000 years after, these instructions from the right brain were 'heard' as the voices of the Gods: instructions on crop management, irrigation, and whatever else was appropriate for daily life of a community. There were many thousands of people in Mesopotamia and Egypt involved in agriculture, distribution, and trade. These were the first large populations to do repetitive backbreaking communal tasks. Grain production requires that type of work, but it was done without reluctance because the Gods were held as real, superior, and absolute in power, and a caretaker and slave mentality had developed. Society was to continue as it was: with people sowing and reaping the fields of the Gods. Early inscriptions insist on this. Jaynes points out the 'authority' of spoken words, and he supplies extensive data from schizophrenics and commissureotomized patients. The right brain under these conditions issues commands, not solutions or suggestions. This is not different, he claims, from what was experienced by the people of Mesopotamia and Egypt during the period up to about 1500 BC. It is the development of written texts (claims Jaynes) which opened up a new vista: the possibility that words could be independent of a person and thus 'voice' could be abstracted into silence. This is an amazing concept which filtered down into society over the next few hundred years as parents modeled such silent consciousness to children. And with that the voices disappeared. [note 27] ... Differences As examples of the differences in consciousness of vastly different people, compare the war edicts and bragging of the Assyrians with the contemporaneous 'Spring and Autumn' Wars being waged in China. The wars were no different -- and the same example of the warring Gods stood before both groups in the skies overhead. But the attitudes were completely different. The Assyrians were bellicose and cruel and insisted on devasting the peoples they had conquered -- always over matters of tribute. [note 28] "Throughout the Assyrian war records runs the monotonous mantra. "I destroyed, I devastated. I burned with fire". No hint of mercy or pity here; but ... repetitive and total conquest. Assyria, often likened to the Nazis, was a thoroughgoing military nation, highly disciplined. Her characteristics were destructive invasion, deportation and taxation." -- CIAS, [http://www.specialtyinterests.net/] The Chinese states went to war over the same sort of resources, but the tactics of war and settlements took a different course. By 400 BC there was already a conscious efforts to view tactics philosophically and write about them, as follows. The Chinese in fact have never favored warfare. "In general, the method of employing the military is this: Preserving the [enemy's] state capital is best, destroying their state capital is second best. Preserving their army is best, destroying their army is second best. [...] ... attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence." -- Sun-tzu, opening lines "The Art of War" (ca 400 BC). [note 29] ... Points of Disagreement For many people language is so obviously and unquestionably innate that Jaynes will make absolutely no sense at all. And without the idea that language could have evolved culturally, you cannot understand the idea of a cultural evolution of subjective consciousness. Growing up bilingual helps, for it provides some perspective. But most of us fail to examine even our own 'word-thinking' and the language of others. Another contributing factor is the incredible chauvinism we have adopted to separate ourselves from animals. Other people will dismiss Jaynes over the details of the "Iliad," which he used as his start-up example of a change in consciousness. The objections involve arguments about when the "Iliad" was written, whether Troy existed at all, and how a group of Greek pirates could possibly wage a ten-year war. Also, since Jaynes is using 1100 BC for the Trojan war (a date first suggested by Herodotus), he is forced to assume that the transmission of details of the epic was via some sort of semi-conscious bards. This follows a theory of 'bardic transmission' dating from studies of Balkan epic poetry earlier in the 20th century, but the exact transmission from bard to bard has since been disproven. [note 30] I have other differences with Jaynes myself. I object to Jaynes' insistence on the need for kings and leaders. It seems to be a peculiarly Western outlook that you cannot have a village of 200 people without some sort of control, much less a city of 10,000. Often he slips into generalization like "the mechanism of social control." Archaeologically, it appears that there were no leaders, kings, or pharaohs in control before 3100 BC. However, we do not need to look among antique or primitive societies alone for egalitarian societies. The precursor of the Dutch Republic, a collection of city states, managed adequately without promoting anyone to absolute power for several hundred years. Humans will cooperate -- it is natural for us as a gregarious species, although it is also natural to demand leadership in times of social stress, as happened after 3100 BC. The idea of 'individuality,' which today makes us almost perversely independent and uncooperative, is a very late concept in Europe, probably dating to well after the 16th or 17th century AD. [note 31] Jaynes uses the idea of 'social control' to suggest how the voices of the Gods -- which most definitely occurred -- might have started and been located in the right hemisphere of the brain. He resorts to the suggestion of an "evolution by natural selection as a method of social control." But this is an unclear concept. I would suggest that "natural selection" is not an issue, primarily because the need for "social control" is not a fact. I would suggest, instead, that the structure of the mammalian brain is already lateralized for spatial and