Pulling on Julian Jaynes' Bootstraps:

A Case Study in Contemporary Issues of

Scientific Confirmation.

Jonah S. Bossewitch

Professor David Lewis

Philosophy Junior Paper

May 6, 1996

"I used to think that the brain was the most amazing organ in my body, but then I realized who was	telling me that."

Comedian Emo Phillips, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist

The publishers wanted to name his book The Death of the Gods, but Julian Jaynes was not interested in the superficial sensationalism flashy packaging would generate. Instead he chose the lengthy academic title, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which was printed in a simple black font on an all white background. But this packaging could not disguise the fact that the ideas in his book were, by his own admission1, preposterous. Although the book's cover may have intimidated some readers, and possibly hurt the book's circulation, the title brings into focus the central hypothesis that Jaynes attempts to confirm through a convoluted network of interrelated ideas, hypothesis, and evidence—consciousness is learned, and is generated by language.

The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind reads like a well written fairy tale, and indeed one of his critics claimed that Jaynes "has the reportorial skill of a Tolkein."2 While his entertaining style is enjoyable, Jaynes paid dearly for it. The manner in which he elaborates his theories masks the structure of the logical relationships connecting his hypothesis. This confusion is compounded by the fact that Jaynes' book touches so many fields, and grapples with many big questions. Some people understood his work to be primarily an explanation of the origins of religion3. Others tried to reduce his work to a treatise on the origins of deliberation4, or the concept of consciousness as opposed to consciousness itself5.

These reactions prompted Jaynes to add a postscript to the original book when it was reprinted in 1990. In the Afterword which appears in the second edition of the book6, Jaynes explicitly outlines his argument as he originally intended it. He breaks down his theory into four separate hypothesis: (I) Consciousness is based on language: Language precedes consciousness, and consciousness is learned. "Consciousness is not all language, but it is generated and accessed by it."7 (II) The Bicameral mind: "Preceding consciousness there was a different mentality based on verbal hallucinations." (III) The dating: "Consciousness was learned only after the breakdown of the bicameral mind." (IV) The double brain: There exists a neurological model that corresponds to the bicameral mentality.

Despite this clarification, many still find it difficult to distill the essence of Jaynes, and this task is complicated by the fact that Jaynes himself stresses the modularity of the various components of his theory. His book attempts to explain everything from the origins of language, consciousness, religion, and civilization, to the mysteries of poetry, music, hypnosis, and madness. He does this by appealing to his hypothesis of the Bicameral mind which he bolsters with a sketch of its neurological counterpart, and supports with a historical hypothesis. It is easy to see why this 'theory of everything' would spawn tremendous controversy, since it makes claims involving virtually every academic discipline. The seemingly holistic nature of Jaynes' approach has resulted in a widely mixed response from his colleagues. Most either love it or hate it, with very little middle ground, and some of his critics have a hard time separating their emotions from their evaluation8.

Reading Jaynes is like watching a magician conjure the Statue of Liberty out of existence by uttering a few magic words. In both instances, the typical reaction is to demand to know how the trick was preformed. The most pressing question facing Jaynes' readers is what sort of tricks does Jaynes employ, and is the structure that he creates anything more than an illusion resting on imaginary foundations? How can we evaluate a theory that resists unraveling no matter how many threads are pulled from it? Is his top-down methodology a valid way of conducting research, or is it just an evasive technique designed to create a theory that is immune from criticism?

Jaynes' separate hypotheses seem to mutually support one another, and this raises important issues for any theory of confirmation. Some of Jaynes hypotheses are formulated in highly theoretical terms, which resist reduction to observational terms. Jaynes assumes the truth of these hypotheses in order to bring observational evidence to bear on them. Is this a legitimate method for generating and testing hypotheses?

Finally, we need to examine the status of Jaynes' methodology in the context of "just-so" stories9. It is often the case that we know the necessary structure of a transition (i.e. we had to get from state A to state B somehow), but we lack the means to confirm directly which of the various possible paths was actually taken. In these situations, we must examine the role of creative guesses at what might have happened. All of these factors have play an important role in formulating a modern sophisticated theory of scientific confirmation, and Jaynes' provides a wonderful case study which demonstrates these principles at work in the Social Sciences.

Magical Metaphors.

Jaynes' first hypothesis, consciousness is learned, forms the core of his entire theory, and it is the only component of his theory that is truly indispensable. In fact, from a simplified perspective, the other hypothesis can be viewed as evidence that confirms this core hypothesis. Conversely, it also possible to view the first hypothesis as evidence that helps confirm the other hypothesis. The entire book can be understood as an attempt to relate the theoretical language of speculative psychological theory to the observational language of anthropology, history, psychiatry, and neurophysiology. Later we will explore how some circular systems of beliefs can become more credible as a result of its components mutually supporting each other. As we shall see, there may also be a way of grounding Jaynes' core hypothesis independently, freeing his theory from the circular model.

