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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,

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Speaker 1: welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my

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Speaker 1: name is Noel. They call me Ben. You are you?

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Speaker 1: And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 1: In the beginning of our opening notes for this episode,

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Speaker 1: I had I had a relatively lame, open ended question,

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Speaker 1: but I believe in it and I want to know.

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Speaker 1: What's what's on your mind? How are you guys feeling today?

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Speaker 1: Are you trying to set up the topic? I you know,

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Speaker 1: originally I was when I wrote, Yeah, really, what's what's

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Speaker 1: going on with you guys? Yeah? Know, just the general

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Speaker 1: state of affairs in the country, the world, you know,

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Speaker 1: base level fear and paranoia. Um, but other than that,

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Speaker 1: not too bad. Yeah, feeling pretty good today. I don't

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Speaker 1: know that it looked like it was gonna storm. I

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Speaker 1: haven't seen any rain yet, so hey, it's a bright

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Speaker 1: new day, keeping it light. Yeah. So I it's weird

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Speaker 1: because that's such a common phrase in English, and it's

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Speaker 1: a very common sentiment in all of humanity. People will

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Speaker 1: say Hey, what's what's on your mind? As though your

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Speaker 1: mind is some sort of object like a table upon

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Speaker 1: which things can be placed, you know. And today we're

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Speaker 1: also touching on a question that has baffled, confounded, perplexed,

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Speaker 1: and uh infuriated people throughout history, which is what what

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Speaker 1: is a mind? You know? Is when we say a mind,

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Speaker 1: are we saying that we are observing a consciousness? You know?

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Speaker 1: Are we talking about just the brain itself and its functions? Right?

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Speaker 1: And maybe just just for set up here, let's explore

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Speaker 1: the idea of consciousness because you told us a pretty

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Speaker 1: impressive and fascinating quotation earlier before we went on the air. Yes. Uh,

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Speaker 1: A gentleman named Daniel Dennett who is a philosopher. I

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Speaker 1: can't speak for him. I would say he thinks of

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Speaker 1: himself as a philosopher slash cognitive scientists, um. And he

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Speaker 1: gave a Ted talk in two thousand seven, and he

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Speaker 1: had this to say on the idea of what is

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Speaker 1: a consciousness? He says that what we are is approximately

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Speaker 1: one hundred trillion little cellular robots. That's he says, that's

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Speaker 1: what we're made out of. No other ingredients, were just

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Speaker 1: made of cells and not one of those cells is conscious,

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Speaker 1: and not a single one of those cares who you

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Speaker 1: are or knows that you are a thing. He says. Somehow,

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Speaker 1: he and everybody else in his field, they have to

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Speaker 1: explain or at least their tasked with explaining when you

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Speaker 1: put like how you put together these groups of cells,

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Speaker 1: of trillions of cells, if you group them into what

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Speaker 1: he calls armies and battalions. Uh, how do those these

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Speaker 1: little robotic, unconscious cells, how do they become us? How

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Speaker 1: do they create ideas? How do they create memories and colors?

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Speaker 1: How do we see colors from these cells? And um?

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Speaker 1: And then what does that mean? Like is that consciousness

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Speaker 1: if you can observe those things and think about those things?

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Speaker 1: And then he he ended that thought with just somehow

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Speaker 1: all of the content, all the consciousness that we experience

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Speaker 1: is accomplished by the the busy activity of these hordes

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Speaker 1: of neurons that are in our brain, that are just

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Speaker 1: firing and storing information through connections. Uh. Pretty crazy. And

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Speaker 1: the biggest thing is, he says, is how is this possible? Like?

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Speaker 1: How how could that be? I really, you know, I

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Speaker 1: really appreciate that because it makes me think of our

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Speaker 1: examination of biomes, you know, or or microbiomes rather where

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Speaker 1: wherein we see that there's there's an entire world in

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Speaker 1: somebody's digestive system, right, And I think the first time

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Speaker 1: I learned about that was when we're doing an episode

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Speaker 1: of our show brain Stuff on farts. Yeah, and also

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Speaker 1: shout out to the Petalmon, the professional professional flashy lists

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Speaker 1: story for another day. I'm getting I'm getting hard side

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Speaker 1: eye from role on this one. Sorry, yeah, sorry, all

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Speaker 1: I know how I feel about farts in the podcast studio.

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Speaker 1: It's a very sensitive subject because it's a very small

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Speaker 1: room us. The concept of consciousness, how is it possible? Right? What?

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Speaker 1: What is a mind? People have generated multiple interpretations suppositions

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Speaker 1: about this, and when we started digging into this, we

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Speaker 1: were inspired, but we also thought, this is a lot,

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Speaker 1: This is a lot of weird stuff to unpack and explore.

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Speaker 1: And luckily we were able to contact one of our

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Speaker 1: recurring guests, a long time friend of the show Ladies

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Speaker 1: and Gentlemen, Joe McCormick, co host of Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind. Hey, how are you guys doing today? Great

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Speaker 1: now that you're here, we were really bummed out before

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Speaker 1: you walk a little bit Yeah, thanks, thanks for walking

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Speaker 1: in and saving saving the day. Just gonna continue pretending

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Speaker 1: that I wasn't sitting here the whole time. What are

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Speaker 1: you talking about? You you weren't sitting here, I was

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Speaker 1: not conscious of it. Yeah, So obviously it sounds like

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Speaker 1: you guys want to talk about consciousness today. And we

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Speaker 1: actually did in a two parter on consciousness recently, on

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Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind, Not so much on the

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Speaker 1: problem of consciousness broadly, because how could you cover that

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Speaker 1: in a single episode. It's a topic that comes up

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Speaker 1: over and over again on our show. It's one of

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Speaker 1: most perplexing questions in all of science and the philosophy

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Speaker 1: of mind. What is consciousness and where does it come from?

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Speaker 1: And I like that you brought up that Daniel Dennet quote, Matt,

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Speaker 1: because it calls to mind the problem of the heap

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Speaker 1: you all know about, like the the heapness problem. If

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Speaker 1: you have one grain of sand, that's not a heap,

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Speaker 1: and if you have two grains of sand, that's not

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Speaker 1: a heap. But at some point you keep adding grains

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Speaker 1: of sand and a heap of sand emerges. At what

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Speaker 1: point does the heap happen? It's hard to pick a number,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. Yah? Yeah, And a similar kind of problem

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Speaker 1: arises from the problem of consciousness that we know to

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Speaker 1: some degree, consciousness is created by brains that are processing information.

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Speaker 1: One experiment you can do to sort of prove this

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Speaker 1: to yourself is go under general anesthesia. If you go

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Speaker 1: under general anesthesia, the information processing in your brain is

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Speaker 1: suppressed and you have complete blackout. It's absolute loss of

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Speaker 1: consciousness for the time that you're out only podcast welcome

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Speaker 1: blacked out. Yeah. So so yeah, So you come back

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Speaker 1: from that, you're you regain your consciousness and you think, wow, okay,

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Speaker 1: so it's possible for my brain to exist and all

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Speaker 1: those cells to be there, but when they're not doing something,

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Speaker 1: my consciousness ceases. But here's a much creepier version. It

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Speaker 1: seems that those cells in your brain can be doing

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff without generating consciousness. I want to

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Speaker 1: see if you guys have ever been in this scenario.

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Speaker 1: You ever gotten to a destination and parked your car

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Speaker 1: and then realize like, oh my god, I was not

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Speaker 1: conscious while I was driving here. What happened? It's a

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Speaker 1: blur you remember, let's call it point A, which was

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Speaker 1: your last significant memory before the drive and then all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden there's a missing gap and you're at

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Speaker 1: you you feel like you're at point B, but maybe

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Speaker 1: point H, point J. You know, any things have happened,

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Speaker 1: and you have this sort of localized amnesia, just the

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Speaker 1: feeling that you did I actually drive here because you

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Speaker 1: were probably lost in thought, in you know, one section

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Speaker 1: or several sections of your brain working together, in that

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Speaker 1: conscious part where you're paying attention to what my arms

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Speaker 1: are doing and what my feet are doing. It's almost

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Speaker 1: like it wasn't happening. Well, I would imagine too, Like

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Speaker 1: with wrote kind of mindless activities like that, this is

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Speaker 1: easier than let's say, you know, something like spending time

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Speaker 1: with a loved one or like generating new memories and

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Speaker 1: things like that. Exactly. No, So that's the important thing

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Speaker 1: is that the right repetitious aspect of it. So on

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Speaker 1: these types of activities like driving or say, you know,

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Speaker 1: other household chores boring sex, moing, mowing the lawn. Didn't

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Speaker 1: expect it to go that way. Mowing the lawn. Mowing

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Speaker 1: the lawn is our show's euphemism for boring sex. Okay, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: any of these repetitive activities yeah, you can. You can

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Speaker 1: like totally lose consciousness and yet your mind is still working.

