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Change is the perennial condition of life but not of knowledge. We understand change because we have knowledge. If everything was changing and nothing at all could be seen as enduring we could not understand anything: there would be, for example, no sufficiently constant conditions for the language-game of naming(the simplest of language-games) to exist. Without naming there could be no reference to change in the past or to change in the future. Consider the changes occurring in cloud formation: if we were unable to identify the change as a change in the configuration of clouds–if for example clouds just disappeared beneath the Greek sun as they sometimes do, then, if we were to talk of this region of reality perhaps it would have to be in terms of something else changing–perhaps the air is getting hotter. If we could not talk of the air because it was very windy then we might need to talk about the motion in space over time. If there was no identifiable motion to talk about, we are left only with an extensive region of space and counting the nows to give ourselves an idea of the passing of time–but what is counting if not a kind of naming? What we are differentiating is a before, from an after, and perhaps with this pure form of consciousness, we are at the limits of the human cognition of change–the past changing into the future. The role of language in the organisation of experience according to the Philosopher Stuart Hampshire in his work “Thought and Action”(London, Chatto and Windus,1959) is formulated thus:
“Men may think with a view to knowledge, as they may think with a view to action. They may ask themselves “Is this statement true or is it not?” and also Shall I do this or shall I not?”. Both kinds of question can be formulated in words, and there would be nothing properly called thought unless such questions could be formulated into words. Words are by definition parts of a language. A language is, among other things, a set of signs used by intelligent beings to refer to recurrent elements in their experience and in reality. Men may use language to refer to recurrent elements in their experience and in reality for many different purposes. They may refer to something in order to give some information about it, to make a request about it, to give an order about it, to give a promise about it, to express admiration about it and for countless other purposes which are distinguishable as different forms of human behaviour and as different social institutions…….a language is always a means of singling out, and directing attention to, certain elements of experience and reality as subjects which can be referred to again and again.” ( P. 11)
Amongst these forms of linguistic behaviour must be included all kinds of rational activity including that of the systematic forms of reasoning we encounter in the productive, practical, and theoretical sciences. This elevation of language from a mere medium for communicating thought, to one of the more important conditions of thought, is shared by a fellow Princeton scholar, Julian Jaynes. Hampshire, later in the above work, confirms the claim of Aristotle that certain forms of knowledge build upon the premises of arguments(endorsed by the wise men of many millennia) that are only probably true and may change. Hampshire in the context of this controversial claim also claims paradoxically that knowledge of our mind may change as might the objects of that knowledge(Thus creating new forms of life and consciousness). A Wittgensteinian notion of freedom is postulated. We are all familiar with Wittgensteinian claims that the rules of language can be changed. It is, that is, possible to combine concepts variously(in a metaphorising process?) to create new and original thoughts . This is a consequence of man being defined as a rule following animal. What is being claimed here runs of course counter to Kantian critical Philosophy which claims, for example, that the formal rules or principles of logic cannot change. Hampshire may well be confusing the material rules of grammar with the formal laws of logic in this discussion. Certainly the latter may be amongst the conditions of thought, but the former is the condition of the relation of thought entities(premises) to one another. Hampshire does, however, acknowledge that the division of the the powers or capacities of the mind are external to language(P.274). Hampshire does not, however acknowledge the rule of principles or laws that organise these powers or capacities into virtuous dispositions. Given the above discussion, it is then somewhat surprising to then find Hampshire admitting that psychoanalysis provides us with a reflexive knowledge of the mind in which the reality principle presupposes knowledge of historical restrictions of freedom. This knowledge enables us to become aware of the relation of the pleasure pain principles and the energy regulation principles to unconscious motives and purposes. On the grounds of an argument that complete knowledge and rationality is an ideal limit beyond the possible scope of our understanding or achievements, Hampshire concludes that these principles and laws can only ever be hypothetical rather than constitutive or determinative. He claims, for instance that there are no starting points for logical reasoning, either in ethics, or in theoretical reasoning(P.257). This is undoubtedly a controversial standpoint and undermines both hylomorphic and critical philosophy in general, as well as the success of these positions in the integration of ethical, religious political and aesthetic judgements in relation to Thought(Truth) and Action.
The question to pose here is whether Julian Jaynes, a fellow Princetownian, shares the above position. We know Jaynes would agree with those popularisations of Freud that romanticises the idea of the Unconscious: an idea that Freud characterises as requiring specific techniques of investigation. We know that Jaynes in his youth doubted the relevance of the Kantian Philosophy. Annoyance with a lecturer who refused to discuss the scientific validity of the categories of the understanding turned Jaynes away from Philosophy and Metaphysics. No details of this rejection are provided but it is certainly possible to assume along with Kant that if the categories of the understanding form the necessary and universal propositions of science, these conditions must be in a different logical realm to that which they condition. A trace of interest for Kant remained because Jaynes on several occasions refers positively to the Kantian Transcendental ego in the context of discussions of the “analogue I” (Julian Jaynes Collection, P.160) It is also clear, however that Jaynes is a biologically inclined scientist who rests a part of his characterisation of Consciousness upon brain research. There are also phenomenological aspects of his research which manifest hylomorphic characteristics. For Aristotle, however, it does not appear as if consciousness is necessary for many reasoning processes. Logic, for Aristotle made no reference to the actuality of consciousness but was rather merely the name for the discipline specifying the principles of thinking. There was, that is, no necessity that I be conscious of these principles whilst using them in the activities of speaking, writing, and understanding. Kantian critical Philosophy does not require consciousness of rational principles. It merely requires that there are logical grounds to connect the conditions with the conditioned. In both hylomorphic Philosophy and Critical Philosophy, the relation of matter to form, is critical in determining the relation of the conditions to the conditioned. In contexts of exploration/discovery we would certainly encounter the phenomenon or actuality of consciousness especially in connection with the posing of the question why in relation to a change which is describable. The answer to this question may or may not surface in consciousness.
Rationality emerges in the human form of life where discourse is abstract and in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. This is actually acknowledged by some Psychologists, e.g. A R Luria in his work, “Cognitive development: Its Cultural and social Foundations”:
“with new forms of abstract categorical relationships to reality, we also see the appearance of new forms of mental dynamics. Whereas before the dynamics of thought occurred only within the framework of immediate, practical experience, and reasoning processes were largely limited to processes of reproducing established practical situations, as a result of the cultural revolution, we see the possibility of drawing inferences not only on the basis of ones own practical experience but on the basis of discursive, verbal and logical processes as well. It becomes possible to take assumptions as they are formulated in language and use them to make logical inferences, regardless of whether or not the content of the premises forms a part of personal experience…..Finally, there are changes in self awareness of the personality which advances to the higher level of social awareness and assumes new capabilities for objective , categorical analysis of ones motivations, actions, intrinsic properties, and idiosyncracies…….sociohistorical shifts not only introduce new content into the mental world of human beings…They advance human consciousness to new levels.”(London, Harvard University Press, 1976)
Luria’s Psychological approach allows one to embrace thought in accordance with the theoretical principles of noncontradiction, sufficient reason and practical moral laws. Luria’s Psychology as we know begins at a base level of reflexes and brain function and advances into Wittgensteinian territory when appeal is made to sociohistorical conditions. The above work was published the same year as Jaynes’ “Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral mind”. We know that Jaynes cited Lurias earlier work, but it is not clear that he would have endorsed the above Aristotelian/Kantian rationalist position. Jaynes the scientist as we know, wished for the rationalist categories of the understanding to be justified scientifically. Whilst it can be argued that much of Jaynes’ work is in the spirit of Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy, its scientific commitment prevents it from exploring the sweep and scope of its rational implications.