Jaynes' core hypothesis is one that has been gaining popularity and acceptance in recent years. He argues that

"consciousness is not all mentality, not necessary for sensation or perception, that it is not a copy of experience, nor necessary for learning, nor even necessary for thinking and reasoning, and has only an arbitrary and functional location... Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what we call the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics... Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or a repository. And it is intimately bound with volition and decision."10

This quotation can be interpreted in many ways, so to get a better sense of Jaynes' use of the term 'consciousness' it is helpful to refer to the second chapter of his book, where he briefly outlines six of the most important features of the 'consciousness' that he refers to: (1) Spatialization. "To allow us to represent diverse but distinct things simultaneously we locate them 'within a mind- space', where we "see" them clearly and distinctly... Consciousness is spatialized by countless spatial metaphors as a place, a container into which go sensory impressions, inside which abstract things are laid out beside one another for comparison and fitted together or arranged in some spatial order, and then out of which come actions and emotions."11 (2) Excerption. We are never aware of anything in its entirety, and our representations of things are limited to excerptions "from the collection of possible attentions to a thing which comprises our knowledge of it."12 (3) The Analog 'I' and (4) The Metaphor 'Me'. These metaphors for ourselves allow us visualize 'ourselves' in an imagined 'world', and enable us to 'make' decisions based on imagined 'outcomes' that would be impossible to obtain without the model 'self'.13 (5) Narratization. The story of our lives, in which we are the main character, links time to space, and is the place for editing casual explanations "to explain anything we happen to find ourselves doing." (6) Conciliation. "Introducing coherence, consistency, and harmony among the excerpts (images) and narratizations of consciousness by assimilating them to previously learned schemas."14

It is important to note that the details of Jaynes' structure of consciousness do not make, or break, his thesis. Dennet recommends that "it is very important to understand Julian Jaynes' project, to see a little bit more about what the whole shape of it is, and delay the barrage of nitpicking objections and criticisms until we have seen what the edifice as a whole is."15 But, at the same time, Dennet also confesses that he is "rather fond of [Jaynes'] way of carving up consciousness," and he finds Jaynes' version "very similar to the way that I [Dennet] independently decided to carve up consciousness."16 Jaynes' account of consciousness also bears a distinct Kantian flavor, and Mulaik has developed a variant of Kant's argument that supports Jaynes' position.17 Although some may find Jaynes' arguments ridiculous, he shares his central views with respectable company.

W. T. Jones voices a standard objection to the first hypothesis, and accuses Jaynes of making the"use mention" error. The use mention criticism has been applied to many theories that seem to confuse the phenomena X with either the concept of X, or the name of X. Jones attempts to unpack Jaynes' metaphor that 'metaphor generates consciousness', and wonders how 'generation by metaphor' can be distinguished from 'description by metaphor'. "Speaking picturesquely, and very loosely, we might allow ourselves to say that metaphor created the language in which physicists now talk about nature; analogously, we might sat that metaphor created the language in which psychologists talk about consciousness." Jones argues that just as it is absurd to think that physicists' language creates nature, as opposed to merely describing it, it is absurd to think that natural language creates consciousness, as opposed to merely giving us a way to talk about it. He points out, that according to Jaynes "metaphor not only created the language in which we talk about consciousness, it also created the consciousness that is talked about in this language... Language brought one absolutely new feature into the world—the distinction, within the [experiential] field, between what is outer and what is inner, between what is experienced, and the experiencing of it"18

Consciousness is not the only phenomena that is susceptible to this type of confusion. At the McMaster-Bauer Symposium on Consciousness, Daniel Dennet defended Jaynes' distinctions by offering some other examples where the concept does equal the phenomena, or at least precedes it. The most famous of these involves the origin of morality. Thomas Hobbes has been repeatedly criticized for claiming that the social contract gave birth to morality, and that right and wrong did not exist before this contract. "Right and wrong, however, are parts of morality, a peculiar phenomenon that can't predate a certain set of concepts of right and wrong. The phenomenon is created in part by the arrival on the scene of a certain set of concepts."19

Similarly, it has been argued20 that, in a sense, history did not exist until the concept of history was invented. "Is there a history of lions and antelopes? Just as many years have passed for them as for us, and things have happened to them, but it is very different. Their passage of time has not been conditioned by their recognition of the transition, it has not been conditioned and tuned and modulated by any reflexive consideration of that process. So history itself, our having histories, is in part a function of our recognizing that very fact."21

Dennet points out that there exists a large set of phenomena which exhibit the strange property where the concept of the phenomena necessarily precedes, or is identical, with the phenomena. Money, marriage, citizenship, law, and baseball all seem to fall into this category.22 Dennet understands Jaynes "to be making a similarly exciting and striking move with regard to consciousness. To put it really somewhat paradoxically, you can't have consciousness until you have the concept of consciousness. In fact, [Jaynes] has a more subtle theory than that, but that's the basic shape of the move."

