Isn't this a testable hypothesis? If consciousness spread virally and isn't a natural outgrowth of the physical structure of the brain, then presumably isolated indigenous tribes would still have pre-consciousness mental processes, and that should be detectable somehow.
The being said, I'm reading "Proto" By Laura Spinney, and the thing that strikes me is how recently the world's major languages developed. Everyone assumes we had language fifty thousand years ago, but the actual language families we know about all seem to trace to no more than about 10,000 BCE, and maybe a lot younger than that. The odds of Proto-Indo-European being traceable to a single tribe in the Black Sea region circa 4500 BCE seem really low to me, but that's what seems to have happened.
The fact that 100k years ago we could have seen 7 Pleiades with the naked eye but angles shifted since and now only 6, but unconnected traditions speak of 7 entities in tales of their origins may indicate we have had language far sooner than 10,000 BCE.
Jaynes relies on some earlier work that's been invalidated, like Bruno Snell's idea of archaic Greeks lacking a concept of an integrated body because they painted what appear to be individual limbs on vases from the geometric period. Snell wrote _The Discovery of the Mind_ in 1946. Since then archaeology has found amazing art like the Pylos Combat Agate from before the geometric period, demonstrating lifelike, realistic bodies rather than assemblages of limbs: the aesthetic of the geometric period was a choice, not evidence of a different kind of consciousness lacking a sense of self.
The language thing is just that without writing, reconstructions based on regular sound correspondences only allow us to infer backwards by a few thousand years. It doesn't mean that anything particularly interesting happened exactly at that time to human language. It's just that language changes relatively fast on this timescale so current languages don't offer enough clues.
And the origins of language are famously uncertain. Might have been recent and relatively sudden (<100 thousand years ago) or a gradual slope for many hundreds of thousands of years.
> Isn't this a testable hypothesis? If consciousness spread virally and isn't a natural outgrowth of the physical structure of the brain, then presumably isolated indigenous tribes would still have pre-consciousness mental processes, and that should be detectable somehow.
I'd distinguish verbal inner monologue from consciousness. Many people think on the daily without narrating things to themselves in sentences, without feeling brutish or animalistic. I can plan complex human actions including theory of mind considerations without narrating it as a monologue. It's still very conscious.
Also that reddit post seems like a fake story made up by a teenager as a sort of scifi. It's just too on the nose. Yeah he lived life without understanding that his friends still exist while out of sight... I guess the OP just learned about some developmental stages of toddlers or object permanence etc and wrote a story like this as fanfic.
The article's definition of consciousness is precise, but it's not what people are referring to in most cases where the word "consciousness" is used. Of course, a word can have multiple definitions. But colloquially, when people say consciousness, we usually mean the thing that goes away when we sleep or are anesthetized. I don't think there's a much better way to define that. The contrast between the wakeful and non-wakeful state as oneself experiences from the inside is precisely what defines consciousness in the colloquial sense. It seems to be a self-defining concept because I can't even define what "experiences" means without thinking about the wakeful/non-wakeful contrast phenomena that is consciousness, and "experiences" was supposed to be a part of the definition of "consciousness" one sentence ago.
I am unsure as to what you are trying to say here. It reads to me as “the word the article discusses has a more popular homonym, but they are clearly not talking about that”.
I think this was also one of the inspirations for Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", which also deals with (among other things) the nature of consciousness and religion in the human mind.
It was definitely the inspiration for one of the subplots of _The Big U_. A faction of college students regressed to a bicameral mentality and would hold rituals in which they waited for oracular speech from an electric fan.
I remember thinking at the time I read it “I don't know how anyone could understand this book without reading Jaynes first”.
I find the description of consciousness in this article very narrow (Only arising post language). Post language consciousness is a particular type of consciousness, and the same can be said of post DMT consciousness (Which is sometimes without language).
That's exactly Jaynes's theory: consciousness not only arrived after the invention of language, it arrived after the invention of writing, literature, agriculture, metallurgy, and government bureaucracy. And also, that it _could not_ have arisen without language because it is crucially founded in the capability of language to describe the world metaphorically.
You don't have to like it, but that's the theory that is being discussed.
As somebody who understands the perceived limitations of the materialist take on consciousness in light of recent decades of seeming philosophical traction (Searle, Chalmers), I have to admit how many ways LLMs proved me wrong.
Rather, how much of it is just language.
We went from completing words to completing sentences, paragraphs, essays, code files, pixel arrangements, music, and more just by aggregating and modeling all that in English.
I was amazed that predicting a word can emerge into knowledge, creativity, productivity - the stuff of thoughts.
It doesn’t happen to anyone (the thinking) but I think they still qualify as thoughts, just without a thinker.
If by "consciousness" you mean the thing that goes away when we sleep, how are you so sure that there's not a conscious thinker in the machine? That seems like a hypothesis rather than a proven fact as we don't know what process in the brain is responsible for consciousness fading away (assuming a practical materialist stance here) when we sleep. If it's some very basic informational pattern thing, then computers could have it.
And yet anendophasia is a thing. Some people think without an inner monologue, without words[^0]. And they seem to do so quite well and quite successfully.
Yeah me too, and it feels like a lot of people who are exclusively 'stuck' in language seem to think the pre-language part is somehow inferior (which imo is very misguided)
Thinking without language makes sense for problems that don't require language like visual art, but how do you solve complex logic problems or write a book without thinking in sentences.
Isn't this a testable hypothesis? If consciousness spread virally and isn't a natural outgrowth of the physical structure of the brain, then presumably isolated indigenous tribes would still have pre-consciousness mental processes, and that should be detectable somehow.
