The Rise of Consciousness

You might want to look at The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-cameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. It is an interesting thesis, although i don't by any means think that he made his case.

This is a good question to ponder since it implies the formation of ego and all its ramifications.

I have done some reading of Arthur Janov's, i.e., "Primal Scream" and "The Primal Man." etc. He doesn't theorize about the moment of first consciousness, as I recall, but he goes into extensive acounts of how the emerging consciousness might have gone hand in hand with the need for neurosis. The perception of time brings with it a great fear because of the realization of our vulnerabilities and insecurity of the future, something that non-sentient animals don't have to contend with. I think that most animals, were they to immediately become self-consciousness, would go insane from anxiety.

So with the first flicker of self-awareness in time, these incipient thoughts may have been arranged as defenses against anxiety and fear. At any rate, the need for intellectual defenses would have greatly sped up the growth of the brain once self-consciousness was attained.

Setanta: Could you give a breakdown of Jaynes theory in "The Origin of Consciousness?"

Thanks Set. It looks like interesting stuff, but upon reading the summaries, I'm not sure the argument is sound. It would seem that cave paintings and sculpture as well as cultural artifacts dating well before 10kyago would argue against a thesis which suggests that consciousness only began 3kyago.

That is one valid criticism, RB--i also had a quibble with both his interpretation of ancient middle eastern texts, his focus on the eastern Mediterranean civilization, as well as his selective offering of textual evidence. I did find the underlying premise to be an interesting proposition, however. I would simply roll it back 40,000 or 50,000 years, to the dawn of homo sapien sapien.

I have often thought that each personal consciousness is somewhat learned (ie. my previous posts on Language and Thought), and there might be some portion of Jaynes' hypothisis which I could be convinced held merit. But this would lead toward an exploration of aspects of consciousness itself, which has been done many times before, so I wasn't really heading in that direction.

Instead, I wanted to try to imagine what it was like for the first self aware hominids. I have wondered what it was like for them often, but I don't have enough information to be able to draw any conclusions. And I don't know how much can be deduced from combinations of archeological evidence and human psychology.

For instance, did toolmaking come before self awareness, or was it the other way around?

I have wondered the same....

In dog training, we are constantly reminding people that their dogs do not think like humans....

So, what would "click" to change a dog's brain, so that a dog had an ego and self-awareness (and actually Did show remorse for digging in the yard)....

Maybe humans just haven't figured out yet how to delete the self-awareness....

anyway.... I wonder the same....

PaL
:-)

In regards to Julian Jaynes' specific work referenced to in this thread, I found value in his work regarding the origins of religion. This involves "voices" personally experienced by the ancients that then may have evolved into Gods themselves. This due mainly to an immature or insufficiently "evolved" corpus callosum, that part of the brain that allows communication between the two cerebral hemispheres. His title specifically references this as the Bi-Cameral Mind (of two houses). Kind of like two individual brains functioning with only some rudimentary communication, unlike, what we feel most normal humans possess today. This theory is one way to explain the early human mind's penchant for some sort of quest for God but does little to shed light on humanity's continued and more modern search manifested even in these more educated times.

Returning to rosborne's original query, it is probably difficult to put an accurate time line on the development of human consciousness but it would seem its initial appearance was like everything else developed by life--purely accidental. Of course, once this evolutionary good trick was acquired it gave a significant advantage to those so possessing it. Imagine, a biological unit that could now pose and work out many different resolutions to a problem (should I approach the dead meat while the lions are there still eating or should I wait a while or perhaps enlist friends to scare off the lions and share the larger portions with my allies?). The development of such consciousness and thought processes allows for the death of bad ideas rather than the individual itself. What a development in the arms race of the "jungle".

It should be noted, however, that this attribute is not limited to humans, but the degree of difference is vast. Then there is the communal repository of information and experience we know as culture. As to the time line, it would generally seem to be exponential just like that of human technology. All this driven by sexual selection.

