Critique 15 – Ancient Civilizations
Critique: “Anyone who studies deeply the earliest civilizations must come to realize that far more unites us with them than differentiates us. These ancestors of ours, only a few hundred generations past, who first figured out how to plant and harvest crops, who domesticated animals, built villages and then cities, created writing and literature and music and art, invented government and law, launched great projects of architecture, exploration, trade and conquest, and laid the foundations of science and mathematics, could not possibly have done all this with minds that functioned in the primitive – in fact, downright silly – manner Jaynes postulates. His theory offensively belittles those people and their stupendous achievements. All our subsequent accomplishments build upon theirs; they themselves did not have the benefit of following such trailblazers, they had to build from scratch.”
Response: There is nothing offensive about it. The underlying issue here is that Robinson either misunderstands or disagrees with Jaynes’s discussion of consciousness (Origin, Chapters 1-2) and, as many people do, ascribes too much importance to consciousness in the problem solving process. On this subject I also recommend Tor Norretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. The bicameral mind is not a “primitive mind,” as Robinson calls it (indicating he did not understand Jaynes’s explanation), but a non-conscious mind, or a mind that lacked introspection. Problem solving in the bicameral era is simply done without introspection. This is still largely the case today. The majority of human behavior is habitual, and most problems are solved unconsciously, as is often described by scientists. For one example (there are many others), see “Richard Feynman – No Ordinary Genius” on YouTube and watch from 52:32 – 53:20. Solutions to complex problems often come in a flash of insight. Again, unconscious problem solving would also have been present in the bicameral period. For example, there are accounts in Mesopotamia of the building plans for a temple coming as a vision in a dream. Many of the achievements of ancient civilizations Robinson celebrates are also accomplished (on a smaller scale) by insects such as ants and bees – things like complex social organization, residence building, farming, etc. (see Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness, pages 111-112).
Critics of Jaynes simply attribute too much importance to introspective consciousness, incorrectly believing it is involved in all cognition, learning, and problem solving. See also Dorfman, Shames, and Kihlstrom, “Intuition, Incubation, and Insight: Implicit Cognition in Problem Solving.”As far as the similarities with ancient civilizations, this is what Jaynes referred to as the presentist fallacy: overemphasizing the similarities of historical cultures while minimizing the differences (especially the psychological differences). Anthropologists and historians generally do not concern themselves with psychological differences, focusing instead on artifacts and practices. Descriptions of personal gods in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as many other aspects relevant to Jaynes’s theory, are typically noted by mainstream historians without further comment or any insights into the larger psychological implications. We are predisposed to categorize things that appear the same as being the same, so since the inhabitants of ancient civilizations looked like us, there is a tendency to assume that they were also psychologically identical to us, yet this is not the case. It is very hard for us to imagine a city where the entire leadership consisted of gods, who made all of the important decisions, and who conveyed these orders in hallucinations and dreams to the priests. Yet this was the case in Mesopotamia (see the books referenced in the response to Critique 3, above).
People psychologically similar to us would have no need for these elaborate machinations, indeed no need for the huge pantheons of gods, or idols, oracles, divination, etc. If we take a step back, all of these practices are a mystery without Jaynes’s theory. The transition from bicamerality to consciousness likely took place over many generations, with different features of consciousness emerging at different times and in different places, rather than simultaneously. Further evidence for bicameralism (as well as similiarites with ancient civilizations) is seen in pre-literate societies (see my Introduction to The Julian Jaynes Collection and Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality). Further evidence for the learned, linguistic nature of introspective consciousness is seen in child development studies (see my Introduction to The Julian Jaynes Collection, David Foulkes, Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness, and Philip Zelazo, “The Development of Consciousness,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness).
Learn about about Julian Jaynes’s theory by reading our latest book, Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory.