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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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  • From: "Marcus" <marcus AT loyno.edu>
  • To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7
  • Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 12:29:26 -0500

Two notes to Karey Perkins' interesting remarks about Percy
and Jaynes.

1. "So yes, maybe that was the little clue [in Jaynes] that
led Percy down the rabbit trail to Peirce?" I am very
confident that Percy was into and onto Peirce quite a long
time before he encountered Jaynes.

2. Another fragment floating out of my memory hole is that
Percy wasn't for a moment to reduce the OT prophets into
"something like a schizophrenic hearing voices."

Marcus

PS I don't have a copy of OCBCM nearby. If you have a
moment Karey, check to see if JJ says anything about Allah
dictating the Koran directly to Muhammad.






----- Original Message Follows -----
From: percy-l-request AT lists.ibiblio.org
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Percy-L Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 12:00:29 -0400

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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Re: consciousness, Julian Jaynes, and Percy (Karey
> Perkins)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 13:54:36 -0400
> From: "Karey Perkins" <karey AT kareyperkins.com>
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] consciousness, Julian Jaynes, and
> Percy To: "'Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical
> Discussion'"
> <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <002801c6a2b7$93abe9f0$0201000a@KAREY>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Thanks so much to all of you - Marcus and Nikki, my
> reaction to Jaynes was much the same as Percy's. The
> reason I asked the question of the list was because I was
> under the impression that Jaynes was an important thinker
> in the field, along the lines of Terence Deacon, and so
> worthy of reading for background info. But as I read him
> , I thought, "Surely not. Surely I must be mistaken."
> His thoughts are really "out there" - all the while one is
> admiring Jaynes for the elegance of his logic and tying
> together of many loose ends, one thinks that he is really
> coming from another planet. I haven't read the whole book
> , but basically, the primary thesis is that early man had
> a "bicameral mind" which he describes as something like a
> schizophrenic hearing voices. "...at one time human
> nature was split in two, an executive part called god, and
> a follower part called man. Neither part was conscious"
> (Jaynes 84). Bicameral man had no consciousness
> whatsoever -- these voices in his head would give him
> orders and he would follow them mindlessly. As part of
> his evidence, Jaynes uses the Iliad, the history and story
> of which existed around 3000 BC, 2000 to 2500 years before
> "Homer" (or the anonymous poet(s)) wrote about it. All
> the gods (Athena, Apollo, etc.) that talk to Achilles,
> Hector, etc. are actually voices in the characters' heads,
> and the humans are helpless to do anything but obey these
> voices without thinking because they are not even
> conscious of them.
>
> I just taught the Iliad in my World Lit class, and I must
> say, that interpretation never occurred to me.
>
> I haven't read the whole book yet, perhaps it gets better?
> Although it is worth reading for entertainment value.
>
> Anyway, yes, I can well imagine that Percy (as well as the
> entire book group) chuckled at it. Rhonda, thanks for
> the SSL reference - the part you quote was Percy's
> reference to a later portion of the book, page 129 and
> perhaps later places I haven't gotten to yet, that discuss
> the evolution of language, and I imagine that's more
> accurate and valuable information so Percy may have used
> part of Jaynes.
>
> I however, agree with Nikki, that the important sources in
> a study of Percy's language theory are Percy's later
> writings on it and his Ketner correspondence about Peirce
> and language in general. CSP is mentioned only very
> briefly on the first page of Jaynes:
>
> "Despite centuries of pondering and experiment, of trying
> to get together two supposed entities called mind and
> matter in one age, subject and object in another, or soul
> and body in still others, despite endless discoursing on
> the streams, state or contents of consciousness, of
> distinguishing terms like intuitions, sense data, the
> given, raw feels, the sensa, presentation and
> representations, the sensations, images, and affections of
> structuralist introspections, the evidential data of the
> scientific positivist, phenomenological fields, the
> apparitions of Hobbes, the phenomena of Kant, the
> appearances of the idealist, the elements of Mach, the
> phanera of Peirce, or the category errors of Ryle, in
> spite of all these, the problem of consciousness is still
> with us."
>
> So yes, maybe that was the little clue that led Percy down
> the rabbit trail to Peirce?
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
> RHONDA MCDONNELL Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 2:20 PM
> To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] consciousness, Julian Jaynes, and
> Percy
>
> He may have chuckled at Jaynes's theory, but he didn't
> rule him out entirely. He references him in this passage:
>
> A few years ago, [language development] was thought to
> have begun to happen with Homo erectus perhaps a million
> years ago. Now, as Julian Jaynes at Princeton, among
> others, believes, it appears to have occurred in
> Neanderthal man as recently as the fourth glaciation,
> which lasted from about 75,000 to 35,000 years ago.
> During this same period, especially around
>
> 40,000 years ago, there occurred an explosive increase in
> the use and variety of new tools. The human brain
> increased in weight about fifty-four percent, much of
> this increase occurring in the cortex, especially in those
> areas around the Sylvan fissure implicated in the
> perception and production of speech. These are new
> structures, not present or else extremely rudimentary in
> even the highest apes. Moreover, recent experiments have
> shown that if one destroys this cortical region in other
> primates, it has no
>
> effect on vocalization, which is mediated not by a
> cortical but rather by the limbic system. (SIASL 118-119)
>
> So, while Jaynes's theories about the changes to the human
> brain between the
>
> writing of THE ILLIAD and THE ODDESSY might have been too
> extravagent (do I remember Jaynes correctly--I read it in
> the haze of dissertation research), Percy did think
> Jaynes was onto something.
>
> --Rhonda
> . . what people really fear is not that the bomb will
> fall but that the bomb will not fall . . .
> --Walker Percy
>
>
>
>
>
> >From: "Karey Perkins" <karey AT kareyperkins.com>
> >Reply-To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical
> Discussion" ><percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> >To: "'Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion'"
> ><percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> >Subject: [percy-l] consciousness, Julian Jaynes, and
> Percy >Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2006 23:55:40 -0400
> >
> >I am reading Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness
> and the Breakdown >of the Bicameral Mind, C 1976, 1990.
> He discusses the evolution of >language.
> >
> >
> >
> >Questions:
> >
> >
> >
> >1) Did Percy read Jaynes? If so, his opinion?
> >
> >2) How might he have responded, in your opinion, if he
> had read him? >
> >3) Did Jaynes know of Percy? He does cite Peirce, ever
> so briefly, but >not
> >Percy, Langer, or Cassirer.
> >
> >4) What is the general consensus of the mind-body and/or
> semiotic >community
> >on Jaynes?
> >
> >5) Has anyone on the list read Jaynes?
> >
> >6) How does Jaynes' thoughts stand up today? (16 years
> after last >printing)
> >
> >7) What do you think of Jaynes? What is the value of
> his book/thoughts? >
> >8) Any other thoughts?
> >
> >
> >
> >I do remember Mike Frentz differentiating between the
> more scientific >approaches to semiotics/consciousness and
> the more humanistic approaches, >with Jaynes in the former
> camp and Percy in the latter.. I've heard this >book is an
> important one - >
> >
> >
> >Karey
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> >--
> >An archive of all list discussion is available at
> >https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/
> >
> >Visit the Walker Percy Project at
> http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>
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> End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7
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