Saturday, April 03, 2010

The Return of Quetzalcoatl - Chapter 12

All chapters of this book have been moved: here.

2 comments:

Chechar said...

Today I received the following e-mail by D.J., which I’ll respond in the next post:

If I may take a few more moments of your time, it appears your book presents a case for falsification of Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind. Recent data, in your view, supports child abuse as a prominent cause of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia produces auditory hallucinations which in some fashion is the origin of religious/spiritual voices. Infanticide, abandonment and abuse is also seen in high primates, possibly evolving, in the extreme, to deal with Malthusian collapses in primate societies. It's probably reasonable to speculate that the abuse produces psychosis in primates, which apparently manifests itself in a variety of ways. However, probably not auditory hallucinations. It probably means language is necessary even for hallucinations and thus human consciousness. Also, is there any data correlating schizophrenia with IQ?

Darwin's (and Jaynes'?) position was that thought cannot exist without language. In other words consciousness, as Jaynes describes it, cannot exist without language. Other arguments are mathematical, thought arises at a certain density of matter, emergence, as in hydrogen and oxygen become water, and bipedalism, in that the awareness of the horizon in the grasslands produced some sort of stimulus that resulted in consciousness. I have always argued in Darwin's defence, however, your view is unique and your input, when you have a moment, would be greatly appreciated.

Chechar said...

Thanks D.J. for your comments:

@ If I may take a few more moments of your time, it appears your book presents a case for falsification of Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind. Recent data, in your view, supports child abuse as a prominent cause of schizophrenia...

I have a whole web page on this subject. But most of it is in Spanish. And yes: falsifying Jaynes hypothesis is important, and I approached that subject in my Jaynes chapter.

@ Infanticide, abandonment and abuse is also seen in high primates, possibly evolving, in the extreme, to deal with Malthusian collapses in primate societies.

As you can see in the contents page to my book, I will approach the subject of infanticide very thoroughly (the only chapter with dozens of academic references) in a forthcoming chapter. Since infanticide has occurred in very prosperous cultures, like deMause I dismiss Malthusian explanations of it.

@ It's probably reasonable to speculate that the abuse produces psychosis in primates, which apparently manifests itself in a variety of ways. However, probably not auditory hallucinations. It probably means language is necessary even for hallucinations and thus human consciousness.

This is very interesting. There was a passage about animal infanticide in this very chapter that I decided to remove because it was a little boring... But yes: there’s research on primate infanticide going on.

@ Also, is there any data correlating schizophrenia with IQ?

Shrinks say that people with lower IQs are more vulnerable to the disorder.

@ Darwin's (and Jaynes'?) position was that thought cannot exist without language. In other words consciousness, as Jaynes describes it, cannot exist without language. […] however, your view is unique and your input, when you have a moment, would be greatly appreciated.

I believe that what Ark said about the development of empathy is true. If what I am saying is “unique” it’s because there are no other writers that presently are trying to amalgamate Miller (the subject of my 3rd book) with deMause. In fact, I have lost online friends because, although they are Miller fans, they are too cowards to stomach deMause’s psych-heavy data.

I don’t consider myself so unique. Using Wikipedia jargon I’d say that my Quetzalcoatl book is “OR by synthesis” (original research only in the sense that I am amalgamating two rather different psychohistories: Jaynes’ PH and deMause’s PH). Alternatively, it could be said that in my 4th book I try to amalgamate various models, mainly Alice Miller’s, Colin Ross’ and Lloyd deMause’s. While I found Jaynes’ book fascinating, language is not my business. My business is, in a nutshell, how child abuse causes westerners to hate their race & culture to the suicidal point. Unlike Miller, Ross and deMause, Jaynes does not focus on child abuse. Not at all.

If you like , you could try to post your reply here instead of emailing me.