Greek Zombies

Field: Psychology (Social Sciences)

Abstract This paper explores the possibility that the human mind underwent substantial changes in recent history. Assuming that consciousness is a substantial trait of the mind, the paper focuses on the suggestion made by Julian Jaynes that the Mycenean Greeks had a "bicameral" mind instead of a conscious one. The suggestion is commonly dismissed as patently absurd, for instance by critics such as Ned Block. A closer examination of the intuitions involved, considered from different theoretical angles (social constructivism, idealism, eliminativism, realism), reveals that the idea of 'Greek zombies' should be taken more seriously than is commonly assumed. Keywords: ConsciousnessFringe MindsJulian JaynesNed Block Notes Notes [1] From "If You Had Super Ears," by John, pupil of Y3/4 at St. Bartholomew's Catholic Primary School (Rainhill, Merseyside, UK). Posted on the Internet as part of the school's poetry project; see http://www.st-bartholomews.st-helens.sch.uk/childrensown/poems.htm. [2] See Dennett (Citation1986 Citation1991) and Block (Citation1981 Citation1994 Citation1995). For an overview of Jaynes' work and its reception, see the website of the Julian Jaynes Society at http://www.julianjaynes.org. An exception to the unfavorable reception in philosophy, besides Dennett, is David Johnson, whose work explicitly aligns with Jaynes'; see, e.g., Johnson (Citation2003). Jaynes' established repute is now such that the merest association with his views causes suspicion. For instance, when Sarnecki and Sponheimer (Citation2002) mention Jaynes in their review of Mithen (Citation1996), the reader senses palpable implication: "It would be unfair, we think, to compare Mithen's work with Julian Jaynes' Origins of consciousness [sic]," so the authors submit in a footnote, and they continue, "but it is worth noting that … " which does little to improve Mithen's case (p. 184, n. 2). [3] Notice that Bermúdez' proposal and mine are not necessarily in conflict. By extending the standard model of mind to cover fringe minds, Bermúdez also changes the overall framework in terms of which mind is conceived. In particular, in order to be able to describe the thought processes of nonlinguistic creatures, Bermúdez needs to avail himself of a notion of 'mental content' or 'concept' for such creatures, the identity conditions for which appear to be substantially less stringent than those for concepts as ordinarily understood. My converse approach will involve a similar reconsideration of the notion of mental content, as explained in §7. [4] Jaynes also discussed archaeological evidence for similar developments in America (Olmec and Maya cultures in Mexico, Incas and other Andean civilizations) and China. [5] In my view, Block seriously misrepresents Jaynes when he says that "it is obvious that 'consciousness' in the sense in which it is supposed to have been invented by the Greeks is something like a theory of consciousness in roughly the phenomenal sense" (Block, Citation1994, p. 217). Although the matter is difficult to judge because of Jaynes' idiosyncratic view of ('generic') consciousness, I think it is much more apt to say that Jaynes was interested in the emergence of something like A-consciousness in roughly Block's sense of the word. Accordingly, my concern in this paper will be mainly with A-consciousness and not with "a theory of consciousness in roughly the phenomenal sense", nor indeed with P-consciousness as such. [6] First, because it appears to be a matter of definition for Block. In his discussion of A-consciousness, Block explicitly says that he wants "to allow that nonlinguistic animals, for example chimps, have A-conscious states", and he adopts a definition to fit the purpose (1995, p. 231). Secondly, without independent motivation Block's claim about "much lower animals" simply begs the question against Greek zombies. In addition, notice that the selective reactivity or "simple thinking" of nonlinguistic animals that Block seems to envisage here is of the sort that Jaynes explicitly excludes from consciousness (Jaynes 1976/Citation1990, ch. 1). Notice that the notion of consciousness as described by Jaynes (mind-space and the analog I) is in many respects a fair approximation of the notion of A-consciousness as described by Block. Mind-space is the space in which mental contents are explicitly presented for introspection, deliberation and planning of action by the analog I, or in Block's terms, where we find contents poised for use as a premise in reasoning and for rational control of action and speech. [7] The claim that consciousness is a social construction has also been made by other social constructivists such as