0432 Here is a timeline for the Near East, starting with the first singularity.

0433 By the time that archeological evidence for the Ubaid is obvious (say, around 5800 B.C.), surrounding cultures are already dropping the hand-component of their hand-speech talk.

0434 Even though the Ubaid practices speech-alone talk, the bicameral mind persists.

Indeed, the bicameral mind persists through the Sumerian Dynastic, long after writing is invented. 

For hundreds of years, cuneiform writing is used to record transactions and inventories.  But, no scribe writes that the temple and the palace are competing power sources.  Surely, the scribes record events involving competition among factions and powers, but the explicit abstraction of “competition” has yet to be labeled.  Despite this, modern academics find it easy to project modern conflicts between state and church onto ancient civilizational structures.  Are they missing the mark?

0435 If Julian Jaynes is on target, then people in the Sumerian Dynastic do not think with subjective consciousness.  Instead, they do what their “auditory hallucinations” tell them to do.

In sum, people in these early civilizations cultivate a bicameral mentality.

0436 Let me say this again.

The first singularity marks the transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.    The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices hand-talk (or hand-speech talk) and exhibits constrained social complexity.  Our current Lebenswelt practices speech-alone talk and exhibits unconstrained social complexity.

The semiotic characteristics of hand-talk and speech-alone talk account for the difference.

0437 Peirce identified three natural sign-relations: icon, index and symbol.

Here is a picture of how each way of talking employs Peirce’s natural sign-relations.

0438 The semiotics of hand-talk allows both sensible and social construction.  Hand-talk images and indicates its referents.  The referent precedes the manual-brachial word-gesture.  Because hand-talk words are distinct, they behave like symbols.  Symbols are different from one another.  They form a symbolic order that allows symbolic operations, such as grammar.  This is how hand-talk becomes fully linguistic.

0439 The semiotics of speech-alone talk appears to allow sensible construction.  Spoken words, such as “cat” and “chair” appear to picture and point to their referent.  But, they really don’t.  Spoken words do not picture or point to anything.  So, speech-alone talk ultimately favors social construction, even for familiar terms.  Consider “cat-nap” and “chair-person”.

0440 Along with social construction, spoken words can label anything.  Labeling is the first step in explicit abstraction.  Words are defined on the basis of meaning, presence and message.

0441 Finally, speech-alone talk is fully linguistic because spoken words are already symbols.  Each spoken word differs from other spoken words.  So, symbolic operations can spontaneously order discourse.

0442 Surely, cultural transitions from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk preserve continuity with respect to speech-talk, but not with respect to hand-talk.  To me, the hypothesis of the first singularity helps explain why there seems to be two paces to language evolution.  Linguistic data seem to show very slow evolution of words from long ago(corresponding to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, practicing hand-speech talk) and more rapid word-sound change in recent times (corresponding to our current Lebenswelt, practicing speech-alone talk).

0443 My summary of the impact of the first singularity starts with the following figure.

0444 The first singularity marks the evolutionary transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.  It also denotes the cultural transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk.

0445 Hand and hand-speech talk only permit implicit abstraction.  The purely relational structures of the interscope, the interventional sign and the bicameral mind engage implicit abstraction.  These triadic relations are holistic.  They are not analyzed.  They are performed.  Consequently, these relational structures facilitate constrained social complexity, where teams may specialize, but individuals do so only modestly.  Indeed, hand-speech talk adapts to conduct both sensible and social construction in teams and communities.

0446 Speech-alone talk is experienced as if it is hand-speech talk.  But, it is not, because speech-alone words do not image or point to anything.

This is tricky, because spoken words appear to allow implicit abstraction and facilitate explicit abstraction.  When the Wernicke’s region on the right adopts a spoken label as if it is a hand-talk word, then the person projects that assumption into the way an utterance is decoded.  I suppose that might increase the intelligibility of perception_2b in a specialized cultural venue, and if that is so, then speech-alone facilitates unconstrained social complexity.  That does not mean harmony among social circles.  It means the multiplication of explicit social circles based on specialized disciplinary languages and means of production.

