Minds and Brains

1.As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

8 By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”

10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

-Psalm 42

Julian Jaynes offers a beautiful framework in which to think these verses. He says that the entire Bible can be read in terms of the bicameral mind and its breakdown upon the development of large scale civilization. The bicameral mind is a hypothesized mentality of ancient humans that is based on a neural control mechanism initiated in the right hemispherical equivalent to the language centers in the left side of the brain. In this way, a hallucinated personality matrix called a “god” analyzed situations in times of great stress, made a decision for action, and then relayed this command to the left side of the brain in terms of an auditory hallucination, which then interpreted the order and carried it out automatically. In such a schema, it was not the men who controlled their lives, but rather, the gods.

The story of Genesis captures the original relationship between God and man. There were no boundaries between man and his God and the ego could not get in the way of divine command. Adam spoke freely with God and was directly linked through a neural hookup to the patriarchal wisdom of His roaring voice. But as civilization developed, so did consciousness. After eating from the Tree of Knowledge, humans gained self-consciousness. We saw our mortality and nakedness exposed before the harsh light of frontal lobe calculation. After this development in psychological maturity, our direct line to the gods vanished and we come to the situation of the Psalmist above: forsaken by God, yearning for his voice to manifest directly, waiting for His command.

In the early books of the Old Testament, the prophets could still tune into God, hear His voice, and relay commands as if in a hypnotic trance, akin to the early Aiodoi who tapped into the Muses’ inspiration from above. For Amos then, the hallucination of God still thundered in his mind:

“The LORD roars from Zion
and thunders from Jerusalem;
the pastures of the shepherds dry up,
and the top of Carmel withers.”

But over time, these divine experiences lessened in frequency and intensity. We as a species no longer directly heard our commands from the gods. The skys were empty and the gods had retreated into the heavens. Prayers and divination rituals were invented. Oracles such as the one at Delphi became our last contact with the gods until they too were unable to call forth divine hallucinations.

Seen in this light, is not the Bible a wonderful metaphor for humanity’s contact with the divine? In the beginning of history, it were the gods who ruled, who commanded pyramids and temples to be built, who commanded sacrifices and rituals in their honor. But as time went on, as self-consciousness and introspection developed in functional power, the need for divine control lessoned and it was only the religious middlemen who claimed to hear God’s voice. And of course, there are still people today, namely schizophrenics, who are still able to hear His voice. But we do not listen to these people anymore. If you hallucinate God’s voice, you are no longer seen as a special communication tool, but rather, as insane. The lack of historical consciousness in the face of hallucinatory phenomena is disheartening as we label voice hearers as “crazy”. They are not crazy; only born in the wrong century.

Let me start by saying that I have been an avid reader of Peter Hankins’ excellent blog Conscious Entities for many years, and I have a lot of respect for his opinions. So much so that I remember being dissuaded from reading Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind because in Hankins review, he dismissed it as outright implausible. Recently, I did myself a favor and gave Jaynes enough credit to critically examine the book on its own merit. I came away extremely captivated by what Jaynes was saying. His theory of consciousness placed religion and mental illness, the two elephants in the room for philosophy of mind, into one seamless explanatory framework. The human psychological framework was once split into an authoritative god-mind, capable of responding to novel or stressful situations, which then subsequently relayed the results of this unconscious processing through the condensed information modality of speech to the human-mind, which automatically obeyed. All volition was initially habit and conditioning, evolving in complexity as the authoritative god-mind allowed for more complicated behavioral responses to novel stimuli.

For Jaynes, it is only through the development of language that we gained the capacity to experience the frightently common phenomenon of  command hallucinations – auditory hallications in the form of a dismebodied voice that makes forceful behavioral commands, usually of an admonitory context. In religious contexts, this is often experienced as the voice of God or a powerul authority figure of divine origin. Think of Abraham, Socrates, Muhammed, Joan of Arc, Christian mystics, and a large percentage of classically schizophrenic people throughout the ages. Such experiences are widely reported throughout history. Furthermore, Modern neuroscientific imaging provides rough empirical support for Jaynes’s strong version of the hypothesis that auditory hallucinates originate in the right temporal cortex and end up in the left temporal cortex.

This brings me to another point of contention with Hankins review and something I have seen elsewhere in reviews of Jaynes’s book. Hankins talks has if Jaynes’s entire bicameral theory rests on the precise dating of the bicameral breakdown in the literate periods of human history. Despite Hankins praising Jaynes’s book for his clear, rational style, it seems that he has not read the whole book, for Jaynes states repeatedly that the whole theory does not rest on his original suggestion for the date of the origin and emergence of modern consciousness.

