Julian Jaynes | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1920-02-27)February 27, 1920 |
| Died | November 21, 1997(1997-11-21) (aged 77) |
| Education | |
| Occupation(s) | Psychologist, writer |
Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist atYale andPrinceton for nearly 25 years, best known for his 1976 bookThe Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.[1] His career was dedicated to the problem ofconsciousness: "the difference between what others see of us and our sense of our inner selves and the deep feelings that sustain it. ... Men have been conscious of the problem of consciousness almost since consciousness began."[2] Jaynes's solution touches on many disciplines, includingneuroscience,linguistics,psychology,archeology, history, religion andanalysis ofancient texts.
Jaynes was born and lived inWest Newton, Massachusetts, son of Julian Clifford Jaynes (1854–1922), aUnitarian minister, and Clara Bullard Jaynes (1884–1980). He had an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Robert. The family had a summer home inKeppoch, Prince Edward Island, which was a place Jaynes loved, and which gave him a Canadian connection for his entire life.[3]
In the summer of 1939 he registered to attendHarvard University but took a scholarship fromMcGill University, where he graduated in 1941 with a bachelor's degree in psychology, and then began graduate studies at theUniversity of Toronto to learn more about the brain. His studies were interrupted during theSecond World War: because of hisUnitarian principles, he applied for and received official recognition as aconscientious objector, but refused to comply with theU.S. government's law forpacifists; Jaynes spent three years in thepenitentiary atLewisburg, Pennsylvania, working in the prison hospital.[4][5] On his release in 1946 he enrolled atYale University hoping that in animal behavior he would find clues to the beginnings of consciousness.[6] Jaynes received his master's degree in 1948, and then refused to accept his doctorate, again on a dispute of "principle" regarding educational credentials.[7] After Yale, Jaynes spent several years in England working as an actor and playwright.[8]
He returned to Yale in 1954, working as an Instructor and Lecturer until 1960, making significant contributions in the fields ofexperimental psychology,learning, andethology, and co-publishing some papers withFrank A. Beach. Jaynes had begun to turn his focus tocomparative psychology and thehistory of psychology, and in 1964 he became aresearch associate atPrinceton University. There he befriendedEdwin G. Boring, and with plenty of time to pursue the problem of consciousness, Princeton became his academic home until 1995.[9]
Jaynes had dedicated years of research in psychology to the problem of consciousness[10] and he had sought the roots of consciousness in the processes oflearning andcognition that animals and humans shared in common, in accord with prevailingevolutionary assumptions that dominated mid-20th century thinking.[3] He had established his reputation in the study ofanimal learning and naturalanimal behaviour, and in 1968 he lectured on the history ofcomparative psychology at theNational Science Foundation Summer Institute. In September 1969 he gave his first public address on his "new theory of consciousness" at the annual meeting of theAmerican Psychological Association.[11]
His "radical approach"[12] explained the phenomena ofintrospection as dependent on culture and language, especiallymetaphors, more than on the physiology of the brain. This was a challenge to mainstream assumptions of 20th century research, especially to those that justified looking for origins of consciousness in evolution. It was also a challenge to thebehaviorists, who, "under the tutelage ofJohn Watson, solved the problem of consciousness by ignoring it."[13] What they had 'ignored' were the problems ofintrospection and the weaknesses of introspectionist methods of 19th century psychologists. Those 20th century thinkers who questioned the existence of introspection never doubted the existence of senseperception, however; they clearly distinguished between the two.[14] On the other hand, in later years Jaynes's approach had become "radical" for emphasizing the distinction. Jaynes differed with those who ignored it, for exampleStuart Sutherland, who simply defined consciousness as 'awareness'.[15] Jaynes acknowledged that his whole argument was "contradictory to the usual and [...] superficial views of consciousness", and he insisted that "the most common error" people make "is to confuse consciousness with perception."[16]
But there can be no progress in the science of consciousness until careful distinctions have been made between what is introspectable and all the hosts of other neural abilities we have come to callcognition. Consciousness is not the same as cognition and should be sharply distinguished from it.[16]
In the years following, Jaynes talked more about how consciousness began, presenting "his talk [...] widely, as word of his slightly outrageous but tantalizing theory had spread."[17] In 1972 he had delivered a paper, "The Origin of Consciousness", at Cornell University, writing: "For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that only humans are conscious, and that we became so at some historical epoch after language was evolved."[18] This took Jaynes, as he put it, directly into "the earliest writings of mankind to see if we can find any hints as to when this important invention of consciousness might have occurred."[18] He went to ancient texts searching for early evidence of consciousness, and found what he believed to be evidence of remarkably recentvoice-hearing without consciousness. In thesemi-historical Greek epic theIliad Jaynes found "the earliest writing of men in a language that we can really comprehend, [which] when looked at objectively, reveals a very different mentality from our own."[19] In a 1978 interview,Richard Rhodes reported that Jaynes "took up the study ofGreek to traceGreek words for mind back to their origins. By the time he got to theIliad, the words had become concrete, but there is no word for mind in theIliad at all."[20]
Jaynes's one and only book, published in 1976, isThe Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The topic ofconsciousness – "the human ability to introspect"[21] – is introduced by reviewing prior efforts to explain its problematic nature: those efforts, as one of Jaynes's early critics has acknowledged, add up to a "spectacular history of failure".[22] Abandoning the assumption that consciousness is innate, Jaynes explains it instead as a learned behavior that "arises ... from language, and specifically from metaphor."[23] With this understanding, Jaynes then demonstrates that ancient texts and archeology can reveal a history of human mentality alongside the histories of other cultural products. His analysis of the evidence leads him not only to place the origin of consciousness during the2nd millennium BCE but also to hypothesize the existence of an older non-conscious "mentality that he calls the bicameral mind, referring to the brain's two hemispheres".[24]
After publishingThe Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes was frequently invited to speak at conferences and as a guest lecturer at other universities. In 1984, he was invited to give the plenary lecture at theWittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria. He gave six major lectures in 1985 and nine in 1986. He was awarded anhonorary PhD byRhode Island College in 1979 and another fromElizabethtown College in 1985.[3]
Jaynes wrote an extensive afterword for the 1990 edition of his book,[25] in which he addressed criticisms and clarified that his theory has four separate hypotheses: 1) consciousness is based on and accessed by language; 2) the non-consciousbicameral mind is based on verbal hallucinations; 3) the breakdown of bicameral mind precedes consciousness, but the dating is variable; 4) the 'double brain' of bicamerality is based on the twohemispheres of the cerebral cortex being organized differently from today'sfunctional lateralization. He also expanded on the impact of consciousness on imagination and memory, notions of theself, emotions, anxiety, guilt, and sexuality.
Jaynes died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital inCharlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on November 21, 1997. In 2006, his biographers Woodward and Tower reported that Jaynes "felt he had not truly succeeded" in his lifelong work because, in their words, "[h]e was right" about his feeling that "there were people who disagreed with him [who] had not really read his book or understood it."[26]
TheJulian Jaynes Society was founded by Marcel Kuijsten in 1997, shortly after Jaynes's death. The society has published a number of books on Julian Jaynes's theory including foreign-language editions of Julian Jaynes's theory in French, German, and Spanish. The society also maintains a member area, with articles, lectures, and interviews on Jaynes's theory.[27]