In a chapter entitled “The Origins of Civilisation” Jaynes discusses the evolution of groups in relation to primates, the following is claimed:
“Primates…are evolved to live in close association with others. It is the group that evolves. When dominant individuals give a warning cry or run, others of the group flee without looking for the source of the danger. It is thus the experience of one individual and his dominance is an advantage to the whole group. Individuals do not generally respond even to basic physiological needs except within the whole pattern of the groups activity.”(Origins if Consciousness, P 127)
A communication system(which is not the same thing as a language) based on a system of signals that communicate emotions(but not information) assists in this process of protecting the group from danger. The system limits the size of the group to ca 40 individuals(except in extremely hospitable environments). Jaynes claims that there is no reason to believe that the direct descendants of these primates ca 2 million years ago employed any different system of organisation and communication. His grounds for this are archeological. He argues that if more advanced forms of organisation and communication had existed this would have entailed a complementary advance in the development of tools and weapons: we do not see this in the archeological evidence from the Pleistocene age. We encounter diversity in tools, artefacts, and weapons only around 40,000 BC. Jaynes argues, that this is because frontal lobe activity becomes involved in mans activities, in particular Broca’s speech area. Language activity had of course begun much earlier but the base line was signalling behaviour which required a considerable amount of time to become intentional. This was a consequence of a biological movement from the limbic system to the cortex and involved a sensory shift from visual to auditory signalling. Many ecological pressures contributed to these shifts and the development of language. These intentional auditory signals underwent modification of the endings of the calls and signified the beginning of the process of the communication of information about environmental danger (nearby or far off). The endings of these signals could then be separated off as linguistic entities, and used in the activity of hunting, making it a more deliberate and organised activity. These hunting commands could then be transformed into interrogative signals embedded in a context of problem solving. Negation is obviously also a possible consequential response that is connected to a representation of a possible action, and a decision whether to perform the action or not–thus introducing the idea of practical negation and perhaps also an idea of the negation being a practical contradiction, if, for example, it is not appropriate to draw near to the hunted prey at that moment. Jaynes suggests that the cry of disgust or disappointment upon making a mistake in this context and losing the prey, is the emotional nexus of the cry of negation “NO!”: an emotional nexus composed of postural and gestural signals. Failure in the hunt in certain circumstances might of course threaten the survival of the group.
Nouns, Jaynes argues, may have arisen from the imitation of animals behaviour and the modification of a syllable in the command signal–a different syllable for different animals sighted. This stage occurred between 25,000 and 15,000 BC. This may be the best account we have of the “form of life” that precedes the language-game of naming that Wittgenstein was referring to in his later work, “Philosophical Investigations”. These reflections fall into the sphere of concern for Anthropology which Keuhn in his Introduction to Kant’s work bearing that name, defines in the following way:
“Anthropology as understood today is a discipline concerned with the study of the physical, cultural, social, and linguistic development of human beings, from prehistoric times to the present. It is a relatively new phenomenon, which comes into its own only in the 19th century. Its roots, however, can be traced back to the last third of the 18th century. Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Condorcet in France, Lord Kames, Lord Manboddo and William Robertson in Scotland, and Immanuel Kant, Georg Forster, Christoph Meiners, and Ernst Platner in Germany were among the most important early contributors to this new field of study. It grew ultimately from a fundamental concern of the European Enlightenment and as a reaction to the theological understanding of the nature of man.”(Anthropology from a Pragmatic point of view” (vii)
The proper study of the world, it was argued by these anthropologists, was that man ought to be the focus of attention rather than God: principles rather than substances ought to guide this study. Kant in his work “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view” claimed:
“In this discipline I will, then, be more concerned to seek out the phenomena and their laws than the first principles of the possibility of modifying human nature itself”(10, P.145)
The above refers to the Aristotelian distinction Kant draws between first principles and the principles we encounter in the diverse forms of science(essence specifying explanations). The reference to the “laws of the phenomena” suggests a rationalistic transcendental view of phenomenology that many phenomenologists would reject. In contrast to the type of phenomenology we encountered in the 20th century, connected to, for example a transcendental ego, Kant’s Anthropology had a clear ethical import, a clear teleological aspect that attempts to discover and use laws relevant to the emergence of cognitive powers, powers of speech, and other civilising socio-historical processes: processes that led from an animal form of life to a fully rational cosmopolitan form of life. Kant’s work entitled “Logic” contains his mission statement for Philosophy:
“What can I know?”,”What should I do?” “What may I hope for?” “What is a human being?”. The first question is answered in metaphysics, the second in morals, the third in religion, the fourth in Anthropology”(Logic, 9, P.25)
Kant’s ethical works are “Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals”, “Critique of Practical Reason”, and The Metaphysics of Morals”. Kant’s reflections upon Religion are principally contained in “Religion within the bounds of mere Reason”. His epistemological reflections are to be found in the “Critique of Pure Reason”, “Prolégomena to any future Metaphysics”, “Metaphysics of Material Nature” and “Opus Postumum”.
The fourth question cited in the above quote divides into two realms: Physiological Anthropology which firstly, deals with the phenomena and laws under the maxim of “What happens to man”, and, secondly, Pragmatic Anthropology, dealing with the phenomena and Laws of “What man makes of himself”. Observation is an important part of the methodology of Physiological Anthropology which for Kant is guided by principles and laws. Observing ones own mental activity via “Introspection” for Kant is a useless form of activity, and can be a form of self obsession that underlies the role of , for example, moral law in contexts of explanation/justification. The answer to the fourth question is obviously connected to the answers to the other questions especially the first two, both of which require reference to the roles of sensibility, understanding, and reason. Anthropology, for example, investigates sensibility and “the primary springs of the will” in relation to man, the community and the nation. The aspects of morality that are rational( using understanding and reason) are obviously to a certain degree independent of the empirical role of sensibility, given its categorical nature. The integration of the four questions is well illustrated in the following quote from “Anthropology”:
“The sole proof a mans consciousness affords him that he has character is his having made it his supreme maxim to be truthful, both in his admissions to himself and in his conduct toward every other man. And since having character is both the minimum that can be required of a reasonable man, and the maximum of the inner worth(of human dignity) must be possible for the most enduring reason to be a man of principles(to have determinate character) and yet according to its dignity, surpass the greatest talent”(P.195)
Kant addresses the Aristotelian characteristic of language use and understanding, implied by the expression “capable of discourse”. For Kant, language is a means or medium for expressing our thoughts which are composed of intuitions, concepts, and judgements:
“All language is a signification of thought and, on the other hand, the best way of signifying thought is through language, the greatest instrument for understanding ourselves and others. Thinking is speaking with oneself: consequently it is also listening to oneself inwardly(by means of the reproductive power of imagination)…But even those who can speak and hear do not always understand themselves or others, and it is due to the lack of the faculty of signification, or its faulty use(when signs are taken for things and vice versa) that, especially in matters of reason, human beings who are united in language are as distant as heaven from earth in concepts. This becomes obvious only by chance when each acts according to his own concepts.”(Anthropology P.86)
Sharing a language, then, for Kant does not entail sharing a form of life. Kant would therefore classify Jaynes’s theory as an interesting Aristotelian exercise in what he called Physiological Anthropology–an exercise, that is, in investigating the material and efficient causes of thought and language. The structure of language is built up gradually over generations of users, and although it is true that the expressive element of language is embedded in Instinct, thought in the form of speaking to oneself is a vicissitude of the instinctive structure of mind: a structure that can be modified into new forms by the formation of new aims. Jaynes takes up the thread of this discussion:
“each new stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural changes which are reflected in the archaeological record.”(Origins P. 132)
The stage of the use of life nouns(built upon modifiers and commands)corresponds, insofar as the archaeological record is concerned with a diversification of weapons(harpoons) tools and artefacts(pendants, pottery etc). Cave drawings of animals also correspond with this stage of language. The fossil evidence from this period indicates a corresponding increase in the cubic capacity of the frontal lobes of the brain.
Jaynes argues that Peoples names evolved into existence during the period from 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC. with the “advent of Agriculture”: from which followed fixed populations, longer life spans, and larger community sizes. Archaeological findings include large areas reserved for ceremonial graves(up to 87 graves). Jaynes argues cogently that it was the use of names that gave the practice of burying ones dead its meaning. Language represents the presence of things in their absence, perhaps primarily in order to engage the action system by intentions to bring these things into ones presence in accordance with ones wishes. When the wish remains and the intention cannot motivate the action to bring about the state of affairs wished for, the inevitable result is grief in proportion to the strength of the wish. Jaynes asks the pertinent question:”In what would the grieving consist if there was no mechanism in language to represent the presence of the forever absent deceased?” The marvel of Jaynes’s account is his thesis that auditory hallucinations of the voices of kings and gods helped to build civilisation priori to the onset of a conscious state linked to language use: a use which was becoming more and more complex as one stage developed into another. He maintains with considerable psychological insight that tool making for most of pre-history occurred via the imitation of those that knew, by those that did not know how to make a weapon or a tool or artefact. When language complements this process we are then able to explain how a voice of an absent knower can with the command “sharper!” keep a man at work for most of the day during a period in history that was not ruled by obedience to timetables and schedules. With the agricultural revolution we stand at the threshold of the process of city-building. Villages spontaneously coordinate their resources and manpower to unite many into one under the rule of law connected to the voice of authority, or the great-souled men of the past and present. These figures were the problem solvers of the society and either may have simply had more knowledge or alternatively possessed some means of organising their own thought that others in the society did not. Whichever was the case they used the mechanisms of language and more complex memory systems to solve both everyday and unique problems. Mental powers were actualising in the populations during this period, and this process would ultimately lead to the type of discourse and the type of rationality we encounter in the discourse and forms of argumentation that we witnessed in Ancient Classical Greece. Recall that the first of the Philosophers, Thales, was one of the seven sages, one of the great souled men of Greece.
Jaynes refers to the Natufian culture, burying their dead ceremonially in cemeteries. “Towns” of ca 200 people have been excavated but the inhabitants, Jaynes claims, were at this point not conscious as were the Sages of Greece. The Natufians possessed “bicameral minds”(a term invented by Jaynes). Much of their everyday activity was carried out habitually and in accordance with the traditions and accepted forms of life of the community. When novel situations presented novel problems that called for solutions which lay outside these everyday routines, the stress caused by the situation would result in consultation with the wise men of the town, or alternatively with the preserved remains of such a wise man whose visual presence was apparently capable of causing their voice to occur in the thoughts of the agent involved in the problematic situation( a memory mechanism). These voices, Jaynes claims, would have a similar experienced quality to those “heard” by modern schizophrenics. These modern schizophrenics would, of course, have more control over their voices because their memory systems are probably more developed thanks to the possession of a more advanced form of language and modern universal educational systems. The appearance and wide use of the medium of writing may well have contributed to the unifying of the mind and caused the disappearance of the voices, which were mourned in various ways by various cultures. Preserved remains of the dead, when consulted during the times of transition fell “silent”: they no longer possessed the “Power” to call forth auditory hallucinations. At this point these kingly, godly figures were obviously buried in common burial areas and they were no longer publicly presented. The dead kings or Gods in these public houses were obviously the precursors of the Greek Temple which in turn was the precursor of our modern Churches. If several dead Kings or Gods were installed in the Tomb, their voices tended to fuse and become “the voices of the Gods”. Civilisation began with the rule of great souled men and their voices, up until that point in time when their judgements could be written down and recorded in the form of Laws. Writing enabled towns to grow into cities like Athens, where both the Laws and the great souled men behind them were the steering mechanisms of Society. Laws were of course important in large communities where everyone did not know everyone else. Bicameral kingdoms could reach the size of Kingdoms as was the case with the Inca and Aztec sun worshipping civilisations, but as History indicates, these kingdoms were vulnerable to dissolution in many different ways. The bicameral mind was being transformed continually by the influence of writing and the formation of educational institutions dedicated to the study of writings of various kinds. Such activity over millennia transformed the bicameral mind into the conscious mind. In such a transformation, Jaynes argues, we encounter an analogue “I” narratising with the assistance of metaphors that in turn eventually created a mental “metaphorical space” which he calls “Consciousness”.
Jaynes analyses the first systematically organised written literary texts in order to ascertain the picture the author of the works had of the people he wrote about. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not written by the same person but the two works stand together on the cusp of the “Origin of Consciousness”.In the Iliad(ignoring the later additions to the texts from later ages) the heroes , Agamemnon and Achilles( real figures from real cities) were bicameral men and waited in moments of stress for the voices of the Gods to tell them what to do(e.g. begin the war with Troy, steal Achilles’ mistress). These bicameral men did not have the power to solve problems using an analogue I that narratised imagined events in the metaphorical space of the mind. Even the great Agamemnon waited for a God to appear: and sure enough, one did, when he was half asleep in a dream like state that was probably unlike our modern REM dream-sleep. Agamemnon “dreamt” he was lying in his bed(which he was) when the God appeared “at his head” and told him to begin the Trojan war.
This hypothesis of the bicameral mind is the only coherent explanation for the fact that all early societies of any significant size were theocracies, structured, along the lines of the hierarchically structured elements of The Gods-Agamemnon–Achilles–the army or the people. In battle, all eyes were on Achilles and here the mechanism of imitation probably sufficed for allaying the stress of the situation caused by the problems thrown up during the course of the battle. If, then, things still did not go well, all eyes would turn to Agamemnon who may in his turn need the voices of the Gods to resolve the problem and determine what to do next. The critical cultural event that transformed this fragile state of affairs(motivating the oracles of Greece to claim that everything created by men is doomed to ruin and destruction) was the invention of writing. Jaynes defines writing in the following way:
“What is writing? Writing proceeds from pictures of visual events to symbols of phonetic events. And that is amazing transformation. Writing of the latter type, as on the present page is meant to tell a reader something he does not know. But the closer writing is to the former the more it is primarily a mnemonic device to release information which the reader already has”(Origins P.176)
Jaynes points out that the hieroglyphics from distant cultures, where there is no knowledge of the culture in phonetic writing, may never be correctly interpreted, simply because the relevant knowledge connected to the images is not available to the interpreter and may indeed be lost forever.Natural disasters that forced the displacement of populations to other areas may well have seriously disrupted the transmission of knowledge of these cultures. Suddenly, men interacting as a result of these natural catastrophes and wars were faced with alternative perhaps contradictory bicameral voices.