JM

Good question, this exercise may be similar to asking "What it is like to be a Bat" (Thomas Nagel:The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974): 435-50.) http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html
That is, what is it like for a Bat to be a Bat (not us in Bat bodies)?

Thus we will never really know, but I sense an exercise that might be educational in its pursuit. Perhaps being an early hominid was something like us moderns without caffeine in the morning to get our mental juices flowing or after a sleepless night. We have all been there: working in a somewhat mentally clouded state where all our neurons are not participating in the mental state.

But perhaps this only takes us back 10K years in human history. So earlier than that, perhaps, we were like "lesser" animals in that there were concepts and states of awareness that were simply unavailable to our ancestor's. But it would seem difficult to imagine what it was like not being able to imagine.

JM

In the movie "2001" the apes become self-aware at the moment the branch is used as a club. Humans used to be defined as the tool-using animal. Of course, now we know that many animals use tools. I've even seen a thread-waisted wasp—Amophila—using a pebble to tamp down soil. Recently, a crow repeately bent a piece of wire to make a tool.

But pre-humans would have been greatly aided by using tools; it would have allowed them access to more food by catching fish, mammals and birds, and digging plants and insects. It doesn't take a large intellect to pick up a rock or a stick and use it as a weapon. The more food, the more reproduction. Those who used more tools reproduced the most. For instance, the act of creating a water container would have extended a hunting range. I don't know if any of the present apes have made water containers, but they may be on the verge of doing this.

What is self-awareness? Is that the point of ego formation or is a chimpanzee self-aware?

Once again, awareness of time is not only a blessing, it's also a huge curse bringing on added anxiety and fear of the future. Religion begins at this point. Humans still haven't completely coped with their awareness of time. Greater ideation would have meant a greater capability to form intellectual defenses which meant a better ability to cope with anxiety.

One of the problems i have with Jaynes' thesis about the "breakdown of the bi-cameral mind" is that he places it so far "forward" in the story of homo sapiens. I don't recall exact dates, but as i do recall, there were homo sapiens burials discovered (northern Iraq? southeast Turkey?) above the Tigris-Euphrates watershed, in which there were regular circular patterns of pollen found arrayed around one of the bodies. It was consistent with fresh flowers being arranged around the corpse at the time burial. Such an indication of a consciousness of other seems to me inconsistent with an unconsciousness of self. Additionally, Jaynes attempts to use the Illiad as exemplary of the extent to which humans were unaware of self. I feel that by that point, he had gone too far out on a limb of speculation.

JM's point about the validity of the concept to some degree is good, though. His (Jaynes') thesis implies (i won't say states, as it has been to long since i've read it to recall that he definitely states) that the mental images of memory of a "great man" (he hadn't the political rectitude to give the nod to the man or woman thing) would appear to an individual as an actual visitation of that man in ethereal form, from which the concept of an immortal god arises. Seems a little too pat to me. However, what JM suggests about a "quest for God" could work quite well, in a more prosaic, more humanly "ordinary way." Were the concept of god to be codified by a shaman or by shamans, at the same time as a good number of the eldest of a band or tribe still recall such a great man or woman, there is every possibility that the successor generations will not understand that said great man or woman was once living and human, and every likelihood of that "memory handed down" being taken for an actual description of the god the shamans say exists. Perhaps i am saying that Jaynes' overdramatizes the effect, as well as giving insufficient credit to the earliest homo sapiens for having the same basic mental equipment as do we all. It would seem to me natural that human comprehension of our environment, and the develoment of culture and technology for use within that environment would necessary be based upon a very slow, but slowly accelerating rate of the accumulation of useful tools and ideas. Fire to wheel tens of thousands of years, but fire and wheel to steam engine in ten thousand or fewer. I would surmise, with no factual basis (and being unaware of how one would support a contention of having a factual basis), that consciousness arises way back in the earliest days of homo sapiens.

