Response to Comments on Yesterday's Post about "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

I got some really interesting and insightful comments on yesterday's post. Since they require a lot of thought, I'll just respond to them in today's entry.

To Geoff: One problem I had summarizing the book was its use of the term consciousness. The book goes into it in great detail and describes various theories about it, but I couldn't get into all that in a brief post. Consciousness has a lot of definitions and means different things to different people. To my mind, no modern humans possess a fully conscious mind in the sense that so much of what we do is instinctive and not thought out. My impression is that there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes in my head that is completely hidden from me. But that's probably not what you meant by the term. For me, the difference between the consciousness of people today and thousands of years ago is a matter of degree.

The author also brings up the point that there is a detectable difference in the physical structure of the brains of schizophrenics. He speculates that the brain is so plastic that a young child brought up in a bicameral society might actually have the anatomy of his brain develop a little differently physically. (And of course that brings up the point that if that is so, what other configurations might be possible?) The issue of consciousness aside, the idea of being guided by hallucinations is intriguing, especially since early religions tended to describe constant direct contact with gods and ancestors, and then later religions portrayed the gods as being more removed and obscure.

You raise a good point about the Greeks describing themselves in terms of their beliefs. After all, the Iliad and Odyssey were epic poems and not documentaries. But it is interesting how much of those works revolves around gods appearing to individuals (never to groups) and telling people what to do. The author also suggests that muses were not just a symbol for literary inspiration; writers actually heard them and wrote down what they said. I don't have much of a classical education, so I can't really judge how different they were, but I remember reading more than once in the writings of C. G. Jung the idea that the ancient Greeks were actually far stranger and more alien in their thinking than most scholars are aware.

To Crawford Kilian: Thanks for the book recommendation (The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size). I've never read it, but I have read Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett, which seems similar. Instead of the veto concept, it deals with the bubbling-up theory which says that the subconscious is always releasing a myriad of tiny bubbles. The strongest ones grow and make it to the top (consciousness).

To Widdershins: That is an interesting idea. Whether or not that's true literally, what I've always found interesting about mind-altering drugs is that they cause a person's thought processes to work a little differently. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are all in a mental rut, constantly filtering everything through tried-and-true thought processes that are familiar to us. Once when I was in Amsterdam I tried some mushrooms, and was amazed how differently my mind started working. My thinking didn't appear to be less coherent, but it was very different, as if I was thinking with someone else's brain. I don't really advocate drug use, but I have to say that the experience did help to broaden my thought process by forcing me to think differently for a short period.

To Michael: Thank you for sharing that. I've never had more than brief encounters with people who are schizophrenic. I don't doubt that life must be very hard for them. Most people tend not to associate with people they see as different or can't understand. And a lot of people are easily freaked out. I've heard that in some tribal societies schizophrenics are venerated as having spiritual powers.

Thanks to all who left comments. (I love getting comments.) I'm not sure I believe the whole bicameral theory, but I find it very appealing. One thing I am fairly certain of is that there was some really weird stuff going on with people thousands of years ago. If nothing else, this book provides further evidence of that fact.