The practice of the written transmission of knowledge would prove in the future to be more durable in the face of catastrophic natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and massive tsunamis. When bicameral and literary based cultures with their mythological writings, are juxtaposed, we can see how, at least insofar as the survival of cultures are concerned, bicameral civilisations are selected against in the process of cultural evolution. The transmission of hallucinatory based knowledge in contexts where there are competing voices is more unstable, especially if the great souled men of the culture were eliminated. These great souled men may also have been the victim of plagues that swept through the towns and villages of these bicameral civilisations. Archaeological evidence points to the curious phenomenon of villages and towns being uninhabited for long stretches of time. This phenomenon may point to either a natural catastrophe, or the murdering of the leaders behind the voices by invading forces.
The Egyptians referred to this bicameral voice in terms of a persons ka: to hear ones ka was to obey. Language in a written culture has probably lost most of its hypnotic effect. The awesome authority figures behind the written words we read may have been dead for centuries or even millennia. The “suggestion” of what ought and ought not to be done leaves, consequently, a free space for consent or dissent. The imperative mood has been weakened. In Egypt, the King or God’s Ka, resembled his father’s voice with experiential modification. As we approach the age of Consciousness in Egypt the number of ka’s the steward king listens to, could number up to 14(accumulated generations of the voices of previous wise kings). This was probably also a consequence of the increase in the size of Egyptian civilisation. Jaynes suggests that bicameral control is no longer possible once a civilisation reaches a certain size. His arguments for this position are manifold, but he points to the fact that amongst the first phonetic writing, mention is made of overpopulation. There are also pictorial representations of a king approaching the throne of a God who is no longer there: these are the first historical representations of the advent of consciousness in the face of a deus absconditis. These are the symptoms of, and testaments to, the breakdown of the bicameral mind. We know from a considerable body of evidence that at the end of the so called Old Kingdom, the civilisation of Egypt collapsed. This did not happen to the cities of Southern Mesopotamia probably because of the influence writing was having on those great souled men that could read. Writing was used to record judgements and this body of text became known as “The Law”. This kind of activity initiates a new form of government. Hammurabi used this literary tool to unite the Mesopotamian cities under the God Marduk. We believe Hammurabi wrote the laws himself without the aid of scribes. The source of his proclamations was probably the voice of Marduk, and there is an interesting picture of these two figures which is a representation of Hammurabi “under-standing” Marduck ( on the black basalt stele called the Code of Hammurabi) . The God and the steward king stare at each other. The texts of Hammurabi remind us of the text of the Iliad: Hammurabi boasts of his conquests and power in ways that remind us of Achilles and Agamemnon.
Money was not in circulation during these times, but there was a form of tithe taxation–a system where a part of the produce of a field was given to the owner. Wine was not bought but exchanged. In such simple contexts, the voice was seldom wrong in its judgements because they largely reflected the long established practices of tradition. Wars, catastrophes, and resultant migrations destroyed the system of transmission of these practices via the hallucinogenic voice-steering mechanism. In such societies there were no individuals reflecting consciously upon the laws: narrations were usually communicating the grandeur of power and conquest. The “I” did not plan, decide, and then act, but was rather propelled into action by either the practice of imitation, habits of everyday life, or a hallucinogenic voice in situations where problems that could not be solved emerged. In this context, the meeting between two individuals living in different communities steered by different voices, could of course be problematic, but if the communities in question had been living in peace for some time the voices would inevitably be friendly and may result in an exchange of gifts. Jaynes argues that this is probably how inter-city trade began. If, on the other hand, tensions and conflicts between the two communities existed, the steering voices would be hostile, and the individuals would regard each other as enemies. Our modern conscious voice of peace is of course a voice of toleration and compromise requiring the building of friendships where they do not exist: it is a voice, seeking unique solutions to unique problems. In situations where trade occurred between different bicameral cities, traders who had immersed themselves in “foreign” cities, would return to their original communities with traces of other bicameral voices in their memory systems.
Jaynes, the brain researcher, points out that when input to the brain was via the auditory channel, the demand for response was immediate. If the input was in a physical location that was command neutral, namely a written text containing imperatives, an act of will would be required to read the texts which then needed interpretation in terms of knowledge before any action could be engaged upon. Such action in such contexts was, of course not propelled but rather freely chosen. The picture of deus absconditis, then, was partly picturing the ascent of freedom in the world of human affairs.
During the second millenium BC, half the worlds population became refugees. Civilisations were destroyed by geological catastrophes and wars–the volcanic eruption of Thera and the rise of Assyria were two of the major causes of massive upheavals. The subsequent confrontations of bicameral minds subject to different possibly conflicting habits and voices in a situation of uncertainty, must have contributed to the weakening of the steering power of the voice, and perhaps strengthened the freedom connected to reliance upon written texts, both of a narrative and a legal form. The story of the emergence of Consciousness is, as we have seen, intimately connected to the evolution of language throughout its different stages. The experience of difference between myself and others, Jaynes argues, may have led to a postulation of something inside of others that can not be generalised to oneself. Narration of significant events in auditory form was an important part of bicameral activity. Homer’s work “The Iliad”, provides us with an account of the lives of the bicameral heroes, Agamemnon and Achilles. Jaynes’ analysis of the Greek in the text results in the conclusion that although there are many terms that appear to have psychological significance, these have been misinterpreted by moderns to indicate the presence of Consciousness. The terms referred to were actually being used to refer more to the activity and symptoms of the body or to characteristics of the environment. The term “Noos”, for example, derives from the word “noeo” that refers to visual perception which for some obscure reason was internalised in the chest of the body and not the eyes–perhaps because during this era we are still dealing with the domination of the voice and the ears and as yet have not transitioned to the analogue visual “space” of consciousness. Even the word psuche, during the period the narrative of the Iliad is about, is at this point in time a very physical internal “stuff” like breath that comes out of the mouth or stuff that bleeds out from a wound. Jaynes further claims that:
“no one in any way ever sees, decides, thinks, knows, fears or remembers anything in his psyche”(Origins, P.271)
The mind-space in which the I engages spontaneously in the above activities is not present in the Iliad. The words of the narrative themselves obviously proceed from the unconscious stream of narration of the bards of the time. The Odyssey was written at least a century later than The Iliad. Odysseus is much closer to the modern idea of a hero than Achilles was. Odysseus was an actually existing character engaging in deception and subterfuge in a very different world to that depicted in The Iliad. The Gods had to some extent receded and in Homer’s text they talk almost exclusively to each other. The words noos and psuche are now used in very different ways and they are also used more often. The god-like voice is transformed into the Socratic Daimon, so difficult to access. The Platonic idea of the Good appears in a context in which Life, psyche, and Time begin to become more closely associated, and abstraction becomes more apparent in relation to the psychical space of the psyche. Together with an interesting abstract conception of Time and Life, comes the beginnings of an abstract sense of justice, probably connected to the Greek idea of areté and doing the right thing in the right way at the right time(doing what is good in a good way and at a good time). This conception is only possible if time is spatialised as a kind of journey or Odyssey. Violence at one stage of the journey begets consequences at another stage. The past and the future can now become a part of reflection upon the present. The idea of a life working itself out emerges from the Odyssey. Solon of Athens stands as one of the great-souled men of early Greece. Here we encounter one of the first ethical and psychological qualifications of noos when Solon speaks of it as being at its worst in bad leaders and at its best in good leaders. He also talks about the wholeness and completeness of noos. It is clear in the figure of Solon that consciousness and morality are emerging simultaneously. Diké for Solon connects the areté of morality with the areté of the law. The Delphic Oracle’s “know thyself” which Solon is also associated with, now becomes more and more associated with a journey in which life works itself out–a journey filled with plans, choices, and their consequences. It also becomes associated with an active conceptualisation of ones beliefs and actions in the arenas of areté and diké. In The Iliad the psyche could leave the body. We also see in the Philosophies of Pythagoras and Heraclitus that psuche and soma are differentiated, and psuche and noos become more and more integrated in their uses. Psuche is sometimes pictured as being imprisoned in a tomb, and this picture reappears throughout the millennia in various forms of dualism. Jaynes, in a comment upon the changes of use of these terms has the following to say:
“Let no one think these are just word changes. Word changes are concept changes and concept changes are behavioural changes. The entire history of religion and of politics and even of science stands shrill witness to that. Without words like soul, liberty, or truth the pageant of this human condition would have been filled with different roles, different climates.”(Origins P.292)
Biblical literature supports Jaynes’ thesis of the evolution of the bicameral mind into conscious mind. The 8th century BC work of Amos is clearly bicameral, whereas the 2nd century work of Ecclesiastes is clearly a more reflective conscious collection of thoughts relating to the time for every purpose under the sun. Jaynes importantly points to the central use of the words “The Elohim” in the Pentateuch. It is usually, Jayne argues, translated into the singular form of “God” but probably a better translation means to refer to the great souled judges and powerful figures of the past. The most important elohim is Yahweh, He-who-is. Jaynes traces the fading of Yahweh’s voice in the Pentateuch: from being a physical presence walking in the Garden of Eden and talking to Adam, to being present in the lives of Cain and Abel and Abraham, to wrestling all night with Jacob. Moses only speaks to Yahweh once and the voice disappears once the writing on the tablets from Mt Sinai appears. Here we witness the appearance of another Deus as the Law of the Ten Commandments begins to regulate the collective life of the Israelites. We are now in the age of the Prophets considering the wholeness of souls, the rightness and wrongness of actions, and the consequences of these things for ones life. Prayers begin to be offered to deus absconditis and attempts to conjure up his existence no longer occur. He-who-is, recedes into the past. Several millennia later we still can be found praying in our modern Churches, we also take oaths of office(so help me God) and we take oaths in front of judges and juries as if the final severing of the bicameral umbilical cord would set Consciousness adrift in a storm of Biblical proportions. Yet there is an important sense in which our knowledge of our bicameral past is necessary if we are to “know ourselves” completely, a knowledge which involves knowing what is right and wrong. Denial of the past or failure to remember the past often takes the form of rejecting everything connected to Religion and its view of the world. This is a recipe for disaster in the transitional period we currently find ourselves in, namely, the phase of the journey of civilisation from its present form to a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends. Believing as some scientists do, that we can find our way to a destination we have no conception of, using only the scientific method and materialist assumptions of various kinds, is fraught with danger, as is the belief that “the invisible hand” of market forces will suffice to answer the aporetic questions and problems thrown up by the complexities of our existence. Such approaches deny or fail to remember in their different ways the important role of Aristotelian and Kantian Rationality as embodied in the actualisation of our human potential in contexts of exploration/explanation/justification.
The age of prophets at the collapse of bicameral mentality began in Greece with a thousand years of heeding the words of oracles. At the height of her power 35,000 people per day visited the oracle at Delphi. Kings and Statesman consulted with this servant of Apollo. Jaynes claims that oracles retained a dying ability to organise experiences with the right hemisphere of the brain and as this capacity too waned, it was necessary to place oneself in a trance or a hypnotic state of consciousness for the relevant processes to be activated. The idea of “possession” probably originates from this time when the capacity for more “rational” left hemisphere activity neutralised this ancient capacity. Being possessed was not the same as listening to ones bicameral voice, but these states are obviously related. Jaynes points out, as part of the logic of women becoming oracles ,that even women today are more lateralised in their thinking, being more inclined to use both hemispheres. Today it is only the phenomenon of schizophrenia that reminds us of the power of the bicameral voice. It is however, uncertain whether the Greek oracles were using a form of Philosophical reasoning to arrive at their prophecies. Certainly the challenge to “Know thyself” must have been the product of a unique form of reasoning that eventually resulted in the Aristotelian systematic account of the virtues and Eudaimonia. One can wonder whether these prophecies were poetically or religiously inspired or merely advice connected with the practical organisation of lives that is demanded in more complex societies. Jaynes argues that the first gods were poets, and that this form of imagination was associated in complex ways with the activity of the right hemisphere. Dactylic hexameter(a form of rhythmically patterned repetitive discourse) was the characteristic of what he calls “divine language”. The Delphic Oracle of the first century AD spoke in both dactylic hexameter and prose so it is difficult to determine whether the prophecies were poetically/religiously inspired or whether they were the result of rational argumentation. Dactylic hexameter was particularly suited to “commanding” attention whereas prose merely “asks” for attention. The mood of the imperative and the mood of the interrogative are obviously different grammatical and psychological categories. There is both a similarity and differences between the responses of obedience to a command and the answer to an aporetic question. Aporetic questions most often are why-questions raised in contexts of explanation/justification, and sometimes the why question is raised in the context of a justification for a claim relating what we ought or ought not to do in the realm of action. This justification for Kant must be a universal categorical truth that functions as a law in the realm of virtue and moral action(what Kant refers to as “deeds”) These modes of discourse clearly interact in ways reminiscent of the interaction of Platonic forms of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. For Jaynes, as we have seen, words, concepts, and action intertwine in forms of life regulated by Aristotelian forms or principles.
Jaynes also maintained that consciousness emerged ca 1200 BC(partly as a result of the growing complexity of language: its expressive function, its naming function, describing function, truth function, metaphorising function) and theorises that many psychic faculties and powers were destined to be affected, e.g. dreaming and reasoning on either end of the psychic spectrum. In an essay entitled “The Dream of Agamemnon” Jaynes claims:
“Any theory of mind, any theory of consciousness, has to also be a theory of dreams. And the theory I am representing very simply says that dreams are consciousness operating primarily during REM sleep.”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P.196)
If the point of comparison is Freud’s theory of drems, Jaynes describes the dream work in more cognitive terms. The argument that dreams are a phenomenon of consciousness is supported by brain research which clearly shows the activation of the reticular formation during REM sleep/dreaming(A.Hobson and R McCarthy). Jaynes begins his account by referring to the residues of the day, week, or month and points to a mechanism he calls “conciliation” that helps to form the structure and course of the dream work. Internal sensations are also integrated into what he claims is a narrative structure. This kind of narrative, however involves an analogue I, vicariously moving in a “space” that is created in the dream scene. Whether the elements of the dream present themselves to the narrating structure for conciliation or whether the narratising process selects the elements is not discussed by Jaynes. It is, however clear from an example he gives relating to nervously anticipating giving a talk, that walking nude on a beach, running into the water to hide ones nudity and thence being swept away by strong currents is an analogy constructed by the narratising and metaphorisation processes: underlying the dream work is anxiety related to anticipated problems in the giving of a lecture.