Jones maintains that "metaphor only articulates an observed similarity of two features of the experimental field; it did not generate one of them (consciousness) out of whole cloth... so consciousness and physical space must both have been in that early man's experiential field."23 While this position is tenable, it completely ignores exactly the problem that Jaynes is attempting to solve. Unless Jones can provide us with an alternative mechanism which has the power to generate consciousness, his reasoning implies that consciousness has always existed, as long as nature has. Jaynes' book is a valiant struggle to explain the transition from protoplasm to poets, assuming that consciousness was not always a part of all creatures experiential field.

Jones uses his analysis to reduce Jaynes' thesis to the claim that "before the third millennium people never, in any circumstances whatsoever, reflected (however briefly); they never considered alternatives (however sketchy and with however short time horizons)."24 However, given the explicit clarifications that Jaynes makes in the Afterword, and at the McMaster-Bauer Symposium on Consciousness, it is clear that Jaynes would never accept this reduction. Jaynes' first hypothesis is a substantive claim about the nature of consciousness, in the full blown sense of the word.

The Many Voices of Julian Jaynes.

Before we embark on the journey from conch shells to consciousness, we must answer a few questions. What was the impetus that drove this transition? What sorts of intermediate stages must be, or happened to be, traversed for us to be here now, the way that we are? What factors shaped the transitions between these stages? These questions form the basis for Jaynes' second hypothesis, and cast the highly theoretical language of his first hypothesis into a hypothesis with observable25 outcomes.

Jaynes begins his story by reviewing some facts about primate behavior. He notes that some mammals, usually predators, tend towards solitariness, while others, usually prey, form social groups. For these social animals, "it is the group then that evolves. When dominant individuals give a warning cry or run, others of the group flee without looking for the source of danger. It is thus the experience of one individual and his dominance that is an advantage to the whole group... The important thing for us here is that this social structure depends on the communication between individuals."26

Primates have evolved a tremendous repertoire of complex signaling techniques, encompassing tactile (grooming, embracing, nuzzling), auditory (grunts, barks, screeching), and visual (eye contact, posturing, facial expressions) modes of expression. Jaynes claims that these methods of communication impose a fundamental limit on the maximum number of members in a group. In order to maintain social control, the dominance hierarchy must be constantly reinforced by the leader of the group. Baboons manage to achieve groups of up to eighty individuals by maintaining strict dominant hierarchies within a smaller circles of the group, but in general, the typical primate group does not exceed thirty or forty members27. "There is no reason to think that early man from the beginning of the genus Homo two million years ago lived any differently. This number I suggest, was limited by the problem of social control and the degree of openness of the communication channels between individuals. And it is problem of this limitation of group size which the gods may have come into evolutionary history to solve."28

At this point Jaynes invokes a speculative theory of the evolution of language, which he cations "is not intended as a definitive statement of what occurred in evolution so much as a rough working hypothesis to approach it." He stresses the central assertion of this view is that "each new stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural changes which are reflected in the archaeological record."29 These types of qualifiers do not appear often enough make an impact on most critics, but they explicitly sum up Jaynes' bootstrap strategy. We will return to this point soon.

Jaynes traces the development of language from calls, modifiers, and commands, through nouns and the emergence of syntax. He begs us to consider the invention of names, and the dramatic effects that they would have on 'thought', allowing tribe members to be referred to in their absence, and intensifying relationships between members. The final ingredient in the bicameral mind is the most controversial, and in conjunction with the dating hypothesis, steals the spotlight from the Jaynes' other ideas.

"Let us consider a man commanded by himself or his chief to set up a fish weir far upstream from a campsite. If he is not conscious, and cannot therefore narratize the situation and so hold his analog 'I' in a spatialized time with its consequences fully imagined, how does he do it? It is only language, I think, that can keep him at this time-consuming all-afternoon work. A Middle Pleistocene man would forget what he was doing. But a lingual man would have a language to remind him, either repeated by himself, which would require a type of volition which I do not think he was capable of, or as seems more likely, by a repeated 'internal' verbal hallucination telling him what to do."30

Language evolves as a method of social control, and the hallucinated voices play an integral part in maintaining that control. These factors set the stage for the birth of the bicameral mind. The bicameral man is essentially an automaton, incapable of introspection, deception, or deliberation. Jaynes believed that early bicameral civilizations flourished, and even includes ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Babylon as prime examples of civilizations which were entirely bicameral. A typical bicameral man would go about his business, completely governed by deterministic "autopilot" until he encountered a complex situation which required a decision. At this point, the stress generated by the confusion over what to do next, triggered a hallucinated voice that ordered the man what to do. These voices usually took the form of an authority figure, such as a parent, a king, or a god, and would persist long after their living counterpart died. Neither the external interface, nor the internal hallucinatory control was conscious. Each part operated independently, and the whole systems' mentality was preconscious.31

