Hello Moderator! Thank you for your quick replies to this and my other questions about slavery and about right-brain function. It is actually the first time I get to discuss these topics with someone else. You probably know how difficult it is to discuss preconscious mentality with noninitiated people.
I'd like to bring up some further suggestions on your answer:
About preconscious decision passing: Let me propose a picture of an archaic farmer harvesting crops. He is working pragmatically and is dealing with minor problems such as eventual tool breaking, etc. This is accomplished mainly without hallucinatory commands from the right brain. Suddenly he rises his head looking for a sound that might be a threat. After a while a voice from the right brain tells him "Harvest the crops!" and he goes back to what he was doing. This order has been programmed in the farmer's right brain hemisphere (unconsciously, of course) by his boss. The hard working farmer is not discontent with his task, in fact he doesn't even get tired. Now something more difficult happens, such as for example, the crops are already harvested by someone else. The farmer then just stops and waits for hallucinatory commands. The right brain have somehow a bigger perspective so it might solve the problem, but most probably it would tell the left brain: "go to your boss". The archaic farmer goes unconsciusly to his boss, and speaks with a monotone voice: "The crops are already harvested. What now?". In that manner, wouldn't it be possible that decisions would be propagated upwards through the hierarchy?
It's nice to realize that this forum is open to critics of Jaynes theories such as when you propose that the transition to consciousness wasn't as sudden as Jaynes suggests. I agree with that consciousness probably evolved gradually. Furthermore I share what I think is Dennet's view on consciousness, that it is not generated by complexity but identical to complexity. In that case the more complex perspective a mind has, the more conscious it would be. I see two gradients in the levels of consciousnesses, one upwards along the hierarchy and one forwards along time. These curves (or the surface, if you prefer) is of course not straight (flat) but full of leaps and discontinutities.
|