Is bicamerality bullshit?

from the other thread. my original post:

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I also agree, so far as biological evolution goes. But if the evolution of human consciousness is at all biological we'd have to say that morality is an atavism of the primitive bicaremal state of mind (per Julian Jaynes). Simply put, science became the necessary tool for humans to evolve beyond bicamerality in order to gain our advanced form of consciousness.

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no. julian jaynes is a crackpot. he is to psychology what alan feduccia is to paleontology and what michael behe is to biochemistry. highly controversial, against all the known science, and skipping the peer review process to sell books right to the public. not to mention pissing off literally everyone in his field.

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there has not been a major biological change to the human brain of that order in the last 2,000 years. what he proposes is essentially is an evolutionary shift about as major as the difference between a reptile brain and a human brain, and that prior to say, jesus christ, all human beings were schizophrenic. this is just sheer lunacy, and completely unsupported by evolutionary biology.

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his case rests on the supposition that corpus callosum, the structure that joins the bicameral brain, evolved very, very recently. this is completely obliterated by the fact that all eutherian mammals have one. that includes mice, cats, dogs, cows... pretty much everything but kangaroos, echnidas, koalas, and possums. monotremes and marsupials -- but they lack a few other commonly mammalian features too.

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and just to be extra specific, yes, that list of animals that have a fully functioning corpus callosum includes chimpanzees and hominids. further, chimpanzees exhibit the same sorts of moral behaviour that humans do.

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edit: in order for all these eutherian mammals to have a corpus callosum, and jayne's "theory" to be right, it would have to be convergent to such an absurd degree that it challenges the rationality of the person making such an argument. not only would humans have to have evolved it in the last 2,000 years, but every other eutherian mammal would have to have evolved IDENTICAL structures completely separately. further, it is never adequately explained why a truly bicameral mind with isolated hemispheres would exist in the first place, having evolved from a brain more like reptiles' with a single lobe

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and your reply:

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spider lover, have you actually read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? Or are you using other peoples' opinions of Jaynes? Sure, there are plenty of people who don't like his theory. They all have their own theories to peddle. Nobody really knows for sure what human consciousness really is. For me, Jaynes' model of human consciousness is the only one that actually works. That's because he uses metaphorical and analogical aspects of symbolic language to show how consciousness grew out of a bicameral state of mind”when hallucinations and hysteria gave way to self-referential decisionmaking. But I'm way OT. Bye.

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I have not technically read the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind but i had a very, very significant portion of it read to me many years ago. my mother was convinced it was "the answer to religion." i made her listen to the bible, she made me listen to julian jaynes.i was unequipped to argue effectively against it when i was 13, but even then the idea that human brain was nonfunctional to the degree that people walked around hallucinating seemed a tad bit on the "bullshit" side of the argument. since learning some more biology and psychology, it has only cemented the idea that this is sheer and adulterated drivel.frankly, the other thing that i could tell at 13 was that his literary opinions were also flawed. my mother was a classics major, and thought his ideas jived pretty well with the iliad and the odyssey but even herself noticed a major, major flaw in his argument. odysseus, in his argument, would have to be the first rational human being, as the poem bearing his name is essentially about a man who rebels against the gods (voices in his head). but as she knew from studying the mythology -- the literature and the reality of ancient greece were two very different things.actually reading "origin" back-to-back with ancient literature (of decent translation) alone should be enough to completely obliterate his argument. it's the same basic fallacy we often hear about the bible: that the people are primitive. they're not, they're quite modern. such an argument comes from unfamiliarity with the text, and the assumption that it need be accurate in some way -- jaynes seeks to explain the voice of god with schizophrenia. but had people walked around hearing the voice of god, there would be no need for such a text. instead, what the bible (and other ancient literature) often depicts is a very different picture. gilgamesh describes introspection, as does the old testament. there are bouts of atheistic thought in the bible, and homer. there are descriptions of essentially modern cosmopolitan societies. jaynes fatally mistakes mythology about gods for facts that need to be reinterpretted. it's like reading today's comic books and trying to explain the superpowers.further... that's not actually the symptoms of bicameral mind. having a "divided brain" is not actually schizophrenia as the etymology would have us believe. we have people today who have non-functioning corpus callosums. they have had them cut medically as a treatment for epilepsy, and their condition is quite well studied in the lab. it does not cause them to hear voices. corpus callostomy patients are generally unable to say the names of things they see or hold with only their right eye/right hand, but able to write the name, and other similar problems... the sort of things where one side of the brain can't communicate with the other. you know, like neurobiology would predict.auditory hallucinations are caused by problems with or damage to the speech center of the brain, and a few other similar factors. signals from one side of the brain to the other are not perceived as speech, ever. these sorts of auditory hallucinations would be dangerous in the wild, for higher-order mammals.basically, it's a completely untennable idea speaking in terms of biology, evolution, neurology, psychology, literature, history... etc.Edited by arachnophilia, : omitted word, signatureEdited by arachnophilia, : scientifically inappropriate usage of "schizophrenia"

