Saturday, November 12, 2016

THEORY OF ANCIENT MINDS

In the television re-boot of Westworld, one of the characters recently explained the theory behind the level of "consciousness" in the robotic hosts.  He explained a theory that had been kicked around since the mid-1970s. (Again, when sci-fi shows base their own mythology on actual theories, the premise of the show is enhanced in viewers.)

Bicameralism (the philosophy of "two-chamberedness") is a hypothesis in psychology  that argues that the human mind once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3000 years ago.

According to Wikipedia, Jaynes uses governmental bicameralism as a metaphor to describe a mental state in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. The metaphor is based on the idea of lateralization of brain function although each half of a normal human brain is constantly communicating with the other through the corpus callosum. The metaphor is not meant to imply that the two halves of the bicameral brain were "cut off" from each other but that the bicameral mind was experienced as a different, non-conscious mental schema wherein volition in the face of novel stimuli was mediated through a linguistic control mechanism and experienced as auditory verbal hallucination.


The bicameral mentality would be non-conscious in its inability to reason and articulate about mental contents through meta-reflection, reacting without explicitly realizing and without the meta-reflective ability to give an account of why one did so. The bicameral mind would thus lack metaconsciousness, autobiographical memory and the capacity for executive "ego functions" such as deliberate mind-wandering and conscious introspection of mental content. When bicamerality as a method of social control was no longer adaptive in complex civilizations, this mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought which, Jaynes argued, is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical language learned by exposure to narrative practice.


According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state of mind would have experienced the world in a manner that has some similarities to that of a schizophrenic. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or "god" giving admonitory advice or commands and obey without question: one would not be at all conscious of one's own thought processes per se. Research into "command hallucinations" that often direct the behavior of those labeled schizophrenic, as well as other voice hearers, supports Jaynes's predictions.


There is application to this theory to LOST. Several fans once remarked that many characters, mostly secondary ones like the Others, were more rote in their thinking and actions than a normal human being. Some tied the work of the Dharma scientists (including mind control) with the possibility that people were brought to the island to supplement, interact and experiment with "conscious androids."

 It is not out of the realm of possibility. LOST's world collides with many random scientific disciplines. Ben was a master of mental manipulation in order to seize and retain his power. Likewise, the idea of reversing the brain's mental polarity back to the ancient way of processing thoughts (3000 + years ago) would back track to the world of ancient Egyptians, another major theme.

As in Westworld, one really does not know who is real and not real on the island. How did some people survive the plane crash, while others did not? Why did the characters have constant "flash backs?" Was it that their "mind" was being reprogrammed with virtual memories? And if these firmware updates tried to over write existing memories, is that why some characters lashed out, had mental breakdowns or began to have nose bleeds?