The dating is but one of four hypothesis proposed by Jaynes, each standing independent of the others, but strongly reenforced by their interlocking explanatory parsimony.

1. Consciousness — as he carefully defines it — is a learned process based on metaphorical language

2. That preceding the development of consciousness there was a different mentality based on verbal hallucinations called the bicameral (‘two-chambered’) mind.

3. Dating the development of consciousness to around the end of the 2nd millennium B.C. in Greece and Mesopotamia. The transition occurred at different times in other parts of the world.

4. That the bicameral mind is based on a double-brain neurological model

As you can see, the precise dating of the development of consciousness is not the linchpin of his argument. The Clarksian tradition of embodied/embebedded linguistic scaffolding has clearly established the plausibility of (1). The anthropological and archeological evidence gathered by Jaynes and his supporters has an overwhelming mountain of evidence supporting  hypothesis (2); that our ancestors had a different psychological makeup that modern humans is largely evident if you withhold the temptation to project our own psychology onto them. The rampant prevelance of idolatry in almost all ancient civilizations must be taken seriously and a narrow phenomenology of “superstitious beliefs and rituals” is explanatorily sterile. Much anthropological evidence supports the claim that our ancestors literally communicated with the spirit world through auditory hallucinations. Otherwise, we have no convincing explanation for the widespread practice of buyring food and material possessions with the dead, as if the dead chieftans were still capable of issuing forceful commands.

Were we all once so stupid? Or did we have a radically different psychological framework? Would it not be nice to explain in one fell swoop the ease for which hypnosis, religion, and mental illness breakdown the functionality of something supposedly so well entrenched into our neurobiology and evolutionary history?Does not the very origin and decline of religion map onto the bicameral theory perfectly?  We once experienced God, but ate from the tree of knowledge, painfully developed self-consciousness, and have since struggled to be close with the voice of God once again. We cry out with prayers and superstitious ritual, worship and follow readily those who seem still possessed with God’s admonitory wisdom, and blindly go so far as to murder our own children in the face of such powerful admonitory hallucinations (and to this very day!).Nine tenths of human history has been enveloped in religiosity, and yet Enlightenment thinkers are content to simply rationalize that fact into a primitive irrationality.

Hopefully, with the plausibility of (1) and (2) gratiously established, and the ready conceit that hypotheis (3) might need some revision, what of (4)? I already linked to the Julian Jaynes society, which has conveniently provided some discussion of myths and facts concerning Jaynes theory, as well as a nice summary of evidence with alternative hypotheses and numerous academic references.

Coming back to Hankins then, is this all really so ” impossible to believe”? Where is the competing theory for all these phenomena? Where is the implausibility? Where are the gaping flaws in logic?So why hasn’t the bicameral theory caught on you might ask? Well,

The weight of original thought in it is so great that it makes me uneasy for the author’s well-being: the human mind is not built to support such burdens. I would not be Julian Jaynes if they paid me a thousand dollars an hour.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has recently provoked much controversy throughout the secular/atheist internet community by  stating very plainly that he thinks

there is something not “totally” human [about atheists] if they leave out the transcendent

Not surprisingly, secular atheists have been largely offended by this statement, reacting with anger and hostility to the idea that atheists aren’t fully human.  I on the other hand have interpreted this comment differently, and find that it is in fact philosophically astute, giving rise to the idea that consciousness is not a static phenomenon isolated from the influence of shifting environmental contexts. In my view, atheists who are fully constituted by non-supernatural narratives are different in some crucial way from those that live life through a religious filter, perceiving and attending to the world in terms of a delusional, but experientially “objective” spiritual reality. One commenter suggested this line of thought, but only jokingly, when he said:

There is a temptation to agree with them, I’m afraid: the idea that I’m a post-human mutant bestowed with the super-powers of reason and the ability to see through superstition is flattering.But it’s not true. Everyone has those powers, it’s just that some of us have had the good fortune and a history of experience that allows us to shake off some indoctrination. Nothing more.

It seems like a deeper analysis here is warranted. Shouldn’t we as atheists take seriously the notion that, by virtue of the radically concrete and irreligious  narratives that structure our phenomenal fields and constitute our mental life, we are profoundly different than the mystic who hears God speaking to him, or the everyday Christian who sees the world in terms of God’s purpose for his life, day-to-day miracles, blessings, prayers being answered, etc? This isn’t a value judgment; it’s a fact.