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er, no. where exactly in my actual argument did i make any appeals to bias? my problem with his hypothesis is that it goes against everything we know about evolutionary biology, neurology, psychology, and ancient literature. not that it goes against god(s).having been a member of several evangelical and pentecostal churches, i have no problem with the notion that god is largely and invention of the deranged human mind. but i see no reason historically or scientifically to think that anything has changed. as i said, i am not exactly totally unfamiliar with the book. how about you address my actual arguments instead of finding cop-out ways to ignore them?

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as i understand it, this thread is more about "the breakdown of the bicameral mind" part than the "origin of consciousness" part.consciousness itself is something of a mystery, yes, and generally poorly understood. the best explanation is a gradual one -- not a sudden shift from a bicameral mind. all eutherian mammals have a fully working corpus callosum. i'm not entirely sure what a monotreme's brain looks like, but i suspect it's something like a reptile's. reptiles, dinosaurs, and birds have single lobes. while our brains still often have competing impulses, at no point in the evolutionary lineage is there an animal with two separate and complete brains that talk to each other auditorily.

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a side note: the god of the NT and the god of the OT are, in fact, not all that different. there is something of a gradual progression, starting with a strongly anthropomorphic, petty, and violent god in the torah, heading into the abstract and loving in the prophets, and back to an anthropomorphic "son of" the abstract and loving in the NT. it's a slow evolution of cultural ideas, not a completely separate tradition.this is probably where the answer to this thread is. slow evolutions of human philosophy -- not sudden biological changes.

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jaynes, to my recollection, argues that, well, the origin of consciousness is in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. ie: that is consciousness comes about by more effective communication between the hemispheres of the brain, via the corpus callosum. and that before a few thousand years ago, human beings did not have fully working corpus callosum, and were essentially "pre-conscious." i think that's probably wrong. first, how do we define "consciousness?" chimpanzees are capable of symbolic language. as are dolphins. both of these species, btw, have a working corpus callosum. however, insects do not. honey bees are also capable of symbolic language. one might argue that cephalopods are as well. are these animals conscious?i think it might be a completely arbitrary concept, personally. the path between conscious and non-conscious is really gradual, not one-or-the-other.

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symbolic language can exist without syntax. depending on grammatic constructions, word order can be largely unimportant, as in latin.

