From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Wed Nov 26 2003 - 14:00:41 GMT
Hi Mark, Platt, Bo
Mark:
Jaynes has made assumptions and inferences, therefore he does not know
at all. Indeed, as Platt indicates from his Campbell quote, in order to
know, one requires the products of thought; writing. As those who Jaynes
is discussing left no written evidence we do not know what they were
thinking or why they were thinking it.
Paul:
Actually, most of his "Origin of Consciousness" is spent analysing
Iliad, Odyssey, various pieces of Assyrian literature e.g. The Epic of
Gilgamesh, Babylonian cuneiform writing, The Old Testament, Hesiod's
"Works and Days," as well as figurines and pictorial records of the
period. His theory comes almost entirely from an interpretation of early
writing to speculate on the presence of consciousness of the people who
wrote it.
Mark 26-11-03: Hello Paul, Homer was not one man - Homer is the merging of a
whole era of poems and creativity stretching back into prehistory. Writing
requires the manipulation of a symbolic language, and that is an intellectual
process is it not? Therefore, while society may have been dominated by social
patterns, Human intellect was evolving also, and well into prehistory.
I do not feel we need Jaynes' theories to support the MoQ - reading the
Iliad, etc. for oneself does that?
Paul:
That said, of course Jaynes' theory is speculation and, as I've said
before, it is of no concern to me whether or not anyone thinks it is a
good theory in its entirety. As an interpretation of ancient texts, it
just offers historical support to the MOQ assertion that intellect
evolved from society, and more specifically, agrees with Pirsig's
statements about language such as this one quoted in Ant's Textbook:
"[Intellectual patterns] have their genesis in society the same way that
society has its genesis in biology. Without biology there is no society.
Without society there is no intellect since there would be no one to
talk to anyone else and thus no language to speak and thus nothing to
contain the ideas." (Pirsig, 2003)
Mark 26-11-03: Language is the manipulation of symbols and therefore an
intellectual development? I see the Human intellect merging with social usage like
hills merging with valleys - there is no clear and definitive demarcation,
rather a gentle rise away from each other. And i completely accept that intellect
developed from social patterns, even Plato acknowledged that!
Paul:
Something else I found interesting but haven't taken further is that
there is also agreement between Jaynes' speculation on the relationship
between language and the two sides of the brain and something Pirsig
says in a letter to Bo (published in the Essay section).
"I had always assumed that this blockage of direct quality perception
was social, but in Mexico a few years ago I talked to a neurologist who
argued that it was physiological. She said that recent experiments are
showing that the right side of the brain, the "artistic" side, filters
all experience before it reaches the left "rational" side of the brain.
This would concur with the MOQ assertion that value precedes concepts in
human understanding. I have read elsewhere that the left rational side
of the brain can never perceive the right brain as an object, but only
receive messages from it. This would explain why everyone knows that
something is better than other things but no one can define what this
betterness is. All they get are the quality messages but they don't know
where the quality messages are coming from. This is not to say that the
right brain creates the quality, only that it filters it before passing
it along to the left brain for conceptualizing."
Cheers
Paul
Mark 26-11-03: If this is so, then there may be a 'sweet spot' between brain
hemispheres where neither has the upper hand? I have read evidence (Paul
Oliver - The birth of the Blues) suggesting African slaves working in the Southern
states of the USA displayed exceptional left/right brain balance and were
capable of performing highly sophisticated physical movements (which lead to the
term 'rocking' in popular music) and/or verbal tricks.
Maybe the genetic fault in rationality is an imbalance of aesthetic
appreciation due to the suppression of artistic value?
African musicians, when played examples of complex modern jazz, reported how
unsophisticated it was. I do not know about you, but i find that startling,
and i feel those African musicians were evolving an intellectual language of
music that is exceptional for its being incapable of notation.
If these people were at one with the creative process in the same way a
mathematician is at one with the creative process, then being at one with the
creative process is the norm while insisting on a 'me' outside that process is off
kilter? Maybe those Jaynes poets were more normal than we are?
All the best,
Mark
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