Julian Jaynes (1920–1997)
Author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
About the Author
Image credit: Dr. Julian Jaynes (1920 – 1997)
Works by Julian Jaynes
Associated Works
Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited (2006) — Author — 116 copies, 4 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Jaynes, Julian
- Other names
- Jaynes, Julian C.
- Birthdate
- 1920-02-27
- Date of death
- 1997-11-21
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- West Newton, Massachusetts, USA
- Place of death
- Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
- Cause of death
- stroke
- Places of residence
- Newton, Massachusetts, USA
England, UK
Keppoch, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Princeton, New Jersey, USA - Education
- McGill University (BA|1944)
Yale University (MA|1948|PhD|1977)
Harvard University - Occupations
- author
lecturer (psychology)
actor
playwright
psychologist - Organizations
- Julian Jaynes society (http://www.julianjaynes.org/about-jay...)
Princeton University
Yale University
University of Toronto - Awards and honors
- Rhode Island College (Honorary Doctorate ∙ 1979)
Elizabethtown College (Honorate Doctorate ∙ 1985)
Wittgenstein Symposium (plenary lecturer ∙ 1984)
Dr. Julian Jaynes Memorial Scholarship in Psychology - Short biography
- Born in West Newton, Massachusetts, Julian Jaynes did his undergraduate work at Harvard and McGill and received both his master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from Yale. After Yale, Jaynes spent several years in England working as an actor and playwright. Jaynes later returned to the states, and lectured in psychology at Princeton University from 1966 to 1990, teaching a popular class on consciousness for much of that time. In addition, he had numerous positions as Visiting Lecturer or Scholar in Residence in departments of philosophy, English, and archeology and in numerous medical schools. Julian Jaynes was an associate editor of the internationally renowned journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences and on the editorial board of the Journal of Mind and Behavior.
Julian Jaynes published widely, his earlier work focusing on the study of animal behavior and ethology, which eventually led him to the study of human consciousness. His more recent work culminated in 1976 in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a nominee for the National Book Award in 1978. Articles on Jaynes's theory appeared in Time magazine and Psychology Today in 1977. Criticized by some and acclaimed by others as one of the most important books of the 20th century, it remains as controversial today as when it was first published. Expanding on this book are several more recent articles published in a variety of journals such as Canadian Psychology, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The History of Ideas, and Art/World.
Members
Reviews
This book blew my mind. The more I read, the less I believed, but it was filled with ambitious thinking and a grand narrative.
Food for thought!
Food for thought!
Novelty of idea and style make this a winner.
If valid, Jaynes’ theory has far-reaching ramifications.
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Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 4
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 2,267
- Popularity
- #11,325
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 43
- ISBNs
- 26
- Languages
- 5
- Favorited
- 6
Jaynes starts strongly by briefly explaining why he considers all pre-existing theories of consciousness to be badly flawed. This is quite jaw-dropping for the casual reader like me who has not previously studied the subject, or even given it sustained thought. Despite his conviction and excellent explanations, though, I must admit that his sweeping theory on the bicameral mind did not entirely persuade me. His book was enjoyable in part because it gave me the opportunity to systematise my own thoughts about consciousness. The most satisfyingly thought-provoking books do this, by presenting a theory clearly and thoroughly but not dogmatically. I was pleased to find my main point of contention discussed in the 1990 afterword; the book was first published 1977. Consciousness is incredibly difficult to unpick, at least for me, as the experience of it seems so cohesive. It jolted me to realise that memory is not really part of consciousness, for instance, although the sense of self and process of contemplation both lean heavily upon it. Or rather, the presence of memory does not necessarily mean consciousness follows.
When I mentioned to people that I was reading this book, they tended to ask, "What is the bicameral mind?" It is the name Jaynes gives to his hypothesis of how pre-conscious human brains worked, based on changed relations between the right and left hemispheres. Bicameral humans did not have a sense of self or internal mindspace as we do, Jaynes claims. They made decisions based essentially on auditory and visual hallucinations, experienced as separate from their own minds. Perhaps more shocking, at least to me, is the timing that Jaynes suggests for the change from bicameral to conscious brains: a mere three thousand years ago. Personally, I found the proposition that the architecture, technology, organisation, and art created by early human civilisations did not require consciousness hard to accept. Indeed, I am only willing to agree with the weaker version of Jaynes' theory, which he admits to the existence of only in the afterword and of which more later. However, I found it invigorating to contemplate what consciousness actually is, whether what we call civilisation requires consciousness, and how the mental life of humans may have utterly changed over thousands of years.
