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Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain

137 points · 80 comments · Jimmc414

carefree-bob · 1789760305 · focus · HN ↗
There was a book in the 1970s called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, where he argued that ancient civilizations -- and he used examples from Homer -- lacked the current modern sense of self-consciousness. If you look at their behavior, they interact with some external divine voice that drives their actions, whereas if you read modern literature you see people being driven by an inner voice which they associate with themselves.
This shift from the "bicameral mentality" of the external voice to the modern mentality of the inner voice was hypothesized by Jaynes to be rooted in some biological changes in the brain. At the time there was split brain research that showed these two parts of the brain function independently almost as two different minds in the same skull. See this 2007 survey: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6323702_The_bicameral_mind30_years_on_A_critical_reappraisal_of_Julian_Jaynes'_hypothesis" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6323702_The_bicamer...
1. dinobones · 1789763579 · focus · HN ↗
  Not relevant to the article.
  Also, that study is extremely dubious/barring on fan-fiction.
  Homer (if he was even a person) recited oral epic poetry (that we've lost most of) and we've written down an extremely lossy version of it.
  Why should we take any of the mythical character's interactions with mythical gods as any insight for the brains of real humans???
  It'd be like year 4000 historians citing World of Warcraft claiming the Lich King is a very obvious example that humans lack an internal monologue because he was not able to distinguish his own motives/actions between Ner'zhul/Arthas (both spiritual entities inhabiting the "Lich King" body).
  1. glenstein · 1789767170 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean I definitely disagree with the book's argument, and you're right that it's making a different argument than the article, but I think straight up declaring it irrelevant is coming in way too hot. It's also an argument for a merging of separate mental structures that's sourcing the change in an event from recent natural history.
    Again, I don't agree with the book's argument, but declaring an argument proposing a similar convergence on the basis of entirely different reasons to be not even mentionable in response to the article is just getting way too overzealous with comment section policing.
    hn_throwaway_99 · 1789768634 · focus · HN ↗
    Uh, no.
    The premise (and this is how the GP comment put it) was that humans around Homer's time had fundamentally different brain structures, and that differences in poetry and thinking processes could be explained by looking at how brains changed over the last few thousand years.
    That's not "overzealous comment section policing". It's rejecting a premise that is completely infeasible with everything we know about human evolution (or relative lack thereof) during that timespan.
    glenstein · 1789769219 · focus · HN ↗
    Uh, yes. It's overzealous because personally disagreeing with something doesn't mean that it's outside the scope of the subject matter that the article is speaking to. If anything, you're reaffirming the commonalities between the theory and what's proposed in the article because what they have in common is a proposed difference in brain structures followed by a convergence.
    The fact that you disagree with the truth of the theory has literally nothing to do with whether it's on point in response to an article that's about the same subject matter. I would have hoped that me saying multiple times that I disagreed with it would have made clear already that there's more going on here than just a matter of whether you do or don't disagree with it. Declaring that it's "not overzealous" mirrors my language back at me but without attaching an actual argument to it.

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