0447 Given that the semiotic properties of hand-talk (and hand-speech talk) and speech-alone talk are radically different and given that the bicameral mind is an adaptation that pumps interventional sign-relations, then one may wonder how the evolved two-chambered mind performs in the milieu of unconstrained social complexity.

This is where the hypotheses of Julian Jaynes applies.

0448 But, isn’t the problem of Julian Jaynes’s hypothesis the second item in the following list?

0449 So far, this examination is undecided.

Yes, it is a terminological problem, because the double-brain is also one of the proposals.  I know from this examination that the double-brain evolves as a two-chambered cognitive property of the human brain… er… mind.  The bicameral mind pumps interventional sign relations.

No, the term, “auditory hallucination”, is a projection of modern sensibilities onto subject matter that… well… may be too disturbing to discuss.  What if the casual dismissal of Jaynes’s four-strand thesis could be played back, in the mind of a modern objector, in the voice of a well-regarded psychology professor.  You know the one that I am referring to.  Just look at all the awards on display in the office.  What if…

0450 I pause, while the reader shudders.

…the hallucinated voice of the psychology professor tells the modern objector what to say about the topic of “auditory hallucinations”?

Of course, it is nonsense.

0451 Now, let me walk through my bimodal answer.

0452 My first step is to consider the scholastic interscope for how people think.  The interventional sign-relation is embedded within this interscope.  This interscope, by the way, belongs to the human niche.  This interscope is an actuality that is independent of the adapting species.

0453 On the perspective level, a normal context asking, “Does this make sense?”_3c, brings the actuality of the unfolding of judgment_2c into relation with the possibility of ‘contextualizing the situation ‘_1c.  “The situation” includes both phantasm_2b (species expressa_2b) and impression_2a (species impressa_2a).

With sensible construction, the perspective-level comes into play only when something goes wrong.  Julian Jaynes’s description of the occasion of the auditory hallucinations_2c(2a) of the bicameral mind concurs.  In the Iliad, visual and auditory hallucinations are (1) taken for granted as real and (2) received under stressful situations.

0454 My designation for Jaynes’s “auditory hallucination”?

 I designate the actualities within the interventional sign-relation.

Say what?

Another way to label an auditory hallucination_2c(2a) is SV_i(SO_i).

0455 The SV_i of commitment_2c can be depicted as a category-based nested form.  A ratio (rationes, relation, thirdness) brings the intelligibility of perception (species expressa intelligibilis, what ought to be, firstness) into relation with the universality of sensation (species impressa intelligibilis, what is, secondness).

0456 Since commitment_2c (SV_i) is a category-based nested form and the content-level of the scholastic interscope (SI_iand SO_i) is a category-based nested form, one initially anticipates resonances between the two nested forms.  These resonances are built into the interventional sign-relation as a human adaptation.

0457 The first resonance is between ratio_3(2c) (or balance_3(2c)) and what is happening_3a.

The implication is that (as far as scholastics are concerned) everything that happens has a reason.  A Christian theologian contends that the universe embodies the rationality of God.  Modern science presumes that the universe is rational, but avers in regards to the theologian’s contention. 

0458 The second resonance is between the universality of sensation_2(2c) and sensation(impression(decoding))_2a.

In Latin, the second resonance is between species impressa intelligibilis_2(2c) and species impressa_2a.  The plainness of the Latin assists, because each of these terms must be regarded holistically.  In English, scientific terminology elaborates further distinctions and wholeness is veiled.  For example, for the perspective-level actuality_2c, the Latin term, intelligibilis, translates as “universality”.  Also, species impressa_2a is captured by three distinct terms: sensation, impression and decoding.

0459 What else about the second resonance?

The Christian theologian contends that our senses are true.  Our senses are universal.  A universal applies to well… just about everything.

To me, this contention comports with sensible construction.  Social construction produces impressions that do not necessary entail things that trigger external and internal senses.  Rather, social construction wrestles with grammatically correct, counter-intuitive statements that are decoded into literal referents that do not make sense, and demand the construction of a cognitive space that accommodates the statements.

The scientist practices the second resonance with every observation and measurement.  If the universality of sensationis not valid, then the observations and the measurements of one researcher should not be reproduced by another researcher.  Yet, the reproduction of experimental data by independent researchers is a hallmark of science.

