Jan Sleutels - Greek Zombies (Part 1 of 3)

[pearlsfortheswines]

That's why the Bible says that in the beginning there was 'The Word', it's not about the creation of the material world, it's about 'a concept' that started a thought process and gave rise to the sensation of consciousness.

[kimrathbone]

Suppose that there was an earlier transition in consciousness.

When hominids already with a gestural language discovered mirrors. (probably by accident )

They then developed a concept of self through this technology and a type of egocentric consciousness.

So one had 'pre-mirror zombies' (possibly Neanderthals)

The post mirror people were Greek Zombies and so on.

Suppose that modern infants go through this mirror phase of developing self aware consciousness.

[kimrathbone]

And infants with attention deficit - for a poorly developed or fragmentary 'self'

Could this give rise to psychopathy?

I was thinking along the lines that rather than think of Greeek Zombies as schizophrenic one might consider psychopaths as the result of a phase change in consciousness like that attributable to Jaynes.

A fractured identity of self woul explain a lot about psychopaths.

Also evolution would have kept them around (and their traits in the modern mind.

[MSJ11]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this on Youtube!!!!!!!

[julianjaynessociety]

Keep in mind it re-emerges so to speak to varying degrees in different indivduals in the form of auditory hallucinations; for some (now called schizophrenic) the voices take over behavior. For modern civilization to return to a bicameral mentality I think would require some type of complete global breakdown in society (nuclear war?) & a return to a more tribal type state. Language would also have to degrade as consciousness according to Jaynes is a learned process based on metaphorical language.

[macedonianphalanx]

Could bicamerality re-emerge? If so what could trigger that?

Reading OC I understood that bicamerality broke down because of certain stress events that shut down the voices. I wonder if other events and stresses could reverse the process. Could bicamerality re-emerge? If so what could trigger that?

A further question is: can our advanced civilisation be maintained if bicamerality were to re-emerge?

I would appreciate your thoughts on these questions. Thank you, Abdul