The implication of Jaynes’s analysis of the dream work being a work of consciousness tied together with his claim that the Origins of consciousness can be dated to ca 1200 BC, is that conscious dreams did not exist prior to the onset of consciousness. Jaynes brilliantly analyses 4 dreams from the Iliad, the first sustained literary record of bicameral activity. The Greek term “oneiro” is not used to name dreaming but is rather the name of a God that comes with messages to the other Gods during the night. Agamemnon dreams of Nestor coming to him while he is “sleeping”: standing at the head of his bed is not a REM dream(Given Agamemnon’s awareness of being in bed). Agamemnon does not dream Nestor and his message to start the Trojan war in a conscious dream-space but rather in a sense “experiences” Nestor as being beside his bed and bringing the news everyone had been waiting for, namely to start the war. There is no analogue I of Agamemnon inhabiting this conscious dream-space–there is no vicarial activity. The space of the dream is the space Agamemnon is sleeping/waking in. Nestor’s “standing at the head” of Agamemnon’s bed manifests none of the aforementioned characteristics of the modern REM dreams of Conscious man. Nestor tells Agamemnon that he is asleep. Why would he need to do this unless Agamemnon somehow doubted this. Jaynes also analyses Hebrew dreams in similar fashion. Jacob’s dream of the ziggurat on the hillside of Beth-El is more or less hallucinated in the space of Beth-El–the scene of the dream is Beth-El, which means the house of God.
The above account is particularly interesting if it is placed in a hylomorphic coordinate system, e.g. life forms-animal life forms-human life forms-divine forms of life. The risk with using such a framework is that if one does not map the essence of the human form of life correctly, there is a tendency(as was manifested by behaviouristic psychology) to overemphasise mans animal and instinctive nature. Behaviourism was of course a reaction to the equal and opposite risk of over emphasising the divine (rationality) elements in man that were suggested in religious texts about the prophets. Aristotles hylomorphic definition of man as being the rational animal capable of discourse situates the power of discourse in a space that Jaynes investigates in terms of the metaphorising process and consciousness. In Jaynesian theory, Animality(Instinct) as investigated by Freud, is marginalised, as is the rational form of life that is investigated by both Aristotle and Kantian Critical Philosophy. The power of discourse for Aristotle obviously actualises the potential inherent in the collective instincts of the human form of life and the power of discourse in its turn obviously actualises its potential for rationality in a further process of cultural evolution. Matter-form is intrinsically involved in this process, each previous stage becoming the matter to be organised by the principles of organisation. Freud’s major claim that Consciousness is a vicissitude of Instinct is a testament to the continuity between the forms of life that are obviously encapsulated in each other in a way analogous to a series of Russian dolls. The Aristotelian and Freudian Principles(ERP, PPP, RP) are related as matter is to form. The psychological PPP subsumes the biological/homeostatical ERP under it: the RP in its turn subsumes the objects of the PPP under it(the objects we advance towards, and retreat from). The RP also subsumes the ERP under it. The connection of the Aristotelian definition of man to the principles, against the background of Freud’s later theorising about Man and Civilisation, is a theoretical search for the totality of conditions. In this totality Eros, Thanatos and Ananke are all involved in the characterisations of Man the Scientist, Man the Philosopher, Man the ethical Being, Man the Political being, Man the Religious Being, and Man the artist. Kantian Anthropology, Ethics, Politics, Epistemology, Rational Religion, and Aesthetics will also need to be assimilated into the modern Neo-Aristotelian definition of Man and his World.
The risk with focussing on Consciousness to the exclusion of its animal substrate and rational powers and potentialities, is that we risk exaggerating its role as part of the holistic categorical framework of Mans Being-in-the-World. Jaynes correctly claims that Consciousness is not involved in much instinctive and learned habitual activity. He also adds that some creative problem solving may not occur consciously. The major characteristic of Consciousness, according to Jaynes, is that it is constituted of analogous elements of the world partly built up by the metaphorisation process: a process that Aristotle referred to when he claimed that epistemologically we understand less familiar things through the lens of more familiar things. For Aristotle this was a conceptual power. The Jaynesian evidence for this position is overwhelming and includes the usage of the terms of perception and behaviour(sensory-motor activity) which we use to characterise what is happening in the “constructed” space of consciousness.
One of the Kantian mysteries concerns the relations between the a priori intuitions of space and time, and the only clue to the mystery is given in the Kantian claim that space is the form of external intuition, whereas time is the form of internal intuition. The Aristotelian definition of Time shows us how time becomes spatialised by our measurement of motion in the external world—a measurement determined by counting “nows” and arraying them on a scale of before and after. The absolute Time of Newton would obviously not have this structure. All that can be said of Newton’s conception of absolute time is that is “flows” in the direction of the future. But even with these words Newton may well have been metaphorising or spatialising this aspect of our existence. This raises the question of whether there can be transcendental analogies that attempt to speak about that which we cannot speak(the noumenal world).