0460 The third resonance is between the potential intelligibility of perception_1(2c) and the possibility of ‘something happening’_1a.  In Latin, the third resonance is between species expressa intelligibilis_2(2c) and oops, there is no Latin term for the potential of ‘something happening’_1a.

How about itshay appenshay?

But, what about intelligibility?

Firstness exhibits the logic of inclusion.  Firstness allows contradictions.  So, even if ‘something happening’ is purely random, such as tarot cards in a well-shuffled deck, the cards that are drawn include the potential of an intelligible perception_1(2c), according to the third resonance.  The task of a card-reader is to weave the lay of the cards_2c into a phantasm_2b, by decoding each card as a symbol in a symbolic order_2a.  The cards speak for themselves.  The card-reader merely integrates the species impressae_2a into a phantasm_2b that is intelligible enough to address the client’s questions.

0461 Christian theologians may chuckle at the idea of the third resonance, between the potential intelligibility of perception_1(2c) and the possibility of ‘something happening’_1a.  But, I bet that every day those theologians pray for the insight to recognize the wisdom hidden within the craziness of everyday living.

0462 Scientists use the third resonance in order to appreciate how hypotheses are generated, as opposed to how hypotheses are tested.  Of course, every hypothesis must eventually be framed in a manner that allows observations, measurements, and modeling, based on specialized technical terminology.  Courses in “what is science” emphasize these aspects, because they increase the reputation that science enjoys.

But, consider any modern scientific theory and imagine how a premodern scholastic could ideate its highly technical formulation.  To me, every day, the sun goes around the earth.  The continents are not floating on a sea of molten magma.  I don’t ever notice when a radioactive element decays.  The sun produces blinding light through a mechanism that involves things that nobody can see with their eyes.  I can go on, by why bother?

Scientists presume that ‘something happening’_1a has the potential to be intelligible_1(2c) in ways that we would never even dream.

0463 Oh, there is another resonance.

Commitment_2c is SV_i.  Species impressa_2a is SO_i.

Commitment_2c is a nested form because it_2c is the unfolding of judgment_2c.

I wonder whether the most nested element in species impressa_2a can be depicted as a category-based nested form, just like commitment_2c.

Yeah, what if decode_2a can be conjured as a nested form?

Well, I already performed a similar operation in points 0395 to 0399.

So, why not?

0464 What would be a normal context₃ for decode_2a?

May I use the term, “sensation_2a“?

Then, sensation_3(2a) would tend to be exclusive, as well as actual.

0465 Does that make sense_3c?

A sensation_3(2a) may be depicted as the hylomorphe, active body [substantiates] sensate soul_2a.

To me, it seems that this actuality_2a may exclude other actualities, based one’s training_2c, that is, commitment_2c.

Exclusion characterizes one of the logics of thirdness.

So, there is something like a normal context₃ and a potential₁ in decode_2a, even though decode_2a belongs to the category of secondness.

0465 What is the actuality₂ for decode_2a?

The logic of secondness includes the law of noncontradiction.

One way to express the realm of actuality is a hylomorphe, a relational structure containing two contiguous real elements.  The contiguity is [decode].  The first real element, which would correspond to matter in Aristotle’s hylomorphe, is species impressa intelligibilis_2(2c), that is, the universality of sensation_2(2c). The second real element, corresponding to form in Aristotle’s hylomorphe, is species impressa_2(2a), the impression itself.

Decode_2a not only labels the actuality_2a, but [decode] also labels the contiguity between the perspective and content level actualities.

“Impression_2a” not only labels the actuality_2a, but the term represents the form_2(2a) within species impressa_2a.

“Sensation_2a” not only labels the actuality_2a, but the term denotes a normal context_3(2a) operating on the possibility of an intelligibility to the construction of a perception_1(2a).

0466 Here is a picture as how that looks.

0467 What is the potential₁ for decode_2a?

Well, the species impressa_2a is directly situated by the imaginaton_1b (otherwise labeled, “the potential of situating content_1b“) and virtually situated by the phantasm_2b (also labeled, “perception_2b“).

