Manic Matter

Tracing the Development of the Mind of Man

Matt M — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:20:06 +0000

According to Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes in his seminal work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind there was a time when man had no consciousness– which he defined as a “subjective conscious mind” or “an analog ‘I’ narratizing in a functional mind-space.” Jaynes goes on to say that the Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.(pg 55)[1] Jaynes theorized that in ancient man the mind was divided into two chambers. [If you’re not familiar with the bicameral theory of mind please read the short summary here: https://manicmatter.com/origin-consciousness-bicameral-mind/.] One of these chambers was used for basic functions which the individual had either been taught by their culture (like hunting, making shelters, etc) or learned and repeated many times while the other chamber was only used in the rare circumstance that a person encountered a novel, dangerous situation. This type of person was said to be bicameral, they lacked the ability to introspect or reason with logic so when they encountered a situation like a bear suddenly emerging from a cave nearby the other chamber of their mind would use past experience to tell… Continue reading

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Consciousness, the Threshold Between Mind and Matter

Matt M — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 23:05:28 +0000

“Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call Silence — which is the merest word of all.” Al Aaraaf by Edgar A. Poe One of the most characteristic abilities of humans is the ability to produce and understand complex language that is primarily abstract and metaphorical in nature. This stands in stark contrast to the gestures and innate calls of other animals which are reactive in nature, that is to say animals can only communicate about items in their immediate environment while human speech doesn’t rely on environmental triggers.[1, 2] Since the early development of language didn’t leave a distinct archaeological record which can be examined, in order to study its development we must examine physical evidence such as the tools left behind by early man as well as neurological studies, many of which compare the brain of man to that of closely related primates. Hominins have been using stone tools for at least 2.6 million years, the earliest of these were made by using a hard cobble, known as a hammerstone, to strike off flakes from a softer piece of stone known as a core.[See image below, Figures 1, 2, Video 1] These early stone implements are referred to as Oldowan tools, despite being simple flakes and choppers which were only worked on one surface they were in use for almost one million years. It’s unclear which hominin species initially created these tools, but one thing which is clear is that multiple species ended up using them, including several members of the Homo family including H. australopithecus, H.… Continue reading

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Metaphor and the Mind

Matt M — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 21:17:31 +0000

The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. — Friedrich Nietzsche Metaphor is the often overlooked and undervalued engine which provides much of the power of language, and it allows for the exponential expansion of our otherwise concrete system of symbols. The word metaphor comes from the Greek word metaphora, meaning “a transfer,” particularly in “the sense of one word to a different word, literally “a carrying over.”[1] Like it’s name suggests, a metaphor transfers the usage of one term, or phrase, to describe something else because of a perceived similarity of the two things, or because of a certain relationship which the objects share. We see the world through the lens of language, the perception of new objects which we encounter is based upon our existing vocabulary– as Julian Jaynes states in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, “language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication.”(pg 50)[2] When books were first made available many years ago a person who encountered one may have been perplexed by it, they may have seen someone looking at words on a page and thought “a box made out of tablets.” Then when they saw how easily the person flipped to the next page they may have thought, “it’s a tree made out of leaves of words!” Interestingly enough, the word book comes from the Proto-Germanic word meaning “beech … the notion… Continue reading

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Doubt, the Catalyst for Consciousness

Matt M — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 15:14:43 +0000

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am” is one of the most simple, but significant philosophical statements of all time. Hidden within that simplicity is the foundation for all knowledge. Only by doubting can one be certain of one’s own existence, because the process of doubting requires a subject capable of introspection. As Dr. Julian Jaynes said in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, “The eye cannot doubt or be in conflict, as the soon-to-be-invented conscious mind will be able to.” (pg 70)[1] Before modern consciousness existed, while man was transitioning from a bicameral (‘two-chambered’) state of mind, he didn’t have the ability to introspect, reflect on the past, or imagine any possible future– he was controlled by his environment, acting in a stimulus-response manner (if you’re not familiar with the Bicameral Theory of Mind please read the short summary here: https://manicmatter.com/origin-consciousness-bicameral-mind/). During this time period, there were what Dr. Jaynes referred to as the preconscious hypostases, these were physiological responses which instigated behavior, as in the way someone’s breathing might increase as an enemy force charges onto a battlefield and this leads them to fight or flee. In the Iliad, these respiratory changes were referred to as phrenes, and they could cause a cascade of physical reactions in the body that would lead a person to commit to a certain action. Or, as Jaynes says, “The preconscious hypostases are the assumed causes of action when other causes are no longer apparent. In any novel situation, when there are… Continue reading

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