The discipline of History obviously has a complex relation to Time. It attempts to provide a structure for the past that is both relevant to the present and our future. The weaving of a narrative around a cast of characters may be a more poetic attempt to provide us with a structure of Time. Narrative obviously develops a more formal scientific and logical structure in the historical context. All of these activities may have been involved in the rational structuring of our social existence via Laws. Once we are at this stage of civilisation we have the means to evaluate human forms of existence in multiple ways–but the key is metaphorisation of life as a journey from birth to death, a journey that searches for Eudaimonia. Bicameral men are described as automatons by Jaynes and this reminds us of the animated statues Descartes visited in the Royal Gardens of Paris. The attribution of intelligence to machines is also a modern phenomenon. It is, however, more difficult to attribute the more holistic term of personality to a machine: in fact it is impossible and absurd. The analogue I Jaynes postulates does not merely permit the interior dialogue that the Greeks called thinking(talking to oneself) it also introduces the possibility of deception–the analogue I snarling inwardly as its external body “smiles” deceptively like the actor on a stage. Only in a conscious mind can one meaning be manifested and another opposite meaning be thought. This is a learned and not an instinctive activity. Achilles and Agamemnon were not capable of this form of consciousness. They were not capable of the form of thinking that involved talking to oneself. The first literary hero of consciousness was Odysseus. The first philosophical hero may well have been Socrates, although the Pre-Socratic Philosophers have a claim to this title. Plato and Aristotle were heroic in their battles against bicameral mentality of which there was still a trace in Socrates(e.g. his need to consult his daimon) but it was probably Aristotle who left bicameral mentality the furthest behind with his idea of a God that was not a voice and not anthropomorphised in any way(God for Aristotle was pure Form–pure Principle). With Plato we begin to see recorded for the first time concern over mentally challenged people who he recommended be kept under observation. Plato’s ambivalent dualism unfortunately continued to dominate the cultural scene after the death of Aristotle, probably because the dominating interpretation of religion continued to be bicameral. Aristotle’s recentring of the centre of gravity of Culture in the human being had to wait firstly until the translation of his work into Latin(the academic language). Unfortunately this translation was religiously biased and pulled Aristotle back into the bicameral camp. Secondly, Kant’s use of Aristotelian hylomorphism preserved enough of the “logic” to allow us to call Kant a hylomorphic Philosopher, thus linking Critical Philosophy with hylomorphic Philosophy
Prior to Jaynes’ theory Darwin and Behaviourism dominated psychology to the extent that Consciousness was regarded as an evolution of animal consciousness and its relation to Language was largely ignored. It was sufficient to study animal forms of life and generalise to human forms of life. Philosophers during this period were working on theories of meaning for Language, but many attempts assumed that language was “picturing” the world and that these “pictures” were private manifestations of a linguistic soul which had no relation to the principles or laws of Aristotle or Kant. It is almost as if the more complex mental activities of narratising or rationalising were marginalised. Such theorists were seldom placing political or ethical reasoning in focus. Political rationality is obviously tied to the power of reasoning unleashed by the stress of problematic situations occurring in our communal environments. Any solution thought of, requires to be embedded in the context of explanation/justification. Pre Socratic Philosophers and Solon are at the beginning of attempts to justify diké and areté–attempts that coincide with the replacement of the voices of the Gods with written Laws that themselves arose in contexts of justification(reasoned arguments about what ought to be done). If Jaynes is correct in his fixing of the “turning point” where consciousness began to organise essentially bicameral mind and behaviour then it can be argued that forms of government only became “political” in a sense we can recognise ca 1200BC. In his Princeton Interview Jaynes claimed:
“There is no question about politics in the bicameral world…After the bicameral world we have to invent new ways of governing. So, if we take the broad view of history, we find we go into a dictatorship this time, an aristocracy this time and a democracy this time. I think of course mankind is learning just what kind of government is best.But these are slow and agonising things and the whole history of wars and battles is indeed the history of mankind trying to solve this problem of governing. You can almost look at nationalism as one kind of replacement for gods at one time. This is slowly disappearing and we are becoming more of a world culture now.”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P.255)
Current world events may have surprised Jaynes. It seems that massive displacements of populations would retain the potential to cause regressions to earlier solutions that have caused major problems in the past. Nationalism is of course the enemy of both Globalisation and its telos, Cosmopolitanism.
Prior to Socrates,Plato, and Aristotle, there were no systematic attempts to classify political systems. Perhaps the first attempt to both classify and philosophically justify one form of government above another, occurs in Plato’s Republic, in which an ideal state run by Philosophers is regarded as the only form of government that can withstand succumbing to dissolution in accordance with the oracular prophecy “All things created by men are destined for ruin and destruction”. The next best form of government for Plato were Timocracies followed by Oligarchies. Democracies came next in the rank ordering of forms of government but these were looked upon basically as the rule of a mob composed of disgruntled oligarchic sons. Democracies were a breeding ground for tyrants where the leaders suffered firstly a form of mental degeneration not at this point recognised as a mental illness, and secondly, death at the hands of the very soldiers they hired to protect them from the mob. Plato’s Philosopher-Rulers found themselves in a situation where there was a need for “noble lies” and even killing unwanted children. This system did not meet Aristotelian requirements whose political systems accorded better with what we moderns regard as good government(according to areté and diké). For Aristotle three forms of government meet his ethical idea of the Good(based on areté and good character): monarchy(rule by one great-souled man), Aristocracy(ruled by a group of great-souled men) and what he called constitutional rule(rule by an enlightened multitude from the middle class). Perversions or deviations of these three forms of rule are tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Tyranny is the worst form of these perversions followed by democracy(the mob steered by the bad tempered sons of oligarchs congregating in the agora). The best of the worst forms of government is oligarchy: a form of government which also displayed Machiavellian or Thrasymachian characteristics. It is Aristotle’s system that best characterises the dynamics of modern Politics–the dynamics created by the rich v the poor which is still with us after millennia of economic and political experimentation. The dynamics has begun to create an educated middle class–for whom areté and diké are essential elements of political and social life. This class has been produced by an inductive process that has been presenting us with extremes to navigate between via the use of our practical reasoning. It is clear, then, that the gold standard of Political government–constitutional rule in accordance with the values of an enlightened middle class, is a telos we are moving toward. Nationalism is not a phenomenon that Aristotle anticipated. Totalitarianism, however was a perverted form of government he would have recognised and he would have seen the two world wars of the twentieth century as partly a product of not just a world order obeying the principle of a balance of power but also of an underlying positive force of globalisation that found itself in an environment that failed to recognise the importance of areté, diké, epistemé. Jaynes’s final comment relating to “world culture”in the above quote is probably inspired by the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant but he would in all likelihood fail to recognise how Kantian his Psychology is. Globalisation is a process, and its telos Cosmopolitanism, we have been arguing in this work, are both part of ongoing historical processes that began with Aristotle and continued with the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant which envisaged a world culture in the form of what he called a “Kingdom of Ends”. Freedom is an important part of these processes–not the freedom the disgruntled oligarchic sons yearned for, a freedom to do whatever one wished and no longer be subjugated by the will of an oligarchic father, but rather the freedom to choose to do what is right and just in general in ones (political, moral)life. Knowledge and Reason are obviously important aspects that must be actively involved in our choices. Cultural evolution has thus supplanted biological evolution in the affairs of men. Consciousness plays a mediating role in actualising processes now that the gods have disappeared and we live in an age of deusu absconditis. Jaynes concludes his Princeton interview with a theoretical biological observation:
“The gods have no migrated out of what I have called the posterior part of the temporal lobe of the right hemisphere, outside the skin, into the temples, ad churches, where we still seek them. Leaving us uncertain: seeking archaic authorisation, looking around for what is right and wrong, looking around for tests of logic and reasoning–leaving us conscious”(Julian Jaynes Collection, P.256)
Jaynes, having once experienced the disappointment relating to a question he raised about the scientific status of Kantian categories of understanding and judgement, appears in the above remarks to reject the role of Reason and Logic as presented by Critical Philosophy and by implication Hylomorphic Philosophy. Yet both forms of Philosophy would probably recognise Jaynes’ theory as a genuine advancement of our knowledge of homo sapiens–perhaps even to the extent that it might warrant a revision of the hylomorphic essence specifying definition of man.