linear functionality, respectively in the right and left hemisphere. This is in itself enough to naturally place speech functions -- which require linear order -- on the left. In addition, the speech functions are fluidly relocatable, which I think would argue against an evolutionary mandate. Some people have speech functions located on the right, as with those who suffered left hemisphere damage at an early age, and with some left-handed people. What Jaynes, publishing in 1979, was not aware of was the research by Talbott in 1980, and the subsequent expansion on this over the next twenty years, showing the enormous cultural influence of the planets standing in the sky close to Earth, which were universally understood as the Gods who directed all human activities -- the very Gods whose voices Jaynes places in the right hemisphere. Jaynes instead uses marked graves in the early Neolithic (from 7000 BC), the rather occasional extravagant graves of 'kings,' and the display of the skulls of the dead in homes (and later temple structures) in various locations in the Middle East, to suggest that the hallucinating voices of the dead continued to be heard. In Egypt during historic times it was certainly held true that the voice of the dead pharaoh remained to be heard to advise and direct. But this period follows directly on the prehistoric era when, for a thousand years or more, mankind was confronted by the image of a large head looming constantly above the north horizon. We have no idea of the function of all the variously displayed and decorated skulls. In the era before 3100 BC, the skulls might have been honored dead relatives, parents, or leaders, or they might have been sacrificial victims. The images in the sky after 4200 BC must have had a enormous influence on humans, and humans as ever imitated what they saw. The exact measure of this is not revealed until after the head in the sky had disappeared. If anything induced 'voices of the gods' to be heard via the rear commissure between the right hemisphere and the left, it would have been this constant thousand-year image of a face in the sky. ... advantages We could ask, What is the advantage of subjective consciousness? Obviously, in the remote past, it was used to get through change, whether cataclysmic change or the need to live through social change. But, we could ask, what is the utility in today's milieu? From my perspective, subjective consciousness is an absolute delight. It allows traveling through time, visiting distant places, and imagining cosmic relationships. It also allows navigating the complexities of relationships, imagining technology not yet in existence, and selling products to those who do not need them. We should also not neglect the possibility that the subjective consciousness of the left brain aids the normal background processes engaged in by the right brain. Certainly we know that the right brain knows whatever the left brain knows, and is able to work out solutions to questions that the left brain just cannot handle. Einstein's care in shaving is an example of the startling revelations which can come to consciousness as if out of nowhere. Einstein's revelations certainly were not limited to parental admonitions. I suspect that a salesman who has gone through attempts to enter the mind of his customers will have offered his right brain all of these scenarios. They will be stored somewhere and can be accessed as needed. The best approach for a particular customer will be selected and presented to subjective consciousness as if out of nowhere -- based on an almost instantaneous analysis of the customer's psychological state. Considering the speed with which the right brain can operate, this certainly is a more likely process than having to wait for subjective consciousness to trip through a number of imagined scenarios. Everyday speech and the creations of poets and artists must be generated like this. I also suspect that the right brain today, rather than using speech to alert the subjective consciousness, as was traditionally done, uses images to a greater degree. But of course how subjective consciousness operates, and what its particular qualities are, depends completely on how a person is brought up in a particular social context, including the qualities of a particular language. We don't all think alike. Children Lastly, let me add some notes on children and subjective consciousness. Children learn language from adults who, on meeting a child, always test the level of the child's language abilities and then switch to a 'caretaker language' to continue conversing. A 'caretaker language' is grammatically slightly advanced beyond the level of the child. We have all learned this teaching technique, and we use it automatically with children. People who 'baby-talk' to children are those who have made no effort to gage the child's current abilities. [note 32] What Jaynes suggests is that subjective consciousness is learned similarly to the way in which language is learned -- parents teach children subjective consciousness, and have done so actively since about 1500 BC. In the interaction with parents (subjectively conscious parents) children are constantly confronted with snippets of real and imaginary situations which, over the course of years of exposure, and graded to their abilities, suggest the possibilities of imagining what they might do under the proposed situations. What is always suggested to the child is what actions they might take -- because all 'thinking' in the mind involves an analog of actions in the real world. Thus both the analogical 'spaces' and the actions to be performed in them are constantly put forth to children, and this is done with the same lack of awareness that we use with a graded caretaker language. This process also forces upon a child the recognition that others (mainly their parents) see them in their