Brian J. McVeigh - Julian Jaynes and Neurotheology

Highlights from the Julian Jaynes Session at the 2008 "Toward A Science of Consciousness" Conference. For more of Prof. McVeigh's ideas see his chapter in the book "Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited."

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Science & Technology

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• Brian
• McVeigh
• neurotheology
• Julian
• Jaynes
• Easter
• Island
• Moai

[icebear1946]

In the case of idols and idolatry and the practices Jaynes described involving them, no explanation other than mass hallucination suffices. Try searching on 'jaynes' and 'crime' for the bearfabrique description.

[Downtherabbithole212]

Really interesting, pity the sound is terrible and the acoustics make certain parts unintelligeble. So much for the spoken word!

[Downtherabbithole212]

A virus morphed the throat and made the cerebral vocal. Language has systematically destroyed individuality. Who is to say that speaking WAS an evolutionary step forwards. Maybe non-verbal communication was the way we should have gone?

[rross27]

Consciousness is growing and expanding through the generations, and could be recycled from the genetic learning of our parents. Each new "layer" of mans consciousness has had a more powerful urge to create than the last. We started off creating the gods (gleaming-eyed statues) and taking orders from charlatans whispering from behind them. Which brings us to today, as we worship gleaming eyed leader gods who still have charlatans whispering from behind them. How far we have come 8)

[timtak1]

Why did the ancients breakdown, that is to say "make bi of" their monocameral mind in the first place? Why did they throw their voices, why did they start to speak at all?

[timtak1]

I can see why people would want to "breakdown" (i.e. merge ) bi-ness. This is easy... we all want to be loved. We all want to merge. I feel this in myself anyway.

So I can see why I would have created a "bi" *so that we aan break that "bi" down and self-merge, self-speak, self-touch.

What I fail to understand is why we would want to bi, or why we did bi, or why we were bi.

Perhaps we enjoyed being the god? Perhaps before we felt the touch of god we wanted to be him/her?

Okay,

[timtak1]

Jaynes would provide an explanation for the distance required of the self-speach that we now experience.

As a Freud/Lacan lover, I tend to see the "breakdown" (merging) as, at least motivationally, coming first.

The Jaynesian "breakdown" is a merging. He could almost have called his book, "The Merging of the Bicameral Mind."

I.e. that which was "bi" became not "bi" but one.

I can understand why people would want to merge ("breakdown") but why would they have needed, done the bi?

[timtak1]

Jaynes says that at first the voice was the voice of god, of another.

He provides a distance.

But my quandy is, why did the ancients throw their voices at all?

Why did they bother to speak?

Why did they bother to speak when they are alone?

Why did one half of there minds start uttering?

What are Jaynesian stages, before the "breakdown" (merging?)?

Part of us uttered (but why?)

Then (? does this come second?) we presume that the utterance came from the gods?

[timtak1]

The Jaynesian theory posits a new source of the distance/difference/differance

required for communication.

Speaking to oneself is kind of impossible, and yet a common place.

We all "speak" "to" ourselves. Despite the fact that there is not enough room for speach, not enough room for a "to."

So how and why did we create this gap that we love to breach?

Jaynes comes to the rescue?

[timtak1]

I don't understand Derrida either.

But there is a problem, it seems to me, with our oh so common self-speech, in that there is not enough distance, difference or differance to make it worthwhile.

Incipt Jaynes.

He gives an alternitive hypothesis for the origin of the distance/difference/differance required.

I.e. at first we thought someone else was talking, and only later after the "breakdown" did we assume that the voices was from ourselves.