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Speaker 1: You think about all the stuff your brain has to

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Speaker 1: be doing to drive you from one place to another.

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Speaker 1: It's got to take in visual information and auditory inform constantly, constantly,

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Speaker 1: constantly updating your mental model of what the road is

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Speaker 1: where you need to go. It's got to coordinate all

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Speaker 1: your muscles with timing being very precise feedback from the wheel.

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Speaker 1: This is complex behavior without you being present in your

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Speaker 1: mind for it for it to happen at one point

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Speaker 1: of where just a quick interjection. In addition to this,

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Speaker 1: our brains are also keeping the entire human ship running right.

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Speaker 1: So many bodily processes that we are not consciously aware of.

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Speaker 1: There's a thing that used to happen to me when

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Speaker 1: I was a kid. I would lay awake at night

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Speaker 1: and I was too conscious of my breathing, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: if I don't forget that I've been breathing the whole time,

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Speaker 1: if I keep concentrating on it, then what if it

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Speaker 1: just stops? You know, I just add to the point,

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Speaker 1: it does seem mind boggling when we think about it.

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Speaker 1: How many things, not just when we're driving, but just

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Speaker 1: existing tons of what we do is unconscious. Your brain

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Speaker 1: constantly regulates activity within the body unconsciously, the regulation and

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Speaker 1: release of hormones, neurotransmitter reuptake, digestion, all this kind of

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Speaker 1: stuff is going on your brain telling your body what

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Speaker 1: to do, but you not being conscious of it. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: you're very conscious of, say, most of the running and

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Speaker 1: jumping you do, and sometimes conscious of breathing. Why is that?

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Speaker 1: Do you ever think about that? How come evolution created

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Speaker 1: an animal that has conscious control of running and jumping,

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Speaker 1: unconscious control of digestion, and optionally conscious control of breathing.

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Speaker 1: What if you have to consciously control your heart rate

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Speaker 1: and your digestion but unconsciously moved about through the world.

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Speaker 1: Thought of that as making my heart rate speed up

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Speaker 1: right now? Anyway, that's kind of a weird thing to ponder.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can start to think of,

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Speaker 1: like evolutionary reasons why one might be selected for more

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Speaker 1: than the other. But that also is interesting because it

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Speaker 1: gives you reasons that consciousness might be biologically adaptive, that

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Speaker 1: it could actually be useful for something. And that's a

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Speaker 1: big question in the these all these debates about consciousness.

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Speaker 1: Does consciousness actually do anything or is it just a

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Speaker 1: helpless observer of what the body would be doing? Anyway,

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Speaker 1: But I want to go back to the road analogy.

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Speaker 1: There we are. We're on the road, all right. So

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Speaker 1: you are in this highway hypnosis state. You're driving from

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Speaker 1: one place to another. You for some reason, whyever this happens,

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Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure, but you are not conscious of

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Speaker 1: what's going on. You're just somewhere else and you're you know,

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Speaker 1: your your body is driving on its own, controlled by

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Speaker 1: your brain but not by your mind. Suddenly, along the way,

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Speaker 1: let's say you're coming to work and a long a

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Speaker 1: long I seventy five or wherever you'd be traveling, you

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Speaker 1: get to a place where there was a giant pit

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the freeway, and the god molech

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Speaker 1: is down there in the pit, accepting infant sacrifices, and

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Speaker 1: it's completely blocking your path to get to work. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: what would happen then, Well, then you would experience a

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Speaker 1: moment of sudden lucidity. Right, yeah, you'd snap out, you'd

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Speaker 1: come out of that highway hypnosis state. And what would

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Speaker 1: happen next? You'd offer your allegiance to no, don't do that,

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Speaker 1: don't ever do that. We were split on molech in

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Speaker 1: here scrificabies. We we're all close friends, but part of

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Speaker 1: being good friends with someone is that you accept that

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Speaker 1: you don't always agree, and molok is one of those

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Speaker 1: things that is relatively divisive on our show. I just

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Speaker 1: want to be candidates. So we're snapped back to reality.

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Speaker 1: Right here comes gravity. But why do you nice? So

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Speaker 1: why do you snam back? Why do you snam back now?

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Speaker 1: Because because there's a threat or there's danger, Hey, you

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Speaker 1: gotta figure out what to do. That's suddenly that starts

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Speaker 1: to become a point where you can see what your

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Speaker 1: consciousness is being used for, that it has some kind

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Speaker 1: of biological function. Suddenly, So you have all these activities

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Speaker 1: that you can do and your body can carry out

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Speaker 1: and your brain can regulate without your consciousness, even things

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Speaker 1: as complex as driving. But suddenly, when you've got to

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Speaker 1: make a decision, when there is novel stimuli that you

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Speaker 1: did not expect to encounter and it doesn't seem to

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Speaker 1: fit with your you know, wrote conditioned behaviors, then suddenly

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Speaker 1: you have to use your consciousness to make a decision.

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Speaker 1: And figure out what to do next. So this reaction

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Speaker 1: to that novel idea brings you back to the present

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Speaker 1: moment and you begin do do you begin reevaluating the

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Speaker 1: existing stimuli? Well, I mean think about what would happen

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Speaker 1: in your own mind. I can say for me, I

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Speaker 1: think what I would start to do is I would say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I can't go this way, so I need to figure

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Speaker 1: out what's the other way to get to work. And

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Speaker 1: I would imagine in my mind sort of a map

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Speaker 1: of the city and think what are the alternate routes

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Speaker 1: I could use and how would I get to them?

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Speaker 1: It would be like modeling. Yeah, I mean what what

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Speaker 1: would what? Do you all disagree? No, I don't disagree.

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Speaker 1: But I'm also wondering what happens when your base level

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Speaker 1: is constantly presenting you with unexpected things and that becomes

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Speaker 1: the norm. Like if you're a soldier, for example, like

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Speaker 1: in a foxhole or like in a war zone, and

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Speaker 1: you constantly have to be shifting and adjusting and you know,

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Speaker 1: looking out for threats and there's so many of them

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Speaker 1: that it's basically the norm. Well, I mean, in that case,

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Speaker 1: you were probably in a state, a state of heightened

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Speaker 1: awareness constantly, which probably leads to anxiety and stress. Right.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it can be very stressful to have too

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Speaker 1: many demands placed upon your consciousness, right, Like, sometimes we

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Speaker 1: kind of want to slip into that unconscious state. It's relaxing,

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Speaker 1: decision fatigue, it's a real thing. And so okay, so

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Speaker 1: I love this exploration. Right now, Malik has appeared and

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Speaker 1: we're driving to work and we say, oh, we snap

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Speaker 1: out of it, and we say, okay, well, maybe if

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Speaker 1: I get off at the four Street exit, there won't

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Speaker 1: be too much traffic and it'll be a little bit late,

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Speaker 1: and everybody will understand because it's muleck again. Right. But

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Speaker 1: here's a question. What if you couldn't do that, the

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Speaker 1: part where you snap back and come come to your

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Speaker 1: consciousness and you make a model in your mind of

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Speaker 1: how to get to work. What if your mind was

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Speaker 1: not capable of any of that. What if you were

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Speaker 1: a being for whom every activity in your life was

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Speaker 1: in that unconscious autopilot state that we get into sometimes

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Speaker 1: when highway hypnosis, or when you're mowing the lawn, any

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Speaker 1: of these things that you just do without thinking. Could

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Speaker 1: it be possible for a being to exist in a

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Speaker 1: permanent state like that. It seems like it could be possible, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I feel pretty close to that every once in a while. Well,

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Speaker 1: they're they're also quite a few mammals who appear to

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Speaker 1: behave that way, you know, I guess is this in

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Speaker 1: any way related to medic cognition, you know, thinking about thinking? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: medic cognition is often associated with the basis of consciousness.