mind. We often identify the age of seven or eight as the first glimmer of 'self-consciousness' in children. It is, in actuality, the glimmer of their awareness of our consciousness. [note 33] It is instructive to observe children 4 to 7 year old, although the state of subjective consciousness depends very much on their verbal abilities and the interaction they have with their parents and other adults. There seems to be a difference also between girls and boys, perhaps because girls (in our society) are more engaged in relationships by their mothers. Pre-conscious children have recognizable behaviour patterns which might be reflected in the following to various degrees. The following notes are my observations. (They are not from Jaynes.) * They lack any clear memory of the past except for events they have been told about and some critical events which may have been reenacted mentally. Pre-language "memories" of events are almost entirely absent in everyone, for most memories are 'constructed' by a subjective consciousness. (As I have pointed out, this is not true of spatial memories.) * They show little of the self-consciousness which would result in being able to see yourself from an exterior perspective -- in effect as being seen by others. Children are self-aware, as all mammals are, but are unable to displace this to an exterior perspective. Their behavior is simply regulated by parental admonitions and the parental controls of shame, guilt, or embarrassment. * The imagination of a child, as exercised in play, is often unbounded by reality and often lacks a measure of time. Importantly, the play space often lacks themself as an involved actor. Older children will often 'correct' the play fantasies of younger children, in effect mimicking parental teaching of subjective consciousness. * They are often very opinionated, blurting out the opinions of their parents in lieu of any original 'thinking' on a subject, a trait which often carries far into adulthood. Original thoughts on a particular subject would involve being able to create imagined spaces for action in the mind and walking an analog 'I' through these spaces to evaluate alternative outcomes. * They will interrupt adult conversations with non-sequitors, for there is no ability to narratize the present as a mental space in which they can fit themselves and observe the (real) space as if from afar (that is, in the mind), and to narratize into that mental space what others might hear or might be thinking at the moment. * They often have hopelessly inadequate concepts of space and travel time ("Are we there yet?"). Children experience a dilation of real time which adults do not notice. Children (young children, especially) do not have access to the musings of subjective consciousness, with which adults fill real time, to replace the second by second experience of actual time. Yet children are fully functional. They learn to read and do math. They learn skills. They learn how things work, and how to interact with others. They can create and appreciate jokes. They know who they are. But the guide to their actions is the voices of parental admonitions and attitudes which were heard, remembered, and recalled. It is, in fact, the right hemisphere which does this for any predictable situation. Note 6 -- Steven Mithen, in "The Singing Neanderthals" (2006), attempts to make a case for the evolution of language based in part on music and dance. The book involves a lot of guesswork and unfounded suppositions about prior hominids in an attemp to build the case for a slow evolution from natural selection. There was no "slow evolution." Jaynes also attempted to make a case for how language might have developed, but it is too specific to Cromagnon and guesses about the effect of the European climate, and "selective pressures" to make much sense. Alfred de Grazia is, I feel, closer in observing.. "Here is an area where evolutionary thought is especially self-contradictory and, consequently, slippery and evasive. It can only get from one small change to the next but cannot get from the beginning to the end; it can explain some intra-species changes, like horse-breeding and the Beltsville turkey, but it cannot explain a major development. No known mechanism directs a long string of slight modifications in the germ plasm. Even if we were to concede that the jump from hominid to human were only apparently large but was biologically small, human genesis would admittedly be a hologenetic occurrence; when it occurred, hominid life changed drastically; it speciated." -- "Homo Schizo, Human and Cultural Hologenesis" (1983?) Note 22 -- The shift of attention is managed by the "reticular formation" (Jaynes) or the "amygdala" (Goleman) or some other primitive element located at the base of the brain, with connections to sensory and motor areas of the brain and the spinal cord, which has the purpose of awakening certain parts of the nervous system while suppressing others on sensing external stimulations which require attention. Note 30 -- I am more inclined to view the "Iliad" as fiction purposely crafted 'in the style of' an earlier period or a lost earlier literature, or possibly carried forward from a remote time, not as history, which is a substrate added over time, but as a tragedy. The "Iliad" spans only some two months, and is not about a war, but about the effects of the anger of Achilles. There is no archaeological evidence for an extended war at Troy and the city has not been located or identified. The hill at Hisarlik is too small to serve as the citadel of Troy, it is not in sight of the sea, and was repeatedly destroyed by natural disasters, and at the wrong times. But by the sixth century BC, as the Asiatic Greeks faced their defeat by the Persians, the "Iliad" became the favored epic of the heroic forebears of the conquered Greeks. Everyone believed that the war had happened. Greeks