As simply an interesting note, there is a passage in William Golding's The Inheritors (a tortured and torturous novel to read) in which one of the characters had the experience of being above the camp site of the band, and seeing the other members of the band. But before calling out a greeting, this individual realizes that he (she?) is watching the others while they remain unaware of his (her?) presence. It is a description of an epiphany on the part of someone who is largely un-self-aware, and it is rather interestingly written.

More nails in the coffin for Jaynes...

East African artifacts support evolution of symbolic thinking in Middle Stone Age

Excellent article RB--the idea of the beads appeals to me in a discussion of consciousness. I suppose it were possible, but i would have a hard time accepting the notion of items of decoration in an un-self-aware society.

Maybe the experience was comparable to you or I going outside and truely observing a blade of grass or a leaf. How long has it been since you've done that? Notice each little crevice and vein and the contour of the place where it was torn from its anchor. It's impressive, but most adults forget this because once we have learned about something, we file it away and take advantage of the knowledge. We don't appreciate it.

After making an initial observation about anything, it would lead to observation of everything else around it in a more intense manner, and eventually to the observation of one's own self and uses and abilities. It would only advance from there. For that reason, I think that self knowledge would come before tool-making. Which would lead to the belief that humans are not the only species to experience self-awareness. We just haven't quite figured out the language of the others who also are self-aware.

Physical self-awareness can only go so far, so to advance further we would have to become metaphysical, developing religion. With our developing technology, we are now not only making extensions of our physical self with our tools, but extensions of our intellectual selves.

Maybe the first experience of self-awareness could be likened to this discussion and our awareness of our own development and the fact that we are still developing.

I'll accept such a proposition with the notable exception of the development of religion--why does that topic always rear its ugly head? There have been cultures which reached relatively sophisticated levels of pre-industrial development without an establishment of religion, and some with no religion at all.

As much as I like to think that consciousness arose suddenly in a dramatic moment of realization, I don't really think it did. Too many other things in nature are far more subtle. It's like asking, "who was the first to walk upright", or "who was the first to speak a word". It seems likely that there were little tiny touches on these events, which at the time probably seemed insignificant, but then over time as they were repeated and extended by experience, grew to something we recognize as those actions.

The other thing which makes me think that consciousness came about slowly is the way in which infants growing to adults acquire self awareness. New borns are aware, but they are not self-aware the way adults are. At some point in their lives, they become (we became) self-aware, but we don't remember it as an epiphany. I'm not sure any of us can remember it at all... as though it was not one single event, but more of an accumulation of thoughts, resulting in a consciousness.

I remember being taught to take responsibility for my actions in a lecture from my father when I was around five years old, and I remember events from before that (my sister was born when I was two, and I remember little flickers of things from that event). By the time I was five, I knew the concept of "I" because "I" was concerned about getting punished if I did something wrong. But at two, all I remember are snatches of events and actions, as though I were an observer, and not a participant. Something changed between two and five, but whatever it was, I don't remember it. Does anyone?

Re: The Rise of Consciousness


it happened the day before the straight jacket was invented!

Yes I agree that the process would go much more slowly, but for us to try and imagine what the first experience was like we can only use an example we can readily remember. I like your example of our collective consciousness being like a child -- one that takes thousands or maybe millions of years to grow up?

Setanta, I agree that religion doesn't necessarily have to be included in a society and that not every being needs it, but I think that it has been included because it is so relevant in the majority of societies, like it or not. Most societies have some sort of myth or religion to define their experience and even to make sense of consciousness, and so it is very relevant to the discussion.

Bella, no big deal, rather, i object to this passage: "so to advance further we would have to become metaphysical, developing religion." Although you may not have so intended it, this phrase emplies that mental advancement will necessarily lead to religion. My personal view is that religion is a vestige of ancient ignorance, superstition and fear. Whether or not that were true, i simply wanted to point out that mental development does not axiomatically lead to religion.

Yes you are right, I misstated. Religion would not have to be a by-product of advancement in consciousness in each individual but has instead perhaps risen out of the collective and uneven development of the consciousness of societies.