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Speaker 1: I mean, people have all kinds of debates about what

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Speaker 1: consciousness exactly is, uh, And we're obviously not going to

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Speaker 1: settle that question today. But metic cognition, which thinking about

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Speaker 1: thinking or regulating your own thinking, having the idea of

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Speaker 1: not just having a thought, but thinking about the fact

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Speaker 1: that you had a thought, is often what consciousness consists

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Speaker 1: of in some models at least. So would it be

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Speaker 1: possible two in What would that be like to not

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Speaker 1: think about thinking? Well, I mean it seems like it

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Speaker 1: would be okay for lots of tasks. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: could get through a lot of your life without thinking

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Speaker 1: about thinking until you hit these novel stimuli moments where

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Speaker 1: you needed to make a decision and think about sort

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Speaker 1: of like you needed to do some internal city mulation

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Speaker 1: and modeling, like picturing that map in your head and

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to get there when instinct

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Speaker 1: and conditioning won't suffice. What do you do? Now? Here's

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Speaker 1: where we're going to get to the book that is

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Speaker 1: at the center of today's conversation. So recently on Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, my co host Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I did a couple of episodes on the concept of bicameralism,

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Speaker 1: which was introduced in nineteen seventy six by the American

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Speaker 1: psychologist Julian Jaynes in his book The Origin of Consciousness

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Speaker 1: in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And I gotta

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Speaker 1: say at the outset, this is one of the most

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Speaker 1: fascinating books I've ever read. It makes an argument about

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Speaker 1: the nature of consciousness and about the history of consciousness

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Speaker 1: in the human species that ultimately I think is probably wrong,

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Speaker 1: Like I probably don't agree with it, but it is

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Speaker 1: a fascinating hypothesis to explore with him because he pulls

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Speaker 1: from so many different disciplines with tons of thoughtfulness and evidence,

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Speaker 1: and it's just a really fascinating ride to go on.

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Speaker 1: And it made quite a stir when it came out.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it was pretty popular for a you know what,

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Speaker 1: ultimately is an academic work, right, Yeah, It's gotten a

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Speaker 1: lot of attention over the years in in weird, odd

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Speaker 1: kind of smatterings like it is actually not something that

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Speaker 1: has been revisited a whole lot in the scientific or

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Speaker 1: academic literature. One of the things that's frustrating about it is, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it introduces and we'll get to what the hypothesis

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Speaker 1: is in just a second. I hate to keep teasing you,

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Speaker 1: but it introduces this fascinating radical hypothesis about the history

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Speaker 1: of consciousness, tries to offer some evidence for it, and

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Speaker 1: seems to make some predictions about what would be found

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Speaker 1: in the future. So what you really want is for

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Speaker 1: a bunch of scientists to start testing what would be

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Speaker 1: predicted by this hypothesis and see if it's true. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's The testing of its predictions has been somewhat

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Speaker 1: slim there. There have been a few studies that have

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Speaker 1: mentioned it, uh, some favorably, some favorably, but I guess

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Speaker 1: the best we could say is that it remains controversial.

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Speaker 1: So this is in no way consider it a widely

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Speaker 1: accepted hypothesis, but a lot of philosophers and scientists do

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Speaker 1: consider it interesting and valuable, even if it's not necessarily correct. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I appreciate that you point this out. There might

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Speaker 1: be slim testing, but there's nothing definitive either way, right,

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Speaker 1: there's no absolutely yes, absolutely no. Well, I think a

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Speaker 1: few I think a few neurologists have said, look at

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Speaker 1: modern neuroscience disproves his claims, but but others don't necessarily agree.

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Speaker 1: So I think what I should just do now is

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Speaker 1: start by giving you the straightforward version of Jane's conclusion,

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Speaker 1: and then we can turn back to explaining it a

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Speaker 1: little more. Yeah, yes, by cameral mind in a nutshell. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: Julian Jane's hypothesis in this book is that until about

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Speaker 1: three thousand years ago, human beings meaning our species, Homo sapiens,

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Speaker 1: was not conscious us. So that's kind of odd, like,

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Speaker 1: how do you how do you imagine that? Because there

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Speaker 1: has not been significant biological evolution in three thousand years,

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Speaker 1: you know, since about one thousand BC, So what could

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Speaker 1: have happened? Uh, we'll get to that. So he says

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Speaker 1: that around one thousand BC, modern human consciousness meaning our

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Speaker 1: our awareness of awareness, our internal ability to neurotize, like

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Speaker 1: we were talking about in that in that example, it

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Speaker 1: began as a cultural invention, probably in Mesopotamia that's spread

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Speaker 1: across the world. And before that time, for a long time,

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Speaker 1: for thousands of years, before about one thousand b C,

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Speaker 1: almost all humans were not conscious in the way we were.

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Speaker 1: But we're commanded in all novel behaviors by hallucinated voices

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Speaker 1: that they called gods. Yeah, that's that's insane. So in this,

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Speaker 1: in this uh understanding, if we have Nott driving by

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Speaker 1: seventy five, he sees his ancient god, he doesn't think, boy,

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Speaker 1: I've got to take the exit to street. Instead, he

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Speaker 1: hears something. What if he hears the voice of Molok

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Speaker 1: telling him watch out for Molok right there? He might

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Speaker 1: think Seeing that, he might think so now, just I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm afraid if I overcomplicated this by introducing Molik into

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Speaker 1: the example. But no, I mean, my question though, is

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Speaker 1: like this is not figurative. This is like the hypothesis

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Speaker 1: is that there is an auditory hallucination of a voice.

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Speaker 1: This is not like you know, a metaphor self. No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: that that is exactly what he's saying. He's literally saying that.

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Speaker 1: Before about a thousand years ago, people were not conscious.

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Speaker 1: They did not have the ability to snap out of

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Speaker 1: the hypnotized state and think about what they would do. Instead,

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Speaker 1: what happened is they stayed in the hypnotized state their

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Speaker 1: entire lives, and when some kind of novel stimuli arose

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Speaker 1: something that could not be dealt with on basic instinct

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Speaker 1: and conditioned behaviors, like when we're mowing the lawn. Uh.

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Speaker 1: When that happened, a voice would tell them what to do,

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Speaker 1: and they would hear the voice audibly within their head

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Speaker 1: and then be uh commanded, I guess and yeah, and

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Speaker 1: they and they would obey intellectably. They would obey in

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Speaker 1: the sense that James talks in the book about instinctual obedience,

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Speaker 1: like how in you know, social animal species, when there

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Speaker 1: is a dominant individual that you can really very strongly

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Speaker 1: control people's behavior by. Yeah, by displaying these dominant uh

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Speaker 1: sort of signals and getting up in somebody's space and

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Speaker 1: telling them what to do very firmly, people tend to

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Speaker 1: obey uh. And so he he says that this sort

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Speaker 1: of instinct, the tendency to obey, is internalized and it

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Speaker 1: turns into the temporal lobe of the non dominant hemisphere

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Speaker 1: of the brain. So, and most people that's going to

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Speaker 1: be the right himis sphere. You are a right handed person,

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Speaker 1: the non dominant hemisphere is gonna be the right hemisphere,

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Speaker 1: the temporal lobe of the non dominant hemisphere generating this

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Speaker 1: auditory hallucination and commanding the dominant hemisphere what to do.

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Speaker 1: So part of the question would be how does the

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Speaker 1: non dominant hemisphere know what to do? And you would

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Speaker 1: say there that what appears to be happening is that

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Speaker 1: the non dominant hemisphere in Jane's model, is the place

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Speaker 1: where the integration and synthesis of information is taking place.

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Speaker 1: So it's doing the kind of judgment part that we

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Speaker 1: would normally do consciously. Like you would, you would put

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Speaker 1: together a bunch of stuff in your mind, some pictures

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Speaker 1: and some words and some ideas, and say, okay, here's

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Speaker 1: what I need to do. Instead of all that happening consciously,

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Speaker 1: this would happen unconsciously, isolated in the right hemisphere, delivered

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Speaker 1: as an auditory hallucination to the left hemisphere. So would this,

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Speaker 1: without getting too far into the technical details, would this

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Speaker 1: activity synthesis also include memory of past events? Now here's

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Speaker 1: an interesting thing. You have to imagine what memory would

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Speaker 1: consist of if you did not have the ability to

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Speaker 1: be conscious. Now, I don't think we have the space

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Speaker 1: today to fully discuss exactly what Jane's theory of consciousness

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Speaker 1: is because it's a complex thing. Essentially for him. I'll

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Speaker 1: try to give you the simple version for Jane's consciousness

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Speaker 1: is based on language. He says that you couldn't be

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Speaker 1: conscious without having a language. So there are some kind

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Speaker 1: of disturbing takeaways from this. One of them is that

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Speaker 1: it's impossible for say, animals to be conscious if they

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Speaker 1: don't really have a language that's capable. Here here's the

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Speaker 1: key part of generating metaphors. So metaphors are sort of

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Speaker 1: the ultimate workhorse of what language is. It's when you

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Speaker 1: describe an unknown thing in terms of a known thing.

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Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes from that is from a

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Speaker 1: quotes pertaining to that is a throwaway joke or observation

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Speaker 1: in the television show community. A metaphor is a thought

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Speaker 1: wearing another thoughts hat. That's a good one, man. You know.

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Speaker 1: The funny thing about metaphor is even the word metaphor

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Speaker 1: is a metaphor. The word metaphor comes from Greek. It

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Speaker 1: means to carry across. So it takes this unknown concept

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Speaker 1: of the abstract idea of taking the definition of one

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Speaker 1: word and using it to help understand another word. But

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Speaker 1: it takes that from the literal act of carrying something

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Speaker 1: from one place to another. So the word metaphor is

427
00:25:32,320 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 1: a metaphor, and what's more meta than consciousness? I mean,

428
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 1: like the ability Consciousness basically is the ability to extend

429
00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: our understanding of reality and kind of wrap it in

430
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: a sort of digestible form. Or we can think about

431
00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:47,199
Speaker 1: the past, we can think about the future, you can

432
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 1: think about the present all at the same time. That

433
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:53,399
Speaker 1: is Jane's theory. So Jane says consciousness is a place.

434
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: It is a metaphorical mind space based on the analogy

435
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: of real space. Now that might sound kind of hard

436
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: to understand for a second, or might take a second

437
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 1: to segment set in. But when you start testing that

438
00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:09,359
Speaker 1: against your experience, at least for me, I often find

439
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 1: that that's true in the same way that the meaning

440
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 1: of the word metaphor is this abstract thing that's taken

441
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 1: from the literal physical action of carrying something from one

442
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:24,600
Speaker 1: place to another. Consciousness, for Janes is this abstract space

443
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 1: that is based on the metaphor of real space. And

444
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: when I was reading up on this to the idea

445
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: of that god voice, we've basically subsumed that into this

446
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:40,200
Speaker 1: kind of unspoken voice, unheard voice that is our consciousness.

447
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: So it's like we don't hear the voice, but we've

448
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:49,280
Speaker 1: absorbed that essentially into our ability to you know, process

449
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,439
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. So here's one thing.

450
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 1: A bicameral person and a conscious person might not necessarily

451
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: do different things in the same in the same situation. Right.

452
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:04,960
Speaker 1: They might both come to the whole in the freeway,

453
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: see the god molech not know what to do for

454
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:09,639
Speaker 1: a second, and then take the same route to get

455
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: around to work. The only difference is how the brain

456
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 1: organizes and integrates and delivers that information. Now, there might

457
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: be other cases where a conscious person and a bicameral

458
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:24,040
Speaker 1: person would do something different. And before we get to

459
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: too lost on this point, there there is another disturbing implication.

460
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: I want to plant the seed here for our exploration,

461
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:36,200
Speaker 1: and that is that if Jans is correct, when we're

462
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 1: following this line of reasoning, language is a pre existing

463
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: necessity for the development of consciousness, which means that language

464
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: predates consciousness the way we would understand it. And so

465
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 1: that is to me, that is a real stereotype buster,

466
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: because we associate language, whether written or spoken, with this

467
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,680
Speaker 1: act of consciousness of awareness. Yeah, I mean this is

468
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:06,439
Speaker 1: a super radical hypothesis. I mean when I look at

469
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:09,159
Speaker 1: this and I say, I find it interesting, but I

470
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 1: don't believe it. It's not necessarily because I have found

471
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 1: any of his particular arguments very faulty. Uh, most of

472
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: his arguments are I feel like, are moderately too strongly persuasive.

473
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 1: It's just that it goes so strongly against what you

474
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 1: would tend to think, is that, you know, the base

475
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 1: assumption that if there is such a thing as consciousness,

476
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 1: it's a biological invention based on how brains work, rather

477
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: than a cultural invention made possible by language. Um. But

478
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: one thing, one other thing I should mention, just to

479
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: make clear, is also his idea about how the evolution

480
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: of consciousness comes across. So basically you have to imagine

481
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: in human history there's a three stage evolution where human primates,

482
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: uh first without language, are like he imagines animals are,

483
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: which are just stimulus response machines automata that humans like

484
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 1: us that had very powerful brains, brains just as biologically

485
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: powerful as ours, capable of as many calculations and all

486
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, and they were just working on

487
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 1: instinct and conditioning. Which and that's it, right, because it's

488
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: hard to imagine that. Does that mean agriculture as well?

489
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: Does that mean other other things we consider completely human inventions,

490
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: you know, like cooking, hunting? Does that exist before consciousness? No?

491
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: I mean hunting, I think probably does. But once we

492
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:40,959
Speaker 1: get to agriculture, that's the next stage. So you've got

493
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: the animal stage where we're just stimulus response machines. Then

494
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:49,120
Speaker 1: the evolution of language makes possible the transition to buy

495
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: cameraality by cameraality comes after this stage, and that's when

496
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 1: we're in the state where we're still not conscious yet

497
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: but we're hearing these hallucinated voices. And then in the

498
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: third stay it about three thousand years ago, we make

499
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: the final transition to modern human consciousness, where we have

500
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: the ability to narratize in this metaphorical mind space. Well,

501
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: here we are, I think that's a good place to

502
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and then we'll dive into that

503
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: metaphorical mind space, and we're back. This is already such

504
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: a head trip, you guys, I think we've got a

505
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 1: pretty good forty foot view, right, we understand some of

506
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: the basic differentiators. And now, now, if you'd be so

507
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: kind you, I know that everybody listening is wondering what

508
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:47,760
Speaker 1: evidence does Jane's base these claims on, or what you know,

509
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: what does he draw from? Because you mentioned that it's

510
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:53,440
Speaker 1: it's it's a far reaching argument. Yes, so it's a

511
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 1: it's a very multidisciplinary approach. He draws from the history

512
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: of literature, he draws from our key oology, he draws

513
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: from anthropology and understanding ancient religions and societies. He draws

514
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: from uh neurology, from studying the function in different regions

515
00:31:10,360 --> 00:31:12,840
Speaker 1: of the brain. That might be one of the most

516
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: limited areas. Because he was writing back in nineteen seventy six.

517
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 1: We know more about regions of the brain now than

518
00:31:18,360 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: we did then, but we still knew a decent amount then.

519
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 1: And like I said, that, the picture is not clear

520
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: to me what neurology since then has had to say

521
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 1: about his hypothesis. It seems that there are some results

522
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: that sort of go against it and others that sort

523
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: of go in favor of it. So I don't know

524
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: if that helps us in one direction yet. Um. But

525
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: then also psychology, of course, which was his own field,

526
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: so I might go to one of his primary examples

527
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: of how ancient literature would inform this, because literature is

528
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 1: a great place to look for evidence of consciousness. You

529
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: can just look at the characters and see are the

530
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 1: characters conscious? Do they in prospect? Do they have the

531
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 1: ability to neurotize in mind space? Here is a really

532
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: crazy thing that I never noticed before. But James makes

533
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: this argument pretty strongly. I haven't I've asked in our

534
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:15,320
Speaker 1: audience to see if anybody with expertise in the classics,

535
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 1: you know, in ancient Greek literature can contradict what he

536
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: has to say. I haven't had any takers yet, but

537
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: he makes the argument pretty convincingly that the characters of

538
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:32,360
Speaker 1: Homer's the Iliad are not conscious. Yeah. This this was

539
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: the mind blowing thing for me as well, because again

540
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 1: we I think I'm learning about what a high pedestal

541
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: we place the concept of consciousness on the understanding of

542
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: something like one of the world's most famous works of

543
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: literature is that it must inherently be made by conscious thought. Yeah,

544
00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 1: I mean when you picture the writer you pick, I

545
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: mean maybe you don't. I do. I picture a person

546
00:33:04,640 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: in thought. I picture a person who is consciously introspecting

547
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 1: about what to write next. But you have to imagine

548
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: that literature before the conscious period, if the obviously, if

549
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: this is true, we're just entertaining it. Yeah, we're what

550
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 1: ifing if there were such a thing as a bicameral period,

551
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: what would the writing process of a bicameral author be? Like,

552
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: this is a person who does not have the power

553
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 1: to introspect or narratize in a mind space. It would

554
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:36,160
Speaker 1: be transcription, right exactly. It would be essentially taking transcription

555
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: from literature that is compiled and integrated unconsciously by the

556
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: right brain in in most people, by the non dominant hemisphere. Wow,

557
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: it sounds like there's a plan almost uh and so

558
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 1: uh and so. You would see examples of this in, say,

559
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: how how the ancient act of composition is described. Here's

560
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 1: something kind of creepy. What if you took some of

561
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: what appears to be the literary conventions of ancient literature

562
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 1: just literally? How about sing to me? Oh, Muse, the

563
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: song of all these Greek poems starting with the invocation

564
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: of the Muse. Now we usually look at that as

565
00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 1: a literary device. We say, Okay, they're just being metaphorical.