0468 The phantasm_2b answers the question, “What does this_2a mean to me?”_2b, while addressing the potential of my imagination_1b.  So does perception_2b.

Why use different terms for the same element in the interscope?

0469 Does “phantasm_2b” go with the bicameral mind?

Does “perception_2b” associate to subjective consciousness?

Yeah, it seems so.

Phantasm_2b is not subject to introspection.

Perception_2b is.

0470 Plus, those arrows must be neuronal fibers connecting the right and left Wernicke regions.

The form_2(2a) in the actuality of decode_2a, the species impressa_2(2a) (a term now twice baked) is substantiated by matter, the universality of species impressa_2(2c), projected from the perspective to the content level. 

0471 The potential₁ for decode_2a anticipates the intelligibility of the current species expressa_1(2c) in two ways. Directly, the situation-level phantasm_2b will answer to the question, “What does this mean to me?”_3b, and virtually, the phantasm_2b will be judged by the question, “Does this make sense?”_3c.

A phantasm_2b virtually situates sensation_2a, impression_2a and decode_2a.

0472 The following figure pertains to hand-speech talk as two independent modes of talking.

The figure also places Wernicke’s region on the right at the bottom and Wernicke’s region on the left at the top.

0473 This portrayal describes the human SV_i(SO_i) for the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, prior to the first singularity.

0474 It also reminds me of a scenario portrayed in Looking at N.J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality“, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for October 2024, as well as in Part III of Original Sin and the Post Truth Condition(available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

The scene is a team in Europe around 20kyr, hunting deer by driving them over a cliff.  It is three moons since the solstice.  A team member notices a particular type of cloud that signifies the coming of the first autumn cold front.  The first cold front is a big deal during glacial maximum.  The team does not want to be trapped, away from the community, and buried in snow.

0475 I, the team leader (so to speak), can see that my team wants to take the deer that we harvested so far and get out of there.  They tell me to ask the lion-man.  I always take the lion-man with me for moments like this.  Carved from mammoth ivory, the head of the lion adorns the body of a human.  The artifact is small enough to carry, along with my weapons, on team adventures.

Every member of the team watches me look into the face of the lion-man.

The lion-man speaks for himself.  He also speaks because he cannot hand-talk.

0476 We all bet on the intelligibility_2c of my perception_2b of what lion-may says_2a.

Hand-speech talk is marvelous.  The hand-talk component is grounded in icons and indexes, the most natural of natural sign-relations.  The speech-talk component paints with symbols, the most conventional of natural sign-relations.  Hand-speech talk is decoded_2a into a species impressa_2a. So is the voice of the lion-man..

0477 I hear what the lion-man says.

Then, I look up at my team, knowing that they will follow what lion-man says.

I gesture, [image WRAP][image DEER ASLEEP][circle point to all in team][point to direction of community].

Gather the meat that we have and let’s go home.

0478 What happens after the hand-component of hand-speech talk dies?

0479 After the first singularity, traditions that relied on hand-talk are lost or are modified to work with speech-alone talk.

Of course, the modification business cannot stand, because hand-talk facilitates implicit abstraction and speech-alone can only pretend to facilitate implicit abstraction.

0480 Pretend?

Since speech-alone talk does not picture or point its referents, the spoken word precedes its referent.  But, since language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk, we innately expect the referent to precede the word, rather than the other way around.

Speech-alone talk gives the impression that it images and indicates referents because word-referent associations exist before each individual is born, whether they are sensible or social constructions.  In doing so, spoken words fulfill our evolved expectations.  We expect the referent to precede the word, rather than the other way around.

0481 Steven Mithen devotes an entire chapter in The Language Puzzle to the issue of finding and learning the meanings of spoken words in our current Lebenswelt.

Guess how infants figure out spoken words.

They already know that words exist.  It is only a matter of figuring out what they are.

Infants recognize one spoken word from another by tracking transition possibilities.

They do so before they start to talk.

