The project draws an extensive parallel between computer technology, specifically computer programming languages and the open-ended aspect of culture that includes language but also the wider methods, especially those aspects of technology that are used to explain or communicate culture. Humans interact with computers in many other ways, including paying for them and using them to "make money" (computers become actors in the "real economy" with huge impact on the "economy", which is right-wing word for "society").You can't entirely ignore the broad issue of "automation", which is perhaps the topic of most interest to the average reader. Seen from this angle, Part 1 (below) is a primer on the nature of automation, especially "computerization". Most primers on computers ignore the way computers actually "work" in the world and focus on aspects that most people do not need to know (such as CPU's, disks, RAM etc....

Daniel Dennett likes to give Jaynes the benefit of the doubt: “There were a lot of really good ideas lurking among the completely wild junk.” As Dennett hints (with typical subtly), there is a lot of "junk philosophy" around the subjects dear to Jaynes' heart. In this post, I'd like to extract one of Jayne's ideas and wipe a bit of "junk" off it to see where it gets me. At the center of Jayne's theory is the "bicameral mind", which is firmly based on the idea that we have a "right brain" and a "left brain" with notably different capabilities, each capable of acting somewhat on their own. The "right brain" is good at seeing the "big picture" and sends its judgments to the left brain, where they are perceived as speech - sometimes the speech of the Gods. As things get historically more complicated, we evolve our present day "inner chatter", no longer attributed to the Gods (if we are sane), b...

I have copied this review article into the blog as a good summary of contemporary opinion about Jaynes' theories. It seems that his main contribution has been, as I mentioned in a previous post, to ask "impertinent questions" and open up new avenues of investigation. His specific ideas, especially the "bicameral mind" and the idea that early man was not conscious have not fared well. The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: a critical reappraisal of Julian Jaynes’ hypothesis There’s a blind man here with a brow As big and white as a cloud. And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, Writers of music and tellers of stories, Sit at his feet, And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (1916) Andrea Eugenio Cavanna a,b Michael Trimble a Federico Cinti c Francesco Monaco b a Institute of Neurology, London, UK b Department of Neurology, Amedeo Avogadro University, Novara, Italy c Department of Classical Philology, University of Bologna, ...

Daniel Dennett likes to give Jaynes the benefit of the doubt: “There were a lot of really good ideas lurking among the completely wild junk.” (one might say the same of Dennett, but that is another essay ...) "Origin" is an important book. It inspires more notes than will fit in a single post. A sympathetic portrait of the rather quirky Julian James can be found here . Jaynes was somewhat obsessed loner -- a "one book wonder" -- who spent his life chasing a rather off-beat idea of what it is to be conscious. As his title indicates, Jaynes tackles the issue of consciousness. The "Hard" problem of Consciousness is, Why does it feel the way it does? How can a lump of "stuff", no matter how complex its structure and function feel anything? I agree with the general consensus that Jaynes doesn't solve or even address the hard problem but, like the others, comes closer by helping to understand what consciousness is in the first place. His book is fu...