566
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:25,040
Speaker 1: They're saying, like, I'm trying to get into the mood

567
00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 1: about writing. I want some you know, I need this

568
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: introspective juice, and so that's my metaphor, this god, the

569
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: Muse is my metaphor. What if you just take them

570
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: at their word. They're asking the God to start telling

571
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:41,880
Speaker 1: them what to write. That's amazing, well, but I mean

572
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: it also, it doesn't. It's not too far of a

573
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:47,800
Speaker 1: jump from the way we think of ancient civilizations and

574
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: the way they treat gods and act as though all

575
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: things come directly as a result of their relationship with God.

576
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: And it's very specific. It's like, my crops grow because

577
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 1: I did this thing and the God's made it. So

578
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: it's not it's not figurative in any way. And it's

579
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: not just these external activities like what allows the crops

580
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: to grow, what changes the weather. It's internalized influence of

581
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:13,320
Speaker 1: the gods that we see in Jane's interpretation of the iLiads.

582
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 1: So he looks at the Iliad, and he says, I'm

583
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: looking through this thing and trying to find places where

584
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,520
Speaker 1: characters are introspecting. He says, there's maybe a couple of places,

585
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: and these appear to be later additions to the text,

586
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 1: added by scribes long after it was first composed. If

587
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: you look at the original version of the text and

588
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:34,120
Speaker 1: what appears to be its oldest parts. Characters do not

589
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: make decisions by internal introspection. When novel stimuli arise, a

590
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,840
Speaker 1: god shows up and tells them what to do. So

591
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: Achilles is about to strike down Agamymnon, He's like, I

592
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. I'm so angry, I'm

593
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: gonna attack my king. And then a god shows up,

594
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,600
Speaker 1: grabs him by the hair and says, don't do it,

595
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 1: and then repeat it again and again throughout this ancient

596
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,920
Speaker 1: epic poem. Whenever people are faced with novel stimuli, a

597
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:05,840
Speaker 1: god shows up says do this, and they do it,

598
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: so as you said intellectively, right, yeah, And so there's

599
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 1: another There's one thing that really stuck out to me

600
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:17,320
Speaker 1: about this, where James claims there is no concept of will,

601
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 1: nor nor a word for it in the Iliot. I

602
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 1: sure do remember thinking that the Odyssey was a hell

603
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: of a lot more interesting than the Iliad when I

604
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: was a kid, And he makes that contrast, I mean,

605
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:31,840
Speaker 1: the Odyssey seems to have a lot more evidence of

606
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 1: consciousness within it than the Iliad does. For James, at last,

607
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:39,239
Speaker 1: there's inner torment in the Odyssey characters developed. So with

608
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: a lot of his a lot of his claims with

609
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:49,399
Speaker 1: the Iliad in particular, dwell on some word usage exactly. Yeah,

610
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: So James points out that in the Iliad there are

611
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:55,279
Speaker 1: a number of words in the ancient Greek vocabulary that,

612
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: if you look to later texts, have meanings that are

613
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: clearly associated with consciousness and conscious introspection, but as deployed

614
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: in the Iliad, means something else. They have these corporeal,

615
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 1: non conscious meanings. For example, the word see. He like

616
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 1: our word psyche in later centuries. He says this, you know,

617
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 1: you can find it all throughout Greek literature. It means

618
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: consciousness or mind or soul. But in the Iliad, He's like,

619
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 1: it looks like this is just referring to sort of

620
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: life fluids like blood or breath. The word thumos, he says,

621
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:33,279
Speaker 1: in later centuries, you look through Greek literature, and this

622
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: appears to me to mean something like emotional mind or soul.

623
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: In the Iliad, he says it means something more like motion,

624
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,240
Speaker 1: like when a soldier dies on the field, the thumos

625
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:47,760
Speaker 1: goes out of their arms and legs. The word noose,

626
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: which he says in later Greek literature, appears to means

627
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: something like conscious mind or consciousness. In the Iliad, he says,

628
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: it means like field of vision. So if you can

629
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 1: see something, it's in your noose. Kind of kind of freaky, huh,

630
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: And Zeus holds uh like Zeus holds a Disseus in

631
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: his noose. Yeah, he holds him in his eyes, and yeah, Zeus.

632
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: The news of Zeus. I mean it's no, no, no,

633
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:21,800
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's kind of creepy to imagine it.

634
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:24,080
Speaker 1: It is, no, it is, and I mean it's like

635
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:30,720
Speaker 1: it's all entirely practical and functional stuff. You know. It's like, literally,

636
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 1: this is what I see, this is how I interact

637
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 1: with it, and yet there is still like this mystical

638
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,879
Speaker 1: element to it where we're being fed instructions by these

639
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:43,879
Speaker 1: like deities. So it's it's it's it's fascinating counterpoint where

640
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: there's no agency. Yeah, and it goes straight back to

641
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:51,200
Speaker 1: Jane's idea of consciousness being a metaphor based on physical

642
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 1: space because or physical actions in physical space. Because think

643
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:59,720
Speaker 1: about how often in your consciousness you express conscious content

644
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: or conscious behavior with the metaphor of vision, like when

645
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 1: somebody is explaining something to you and you don't get

646
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:10,879
Speaker 1: it and then you finally consciously comprehend it, I see,

647
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 1: or or having vision, having a vision being like someone

648
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: that has foresight that can take a top down view

649
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: of something mentally, and oracles have a part to play

650
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:26,960
Speaker 1: at our story later. Yeah. So this also maybe calls

651
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 1: to mind for some of us the concept of like

652
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: soma or sarks or numa. You know, Uh, there's the

653
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: word soma that eventually comes to mean body, right, but

654
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: it's always in the plural and homer and it just

655
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:45,400
Speaker 1: means dead limbs of a corpse. And now there's a

656
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 1: drug called soma that gives you dead limbs like a corpse. Dole,

657
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: is that the name? For about three months? That's why

658
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: you were inning the whole past three months. I knew

659
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: it was so obviously, his his exploration of the iliad

660
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,839
Speaker 1: is just one of the many historical avenues that James

661
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: goes down in his book, there's no way for us

662
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 1: to explore all of them here if you want. If

663
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: you want more detail, you can read his book, or

664
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,839
Speaker 1: you can go listen to the two episodes that Robert

665
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 1: Lamb and I did on Stuff to Blow your Mind,

666
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:24,319
Speaker 1: where we we go a lot more into We still

667
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:26,760
Speaker 1: don't cover everything, but a lot of the different examples

668
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 1: he discusses from history. Some of the other things he

669
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: brings up are, for example, the theocratic organization of ancient society.

670
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 1: When you look at the rulers of many ancient kingdoms,

671
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 1: it is just almost ubiquitous that the king is a

672
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 1: god or a representative of a god. Now what if

673
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: instead of thinking about that metaphorically or as some kind

674
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: of tool of social control, we just took it literally

675
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: and said, Okay, what they're saying about the role of

676
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: the king is correct. The God tells the king what

677
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 1: to do, and then the king commands the people. We

678
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: are all ruled by this non dominant temboro lobe, exactly

679
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: the king's right hemisphere, or if the king was right

680
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 1: handed left handed, the yeah, the non dominant hemisphere of

681
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 1: the king is presenting to the king as a god

682
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 1: telling the king what to do, and that is being

683
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: interpreted by the king's dominant hemisphere as instructions that must

684
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:25,439
Speaker 1: be carried out and delivered on his commands to the people.

685
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 1: And if that's that's the case, there's another interesting twist here.