It is certainly the case that the brain research of Jaynes’ time was heavily embedded in an anti-theoretical perspective that supported the scientific methodologies of observation and experimentation. Jaynes admits that he began his career with an idea of consciousness that was primarily biological(rather than cultural) and that it would have been difficult to defend his idea in the court of cultural evolution. Research into the function of the right hemisphere of the brain in the 1960’s helped to shift focus from an experimental methodology to a more conceptually based methodology. The very special features related to cognition, spatial relations, facial recognition, and musical appreciation forced Jaynes into appreciating the synthetic connective activity of the right hemisphere–a synthetic activity that must remind one of the Kantian idea of a telos of reason, namely a holistic conception of a totality of conditions of cognition. The left dominant hemispheres function is that of analysing thought about wholes into their parts and focusing attention upon these parts. Jaynes in his research very quickly realised that the brain functions of the motor systems and the sensory systems are bilaterally represented. Language appeared to be an exception. He formed the hypothesis that language may well have been bilaterally represented earlier on in mans history thus laying the foundations for his theory of the bicameral mind. If this were the case , he further argued, right hemisphere language would be understood synthetically. One can imagine a hierarchy of possibilities here ranging from narratives aiming at Kantian exemplary necessity and universality to non- narrative, non metaphorising forms of argumentation designed to answer the 4 aporetic questions of Kant(What can I know, What ought I to do, What can we hope for, and What is man). All cognitive activities associated with the use and understanding of aporetic principles may well involve right hemisphere activity. Such cognitive investigations would also require using the inductive technique of the golden mean to navigate between extreme metaphysical positions such as materialism and dualism, empiricism and rationalism, oligarchy and democracy. Jaynes obviously felt that Kantian critical philosophy was too rationalistic for his investigative spirit: a spirit that felt more at home in the context of exploration/discovery than in the higher context of explanation/justification. Brain research obviously is explorative and prefers not to commit itself prematurely to any form of theory. In Aristotelian terms such forms of investigation will provide us with many of the answers to questions relating to the material and efficient (physical)conditions of cultural phenomena. When it comes, however, to understanding the phenomena connected to action, whose essence is largely determinable by its telos or end(rather than its physical causation), we need to move from the context of exploration/discovery to the context of explanation/justification and think conceptually in terms of formal and final “causes”(Explanations). Strategically, the Jaynesian account ignores the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of the higher mental processes used by man and focuses instead upon the middle ground of human psuche: that of the putative missing link of conscious and linguistic processes. These missing links are undoubtedly important for the understanding of the relations between, for example, religion and politics, politics and ethics, aesthetics and ethics, poetry and philosophy, history and philosophy, philosophical psychology and ethics etc. In charting this unknown territory Jaynes remains faithful to one of the primary aims of hylomorphic philosophy which is to systematically understand the world(Being-in-the-world) as a systematic whole,
The modern contribution to this endeavour is empirical. Brain research is empirically motivated. Yet it has been argued by Nobel prise winners in this field that such research requires a theoretical understanding of the powers of the mind. Gerald Edelman in his work “Bright Air Brilliant Fire” claims that it is impossible to do brain research systematically without reference to Freudian theory. Insofar as Freudian Psychological theory claims to be Kantian and Kantian Philosophy in its turn owes a huge largely unacknowledged debt to Aristotle’s Hylomorphic theory and Jaynes provides us with many of the missing theoretical links as part of an investigation into the totality of conditions that lie behind conditioned phenomena, we would maintain that all of the above elements are necessary for systematic brain research. We should also recall in this context that Jaynes in his Stafford interview specifically claimed in the spirit of both hylomorphic and critical theory that his account is not a neurological account.
Jaynes was writing at a time when Cognitive Psychology had moved away from Piaget’s biological-clinical approach toward information theory embedded in a mechanical/machine paradigm that more or less eliminated the idea of consciousness. Even those cognitive Psychologists that did not share a commitment to the above more technological paradigm preferred to define cognition in terms of attention, awareness, perception, etc(the lower forms of consciousness). Jaynes in his Stafford interview, when asked to criticise his own theory maintained that he would attempt to speak more about modes of consciousness and mechanisms such as repression which he would present very differently to the Freudian account of the concept. He would, he claims, also focus more on the psychological correlate of attention, namely concentration and the bodily(gestural) and musical modes of consciousness.
We conclude with a short note on the brain research following the publication of Jaynes’ major work “The Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of bicameral mind”. Jaynes in his Stafford interview referred to Buchbaum’s research into the role of the right hemisphere in schizophrenic hallucinations. Buchbaum confirms Jaynes’ thesis and endorses his neurological model for the bicameral mind. One fascinating aspect of Jaynes’ neurological model is the role of the the anterior commissure: a structure which connects the temporal lobes in the region of Wernicke’s area. In a recent article published in Frontiers in Psychology(May 2014) it is stated by Winter, T., J., and Franz, E., A., that this structure is not sufficiently studied. It is further stated that this is an older structure than the corpus callosum. The study contained in this journal is not a language related structure bur rather seeks to establish the role of the structure in the allocation of attention to action. Jaynes describes this structure in the following way :
“Here, then, I suggest, is the tiny bridge across which came the directions which built our civilisations and founded the worlds religions, where gods spoke to men and were obeyed because they were human volition….The speech of the gods was directly organised in what corresponds to Wernicke’s area in the right hemisphere and “spoken” or “heard” over the anterior commisure to or by the auditory area of the left temporal lobe.”(Origins, P.104-5)
The code used in this exchange was the code of Language.
Erik Kandel, the 2000 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine makes the following claims which fully accord with Jaynesian theory:
“The right hemisphere, in contrast, becomes active only when a novel stimulus, or a novel task is presented. Activation of the right hemisphere decreases as a stimulus or a task becomes more routine through practice, whereas the left hemisphere continues to process the stimulus…. Goldberg’s earlier work had suggested that the right hemisphere of the brain plays a special role in solving problems that require insight…)”The Age of insight”(New York, Random House, 2012) P.476)
Further in his “Principles of Neural Science”(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1991), Kendel says:
“nonetheless the right cerebral hemisphere does play a role in language. In particular it is important for communicative and emotional prosody(stress, timing, and intonation)….In addition the right hemisphere plays a role in the pragmatics of language. Patients with damage in the right hemisphere have difficulty incorporating sentences into a coherent narrative or conversation ad using language in appropriate settings.”_(P.1182)
It is clear that given the focus upon mechanical explanations and mechanical devices such as the computer, brain research has not been following a path laid down by Jaynesian theory nor has it followed the path of investigating the role of the brain in cultural morphology, i.e. in tracing the forms of civilisation produced throughout history by rational thinking and thought. Gerald Edelman claims that the morphology of the computer is a completely inappropriate form of comparison insofar as the human morphology of the brain is concerned. He locates conceptual thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain and claims that it is these centres that best characterise what he refers to as the Morphology of the Mind, in particular what he calls Higher Order Consciousness. Higher Order Consciousness is a form of consciousness which he claims frees us from the tyranny of “the remembered present”. The fact that people break promises in “the remembered present” would no longer on such an account suffice to invalidate(as it seems to on almost all scientific and positivistic accounts of consciousness) the logical/universal ought character of the categorical imperative. Neither would the conceptual approach invalidate the Aristotelian ought imperative implied by a commitment to areté (doing the right thing at the right time in the right way).
Kandel, like Edelman praises Freudian theory for its insight but focuses upon its early failures before Freud resorted to the Philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Kant in order to fully explain and justify the extension of his theory to the cultural aspect of his patients world. The accusation therefore of Freud not being a philosopher and remaining a scientist fails to appreciate the extent to which Aristotle and Kant were both scientists and Philosophers.