If we view the difference between the consciousness of Christians and atheists not in terms of the internal mechanisms of rationality and cognitive optimization, but rather, in terms of the contextual narratives that fundamentally shape how we perceive and attend to the world around us, then perhaps we will realize that human consciousness is evolving at a more rapid pace than we have previously supposed. Nietzsche was perhaps right after all.

Lots of bloggers have been commenting on this paper by Simon Blackburn, called “Religion and Respect”. Everyone seems to be commenting on one paragraph in particular:

We can respect, in the minimal sense of tolerating, those who hold false beliefs. We can pass by on the other side. We need not be concerned to change them, and in a liberal society we do not seek to suppress them or silence them. But once we are convinced that a belief is false, or even just that it is irrational, we cannot respect in any thicker sense those who hold it—not on account of their holding it. We may respect them for all sorts of other qualities, but not that one. We would prefer them to change their minds.

Most bloggers that I have seen commenting on the Blackburn paper seem to disagree with him on this particular point, and I thought I would share my opinion. To start off, one blogger said:

This is where I take issue with Blackburn’s stance. Blackburn cannot respect a person who holds a false belief, because he operates under the assumption that if someone believes something different than he does, then she must be wrong.

I think Lindsey completely misses Blackburn’s point in the quoted paragraph above. He wasn’t saying that he doesn’t respect religious people, but rather he can’t respect someone in a “thicker sense”. I take this thicker sense to mean that he can’t respect someone for holding an irrational belief, not that he can’t respect them at all. After all, he says: “We may respect them for all sorts of other qualities, but not that one.” On this point I agree with Blackburn and I can’t understand the antagonism towards this paragraph. If someone told you that they believed a celestial teapot was orbiting Jupiter and it was impossible to verify that it existed, would you respect that person for holding that belief? No, you would think it was irrational to hold such a belief and for precisely that reason, you could not respect them for holding the belief. This doesn’t mean that you don’t respect them for other reasons, such as being moral or intelligent in other areas of inquiry. It is just that on that particular matter, you wouldn’t respect their specific philosophical beliefs and I think the analogy holds for the belief in God.

Let me come right out and say it, as an atheist, I think that it is irrational to hold a belief in any sort of deity. I think that atheism is the default position on whether or not there are any Gods and therefor it requires some intellectual leap, whether provided through indoctrination or some more subjective thought process, to believe in a god. I believe that either way, this thought process is erroneous and irrational, leading to a belief that is very likely to be false. This is why I have to disagree with blogger Lindsey when she says:

Personally, I respect a person (and the part of that person) who I think legitimately came to believe what she did, or is being sincere and honest about what she believes and for what reasons she believes. That sort of belief I can respect, regardless of whether or not I agree with it. It’s the type of respect I have for my atheist and agnostic friends. I don’t agree with them, but I don’t have to. I recognize that they have some good reasons to believe what they do (even if those reasons doesn’t sway my own beliefs). That’s the type of respect that is important to have. It’s about appreciating how a person came to have her set of beliefs, and how she lives out those beliefs. Is she being honest with herself? Is she living out her beliefs with integrity? That is what counts.

Going back to the celestial teapot, one of my favorite examples, does it make sense to respect the “part of the person” that believes in something that can’t be verified in any way? Clearly, it is irrational to believe in the teapot, so why should I respect the part of the person responsible for instilling them with an irrational belief? The only way to counter Blackburn’s point here is to argue that believing in a deity is rational, and I think you will inevitably fail in this regard, for numerous reasons. As I said above, atheism is the default position when it comes to believing in a god, and any deviation from the default must be seen as irrational.

There is, of course, a difference between tolerating an irrational belief and respecting it. Obviously, I tolerate people who believe in irrational metaphysical beings, but I don’t see any reason why I should respect those beliefs, in the sense of intellectual respect. If I sincerely believe that it takes an irrational thought process to come to believe in something, how can I respect that process in the 21st century?

In summary, I can respect a theist for many different reasons, but I can’t respect them on account of them holding an irrational belief. The only way that I could respect someone on account of their holding a belief in a deity, is if they provided an account of their intellectual thought process that wasn’t grounded in subjectivity or irrationality. This is a debate I would willingly have, so if anyone wants to argue that believing in a deity is not irrational, go ahead. Until I am convinced otherwise, I will agree with Blackburn.

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