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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Edited by arachnophilia, : ...and another thing!
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