/lit/ - Literature

>>12448815
"The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections. It is impossible for us with our subjectivity to appreciate what it was like. When Agamemnon, king of men, robs Achilles of his mistress, it is a god that grasps Achilles by his yellow hair and warns him not to strike Agamemnon (I :197ff.). It is a god who then rises out of the gray sea and consoles him in his tears of wrath on the beach by his black ships, a god who whispers low to Helen to sweep her heart with homesick longing, a god who hides Paris in a mist in front of the attacking Menelaus, a god who tells Glaucus to take bronze for gold (6:234ff.), a god who leads the armies into battle, who speaks to each soldier at the turning points, who debates and teaches Hector what he must do, who urges the soldiers on or defeats them by casting them in spells or drawing mists over their visual fields. It is the gods who start quarrels among men (4:437ff.) that really cause the war (3:164ff.), and then plan its strategy (2:56ff.). It is one god who makes Achilles promise not to go into battle, another who urges him to go, and another who then clothes him in a golden fire reaching up to heaven and screams through his throat across the bloodied trench at the Trojans, rousing in them ungovernable panic. In fact, the gods take the place of consciousness." -- p. 72

>>12448815
It stands on fallacies innumerable.
Brainlet-tier like Germs, Sapiens and Conspiracy.

>>12448818
>The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections.
t."I have never read the Iliad"

>>12448815
>Evidence of this can be found in their literature, religions, practices, cultures, theocracies
aka Peterson-tier pseud bloviating

>>12448815
Because it is wrong.

>>12448815
>but instead had bicameral minds where one side of the brain induced auditory (and sometimes visual) hallucinations
Only a conscious being can have hallucinations. So if you're summary is correct, the book is stupid.

Bump

>>12448822
Julian Jaynes claims that some of the words in the Iliad (like psyche, thumos, phren, etc.) have come to mean mental things in a later age.

>"The word psyche, which later means soul or conscious mind, is in most instances life-substances, such as blood or breath: a dying warrior bleeds out his psyche onto the ground or breathes it out in his last gasp."

>"The thumos, which later comes to mean something like emotional soul, is simply motion or agitation. When a man stops moving, the thumos leaves his limbs. But it is also somehow like an organ itself, for when Glaucus prays to Apollo to alleviate his pain and to give him strength to help his friend Sarpedon, Apollo hears his prayer and "casts strength in his thumos" (Iliad, 16:529). The thumos can tell a man to eat, drink, or fight. Diomedes says in one place that Achilles will fight "when the thumos in his chest tells him to and a god rouses him" (9:702f.). But it is not really an organ and not always localized; a raging ocean has thumos."

>>12448848
>Only a conscious being can have hallucinations
Source?

>>12448893
What kind of source do you expect? Self-evidently, something that is not concious can not suffer hallucinations, because "suffering", i.e. experiencing, something presupposes consciousness.

>>12448815

But I have read it.

Even if it's total quackery, it still contains fascinating ideas.

Of course, I, and 99% of /lit/ posters calling everyone who fails to confirm their ideological biases and literary preferences pseuds, lack the foundational knowledge required to determine whether it's total quackery.

>>12448815
This seems like pic related but on a academic and hstorical level.

>>12448818
Did this guy omit all the parts with Odysseus? He was known for being cunning and intelligent
>inb4 exception

>>12448919
You're operating with a very different definition of consciousness from Jaynes. The first part of OP's book deals with trying to define it

>>12448974
I operate with the universally agreed on definition of consciousness. Apparently, he means self-consciousness, and accordingly should say so if he doesn't want to look like an idiot.

>>12448919
I think you would have to define what consciousness is and what it is not, which is what Jayne does in the earliest chapters. To him, consciousness is not a copy of experience and is not at all necessary for concepts, learning, thinking, or reason, but that it is more of a product of language and metaphor.

>>12448998
>I operate with the universally agreed on definition of consciousness
Which is?

>>12448958
Nope, he considers it in his book. The Odyssey comes after Iliad and it represents an early form of consciousness.

>>12448920
WOT IF ideas aren't fascinating if they aren't supported by decent evidence. This is UFO crop circles levels of retarded. Just to be totally fair, I did not read the book, but judging from the information ITT the author decided to claim that earlier humans were mental robots because their literary conventions and linguistic techniques differed from modern world. This sounds fucking retarded as to a layman like myself, I'm sure actual academics read it as an elaborate joke.

>>12449032
Odysseus shows these traits in the Iliad aswell though. Same goes for Nestor and other elder folks who act as advisers and give council

>>12449032
>>12449048
Also, the Iliad was written by the same poet, Homer, so it coming "after" makes no sense. Conciousness as a trait wouldn't develop within the pan of one lifetime

>>12448998
>universally agreed on definition of consciousness
If you had anything more than a dabbling pseud's insight into this matter you'd know that there is no such thing, and that consciousness is an incredibly vague and nebulous concept, as he talks about in the first part of the book.

>>12449032
>Which is?
In short, subjective experience. Again, it's the universally agreed upon definition of consciousness. You can look it up almost anywhere, save for perhaps the book in the OP, and don't have to rely on me to explain it to you.

>I think you would have to define what consciousness is and what it is not, which is what Jayne does in the earliest chapters. To him, consciousness is not a copy of experience and is not at all necessary for concepts, learning, thinking, or reason, but that it is more of a product of language and metaphor.
That's a useless and misleading definition of consciousness, plain and simple, and much better described as self-consciousness. By this definition, animals, children and heavy retards aren't conscious, but, as we both know, they are in any relevant sense of the word. Also, what do you mean by "copy of experience"?

>>12449048
I don't think Jaynes would consider cunning and intelligence as conscious activities. He just shows that the Iliad has a bicameral mentality that is quite different from the mentality of the Odyssey. He does this with other literature as well.

