[Royce]

I have just started to read Julian Jaynes "The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind",and Ramachandrans "The tell tale brain:A neuroscientist`s quest for what makes us human".

Exploring the single most interesting aspect of life,I hope that people on this board,whether you have read these guys or not have something to offer on the subject.I am hopeful that there are people who have studied this who can give useful information and tips on other relevant books that might enlighten me .

I hope that everyone with a interest,might share their thoughts on this

It might take me awhile to participate,I think I should back up my fragile arguments with some reading first.

[jamesA01]

Everyone here must read the Tell Tale Brain, Ramachandran is amazing.

There's also a BBC documentary on him:

http://youtu.be/sq6u4XVrr58

In the UK, everyone is forced by law to pay a £100+ annual license fee to the BBC. Mostly they put out rubbish and we all resent having to fund a bunch of coked up upper class london media twats producing shitty talents shows. But occasionally they make something that this documentary and it all seems worth it.

[Royce]

Thanks for the link

In the UK, everyone is forced by law to pay a £100+ annual license fee to the BBC. Mostly they put out rubbish and we all resent having to fund a bunch of coked up upper class london media twats producing shitty talents shows. But occasionally they make something that this documentary and it all seems worth it.

Yeah,we have the same deal in Norway.We have to pay 270 british pounds in licence,and they provide three channels with no commercials.They have decent documentaries now and again,and it beats commercial television by far I have almost given up television,I only watch movies or series very rarely.

[Madness]

PBS over here is failing. I wish we had something like mandatory broadcasting implemented in Canada - though I am ignorant.

Ramachandran is one of my idols. Jaynes was also an interesting read but, ultimately, he's constrained by his time and place; research that was available. Plus I'm taking an educated guess and suggesting that the brain functions in concert, not arbitrarily and independently (though, of course, dysfunction as a result of damaged nerve tracts - communication - happens).

[Royce]

Ok,I am just going to throw something out here.Jaynes suggest that conciousness does not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities.He mentions various examples like bicycling,tennis and so on where consciousness actually make things more difficult.He goes on to say that it is perfectly possible that there could have existed a race of men who spoke,judged,reasoned,solved problems,indeed did most of the things we do,but who were not conscious at all.The ego which has a birthday(5000 years ago?) is what makes us conscious.Before that he basically says that we were the same,just without a self

To me this sounds like what Itoh tried to describe in "harmony"(or am I wrong about that?)

My problem with this is that if this is in some way true,why and how did the ego come into existence?

[Madness]

I think that sounds like Harmony too, Royce.

Ok,I am just going to throw something out here.Jaynes suggest that conciousness does not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities.He mentions various examples like bicycling,tennis and so on where consciousness actually make things more difficult.He goes on to say that it is perfectly possible that there could have existed a race of men who spoke,judged,reasoned,solved problems,indeed did most of the things we do,but who were not conscious at all.The ego which has a birthday(5000 years ago?) is what makes us conscious.Before that he basically says that we were the same,just without a self

...

My problem with this is that if this is in some way true,why and how did the ego come into existence?

First off, Jaynes seems to be referring about what psychologists have come to be called 'procedural memory,' often skills, difficult to teach and conceptualize with language, that we learn by doing.

For the latter portion of the quote, to write completely hypothetically, the evolution of brains is like the metaphorical snowball rolling downhill - every new biological feature requires requisite neural tissue, which in turn adds to and allows for new, emergent patterns of activation. For instance, we go through the process of growing our brains during gestation as the brain has evolved (reptile, mammal, neocortex - humans).

Given that, consciousness might have spontaneously occurred after any given new feature (say, opposable thumbs).

[Royce]

Given that, consciousness might have spontaneously occurred after any given new feature (say, opposable thumbs).

Or maybe language had something to do with it? Jaynes is suggesting that there are no references to "self" early in human history,although this is almost impossible to prove.He uses the Illiad as an example.

The use of metaphors among humans is an interesting aspect though.Almost every word we use is layer upon layer of metaphoric content,and the more intricate language gets(abstract descriptions and so on) the more we need counsciousness to provide us with metaphors,which again help us to communicate more broadly with each other.

[Madness]

You should look into Neuronal Recycling Theory (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007) and Surfaces and Essences - Hofstadter & Sander.

[Royce]

You should look into Neuronal Recycling Theory (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007) and Surfaces and Essences - Hofstadter & Sander.

Thanks for the tips I know Jaynes book was written in the eighties so there are probably newer authors who are more relevant,but I do enjoy him though,he is very engaging

[Wic]

Ramachandran is fantastic.  That documentary posted earlier led me to the corresponding book, then his others.  His whole professional focus is on the oddest perceptual effects he can find.  Read Montague, another neuroscientist, wrote Why Choose This Book, which is a book about decision making from the perspectives of computer programming, energy efficiency, and evolution.  That one will cause rapid and deep reevaluations of your self. 

Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is along a similar vein, tackling the myths of the blank slate, noble savage, and ghost in the machine from an evolutionary psychology view.

[Madness]

Wic, sorry I missed this, you might enjoy my post in the Reading list? thread (if not the thread itself).

[Royce]

Wic, sorry I missed this, you might enjoy my post in the Reading list? thread (if not the thread itself)

Thanks for that highly interesting link Madness

[Madness]

Lol - glad to facilitate, Royce .

[Royce]

I will put in a passage which I hope to get some response to:)

"The hexagram patterns derived from the I Ching in response to a question are meaningful (usually) because they resonate with
something that pre-exists in the mind, below conscious awareness. The I ching clarifies that relationship and triggers an "ah ha"
moment. Or one`s horoscope is meaningful, not because the stars and planets control human destiny, but because the archetypal
processes they symbolically reflect correspond to subjective interpretations of character. In this respect, the notion of synchronicity
is quite profound, in that it asserts a correspondence between the mind and the external world- the so-called "real" world. The
Hermetic philosophers said it well: As above, so below."

"This mirroring of inner consciousness and the outer world still poses a conundrum for neuroscience and most Western philosophy.
Why, and how, do external events meaningfully relate to inner, psychic events? It is as if consciousness, or mind, forms the primary
ground of being, while the physical world is secondary- a construct created by the mind. Any eastern spiritual tradition or philosophy
will tell you this is the case. Western thought, with its emphasis on materialism, is uncomfortable with that notion. I am not aware of
any finding in current neuroscience that resolves this question, at least not yet; but we do know enough about brain function to say
with fair confidence that , to some extent, the world we call "reality" is a construct of our brains. The brain assembles a coherent story
(more or less) by combining sensory experience with memories, associations, interpretations, and intuitions, then presenting the result
as the movie, or perhaps more accurately the hallucination, we inhabit. If psychedelics teach us anything, it is how fragile this
constructed reality is, and how profoundly it can be distorted."

Can these phenomena be explained by neuroscience as we know it today?

[Madness]

What is thing from, Royce?