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so hoot is still touting bicamerality as an explanation for religion. let's review:in the 30 years sinces julian jaynes published his book, remarkable advances have been made in the study of the brain. jaynes operated from the 70's assumptions regarding brain mapping; that specific areas of the brain biologically controlled specific things. this has since been overturned, and the brain has been shown to be much, much more "plastic" than we assumed 30 years ago. for instance, a lot of study has been put into corpus callostomies (severing the corpus callosm) and even full hemispherectomies (removing an entire half of the brain). below a certain age, the brain literally re-maps itself to compensate. above that age, the effects produced are wholely unlike those predicted by jayne's hypothesis. schizoidal hallucinations are produced by other neurological and psychological factors.we have also, in this time, taught both chimpanzees and dolphins symbolic language. chimps (not sure about dolphins) do show concepts of the self. language is, by definition, a conscious act. but this of course does not phase the jaynesian, who applies poor literary criticism to ancient texts and says "see! not very conscious, huh?"i say poor literary criticism because such things do not take stylistics into account, and are generally unfamiliar with the body of text they are critiquing. as i have often found discussing the bible, it is largely the assumptions of the reader that results in the conclusions of primitive authors. this text (and others cited by jaynes) were written by (biologically) modern people, living in complex metropolitan societies, and quite frequently show a lot of human emotion and introspection. to describe them as "unconscious" is to show unfamiliarity with the text. indeed, jaynes himself resorted to the ad-hoc assertion that later authors changed the texts. (though one wonders how much you'd have change the odyssey to make it not about an individual who denies the gods)but "biologically modern" is the key. jaynes is essentially proposing a major evolutionary shift sometime in the last 2,000 - 400 years. and at a date that seems to shift around. but the evolutionary change he's proposing -- the evolution of the corpus callosum -- is completely flawed to begin with. we did not start out with two brains. reptiles have a single lobe. division would happen gradually, and so the corpus callosum would neccessarily be the left over remnant of a single lobed brain. and such a shift happened somewhere between the reptilian brain and the eutherian mammal brain -- between lizards and mice. we're talking "before the dinosaurs" not "around the time of jesus." indeed, all eutherian mammals today demonstrate a fully operation corpus callosum: they have no difficulty doing multi-hemispherical tasks, like... walking.further inconsistencies regarding the date of the shift away from supposed bicamerality. the assertion regarding the conquest of the aztecs is just... somewhat racist. he asserts that the aztecs were still bicameral during the arrival of cortez, and this aided cortez in taking over mexico. does catholocism not count as a religion, jokes aside? why should we assume that cortez, who took his orders from a divinely-mandated monarch, did not hear voices, but the natives did? this (and much of the literary criticism) shows a very strong western bias, and a very anachronistic reading of history. and both are being used to shape the facts.now, if you'd like to post some evidence that the last 30 years of neurobiology, psychology, animal behaviour, evolutionary biology, and study of ancient literature are all completely wrong, we can go back to discussing why this falsified hypothesis is not "bullshit."

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i believe the initial question was, "is bicamerality bullshit?" the answer is yes. the idea that brain operates in two distinct hemispheres, or that it used to, is quite simply wrong. i can't see a way for it be "metaphorically" correct. it's wrong, and everything about it is wrong. all of the biology, neurology, and literary criticism. it's all wrong, and it's time to drop it as an explanation for anything. we might as well talk about the explanatory power of a flat earth. his observations about the lack of self-reflection and the analog "i" are also wrong. they ignore large portions of the source text (which we can forgive out of ignorance) and the vast history of ancient literature analysis and commentary. and when someone brings up a counter example, he ad-hoc-ly supposes it was a later author that tacked that little bit on. we're talking about texts, editions of which are older than his most recent examples of bicamerality. he's wrong linguistically, and wrong literarily.i am not so much concerned with what actually does generate consciousness in this discussion -- we're discussing the idea of bicamerality, which has been out-and-out falsified. i have not read chomsky, so i am not qualified to critique his arguments and his new definition of "syntax." but the fact remains that great apes can, in fact use normal linguistic syntax and identify the "analog i." they (like human babies) can recognize themselves in the mirror, for instance. jaynes is essentially positting that early humans were less sophisticated than babies and great apes. why? the solution is remarkably simple. people want to believe. it's not a biological shift in the brain -- certainly even jaynes never said that modern people were still "bicameral." if he did the idea is so easily falsifiable: examine the brain of an individual who claims to hear god. you'll quickly find that all of them, in fact, have a working corpus callosum. you will then have to separate the "want to believe" crowd from the people actually having audible hallucinations. neither of which is caused be a "bicameral" mind.the simplest explanation is that religious people thousands of years ago were just like religious people now, and tales of the gods were used to manipulate then just as they are now. and yeah, maybe you had the occasional schizoid prophet -- but that wasn't caused by a malfunctioning corpus callosum. it was caused by the same things that cause schizophrenia today.the business about the gods leaving us is a strong story, i admit. but if anything, jayne's story is based on the cultural tradition, not the other way around. in western society, we are rather indundated with judeo-christian mythology, most of which was solidified around the time of the babylonian exile of the jews. i wonder why they thought god left them? it wasn't cause they stopped hearing voice, it was because they were in the middle of a holocaust. i'm not sure i understand. to jump from an argument that fundamentally attacks spiritualism as a mental derrangement to suppositions about how the brain is more than just an organ is... a little weird. i do not. as an artist who has fully learned to flex both hemispheres of his brain, i am forced to disagree. consciousness is as much symbolic, representative, and pictorial as it is linguistic. it comes from the whole of the brain, and not simply the left hemisphere invading the right. indeed, i believe that you will find that all the early languages were themselves pictorial -- a skill that necessitates both hemispheres working in tandem. i'm sorry, that's just not making it through the bullshit filter. what?Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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it means "the whole of the brain." as opposed to half of it. but, like i said, we don't need to understand precisely what does give rise to consciousness to know that certain ideas about it are wrong. and yet, you do not refute my points. as i stated above, i got basically the audiobook version. i wasn't doing the reading, but i sure got the information.my "crackpot" opinion is gathered from the information above, none of which you cared to even try to refute: he's wrong on a whole plethora of topics. it's also gathered from talking to psychologists -- that's what they think of him. like i said, you bring him up in psychological circles and you'll get same groans as if you talk about feduccia in paleontological circles, and the same groans you'll get if you bring up ron wyatt in biblical archaeology circles. he's a crackpot. it was a creative idea in the 70's, but it's been disproven. and, to my knowledge, he kept pushing it to the day he died. and gained a lot of followers who didn't seem to care that all of the supporting arguments were wrong. i think it's fairly easy to understand that some people do not think in words. and i'm really not sure what your point is anyways -- jaynes does not argue that consciousness is linguistic. in fact, he argues that a lot of people with written language were preconscious. clearly this is not jayne's definition -- what's your's?further, it's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it? people capable of language misinterpretting their own language centers? either they're in conscious control of their linguistic faculties, or they are not.