>>12449049
He discusses this objection in the book.

>"Objection: Is it not true that some scholars have considered the poem to be entirely the invention of one man, Homer, with no historical basis whatever, even doubting whether Troy existed at all, in spite of Schliemann's famous discoveries in the nineteenth century?"

>"Reply: This doubt has recently been put to rest by the discovery of Hittite tablets, dating from 1300 B.C., which clearly refer to the land of the Achaeans and their king, Agamemnon. T h e catalogue of Greek places that send ships to Troy in Book 2 corresponds remarkably closely to the pattern of settlement which archaeology has discovered. The treasures of Mycenae, once thought to be fairy tales in the imagination of a poet, have been dug out of the silted ruins of the city. Other details mentioned in the Iliad, the manners of burial, the kinds of armor, such as the precisely described boars'-tusk helmet, have been unearthed in sites relevant to the poem. There is thus no question of its historical substrate. The Iliad is not imaginative creative literature and hence not a matter for literary discussion. It is history, webbed into the Mycenaean Aegean, to be examined by psychohistorical scientists."

>"The problem of single or multiple authorship of the poem has been endlessly debated by classical scholars for at least a century. But this establishment of an historical basis, even of artifacts mentioned in the poem, must indicate that there were many intermediaries who verbally transmitted whatever happened in the thirteenth century to succeeding ages. It is thus more plausible to think of the creation of the poem as part of this verbal transmission than as the work of a single man named Homer in the ninth century B.C. Homer, if he existed, may simply have been the first aoidos to be transcribed."

>>12448815
I mean bicameralism is thoroughly discredited among psychologists today

>>12449105
can you link me to something about this?

>>12448951
I know that picture is to make fun of people like me and point out how selfish it is, but even a fool can be proud of folly.

Can you explain why we didn't find this in any people from remote indigenous tribes?

>>12448815
It is fun, anon. Read it about 10 yrs ago....

>>12448815
I always absolutely cringe whenever modern STEMlovers try to present their views on consciousness, the latest meme-subject which they had previously ignored for centuries but eventually realized they could not do so any longer. So now they present embarassment after embarassment, in the form of their theories, in a vain attempt to add their voice to discussions of a modern meme-topic.

There is not a scientist on the planet who has any understanding of consciousness, nor a single other person who follows science does either. There is only one figure of this entire world that knows what consciousness is, this being the mystic. Preferably Hindus and Buddhists, and specifically nondualist schools like Advaita. They alone know what consciousness is, and they already solved it thousands of years ago. Everyone else can go home.

I'm trying to save you time here and telling you that not a page of science has any value on the subject discussed here, and if you want to understand it, look to literature written by mystics. That's all.

lack of introspection is common to all epic poetry, this book is dumb

>>12448815
but dude what if like monkeys did drugs and that's how consciousness emerged, there's even a lot more evidence to back this up

>>12449098
>"The Iliad is not imaginative creative literature and hence not a matter for literary discussion. It is history"
>because it contains some references to real things

that's a colossally retarded thing to say.

I too, watched westworld

>>12448974

>Ancient people weren't conscious.
>Here's why they were.
>I don't mean that definition of consciousness, I mean this definition of consciousness I made up to fit my theory.

It's just a language game, then.

>>12449047
He does present more archeological evidence in the book, not just literary conventions and linguistic techniques differed from modern world.

>>12449051
See this >>12449050
Consciousness and subjective experience can be used synonymously, you would have to elaborate more on the extensiveness of consciousness or this subjective experience, otherwise you're just being tautological. Again, he elaborates more on what it is and what it is not in the book, I only tried to summarize it.

Copy of experience as in that consciousness is no more than a storage of sensory images.

>>12449151
There are a couple of research papers about the vestiges of bicameralism in preliterate societies.

>http://www.julianjaynes.org/supporting-evidence_bicameralism-in-tribes.php

This shit is more interesting than any other thread that's active.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ1_24Sx_LI

>>12448821
>>12448832
>>12448842
>>12448848
>>12448951
>>12449187
>>12449196
>>12449209

>>12448848
>>12448919
>Only a conscious being can have hallucinations.
>Self-evidently, something that is not concious can not suffer hallucinations, because "suffering", i.e. experiencing, something presupposes consciousness.
You are literally the dumbest person to ever post on /lit/

>>12449526
>You disagree with a retarded philosophy that says that you are a NPC
>Therefore you are a NPC
Go back to the cloning vats for processing into protein-rich paste. You are defective.
Also copying other people's memes isn't nice.

>>12449663

>>12448815
>its le wrong
>its le correct
Who fucking cares. It's a great read and I recommend it too, It's not like any of you retards has the knowledge or the intelligence to determine if whether what the books says is true or not anyway.

>>12449661
That anon is correct. Sorry to hear that you are so divorced from actual reason and debate as to misunderstand What he's saying. You should go back to /b/ with your intellectual peers.

>>12449679
That's another pair of shoes.
>>12449677
>I CAN ONLY DOUBLE DOWN ERROR ERROR ERROR
Then again there might be too little of value left after your biomass is done being reporpoused. Just drink some cyanide.

>>12449661
Then tell me what's wrong about either of my statements.

>>12448818
Did nobody tell him the Iliad was fiction?

>Societies from the bronze age and earlier were literally entirely composed of people with no consciousness
>Except they did have a consciousness, and another consciousness that could fuck with the first one
>The evidence for this is all this fictional literature we've decided to interpret as literal history for some reason

>>12449679
>who cares if it's obvious bullshit?
>it's not like you're smart enough to determine whether something is true or not
>"le"

What fucking hole did you crawl out of?

bump

>>12449105
>>12449121
I would like some articles as well if possible