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Julian Jaynes & the Origin of Consciousness



Last Updated: 12/23/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 36
Sign: Pisces

City: Los Angeles, Boston, Austin
State: New York
Country: US
Signup Date: 10/30/2007

Who Gives Kudos:

Star Sailor.. (2)
Barry Kennedy (1)
Monday, November 12, 2007 
"...Jaynes notes that many people perceive their own thought processes as a kind of dialogue between the 'self' and another internal protagonist inside their head. Nowadays we understand that both 'voices' are our own — or if we don't we are treated as mentally ill. This happened, briefly, to Evelyn Waugh. Never one to mince words, Waugh remarked to a friend: 'I haven't seen you for a long time, but then I've seen so few people because — did you know? — I went mad.' After his recovery Waugh wrote a novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, which described his hallucinatory period, and the voices he heard.

Jaynes's suggestion is that some time before 1000 BC people in general were unaware that the second voice — the Gilbert Pinfold voice — came from within themselves. They thought the Pinfold voice was a god: Apollo, say, or Astarte or Yahweh or, more probably, a minor household god, offering them advice or orders. Jaynes even located the voices of the gods in the opposite hemisphere of the brain from the one that controls audible speech. The 'breakdown' of the bicameral mind' was, for Jaynes, a historical transition. It was the moment in history when it dawned on people that the external voices that they seemed to be hearing were really internal. Jaynes even goes so far as to define this historical transition as the dawning of human consciousness.

There is an ancient Egyptian inscription about the creator god Ptah, which describes the various other gods as variations of Ptah's 'voice' or 'tongue'. Modern translations reject the literal 'voice' and interpret the other gods as 'objectified conceptions of [Ptah's] mind.' Jaynes dismisses such educated readings, preferring to take the literal meaning seriously. The gods were hallucinated voices, speaking inside people's heads. Jaynes further suggests that such gods evolved from memories of dead kings, who still, in a manner of speaking, retained control over their subjects via imagined voices in their heads. Whether or not you find this tthesis plausible, Jaynes's book is intriguing enough to earn its mention in a book on religion."

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, pgs. 350-351
Currently reading:
Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited
By Marcel Kuijsten
Release date: 19 January, 2007
8:07 AM
 
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Star Sailor Chihuahua

 
You have given me new things to think about ...thank you :)



*Jaynes further suggests that such gods evolved from memories of dead kings, who still, in a manner of speaking, retained control over their subjects via imagined voices in their heads. *


So where does a 3 year old child get the idea she came from another planet ,the same planet that Osiris and Isis came from?
 
Posted by Star Sailor Chihuahua on Friday, November 16, 2007 - 11:26 PM
[Reply to this] 
superfishstore.com

 
A 3 year old probaby gets the idea tha he came from another planet from one of his dumb parents who is also a trekkie.
 
Posted by superfishstore.com on Sunday, November 25, 2007 - 2:42 AM
[Reply to this] 
Barry Kennedy
Barry Kennedy

 
Hey man -

I'm sure you are already familiar with this, but just in case...

have you heard of the research of Dr. Michael Persinger?

He located an area of the brain (in the temporal lobes) that seems to govern "religious" experiences.

Then he built a helmet (called the "God Helmet") that stimulates this area with electromagnets.
Blind study participants reliably reported talking to God, or aliens.
They also felt (at lower voltages) a feeling of inter-connectedness with the universe and fellow humans.

This area also is connected with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, which is linked to "religious visions"...
or hallucinations, depending on your perspective ;-)
 
Posted by Barry Kennedy on Sunday, November 25, 2007 - 8:25 PM
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