One of the strongest points of the argument for a bicameral mind, in my view, was its explanation of the intense and consistent veneration of the dead across the ancient world. Jaynes suggests that statues of gods and bodies of rulers were accorded great privileges as their voices lived on as auditory hallucinations, which allowed power structures to persist. This is a compelling explanation for the fact that the spectacular ruins that survive to this day are mausoleums and temples, built to glorify the intangible and the dead rather than serve practical functions for the living. On the ancient Eygptian pantheon:
This is by no means the only point when Jaynes critiques translators for projecting modern ideas onto the distant past. He also does this in some detail for both the Iliad and Old Testament, as well as complaining that applying terms like 'money' to the Code of Hammurabi is simply inaccurate. ([b:Debt: The First 5,000 Years|6617037|Debt The First 5,000 Years|David Graeber|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390408633l/6617037._SY75_.jpg|6811142] by David Graeber echoed this, I believe.) While Jaynes certainly has a point, it is impossible to completely avoid projecting contemporary ideas on the past. Translation is an active interpretation of text by a mind anchored in a particular point in history. The history of the Iliad can be traced through its translations, all of which say something about the person who did the translating and the culture in which they lived.
An important feature of Jaynes' thesis is that consciousness cannot exist without language and that it began to emerge with writing. It is less plausible, at least to me, that written language developed for more than a thousand years in the absence of consciousness. The question is, what level of complexity in technical innovation, interpersonal organisation, and literary endeavour could be possible without consciousness? Many mammals, birds, and insects manage incredible feats of architecture and co-operation, apparently without consciousness. Constructing a pyramid perhaps did not require it, but I cannot believe that the Iliad was composed by pre-conscious minds. While reciting it from memory needn't necessarily require consciousness, its creation surely involved some sense of the characters as conscious beings. It cannot be only the act of translation that gives the Iliad its emotional depth. The poem begins with the anger of Achilles, based on vanity, frustration, and arrogance. I find it very hard to reconcile such emotions with a bicameral person whose every action is directly motivated by voices of the gods. Jaynes argues that the gods control everything that happens in the Iliad, which is broadly justifiable from what I know of it. I've only ever read the Iliad in translation, however I vividly remember the feelings of love, hate, compassion, and cruelty that the characters exhibit. To my mind, consciousness is a necessity for such depths of emotion. Is romantic love, resentment, or mercy possible without consciousness? I'm inclined to think not. Each requires a sense of self and of others as having selves separate from one's own. Perhaps translators have added all of this to the poem, however I think it more likely that the Iliad has retained its appeal through the ages in part due its intensity of feeling. Now I want to re-read it, of course.
Returning to what is and isn't possible without consciousness, I agreed with this comment:
While the law of the Iliad is that of the gods, I still would not describe it as wholly amoral. Although that could be due to the work of translators. I'd love to discuss this book with my high school classics teacher, who actually knew ancient Greek.
The final third of 'The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' considers the vestiges and legacy of the bicameral mind, including oracles, hypnosis, and schizophrenia. These are as ingenious and compelling as the theory itself. Given when the book was first published, the neuroscience and psychiatric material is rather speculative. I'd be very interested to find out whether Jaynes' hypotheses have been supported or not by more recent fMRI research. That said, a great strength of the book is the emphasis on neuroplasticity (which I know subsequent research has supported) and the culturally mediated nature of human consciousness. This is sensibly put and convincing:
That final sentence seems technical, but this book is very good at explaining its terms and is very readable even at its most theoretical.
Now back to the afterword, which considers the reception of the bicameral mind theory and research since. In this Jaynes touches upon the point about emotions, which I was apparently not the only reader to pick up on. He also concedes this:
Although he presents this as the weaker theory, I consider it the stronger because I find it more plausible. I do not see why bicameral hallucinations could not coexist with some, initially subordinate, sense of self. As for disprovability, even if humanity developed time travel, we would struggle to conclusively determine exactly how the mental worlds of people in 3000BC differed from our own. Maybe if we developed telepathy, but even then I doubt it. (Parenthetically, I think telepathy would be a dubious research tool, because any mind-reading would require the mind-reader to engage in translation. Thoughts are slippery and ambiguous things. Surely two telepaths could read the same mind very differently; I wish more fiction explored this possibility.)
Jaynes convinced me that ancient peoples very likely heard the voices of the dead and of gods, and that such hallucinations preceded consciousness. He did not convince me that such hallucinations could not coexist with consciousness, albeit with a sense of self perhaps very different to our own. I very much enjoyed thinking this through and was thrilled by the vertiginous sense of how much consciousness could have changed in thousands of years, and how it might continue changing in the future. 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' was an excellent lockdown read. I highly recommend it as an escape into the distant past and the recesses of the human brain.… (more)