0482 How much easier their lives would be if they grew up in a hand-speech talk tradition?

Hmmm, maybe, I should say, “How much more intuitively natural their mental processing would be, if…”

0484 Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why many current psychologists see no need to entertain the four interweaving hypotheses proposed by Julian Jaynes in 1976.  They are focused on investigating the nature of language using sophisticated observations and measurements.  They cannot see how their investigations comport with Jaynes’s formulation of the bicameral mind.  The scientists are doing precisely what the voices in their heads are telling them to do.

I know that sounds goofy.

But, introspection does not seem to be a strong suite when it comes to modern bigilib academic “scientific” disciplines.

0485 Consider modern science in light of the following interaction between Wernicke’s regions, right and left, as delineated through Jaynes’s paradigm.

0486 Commitment_2c resides in Wernicke’s region on the right.  A positivist intellect_3(2c) (rationes_3(2c)) brings the actuality of disciplinary language_2(2a) into relation with the possibility of observations and measurements_1(2c).  Disciplinary language_2(2a) is treated as if its symbolic terms are icons and indexes of {real things [substantiating] phenomena}_2(2c).  In the process, Wernicke’s region on the right weighs what is_2(2c) on the basis of universality.  The scientist implicitly abstracts a species impressa_2(2a) where phenomena speak for themselves_2(2c)…

…in the language of the scientist’s discipline_2(2a).

In other words, observations and measurements_1(2c) will be situated as intelligible perceptions_2b when they become… um… data for models_2b.

0487 Can I say that another way?

Phenomena speak for themselves_2(2c) through mathematical and mechanical symbols_2(2c) in the normal context of a positivist intellect_2(2c) operating on the potential of ‘intelligible observations and measurements_1(2c).

0488 That is the SV_i.  What is the SO_i?

Disciplinary technical terms [decode and go into] a scientific species impressa_2(2a) in the normal context of positivist sensation_3(2a) (portrayed here as the juxtaposition of “sense” and “action”) operating on the potential of ‘a scientific referent and its symbolic representation’_1(2a).

0489 Why turn sensation_2a into “sense” and “action” for scientific inquiry as what is happening_3a?

Well, that is my impression_2(2a) of phenomena speaking for themselves_2(2c).

0490 Julian Jaynes’s book applies to historical and psychological developments in our current Lebenswelt.

The following timeline pertains.

0491 The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is clearly present in the archaeological record by 5800 B.C.  According to the hypothesis of the first singularity, the Ubaid is the first stone-age culture to practice speech-alone talk.  However, nearby hand-speech cultures are already changing due to their exposure to the marginally greater wealth and power of the Ubaid.  They are losing the hand-component of their hand-speech talk.  Soon, they will practice speech-alone talk.

The Ubaid shows trends towards labor and social complexity from the very beginning.  These trends are slow at first.  A tripartite temple structure appears in some villages.  Some villages grow while other villages decline and are abandoned.  This supports the idea that explicit abstractions in labor specialization are re-organizing societies from social circles to circles of specialization.

0492 The judgment_2c that unfolds into commitment_2c incorporates explicit abstractions of prior generations.

0493 Now, let me conduct a thought experiment, concerning a formerly hand-speech talking culture near the Ubaid, that has dropped the hand-component of its hand-speech talk, and is now practicing speech-alone talk.

In generation one, an innovation is made in, say, obtaining copper from the heating of yellow, almost golden, rocks mixed with charcoal in a clay pot.

Generation two improves the process and adds more detailed spoken labels, including terms for the look of the rocks, the character of the charcoal, the degree that the rocks are ground, the proportion of rock and charcoal, and the shape and durability of the clay pot.  The entire process is holistic and the labels assist in consistency. 

Generation three treats the labels as if they picture and point to their referents, and the process turns into a recipe or… a modern anthropologist might say, “a ritual”.  Toying with the ritual allows more productive extraction of copper, but its getting harder to find those almost-golden rocks.  Substitutions must be made.  Emissaries are sent afield to locate more of the correct minerals.

Generation four processes the technical words as if they symbolize essences operating within the ritual.  The recipe-oriented process, done properly, appeases the gods.  If the gods are pleased, then copper alchemically coagulates in the heated clay vessel.