George Herbert Mead (Citation1934), Lev Vygotsky (Citation1962), and Rom Harré (Citation1986). For clarity and convenience, however, I concentrate my discussion on Jaynes. [8] Would it be possible to play baseball accidentally without having the concept of BASEBALL? It is certainly conceivable that a group of people would go through (at least some of) the motions of a baseball game, but I think they would not be playing baseball. Not, that is, until the moment when one of the group says, "Let's do that again," where 'that' is followed by an articulate description of what makes something a game of baseball (presumably including at least part of the rules of the game). At that moment, we may say, the concept of BASEBALL has been introduced and baseball is born. [9] Jaynes' approach to concepts is purely extensional. "Concepts are simply classes of behaviorally equivalent things," Jaynes said (1976, p. 31), which places them firmly outside the head (More precisely, they are outside the head, but they are type-individuated in relational terms with reference to the user's behavioral repertoire.) According to Jaynes, our discriminative aptitude with regard to such classes is partly acquired in experiential development and partly based on innate neural structures. The neurally-based aptitudes correspond to "root concepts" that are "prior to experience" and "allow behavior to occur at all" (p. 31). Jaynes' line on concepts is consistent with his treatment of "reactivity," that is, the mind's aptitude to respond to the environment adequately and discriminatively. According to Jaynes, no consciousness is needed for this ability, nor indeed for the learning processes by which the aptitudes are acquired or modified. Moreover, a similarly "automated" account is given of "simple thinking" and making judgments. As Jaynes put it, in many cases "one does one's thinking before one knows what one is to think about. The important part of the matter is the instruction [in an experimental set-up], which allows the whole business to go off automatically" (p. 39). [10] As pointed out earlier, Bermúdez (Citation2003) works with a notion of 'mental content' or 'concept' for prelinguistic creatures, the identity conditions for which appear to be substantially less stringent than those for concepts as ordinarily understood. This suggests at least a functional equivalent of the distinction between A-concepts and B-concepts, which merits further study. Notice that the line of reasoning proposed here also undermines the straightforward application of a 'language of thought' hypothesis to B-minds. Unless the standard notion of 'language' is reconsidered to match B-conceptual possibilities, it is not clear what a mental language in B-minds could be supposed to do. Interestingly, an analogous reconsideration of the notion of language has also been argued by David Olson (Citation1994), based on work in developmental and cultural psychology. Olson's point is that our common conception of language (including our notions of intention, meaning, concept, and the like) is literate to the bone, which makes its application to other forms of communication such as pristine orality highly suspect. In accordance with this analysis, Olson urges a sharp contrast between the modern literate mind on the one hand, and on the other hand the minds of preliterate children and of preliterate cultures. [11] Block's functional distinction between A-consciousness and P-consciousness is targeted on explaining relatively isolated, abnormal phenomena such as blindsight (A-consciousness without P-consciousness), and brain damaged animals (P-consciousness without A-consciousness). Now, P-conscious Greek A-zombies would structurally and normally be like these brain damaged animals, or, to change the image, they would structurally and normally suffer from massive, pan-modal 'inverted blindsight'—we would be happy to think of them as having P-consciousness, yet they could not be said ever to have rational access to their conscious contents. This certainly strikes me as a type of mind substantially different from ours. Moreover, it makes me wonder whether the alleged possession of P-consciousness could ever be empirically demonstrated. [12] See Kant (Citation1781/1787), Kuhn (Citation1962), and Putnam (Citation1981). [13] As mentioned earlier Jaynes explicitly denied that consciousness is necessary for thinking (1976/Citation1990, pp. 36ff). Moreover, in the afterword added in the 1990 edition of his book, Jaynes suggested that what he has called the analog I is closely related to the Kantian transcendental ego. [14] For a devastating account of the cultural biases involved in attempts to draw the boundary, see Gould (Citation1981).