686
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 1: If that's the case, it explains why God's often only

687
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: appear to the person they're interacting with, right person they're commanding. Yeah,

688
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 1: so think about this. In the history of religions, early

689
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 1: religions seem to have a lot of direct interaction with

690
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 1: idols and with God experiences directly. I mean, if you

691
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:56,320
Speaker 1: read about the religious phenomenology of the most ancient religions

692
00:41:56,360 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: in the world, people talk constantly about conversations with the gods,

693
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: where the gods tell them what to do, and they

694
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: talk about going to see the gods. Oftentimes these are

695
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: represented as idols, like and part of Jane's theory is

696
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 1: that idols where things created to just help people trigger

697
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: their hallucinations when they wanted information, they could put themselves

698
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: themselves in an altered state of consciousness by interacting with

699
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 1: these idols that would get the hallucinations going. Now you

700
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: see that and then you see this transition to other

701
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 1: kinds of religion. It's not that people used to be

702
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: more religious and now they're less religious. Religion just seems

703
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: to be a very different kind of thing later on.

704
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 1: So in the last two thousand years or so, you

705
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,800
Speaker 1: start to see these religions based on things like faith

706
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 1: and dogma, which, if you imagine a bicameral world, even

707
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: though everybody's believing in gods, what's the role for something

708
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: like faith in there, Like, you don't need to be

709
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: told to believe in a doctrine or something. It's just

710
00:42:57,680 --> 00:42:59,839
Speaker 1: like you're talking to the gods all the time. There's

711
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:04,399
Speaker 1: no need for faith, and you're doing what they say instantly. Yeah,

712
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 1: faith sort of inherently incorporates the idea of overcoming doubt exactly,

713
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 1: and especially law written law. This is a big thing

714
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 1: for James where he talks about how one of the

715
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:20,279
Speaker 1: major factors precipitating the transition from the bicameral mind to

716
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: the conscious mind is well. One thing he points out calamity.

717
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:27,359
Speaker 1: So there will be these widespread disasters in the late

718
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: Bronze Age collapse and all that that caused problems in

719
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,280
Speaker 1: the way society was working that sort of put pressures

720
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: on people and forced them to find new ways to

721
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:38,879
Speaker 1: structure their minds in order to live. But the other

722
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: major influence he highlights is literature, and literature would include

723
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: written law. Think about how the presence of a written

724
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: law would undermine your relationship with the gods that tell

725
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 1: you what to do. Yeah. If there's any kind of

726
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 1: conflict there, where which side do you choose? Yeah? And

727
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:00,400
Speaker 1: so he he actually argues that there were probably going

728
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: to be these periods where, say, within one particular religious tradition,

729
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: there would be a conflict between the conscious people who

730
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: are trying to practice the conscious version of that religion

731
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: and the bicameral people who are trying to practice the

732
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: bicameral version of that religion. He gives one example from

733
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: uh from the Old Testament where he says, you know,

734
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: there are these passages in the Old Testament and in

735
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,320
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible where it says you really should not

736
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 1: tolerate anybody who has an obe. What does that mean

737
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: this word obe? And he says that what he thinks

738
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: this word means is like familiar spirit, meaning that there

739
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 1: could have been at the time a brotherhood of conscious

740
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:43,320
Speaker 1: priests who are trying to enforce the conscious version of

741
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: the religion and saw the people who were trying to

742
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 1: practice their bicameral hallucinated voice version of the religion as

743
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:54,839
Speaker 1: blasphemous and and causing trouble within their their control over

744
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: what faith in doctrine was. Does this tie into monotheism

745
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: at that point as well? Yeah, it would be hard

746
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 1: to have monotheism under bicameraality. You could imagine that if

747
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: the bicameral world transitioning into a conscious world, you would

748
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:13,359
Speaker 1: probably see a concurrent transition away from polytheism and towards monotheism,

749
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 1: which kind of does line up with the timeline we see.

750
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 1: So you can see how fascinating this is and how

751
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: easily this becomes a very very deep rabbit hole. But

752
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we did not point out

753
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,160
Speaker 1: that there is also a lot of criticism here. Sure,

754
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 1: I mean, there are there are tons of reasons to

755
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: doubt this. I mean, one would just be to say, well, okay,

756
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:41,920
Speaker 1: he puts a lot of interesting evidence on the table,

757
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: but uh, a statement, this radical, you know, hypothesis, this

758
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 1: this radical doesn't really get anywhere until it makes predictions

759
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 1: about things yet unknown that we find out are in

760
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 1: fact correct, and so I would say has not yet

761
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 1: met that burden. I don't think it has predicted much

762
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: that we've discovered. Oh yeah, it's true. One thing that

763
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,360
Speaker 1: might be interesting would be if we discover whole cases

764
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: of ancient documents that we've never found before. You know,

765
00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: archaeologists turn up ancient literature is previously undiscovered, and we

766
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: find a transition along the lines of what he claims

767
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: is there for the Iliad and the Odyssey. So if

768
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: we see you know, uh, four thousand year old literature

769
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:27,880
Speaker 1: or you know, year old literature having all these words

770
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:30,879
Speaker 1: that later on we know in these languages mean things

771
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,879
Speaker 1: about consciousness and in context do not mean anything about consciousness,

772
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:37,880
Speaker 1: I'd say that's a good that's a good prediction. Confirmed

773
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:40,360
Speaker 1: that we're seeing more things line up with the timeline

774
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: of literature not reflecting consciousness and then later reflecting consciousness.

775
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 1: Why there's no effort to do that kind of analysis,

776
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,479
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I've seen some people try

777
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: to look at other ancient works of literature and say,

778
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:58,120
Speaker 1: you know what, how much introspective content is there? But

779
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 1: I don't know that anybody's really gone that deep on

780
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: it yet. I mean, there might be a study out

781
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:08,439
Speaker 1: there I'm not aware of. But there's also there's also

782
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: a heap of not to make a heap problem, but

783
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: there's there's also a heap of differing constraints. If we're

784
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:19,800
Speaker 1: talking literature of that age, then it may be radically

785
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:23,080
Speaker 1: different in one place for entirely unrelated reasons. Well, right,

786
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:26,360
Speaker 1: I mean, so think about the alternatives. Let's just assume

787
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 1: that the bicameral hypothesis is not correct and that people

788
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: have always been conscious. And yet at the same time,

789
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:37,680
Speaker 1: let's just take Jane's as as correct in his argument

790
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:41,760
Speaker 1: that those words in the Iliad don't reflect any conscious content.

791
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 1: What would explain that? That's an interesting problem in itself.

792
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: How come these conscious people creating an ancient work of

793
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:52,840
Speaker 1: literature did not put any consciousness into the work. That's

794
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: you know, that's a fascinating question. I've got to ban

795
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 1: myself from using the word fascinating for ease the rest

796
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 1: of this episode and in this in this exploration, I

797
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,320
Speaker 1: guess one of the big questions people would run into is, okay,

798
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 1: is fascinating? Even the people who criticize James and disagree

799
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 1: with the idea. Say, wow, what a oh, I did

800
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:19,280
Speaker 1: it again? What a what an interesting that MAT's word?

801
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:25,440
Speaker 1: What an interesting what? What an interesting proposal? What a

802
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 1: brain raking proposal. There we go, You've got the double oo.

803
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: That's pretty rare. Got to earn that one. But to

804
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: what end? Where does this lead us? What are the implications?

805
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 1: How does this exist in the modern world? But not

806
00:48:43,239 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: so fast been first we're gonna hear from our sponsor.

807
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 1: We've returned some of the implications that are pretty clear.

808
00:48:55,840 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 1: Here is the idea that religion is related to internal hallucinations,

809
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: which may may seem offensive to some people. At this time.

810
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: We're not advocating this, we are saying it's the argument, right. Well,

811
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: I mean, James wouldn't necessarily say that modern religions are

812
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:15,799
Speaker 1: related to internal hallucinations. I think you would have said

813
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: that the ancient religions of the bicameral people's. But as

814
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 1: as as we were talking about earlier, modern religion is

815
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,400
Speaker 1: just very different, I mean just descriptively very different from

816
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 1: the kinds of religion that you would imagine would have

817
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:33,319
Speaker 1: been practiced by bicameral people. And what are what are

818
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 1: some what are some vestiges if they exist. Well, one

819
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: thing that would be quite obvious that James point out

820
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 1: points out is the condition of schizophrenia. So schizophrenia is

821
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: often characterized by the perception of auditory hallucinations. People hear voices,

822
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 1: and they hear voices with great lucidity. Often it's a

823
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:56,440
Speaker 1: lot of times it's hard for people who have never

824
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:59,759
Speaker 1: had an auditory hallucination to imagine that you could hear

825
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 1: a voice that isn't really there and hear it as

826
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:06,880
Speaker 1: clearly and as you know, as as I don't know

827
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:12,319
Speaker 1: what the word as really as as absolutely concretely as

828
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:14,399
Speaker 1: the voice of somebody in the room. But it can.

829
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 1: I've read tons of reports that can absolutely feel like that.

830
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: Auditory hallucinations can be incredibly convincing and powerful and can

831
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:27,359
Speaker 1: have this kind of sway over behavior. Many other things

832
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 1: about schizophrenia do seem to line up with some of

833
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:34,439
Speaker 1: the phenomenology of what Jane's imagines would be the bicameral mind.

834
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: So there's a sort of loss of the ability to

835
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: narrotize the self. Sometimes, uh, sometimes people with schizophrenia have

836
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:47,360
Speaker 1: difficulty imagining the like like the draw a person test.

837
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:51,200
Speaker 1: There's a test sometimes used to diagnose schizophrenia, where um,

838
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 1: people who have the condition have difficulty drawing a person.

839
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,760
Speaker 1: Then then there's the additional thing, for instance, the idea

840
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 1: that in some cases people suffering from schizophrenia are able

841
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: to tickle themselves. Did you hear that one? No, I

842
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:09,080
Speaker 1: haven't heard that. But that's that seems like it couldn't

843
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:12,240
Speaker 1: maybe be compatible with the bi cameral hypothesis just because

844
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 1: of the division between the hemispheres of the brain that

845
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: would be implied there. And what's another strange thing about

846
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: this is that regardless of whether you agree with this

847
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:26,960
Speaker 1: idea or whether you disagree, there is no denying that

848
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:31,200
Speaker 1: it is influenced the modern world, even if it's untrue

849
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 1: in very strange and meaningful ways. If part of the

850
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: argument is based on literature and art, the the concept

851
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: of bi cameralism itself has been driving literature and art well.

852
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 1: Not only that, we've talked a little bit about how

853
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: this hypothesis could be used to explain the evolution of religion,

854
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:53,279
Speaker 1: I suppose, but I don't think we've really touched on

855
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: the idea that when those voices went away, it was negative,

856
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,759
Speaker 1: it caused anguish ramatic And this is another thing that

857
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:06,240
Speaker 1: ties into schizophrenia. I mean, we often think about schizophrenia

858
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:09,240
Speaker 1: as a sense of being abandoned, you know, by your God.

859
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean, like I was saying, with schizophrenia,

860
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: often people um don't necessarily perceive all of the voices

861
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 1: that they hear during schizophrenic hallucinations as negative. Like sometimes

862
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: they see the voices as helpful, or sometimes they see

863
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:27,279
Speaker 1: them as comforting. Other times they do see them as

864
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:30,719
Speaker 1: negative or very distressing. Um As, I would imagine in

865
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: some cases, the bicameral gods could be like the gods

866
00:52:34,960 --> 00:52:37,520
Speaker 1: in this case would have been your own mind, So

867
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 1: they would have been as powerful and as various as

868
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 1: people's own minds tend to be. So you could have

869
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:46,400
Speaker 1: voices that would be very smart and very helpful. You

870
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: could have voices that are not so smart and not

871
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:51,800
Speaker 1: so helpful. You could have voices that are illogical and

872
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:54,720
Speaker 1: commanding you to do bad things. You could have voices

873
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:57,279
Speaker 1: that are nice, you could have voices that are mean

874
00:52:57,440 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: and critical. I mean, just think about how much in

875
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: a visuality there is in the way our our minds

876
00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: are built. And you can imagine that same thing in

877
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:08,800
Speaker 1: the relationship between the bicameral god and the bicameral person.

878
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: But anyway, if you find your voices helpful and comforting,

879
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 1: when they go away, this can be very distressing to you.

880
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 1: And James pulls together a lot of evidence to suggest

881
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:22,320
Speaker 1: that when people's gods vanished, when they made this transition

882
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 1: from bicamerality the consciousness, it was traumatic for them. Like

883
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 1: he cites all this ancient literature of people saying I

884
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:31,799
Speaker 1: want my God's back. He even cites an example from

885
00:53:31,840 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 1: the Psalms where people are saying, my heart pants for you, Oh,

886
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: God's where are you come back? It makes me think

887
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:41,919
Speaker 1: of the fall, the fall of Man of Adam and Eve.

888
00:53:42,600 --> 00:53:45,320
Speaker 1: Let's I was explained, is like, that's when it happened, right, Like,

889
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:48,720
Speaker 1: that was literally what caused us to be abandoned. Before

890
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: that we were all one. It was that he calls

891
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:52,960
Speaker 1: it the el aheim. I believe the great ones that

892
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:55,879
Speaker 1: the elheim is one of the words in the Hebrew

893
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:59,239
Speaker 1: Bible used for the name of God. It's usually translated

894
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 1: in modern English translations in a singular for God, but

895
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:06,520
Speaker 1: it he he argues that really in the ancient context

896
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,439
Speaker 1: it should be translated as God's It is a plural word,

897
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:13,040
Speaker 1: but the way I understand it, it could mean singular

898
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:16,320
Speaker 1: or plural um and he what just says we should

899
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 1: translate it plural, you know how how it would be

900
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:21,319
Speaker 1: in the ancient context, and it's people talking about how

901
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,120
Speaker 1: they want the voices back. Yeah, And just this gets

902
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:26,239
Speaker 1: into one tiny thing that we've covered before on this show,

903
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:31,480
Speaker 1: which is the possibilities of hallucinogens physical the eating of

904
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:35,440
Speaker 1: substances in early man and how possibly that could have

905
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: played a role in the connection or a separation, you

906
00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 1: know what, a melding of the mind in a way

907
00:54:43,120 --> 00:54:46,640
Speaker 1: because of things like psilocybin. Yeah, Terence McKenna, right, yeah, yeah,

908
00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:48,720
Speaker 1: food of the gods, Terence McKenna. Some of these ideas

909
00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: are put forth there. It's fascinating stuff. Ter Grandpa Terry

910
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:57,400
Speaker 1: talking on the ranch telling everybody what's going on. I

911
00:54:57,520 --> 00:54:59,879
Speaker 1: wish you guys have invited Nolan I to hang out

912
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:02,279
Speaker 1: with him when you were when you were hanging out

913
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: and learning questions. No, I never hung out with Terence.

914
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: That would have been great. But it just makes me sorry.

915
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: It just makes me think, I wonder if there is

916
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:14,840
Speaker 1: something there, you know, if we just forsake of argument.

917
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:17,960
Speaker 1: Take that the bicamera roll theories are correct, and you

918
00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:20,720
Speaker 1: have these two separate hemispheres, and then somehow you're introducing

919
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 1: these chemicals that are causing other types of hallucinations physical

920
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:30,439
Speaker 1: chemical hallucinations. Will check it out. Uh. Philip K. Dick,

921
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 1: the sci fi writer, he was known to dabble in

922
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:38,920
Speaker 1: the hallucinogenic arts, shall we say. In fact, I think

923
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:41,400
Speaker 1: he kind of like had this like crazy flophouse that

924
00:55:41,520 --> 00:55:43,360
Speaker 1: he owned where people would just kind of hippies and

925
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 1: stuff would come through and sleep on the floor and

926
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:48,000
Speaker 1: they would share their drugs and he you know, there

927
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 1: was a period in his life where he just kind

928
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 1: of existed, I believe, in a constant hallucinogenic state. And

929
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:58,840
Speaker 1: he absolutely adored Jane's book, And in fact, he wrote

930
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:02,719
Speaker 1: him a letter personally, um, expressing this love of the

931
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: book and how it really helped him explain some things. Um.

