Liedzeit

Abstract

In 1984 Julian Jaynes gave a lecture in Kirchberg entitled “Four Hypotheses on the Origin of Mind.” The first of these hypotheses, and most interesting from a philosophical point of view, states that subjective consciousness is a social construction dependent on language, built upon metaphors of behavior in the physical world.
Wittgenstein would perhaps have been in sympathy with Jaynes. He too thought that consciousness is not some “private theatre”. Inner processes at the bottom of conscious thought, accessible only to the individual, he called a “dangerous metaphor.” Like Jaynes, Wittgenstein held that language is logically prior to consciousness and when he claimed that dogs cannot be hypocrites but also not sincere, Jaynes would certainly have agreed. And like Jaynes, Wittgenstein was not afraid to be accused of behavioristic tendencies.

1. Jaynes in Kirchberg

Very nearly 30 years ago, in 1984, Julian Jaynes gave a lecture in Kirchberg where he summarized his theory on the origin and nature of consciousness, a theory that he had introduced in his best-selling book »The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind«.
When I was sitting there listening to Jaynes all these years ago, I thought that Jaynes had deliberately chosen to talk there because he felt that he would find open minds among philosophers used to the unconventional ways of Wittgensteinian thinking. But in fact he was invited to give the lecture and probably did not give too much thought on the audience he was going to face here.
Still, there were a lot of things Jaynes had in common with Wittgenstein, it seemed to me. Some of the things Wittgenstein had said, made a lot more sense to me when considered from a Jaynesian angle. To give just one example, Jaynes says that consciousness is not necessary for most kinds of learning and Wittgenstein says that the for the learning of a language training (Abrichtung) in the sense of drilling or conditioning is necessary. So I promised myself that I would work out some of these common traits in the thinking of these two men.

2. Consciousness

Wittgenstein rarely uses the word “consciousness” in a technical sense. “Could one imagine a stone’s having consciousness?” (PI 390) he asks and if so why should that be of any interest to us? And “The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process: how does it come about that this does not come into the considerations of our ordinary life?” (PI 412)
Typically Wittgenstein asks how the word consciousness is used:

He goes on explaining that expressions like “I see” or “I hear” or “I am conscious” do have their uses for example when I am telling someone who thinks I have fainted.

He adds that it is remarkable that we can learn to make oneself understood in these matters.
This is followed by a puzzling paragraph:
If the remark about the chief is meant ironically, which to me does not sound implausible, we would have a good authority backing up Jaynes in thinking that there could have been a world in which people were not conscious.
In Zettel Wittgenstein makes what he calls an auxiliary construction: Government and science decide that people of a certain tribe have no souls. Because we want to enslave them. But naturally, Wittgenstein says, we are nevertheless interested in their language, because we want to give them orders and want to receive reports. “But we must also be interested in what corresponds in them to our ‘psychological utterances’ since we want to keep them fit for work. So if they complain about pain, we think they don’t feel real pain, not like us, but still we give them medicine. Also, they can be used in psychological experiment, since their reactions - including their linguistic reactions - are quite those of mind endowed human beings. Finally, they can even learn our own language. (Zettel 528)
Obviously this can be interpretated as meaning that, of course, it is just propaganda and the tribe people possed souls/consciousnes all along. But I think it can also mean that a soulless people would behave in most circumstances just like us and that they would in a very short time emulate a consciousness. This is, what according to Jaynes did indeed happen in history, for example when the conquistadors met the people in South America.

3. Pain

In what sense is it true that my hand does not feel pain, but I in my hand?

In the paper “Sensory Pain and Conscious Pain” Jaynes comes to the conclusion that:
And in this sense consciousness would be an operant fitting consciousness into neobhaviourism.
The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or anything else you please.

4. Language

Without language there cannot be consciousness, this is the main idea of Jaynes. But more than this, there could very well be language without consciousness. And Jaynes thinks that for thousands of years this was the case. (He says that it would constitute a weak form of his theory to say that consciousness developed together with language.) And again, Wittgenstein is an ally.
In the Philosophical Inverstigations Wittgenstein denounces what he calls the Private Language, a language only I can understand on principle. But really the arguments against a private language is only the preparation for his main attack on our basic concept of ordinary - public - language.
What is this view? Here is what António Damásio has to say about it in “The feeling of what happens”: “The glories of language lie [...] in the ability to translate, with precision, thoughts into words and sentences, and words and sentences into thoughts...”
This is exactly the view that Wittgenstein thinks is fundamentally wrong:

Wittgenstein is uncharacteristically straight forward in this question: You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned language. There is no thought language, no Mentalese, there is no concept of pain or refrigerator that exists prior and independently of language.

But are there not „inner“ experiences? Experiences independent of language and anything we have learned? Like the pain that I feel? And isn’t the public language I am using to communicate not just a sometimes insufficient tool to explain my thoughts to the world? How could I have the feeling that something is on the tip of my tongue? (see PI p. 219: “What is going on in my consciousness? That is not the point at all. Whatever did go on was not what was meant by that expression. It is of more interest what went on in my behaviour.”) Does this not prove that in a way I know what to say is logically prior to language, like some kind of private language that only gets translated?
Should we not admit, that there must be some kind of “core consciousness” that logically and historically predates our “extended consciousness”, a kind of consciousness, shared with animals, that did not have language but still allowed some kind of languageless thinking?
Interestingly, Wittgenstein quotes William James who mentions a deaf-mute who claimed to have had thoughts about God and the world in his youth before he was able to speak. And Wittgenstein asks: „Are you sure — one would like to ask – that this is the correct translation of your wordless thought into words?“ (PI 342)

Helen Keller, of course is the witness for the defence. She testified that she was not fully conscious before she had learned language. This was, says Merlin Donald, a naive claim on her part. (Donald 2006, p. 35)
Again and again Wittgenstein struggles with the claim that there must be inner processes.

If I only pretend to be weak, for example, in order to rob the man helping me. That must be more than just behaviour. There must be an internal difference. And the proof is that I can admit my crime. This is true, says Wittgenstein, but he calls the „inner process“ a dangerous metaphor. Does it „follow“ that the intention was some kind of internal process? (Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology I 824)

But if you say: „How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?“ then I say: „How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?“ ”And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing”— Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here. (And when he gives the objection „But in a fairy tale the pot too can see and hear!“ he answers: „Certainly; but it can also talk.“ (PI 282))

„Are you not really a behaviourist in disguise? Aren’t you at bottom really saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?“ — If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction. (PI 307)