The Development of Consciousness in Children
Bill Rowe, interviewed by Brendan Leahy, in Marcel Kuijsten (ed.), Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2022).
Summary: Bill Rowe interviewed by Brendan Leahy on the development of consciousness in children and how this relates to Julian Jaynes’s theory.
Excerpt: Brendan Leahy: What are some of the prerequisites for consciousness, as consciousness is defined by Jaynes?
Bill Rowe: Well in children, there’s a capacity and a context. There has to be a capacity for language — language is an absolute requirement. Then the group that the child is born into has to have the need to build cognitively flexible individuals who are comfortable with making a lot of choices. Julian Jaynes’s theory is a onstructivist one. So, to put together a child development component, we have to look for features in childhood that link the child to the group or to other people, because you have to learn consciousness through other people. …