What It Feels Like To Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes
arXiv Preprint Archive August 26, 2008 Peer reviewed via arXiv
Summary
Ancient Greeks heard commanding divine voices rather than experiencing internal dialogue - a fascinating window into how human consciousness evolved. This analysis explores Jaynes's influential theory that early civilizations experienced auditory commands perceived as gods, rather than the self-reflective consciousness we know today. While Jaynes suggested only modern humans are truly conscious, this perspective challenges his view, arguing that consciousness extends to all feeling creatures. The work bridges cognitive science (cs.CL) and philosophy, offering fresh insights into the relationship between language, thought, and consciousness.
Abstract
Julian Jaynes's profound humanitarian convictions not only prevented him from going to war, but would have prevented him from ever kicking a dog. Yet according to his theory, not only are language-less dogs unconscious, but so too were the speaking/hearing Greeks in the Bicameral Era, when they heard gods' voices telling them what to do rather than thinking for themselves. I argue that to be conscious is to be able to feel, and that all mammals (and probably lower vertebrates and invertebrates too) feel, hence are conscious. Julian Jaynes's brilliant analysis of our concepts of consciousness nevertheless keeps inspiring ever more inquiry and insights into the age-old mind/body problem and its relation to cognition and language.