on both sides of the Aegean traced their linage to the heroes of the "Iliad." There is not a single mention of texts in the "Iliad," even though these were already in wide use in Mycenaean Greece (supposedly by 1200 BC, and certainly by 900 BC). The tradition in antiquity, that Homer was blind and therefore could not write, points to a purposeful falsification also, and lent an aura of authenticity to the epic. But the final composition of the "Iliad" has to be placed in the 8th or 7th century BC when the Greeks possess an alphabet. The poem selectively picks details from an imagined past. The battle tactics are wrong, as is the armor, and the funeral customs are foreign. There are anachronistic references to the Olympic Games, and the Gods are mocked -- all suggesting a composition well after 700 BC. If the "Iliad" had achieved status as a classic at an earlier time, the vocabulary should have been recognized as archaic by the Greeks of the third century BC, since language conforms to classics. Alfred de Grazia suggests that the 'heroic diction' was a purposeful amalgam of dialects of a late date. Jaynes also forgets (perhaps) that events which are discussed and recounted will be remembered. This is true for early childhood experiences, and ought to be true of pre-subjectivly consciousness people also. Thus it is quite possible that the whole of the "Iliad" (as Talbott has claimed) is but a retelling of the "War of the Gods" of 3147 BC. It strikes me, still, as a purposeful creation -- in a purposeful 'antique' style. If so, it is all the more marvelous that the "Iliad" passed through Jaynes' analysis transparently. What we are seeing perhaps is the embellishment of memory on a grand scale, although the rigidity of the underlying structure of the "Iliad" argues for a conscious composition. But the "Iliad" was also extensively edited and codefied after about 600 BC by others. The "Iliad" is written with clear intent, as was certainly understood since the 18th century AD by literary critics -- Guy Davenport in 1954 wrote, "Not a line .. can be put out of its place" -- and with a clear political balance. But the facts of a detailed fiction along with an adopted diction has little to do with Jaynes' analysis, which deals with the use of body-part nouns for feelings and emotions and the actions initiated by the Gods. There is no need to consider the historical dimensions of the "Iliad." Jaynes makes this clear in the closing paragraphs of his investigations of the "Iliad," and I certainly agree with his conclusions. Note 21 -- Most of our memories are constructed, or rather reconstructed, by us if they involve action, for we fill them out with the appropriate details, to the point of making up dialogues. Which is why memories reported as evidence in courts are suspect. Of course we do have other memories too. You will probably remember the layout of your house at age three, even though you do not remember a single event or action from that age. All animals are capable of memories involving the geography of their environment, and often with astounding accuracy. [return to text] Note 24 -- There is obviously more to learning "what others might be thinking" than what is suggested here. Sara Blaffer Hrdy writes.. "The reason our species has managed to survive and proliferate to the extent that 6 billion people currently occupy the planet has to do with how readily we can learn to cooperate when we want to. And our capacity for empathy is one of the things that made us good at doing that." "Predators from gopher snakes to lions have to be able to anticipate where their quarry will dart. Chimps and gorillas can figure out what another individual is likely to know or not know. But compared with that of humans, this capacity to entertain the psychological perspective of other individuals is crude." -- "Mothers and Others," Natural History (2001). Note 25 -- The reflections occur in everyday conversations. It is not unusual to hear someone say, "I did not want you to think that I thought you would think that I thought.. so and so." Convoluted on close analysis, but perfectly understandable to the parties concerned. Note 26 -- In referring to the 'left' and 'right' brain we are talking primarily about the speech centers -- Broca's area and Wernicke's area. The abilities of the right and left hemisphere listed in the text are abbreviated for the sake of discussion. To gain an appreciation for the incomprehensible complexity of mental functions, see the classic book by Oliver Sacks "The Man who Mistook his Wife for his Hat" (1970) which deals with dysfunctions of the right hemisphere. These right hemisphere abnormalities are not noticed by the subjects, whereas left hemisphere dysfunction are experienced and can be described by patients. Note 27 -- At the close of the age of the prophets, the time from Elijah to Zachariah, Bible texts start including admonitions against hearing voices and talking in tongues. [return to text] Note 28 -- See also the writings of Edward T. Hall and any number of academics (and non-academics) who have taken up these topics. The principles first expounded by Hall are today used in international marketing. [return to text] Note 31 -- In "Collapse" (2005), Jared Diamond writes about communal decision making in the highland communities of New Guinea, still in practice after the arrival of Dutch and Australian colonial government in the 1930s... "Decisions were (and often still are today) reached by means of everyone in the village sitting down together and talking, and talking, and talking." And, he notes, this happens today to the extreme frustration of New Guinea goverment officials. As I note elsewhere, the same process of reaching complete consensus through endless talk was used by the much larger groups of Plains Indians, in the 19th century AD, to the frustration of US treaty negotiators. (end)