Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb
From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <1994@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 10 Jan 89 20:01:27 GMT
References: <569@epicb.UUCP> <1146@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <496@uceng.UC.EDU> <1154@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <440@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 29

In article <440@aipna.ed.ac.uk> jeff@uk.ac.ed.aipna.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>>Now I know where that idea about language and consciousness
>>evolving in the last 10000 years came from!  Jaynes' thesis is
>>considered quack by every anthropologist I have talked to.
>
>I'm not sure why you think anthropologists are the right people to ask.
>
Well, I admit I haven't talked to the new age people or the Scientologists.
Who would you consider authorities on this subject?
>Disagreements on this subject are often due to different ideas about
>what "consciousness" means.  Many people think animals are conscious, which
>seems rather unlikely given how much of our internal experience involves
>language.  I'm not sure what it means to say a rat is conscious.  But
>some people think consciousness is something rats might have, and they
>would certainly disagree with Jaynes.  But then I'd say they were talking
>about different things.
>
>And, in any case, Jaynes says some interesting things about consciousness
>that seem to be independent of his "bichameral mind" ideas.

I agree he says some interesting things.  I just didn't think his
evidence supports such a radical thesis.  The "internal voice" aspect
of our consciousness is certainly one of the most easily noticed aspects
of it.  One could, of course, define consciousness as that verbal
aspect of it.  I would be hard put to consider deaf-mutes nonconscious,
or even Helen Keller before she learned to communicate.  I would bet
that many of the great apes are conscious.  They seem to display behavior
indicating they are.