X-Message-Number: 15921
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Is consciousness only 3000 years old?
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 10:37:26 -0800

I have been re reading Princeton psychology professor Julian Jaynes' 1976
book "The Origin of Consciousness In The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".
I had forgotten what an amazing hypothesis he suggested and supported.  In
essence, Jaynes proposed the idea that up until about 3000 years ago, human
being were not conscious at all.

He described in some detail how numerous mental and behavioral activities do
not require consciousness, drawing from research available up to that time
and carefully defined consciousness as the arena of "internal" mental
dialogue from which modern human beings derive decision making, free will,
etc.  Jaynes conscludes that consciousness came as a function of language
but was accidental and not evolutionary.  We didn't need to be conscious to
survive.

Jaynes outlines how the "bicameral mind" of our ancestors was divided
between the (usual) right hemisphere which would make decisions in unusual
situations (not habitual) and then cause voices and sometimes visual
hallucinations to convey these decisions into the awareness of the (usual)
left hemisphere.  Jaynes suggested that the human being would unconsciously
react to these hallucinated commands and identified these commands as (in
the case certainly of Homer's Illiad) "gods".

Whether or not Jaynes fascinating hypothesis about the past is correct or
not, this suggestion that it is entirely possible for human beings to exist,
make and use tools, read and write, and build entire civilizations without
consciousness is something which should be of no small importance to us
here.

For some time there has been an ongoing debate on the Cryonet about whether
"something vital" could be lost in duplicating the human mind in another
medium (such as a virtual reality in a digital computer).  The possibility
that our ancestors could have exhibited all the usual human functions of
thinking, emotions, problem-solving etc but may have LACKED CONSCIOUSNESS
makes this book very important to be carefully read and considered by
cryonists in my opinion.

For the "near" future, with restoration of life to biological bodies with
cryonics this is not a critical problem.  However, the arguments that we
might upload into and unconscious state seems to me to have more weight IF
Jaynes suggestions that a "bicameral mind" is POSSIBLE and ESPECIALLY SO if
he is right and consciousness was absolutely absent from the human race
until just 30 centuries ago.

Are any of you acquainted with these ideas?  Have you read Jaynes' book?  Do
you have any comments?

George Smith

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