0494 What happens during this span of four generations?

The first generation does not have specialists in copper extraction.  The fourth generation does.  Each generation operates by converting the explicit abstractions of the previous generation into implicit abstractions. The implicit abstractions pour into their labels, as if the labels are their proper containers.  At the end, a new, specialized “social circle” manifests, demanding its place in the current social system.  The “copper refiners” cannot be ignored.  Their sensible and social constructions get incorporated into an expanding syncretic.

0495 All four generations rely on the bicameral mentality.

The bicameral mentality is not deceptive or manipulative, because one’s commitment_2c is presumably to the harmony of all social circles.  After the first singularity, that commitment_2c  includes labor and social specializations, just as prior to the first singularity.  Even civilizational conflict exhibits the patterns of a bicameral mind, according to Jaynes’s reading of Homer’s Iliad.  Introspection does not occur.  Every spoken word is taken on face value.

0496 Almost forty generations pass from the start of the Ubaid to the beginning of the Sumerian Dynastic.  Today, the Sumerian and Egyptian Dynastic periods are regarded by anthropologists as the earliest civilizations.  The Sumerian Dynastic is composed of city-states.  The Egyptian Dynastic rules a consolidated territory.

0497 Even after the official end of the Sumerian civilization, the bicameral mentality operates.

Ur III is the last empire to practice Sumerian as a spoken language.  Consider the story of the Tower of Babel.  Thingsspeak for themselves, even in a civilization that speaks both Sumerian and Akkadian.  The Bible attests to the land of Shinar speaking “one language” as if it is a civilizational mantra.

Consider Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in December 2023) for a possible case study.  The one language that the people of Shinar believe in is the language of the Tower of Babel, speaking for itself.

0498 Due to increasing complexity and volatility of ritual practices and statecraft, species impressae_2a spontaneously generated by commitment_2c become less and less capable of supporting intelligible phantasms_2b.

A quest for authorization begins.

Elite traditions appear, formally triggering the operation of the bicameral mind by specialists in prognostication.

As civilizations become more and more difficult to manage, the two-chambered mind is increasingly clogged by explicit abstractions in the guise of implicit abstractions.  However, the bicameral mind is still anchored in a phenotypethat matches Jaynes’s proposed right and left Wernicke regions.

Is that too great a simplification?

Let me bring it down to our modern era.

When I look at all the meters and lab equipment operated by physicists, all the pipets and spectrometers used by biochemists, all the dissection tools used by anatomists, all the surveys collected by sociologists, and so on, I cannot help but think that the data speaks for itself.

Then, a voice in my head says, “Trust the science.”

Where did I hear that before?

0499 For prognostications, traditions that observe and measure certain natural events or intentional procedures allow expert-initiated events to speak for themselves, according to associations between certain features of the events and clues to future outcomes.

Eventually, the associations are recorded as recipes. And, the recipes are attributed to divine intelligences.

0500 Technical terms are later recorded as recipes. Recipes are regarded as both universal and intelligible.

Prognostication events_2(2c) are decoded (by experts) and rendered into technical terms_2(2a) that weave a kind of impression_2(2a) for the inquirer to consider.

0501 In short, after the first singularity, the semiotic differences between spoken words and hand-speech words start to burden the holistic operations of the interventional sign-relation embodied in the bicameral mind.  Speech-alone talkpermits explicit abstraction to be regarded by commitment_2c as an implicit abstraction.

0502 How long does that last before the bicameral mind breaks down?

This is one question that Jaynes’s research labors to answer.

0503 This first look at The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes, makes fun of the term, “auditory hallucinations”.

Why?

It turns out that the term applies to SV_i(SO_i), the dual actualities of the interventional sign relation.

It also turns out to be the embodiment of what evolutionary anthropologist, Steven Mithen, calls “synaesthesia” or “cross-modal sensations” that explain why spoken words exist.

0504 Indeed, a weird divergence comes to the surface in Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) The Language Puzzle(appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in September 2025).

0505 Steven Mithen asks, “Why do spoken words exist?”

His conscious answer is that they are acquired through synaesthesia in regards to things themselves.  In other words, interactions with things themselves somehow trigger stable vocal utterances, or spoken words, through… well… leaky neurons.

