Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. :.Was* Dian. really tlrlCbilSCiOUS' for 7'/u• 011/G/N Of' CONSCIOUSNESS IN credit or blame for anything that was done i Tm; IJJU\AI\DOWN Of' TilE HICAM-' over those vast eons of time." l,f:n,n MIND. by Julian Jaynes, News to you? There's more! According to < Houghton-Mifflin. 46 pp. Jaynes, these unconscious automata were con* trolled by hallucinated voices (speaking in : By Ned Block . verse) which they thought to be the voices of l Most of us believe that human adults are the gods. "At one time, human nature was split / conscl.<:!US by nature. *prtnceton Professor Jull* in. two,an ex')cu.tlve part called a !;!Od, .and a ; an Jaynes in this strange, fascinating book follower part called a man. Neither was • tells us that, on the contrary, consciousness conscious." The mind of these men is called by I was Invented, and relatively recently at that: Jayne• .the "bicam!lral, (t.wo c)!ainb'ered) ! firatin Mesopotamia around.l300 BC, then 600 mind", And poetry, music, hypnosis, schizo* years later, It spread or was reinvented in phrenia (and of course religion) are all sup* * Greece and Palestine. He also holds that the posed to be .vestiges of this bicameral mind, : Incas. Iai:ked consciQUsness untllsubdued' .. bY remnants of the days before consciousness was : the sPanish Conquistadores in the 16th Century1 . :, : * * , .(the main evidence in this latter case belngthll-; .,. , * : *easewlthwhich theincaswereconqueredby the *These claims are, of preposterous. 1 :Spaidards). Even chimpanzees plan, devise, deceive and ! . , *harbor and frustrations. Ifl one ex per* Tbe.concept of in*. a chimp W.as given two sth!ks, neither ; tends is consciousness as the ablllty to think, one long enough to reach a bimana sllspcrided \plan, want, hope, dece!v7 and the like. s.o.ac* outside the cage, but joinable to make a long * ;to Jaynes, the Inventors pf wrltiOg, enough tool. After trying to reach the banana :the bu1lders of the ziggurats of Babylon and with a. single stick and giving up, the chimp ' the :Pyramids of Egypt .• the author and suddenly put the sticks together and 1 jects of ,the Code and. the famll* motion snared. the* banana. And on occasion, a *: iar characters and authors,?£ the Old chimp is observed to fill his*mouth \vith water 1 TestamJ!llt and the Ill!ad, were automata, , and coax a disliked keeper close enough tb spit :who not what did • • • They. were the water in his face. So. chimps elm plan, "What would call Signal that 15• re* decei*ve, etc.,, and are thus conscious in 1 aponding each minute to cues m a Jaynes's sense. Can anyone take seriously the I response manner, and bj! those idea* that. most any zoo. contains creatures ' cues." They had no "subjecuve higher on the* consciousness hierarchy than ; in which to plan and d:v.lse, and dece1ve and Homer and Hammurabl? :• 1 , hope," no "private amb1t1ons, ... grudges, •.• frustrations." Hence they were "not responsi* I ble for their and undeserving of "the 1 . But we* don't need animal experimel!tS to show claim that the ancients.lacked much as we do, they nonetheleu false* ly b111l!!ved that they were*ordered about by the gl)(is rather' than deciding for themselves. words, it is far more plausible tc supl>(l•e that their basic processei' of though! and like ours, they had a theory about these •. Indeed, throuihmst the book, Jaynes confuaes'tht.JII"* ture,of people's thought proceisea wl.th the na• of. theil' of their. thought process. es. * .. *,, . cf bourse,' theo.rlel ot tliouaht do Influence the way they think, at lent to some extent, and therein may lie an Important grain . While Jaynes never grapples with the opv!of truth In what Jaynes says. If the ancients ous absurdity In his view, It seems clear that had a totally different theory of the aprlngt of he would reply by saying that bicameral man: action accordingJo which they wert;,ihe d!d not plan, devise, deceive, etc.;* rather he mere toola of. the gods, they on that account was commanded to take certain actions (by may been less Introspective, lpOn• the hallucinated voices), and he obeyed. "The taneous. * * •. * * '. to be absurd. These supposedly unco)1sclous folk. planned sophlstlcllted cities, monuments, buildings and wars, and Invented writing, embalming and all manner of rna• chines. Even the ancient texts Jaynes appeals to are rUe with anger, vengeance, plans, hopes and deceit. In the Old Testament, Joseph's brothers envy him and conspire to get rid of him, decel.v* . ing their father by dipping Joseph's coat in goat blood. In the Illiad, Pat,roclus disguises him* self as Achilles in order to sca.re the Trojans, and ,a Trojan spy is treacherously murdered after giving up military secrets under a false promise of security. Trojan War," Jaynes says, "was directed by ' :there have been changes. of hallucinations." But if Odysseus hallucinated ness" in this limited sense closer to home. For and obeyed a voice telling him to build a hol* example, Freudian Ideas seem to have made us low horse, fill It with soldiers, leave it at the more introspective In some reSpects than our gates of Troy and pretend to leave, then Odys* grandparents. But* such a grain of truth Is not :Seus HAS planned, devised and deceived, considered by Jaynes-lndeed, he 1ays noth* albeit in a rather odd way. For after all, whose ing of such revolutions in the style or cdntent *voice is It, if not his? of thought. * main argument for his view is that the literatures of the "bicameral" period do not of reasons, motives, deceit, hope, indecision, etc., an.;l instead they ascribe the springs of .;lction to .'the gods. But even supposing Jaynes is ilght about bicameral literature, there is a better explanation of this "dhta": that while the ancients thought and While the book contains many confusions, they are woven into a fascinating collection of lore from psychology, physiology and archae* ology, all juxtaposed in bizarre and stimulating ways. The aim of all this is to support Jaynes's crackpot claim, but the result is a book that is never boring. ' Ned Block teaches philosophy at MIT.