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ask hoot mon. he seems to think consciousness is linguistic (but that some language doesn't count).i would say that symbolic representation of ideas is a conscious act. admittedly, i don't have a good argument for it. if you'd like to submit a counter argument, i'd be more than willing to consider it.

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helen keller had a human brain that functioned normally. consciousness is an artifact of the operation of the human brain. the only "consciousness genes" are the ones responsible for the brain.now, we might argue over coma patients. people with inactive frontal lobes may not be conscious. significant brain damage does disrupt consciousness. you're still using "bicamerality" in an especially bullshit way. jaynes was not arguing that this is the source of modern religion. as i stated above, you will find far simpler explanations in classical conditioning and group think -- no brain damage needed. if you ask a believer. ask a recovering christian next time. (where's crashfrog when we need him?) once again. truly bicameral minds, the ones with fully or partially severed corpus callosums, do not have audible hallucinations. auditory hallucinations are caused schizophrenia (which does not actually mean "bicameral" as much as it sounds like it does), improper balances of neuroreceptors, and in some cases poor blood flow to the brain.that's called "completely falsified." not only does the supposed state not cause the effects, but we know that the effects are caused by other factors. this is a very poor excuse for logic. besides the above hole, it's jumping to conclusions, incredulity, and false anecdotal evidence. you do not certainly know that you cannot have auditory hallucinations -- otherwise conscious and rational people have them as the result of various medications or brain injury. if we did either of those things to you, it's very possible that you would hear voices. and all with a perfectly working corpus callosum.

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you and every other eutherian mammal.

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hoot, you haven't even demonstrated that human mind ever was bicameral (it wasn't), or that bicamerality would produce such things (it doesn't). and that's a far cry from asserting that people today have some mental defect.

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yes, a lot like ray strays from the usual meaning of "darwinism." one of the first signs of a commitment to a bad ideology is when you have to start redefining words with accepted meanings. actually hearing voices that you think are god is called "schizophrenia." i think you'll find that a good man people who claim to communicate with god are not schizophrenic. some might be liars, but most just want to fit in or have been conditioned to believe certain parts of the their normal conscious internal dialog are god.

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er, yes, in government. the issue we're talking about in neurology is somewhat analogous -- that the two lobes of the brain essentially fought for control.

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