Yet, some other intelligence operates beneath the surface of his conscious answer.  His bicameral mind inspires him to admit that he rejects the gestural origin of language outright, because no current research into natural language deals with gestural language. That makes sense, because all civilized people only practice speech-alone talk.

0506 Yet, the inadmissibility of Mithen’s conscious admission triggers a search, by this reader, for clues to an alternate hypothesis, which this examination provides.  After the domestication of fire and after the evolution of voluntary neural control of the vocal tract, vocal utterances are added as adornments to hand-talk.  This habit contributes to the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, who practices hand-speech talk from the beginning.

0507 So, Mithen’s synaesthesia is not like… working with neuronal crossover… from encountering things themselves to auditory assignments.

0508 Rather, synaesthesia becomes a cultural practice during night-time communal hand-talk.  Vocal utterances clarify hand-talk word gestures when they are difficult to see in the flickering light of a campfire.  Then, synaesthesia from the Wernicke’s region on the right trains the Wernicke’s area on the left to automatically decode either hand-talk or speech-talk or both.  Hand-speech talk is then practiced night and day.

0509 The habit of synaesthesia does not stop there, because sensory-modal crossover supports the logic of adornment.  A spoken word adorns a hand-talk word-gesture.  Likewise, ochre adorns skin.  Soon, seashells are strung on fiber to adorn ankles and necks.  Each of these adornments speak to the actuality of what they are adorning.

After humans interbreed with Neanderthals, between 65 and 45kyr, humans begin to carve and mold figures in earnest.  These artifacts speak for themselves.  This is synaesthesia at its most robust.  The visual realness of say, the lion-man,crosses over into the auditory realness of what the lion-man has to say.

After the first singularity, Julian Jaynes attributes the large eyes of Mesopotamian temple statuary to synaesthesia.  The large eyes trigger “auditory hallucinations”, where divine commitment_2c induces meaning-filled species impressa_2a.

0510 Here is a picture.

0511 However, there is a problem.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0512 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the intervention sign-relation is honed through natural… or is it cultural?… selection to promote harmony among diverse social circles.  What the lion-may says is always in tune with what needs to be done to stay alive in a hostile world.

In our current Lebenswelt, explicit abstractions from one generation are taken to be implicit abstractions by the next.  So, the way that an explicit abstraction divides the world, say, between experts and the people that are supposed to benefit from expertise, becomes implicit, and then more explicit abstractions are added, then they become implicit, until elite expert “voices” no longer make sense to the ones who are being ordered around.

0513 What is amazing is that, without introspection, elites follow their own bicameral voices with um… “mindless” obedience.

Does any of this seem vaguely familiar?

0514 So, how does one solve the problem of authorization?

This is the topic of Book III of Jaynes’s masterwork.

0515 Many solutions are ingenious.  They tend to use tricks to stimulate interventional sign-vehicles_2c (SV_i) that yield, through the two-chambered mind, oracular proclamations_2a (SO_i), that may be regarded as ‘more intelligible that what the questioner can achieve on his or her own’_1(2a).

For example, an oracle tells Socrates that he is the wisest philosopher on earth (SO_i).  So, Socrates spends the rest of his life trying to show that the oracle is wrong, which turns out to be an effective way to demonstrate that no one is as wise as Socrates (SV_i).

0516 Here is a picture of what happens as consciousness slowly arises, during the breakdown of the bicameral mind.

The statement on the left describes the bicameral mind before the first singularity.

The statement on the right describes how civilizations attempt to rescue, maintain and (maybe even) exploit the bicameral mind, as it gets clogged down with explicit abstractions (that are absorbed into the next generation’s implicit abstractions).

0517 Yes, as soon as I start wondering whether my phantasm_2b is intelligible, I engage in introspection, and a whole new vocabulary is needed.  These words arrive as explicit abstractions, that attain the qualities of implicit abstraction, then those qualities are formalized into recipes, and then those recipes are considered to be the essence of whatever the thing that we have labeled must be.

What have we labeled this thing?

“Subjective consciousness?”

0518 Remember that Jaynes’s term, “auditory hallucination” serves as a label for SV_i(SO_i).