The being said, I'm reading "Proto" By Laura Spinney, and the thing that strikes me is how recently the world's major languages developed. Everyone assumes we had language fifty thousand years ago, but the actual language families we know about all seem to trace to no more than about 10,000 BCE, and maybe a lot younger than that. The odds of Proto-Indo-European being traceable to a single tribe in the Black Sea region circa 4500 BCE seem really low to me, but that's what seems to have happened.
The fact that 100k years ago we could have seen 7 Pleiades with the naked eye but angles shifted since and now only 6, but unconnected traditions speak of 7 entities in tales of their origins may indicate we have had language far sooner than 10,000 BCE.
Jaynes relies on some earlier work that's been invalidated, like Bruno Snell's idea of archaic Greeks lacking a concept of an integrated body because they painted what appear to be individual limbs on vases from the geometric period. Snell wrote _The Discovery of the Mind_ in 1946. Since then archaeology has found amazing art like the Pylos Combat Agate from before the geometric period, demonstrating lifelike, realistic bodies rather than assemblages of limbs: the aesthetic of the geometric period was a choice, not evidence of a different kind of consciousness lacking a sense of self.
The language thing is just that without writing, reconstructions based on regular sound correspondences only allow us to infer backwards by a few thousand years. It doesn't mean that anything particularly interesting happened exactly at that time to human language. It's just that language changes relatively fast on this timescale so current languages don't offer enough clues.
And the origins of language are famously uncertain. Might have been recent and relatively sudden (<100 thousand years ago) or a gradual slope for many hundreds of thousands of years.
Slate Star Codex reviewed Jaynes' book as well, which is how I first heard about it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-of-...
To your point:
> Isn't this a testable hypothesis? If consciousness spread virally and isn't a natural outgrowth of the physical structure of the brain, then presumably isolated indigenous tribes would still have pre-consciousness mental processes, and that should be detectable somehow.
SSC's article points to a Reddit thread that suggests even folks in the mainstream of culture may undergo a "consciousness transition" as adults: https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/3yrw2i/i_never_though...
I'd distinguish verbal inner monologue from consciousness. Many people think on the daily without narrating things to themselves in sentences, without feeling brutish or animalistic. I can plan complex human actions including theory of mind considerations without narrating it as a monologue. It's still very conscious.
Also that reddit post seems like a fake story made up by a teenager as a sort of scifi. It's just too on the nose. Yeah he lived life without understanding that his friends still exist while out of sight... I guess the OP just learned about some developmental stages of toddlers or object permanence etc and wrote a story like this as fanfic.
The article's definition of consciousness is precise, but it's not what people are referring to in most cases where the word "consciousness" is used. Of course, a word can have multiple definitions. But colloquially, when people say consciousness, we usually mean the thing that goes away when we sleep or are anesthetized. I don't think there's a much better way to define that. The contrast between the wakeful and non-wakeful state as oneself experiences from the inside is precisely what defines consciousness in the colloquial sense. It seems to be a self-defining concept because I can't even define what "experiences" means without thinking about the wakeful/non-wakeful contrast phenomena that is consciousness, and "experiences" was supposed to be a part of the definition of "consciousness" one sentence ago.
Anesthesia is a rather different state than sleep.
I had some serious surgery a few years ago and paid attention when I went under to see if I could recall anything.
Nope. You don’t exist for that time. Anesthesiologist counts down 10, 9, 8, 7, and then I was teleported to the recovery bed.
I consider it incredibly weird and very unlike sleep. Consciousness is off, instantly, then back.
Well... memory is off at least.
I am unsure as to what you are trying to say here. It reads to me as “the word the article discusses has a more popular homonym, but they are clearly not talking about that”.
I think this was also one of the inspirations for Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", which also deals with (among other things) the nature of consciousness and religion in the human mind.
It was definitely the inspiration for one of the subplots of _The Big U_. A faction of college students regressed to a bicameral mentality and would hold rituals in which they waited for oracular speech from an electric fan.
I remember thinking at the time I read it “I don't know how anyone could understand this book without reading Jaynes first”.
I find the description of consciousness in this article very narrow (Only arising post language). Post language consciousness is a particular type of consciousness, and the same can be said of post DMT consciousness (Which is sometimes without language).
That's exactly Jaynes's theory: consciousness not only arrived after the invention of language, it arrived after the invention of writing, literature, agriculture, metallurgy, and government bureaucracy. And also, that it _could not_ have arisen without language because it is crucially founded in the capability of language to describe the world metaphorically.
You don't have to like it, but that's the theory that is being discussed.
As somebody who understands the perceived limitations of the materialist take on consciousness in light of recent decades of seeming philosophical traction (Searle, Chalmers), I have to admit how many ways LLMs proved me wrong.
Rather, how much of it is just language.
We went from completing words to completing sentences, paragraphs, essays, code files, pixel arrangements, music, and more just by aggregating and modeling all that in English.
I was amazed that predicting a word can emerge into knowledge, creativity, productivity - the stuff of thoughts.
It doesn’t happen to anyone (the thinking) but I think they still qualify as thoughts, just without a thinker.
If by "consciousness" you mean the thing that goes away when we sleep, how are you so sure that there's not a conscious thinker in the machine? That seems like a hypothesis rather than a proven fact as we don't know what process in the brain is responsible for consciousness fading away (assuming a practical materialist stance here) when we sleep. If it's some very basic informational pattern thing, then computers could have it.
And yet anendophasia is a thing. Some people think without an inner monologue, without words[^0]. And they seem to do so quite well and quite successfully.
[0]: https://johnrmiles.com/life-without-an-inner-monologue/
I’m pretty sure I can do both. Can’t everyone?
Yeah me too, and it feels like a lot of people who are exclusively 'stuck' in language seem to think the pre-language part is somehow inferior (which imo is very misguided)
Thinking without language makes sense for problems that don't require language like visual art, but how do you solve complex logic problems or write a book without thinking in sentences.