932
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:08,239
Speaker 1: There's a a trilogy. I think he didn't finish one

933
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: of them, but there was a trilogy of books, one

934
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:13,640
Speaker 1: of which is called Valas that Philip K. Dick wrote,

935
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:17,320
Speaker 1: where the character's name is horse lover Fat which horse

936
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:21,399
Speaker 1: lover um I believe Philip is translated to mean horse lover,

937
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 1: and dick is the German word for fat. So he

938
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,080
Speaker 1: basically is writing about himself, and in this book he

939
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: is narrating it as like an omniscient narrator, but then

940
00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:35,120
Speaker 1: sometimes switches to where he's talking about himself as though

941
00:56:35,200 --> 00:56:37,759
Speaker 1: he's the same person that he's narrating about. And this

942
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:40,120
Speaker 1: the one big part of the story is based on

943
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:41,480
Speaker 1: if the real thing that happened to him, where he

944
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:45,359
Speaker 1: claims that a pink laser from outer space shot into

945
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:49,799
Speaker 1: his brain and gave him knowledge of a strangulated um

946
00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: in testicle in his son that could have potentially killed him,

947
00:56:55,000 --> 00:56:58,719
Speaker 1: and the knowledge that he received allowed him to intervene

948
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 1: and save his son's life. Um and from that point on,

949
00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:05,440
Speaker 1: you know, again, psychedelics, a lot of a lot of

950
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: that at play. He claimed to hear these voices. So

951
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:10,960
Speaker 1: what do you say in the letter? It's a long letter,

952
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 1: but I'll just read you a couple of parts where

953
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 1: he says what I did not expect, however, was to

954
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:19,760
Speaker 1: find myself under the jurisdiction of an ancient god who

955
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:23,600
Speaker 1: commanded me first this way and then that, extricating me

956
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:26,560
Speaker 1: from a highly stressful situation I had found myself in

957
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: no theory of my own, and for three years I

958
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:31,320
Speaker 1: have studied in labor to come up with a theory

959
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 1: or by anyone else assumingly means anyone else but you

960
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: talking to Jane. Uh could account for the exquisitely beautiful voice,

961
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 1: the inner voice, which I heard off and on for

962
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:45,680
Speaker 1: eleven months. At first I told my wife that the

963
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:48,480
Speaker 1: Elheim we're talking to me. Later, during one of my

964
00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: many hypnogogic dialogues between me and this articulating entity, it

965
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: also communicated in dreams. In written form, it informed me

966
00:57:56,960 --> 00:58:01,840
Speaker 1: that Jesus was a name for Zeus Zagreus. However, in

967
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:04,240
Speaker 1: most dreams early on, it appeared in the form of

968
00:58:04,400 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: Sybil of Apollo, but with a third eye and lateral

969
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: lens form by which she could see and hence no everything.

970
00:58:11,840 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 1: He then wraps it up with this. Let me say

971
00:58:14,520 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: in conclusion that your superb book has now made it

972
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 1: possible for me to discuss my experience as openly without

973
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:24,160
Speaker 1: being merely called schizophrenic. That's awesome. He was even a

974
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 1: great writer of letters, and it's heavy stuff, and of

975
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:32,280
Speaker 1: course we were talking about modern literature. We would be remiss.

976
00:58:32,440 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 1: You can read that letter in full online, and UH,

977
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:38,919
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we did not at least

978
00:58:38,960 --> 00:58:46,040
Speaker 1: briefly mentioned Westworld and Westworld encounters some topics like this. Now,

979
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:52,280
Speaker 1: given the shows, given our mutual agreement between us as

980
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 1: host and between our audience, we are not going to

981
00:58:56,280 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 1: spoil West World for you. But if you enjoy science

982
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 1: fiction and you enjoyed this episode, we do highly recommend

983
00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 1: that you consider checking it out. If you can afford

984
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 1: an HBO subscription or no, friend, let me let me

985
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 1: spoil it. John Wayne is God. Everybody knows that, and hey,

986
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 1: hit us up. We'll share our HBO Go accounts or

987
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:22,480
Speaker 1: at least our moms. So in the course of our

988
00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:25,880
Speaker 1: exploration today, there's another big thing we have to mention.

989
00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:29,600
Speaker 1: We have touched on a controversial topic, the concept of

990
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:35,240
Speaker 1: hearing voices sometimes called auditory hallucinations. And if you are

991
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 1: listening to this and you feel that you are suffering

992
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:43,440
Speaker 1: from a condition related to this or similar to this, UH,

993
00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:47,800
Speaker 1: please know that you are not alone, you are not isolated,

994
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:51,000
Speaker 1: and there are organizations around the world that are waiting

995
00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:54,840
Speaker 1: to support you. To help you, you can call Lines

996
00:59:54,920 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 1: for Life at one d to seven, three eight to

997
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: five five. You can also check out If you are

998
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:04,680
Speaker 1: someone who both feels you hear voices and you feel

999
01:00:04,720 --> 01:00:06,880
Speaker 1: at peace with this, or you want to explore it more,

1000
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:11,480
Speaker 1: you can also check out organizations like the International Hearing

1001
01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 1: Voices Network. Guys, I'm hearing a voice right now. It's

1002
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:18,400
Speaker 1: super producer Paul, and he's saying, Wow, you guys have

1003
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 1: been recording for like an hour and fifteen minutes already.

1004
01:00:22,280 --> 01:00:24,720
Speaker 1: I didn't hear that. I just Oh, you didn't hear that.

1005
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:29,400
Speaker 1: I don't think he's talking again, are you? I just

1006
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 1: heard that the crocodile must be fed a bunch of times.

1007
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 1: What's that? Man? I don't know. I have a voice

1008
01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:41,080
Speaker 1: just whispering zanzibar at all times, at all times. Even now,

1009
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:44,960
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to focus. I can really specific form

1010
01:00:45,040 --> 01:00:50,439
Speaker 1: of tenitis. It just sounds like zanzibaritis. Aside, Joe, thank

1011
01:00:50,520 --> 01:00:53,680
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on the show. Than a

1012
01:00:53,720 --> 01:00:55,680
Speaker 1: lot of fun. This is a very nice stove tailed

1013
01:00:55,680 --> 01:01:00,160
Speaker 1: to our earlier episode with Joe as a gnosticism. Oh

1014
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:03,400
Speaker 1: that one was fun too, So if you enjoyed this episode,

1015
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:07,360
Speaker 1: please check out our earlier works on nasticism. Joe, you

1016
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:09,880
Speaker 1: were also on the show when we talked about internet

1017
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:15,120
Speaker 1: trolling and shills. Oh yeah, paid government online manipulators. Yeah,

1018
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's become a little more relevant since we

1019
01:01:17,880 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 1: first talked about it. Huh, that's fake news. So it's

1020
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,800
Speaker 1: fake news. Um. One thing that is not fake, however,

1021
01:01:26,280 --> 01:01:29,760
Speaker 1: is stuff to blow your mind. If you have checked

1022
01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: out our show, if you like our show even a

1023
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 1: little bit, you're going to love these guys and the

1024
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: topics that they explore. So don't delay. As soon as

1025
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:42,720
Speaker 1: this podcast ends, click over, check out Stuff to blow

1026
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:45,880
Speaker 1: your mind. Get a deep dive into the bi camera mind. Yeah.

1027
01:01:45,880 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: I was on a very short trip last week, um,

1028
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:52,280
Speaker 1: and I listened to your episode on It and the Deadlights,

1029
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 1: and I really dug it and I very much enjoyed it. Well.

1030
01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:59,440
Speaker 1: Shout out to my co workers Robert Lammer Christian Sacer. No,

1031
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:01,280
Speaker 1: that was two news on there. But they do a

1032
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:03,400
Speaker 1: great just great. They talk about like you know, Penny

1033
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:05,640
Speaker 1: Wise and the deity from it and kind of cat

1034
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: they couch it in terms of you know, predatory behavior

1035
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 1: and in in nature, and it was you know, it

1036
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:17,560
Speaker 1: was really really great. I really enjoyed it. Did you

1037
01:02:17,640 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: just spoil it? For me, I think Stephen spoiled kid.

1038
01:02:22,240 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. We saw it together. Come on, we

1039
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:28,160
Speaker 1: did see it together. It's true. So the voices in

1040
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:32,240
Speaker 1: our respective heads are compelling us to end today's episode, However,

1041
01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 1: not the show. We'd like to hear what you think.

1042
01:02:36,160 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: Is there some sand to this argument? How much a

1043
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 1: grain to grains a heap? I'm glad you went there.

1044
01:02:44,400 --> 01:02:47,360
Speaker 1: Anything you want to you want to talk about anything

1045
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:49,680
Speaker 1: we've covered on this episode, you can find us on Facebook.

1046
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:52,160
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter, where we're conspiracy. Stuff

1047
01:02:52,360 --> 01:02:56,680
Speaker 1: is a pile smaller than a heap. I feel like

1048
01:02:56,840 --> 01:03:00,560
Speaker 1: it is, intuitively, but I don't you know, I don't

1049
01:03:00,640 --> 01:03:02,800
Speaker 1: know who the authority would be on that. You know what,

1050
01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:05,840
Speaker 1: If you guys are an authority out there, let us know.

1051
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:08,600
Speaker 1: Send us an email. Please let us know the difference.

1052
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 1: It's it's killing us. Uh. You can send us an email.

1053
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:13,920
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com