To get a complete picture of the bicameral mind, it helps to fast forward a bit to the breakdown of the bicameral mind, and the emergence of consciousness. Remember, that this process is not discrete, as it is carried on continuously. Jaynes highlights several factors that he considers crucial for the huge alteration in human mentality between the bicameral mind and consciousness: (1) the weakening of the auditory by the advent of writing; (2) the inherent fragility of hallucinatory control; (3) the unworkableness of gods in the chaos of historical upheaval; (4) the positing of internal cause in the observation of difference in others; (5) the acquisition of narratization from epics; (6) the survival value of deceit; and (7) a modicum of natural selection."32 Jaynes' construction suggests an interesting solution to the "other minds" problem. According to Jaynes story, I am first forced to infer that other people have minds, in order to explain their radically bizarre behavior, and only later infer, that since I am similar to them, I must have a mind too. Jaynes claims that we first began to posit our own mind-spaces after attempting to understand the behavior of others. One of the reasons that people find Jaynes' theory so romantic, is that the processes that lead to the evolution of consciousness include travel to distant lands, and falling in love.

The Theory That Best Fits the Evidence, or The Evidence That Best Fits the Theory?

Although the transition from non-conscious to conscious is a necessary one (for us to be as we are), the details of that transition are empirical, and the path that early humans took need not be the only way to get from point A to point B. Given Jaynes' first two hypotheses concerning the nature of a consciousness, and the bicameral stage that humans pass through while learning consciousness, we are faced with the challenge of relating these theories to observational evidence, and subjecting them to the tests that all scientific hypotheses must endure. There are a variety of phenomena that could be used for this task, including historical, neurological, contemporary psychological evidence, studies in artificial intelligence and animal models. Jaynes only explores some of these options, and his theory remains open to further empirical investigation.

Jaynes believes that the bicameral hypothesis best explains many of the archeological features of the ancient world that make little sense to us. He uses his hypothesis to interpret historical evidence in a new light, and he uses this historical confirmation to date the bicameral hypothesis. For instance, he uses the bicameral hypothesis to explain the bizarre burial rites that began at the dawn of the bicameral age. Since people could still hear the voices of the dead, they continued to feed and protect them. Assuming the bicameral hypothesis, Jaynes also predicts that the voices would be triggered by physical devices, such as the many figurines and idols that were widely known in the ancient world, and have been unearthed in huge numbers. Even the systematic architecture shared by almost all bicameral cultures testifies to a radically different mentality at work. We must be wary, however, since many of Jaynes' "predictions" sound a bit ad hoc, and are dispensable in the sense that their absence would not disconfirm the theory.

In addition to the limited, though consistent archeological evidence, Jaynes relies heavily on literary evidence to support the dating of his bicameral hypothesis. Dennet cuts Jaynes some slack for his bold interpretations "because this isn't just archeology he is doing; this is software archeology, and software doesn't leave much of a fossil record. Software, after all, is just concepts."33 Jaynes spends considerable effort reinterpreting classical Greek literature to demonstrate how it confirms his views. He contrasts the language and the action of the Iliad with that of the Odyssey, and finds that "the words which in later Greek indicate aspects of conscious functioning, have in the Iliad more concrete and bodily referents."34 During the time of the Iliad, everybody was a behaviorist, and the word 'angry' did not reflect the internal state of the user. Rather, it indicated the increased rate of deep breathing and corresponding chest expansion that accompanies and signifies anger.35 "The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections."36 When Agamemnon offends Achilles, Athena descends to stop Achilles from drawing his sword.37 Jaynes insists that we should understand this encounter as Achilles' hallucinated voice (or personal god) doing his deliberation for him, as it would for any typical bicameral man. He contrasts the characters in the Iliad with the deliberating, scheming, introspective characters in the Odyssey.

When he hits the Old Testament, Jaynes is like a kid who has stumbled into a free video arcade, stopping to play with every idea in the text. He believes that this document was written smack in the middle of the most significant transition in human mentality, and vestiges of the bicameral litter the mind-scape of the population. Prophets hallucinate voices and visions, while the masses are questing for authority, searching for lost gods who have forsaken them. The bicameral age never completely ends, as anachronisms like the Oracle at Delphi, and modern day schizophrenics, persist long after the majority of the population has learned a new mentality.

It is worth remembering that the journey from non-conscious to consciousness did not end however many thousands of years ago. Every child born into a conscious civilization embarks on this journey from the moment that they enter our world. Since our mentality is not hardwired, a child born today and raised by a bicameral family in a bicameral civilization would grow up to be bicameral. Similarly, a child born during the bicameral age and raised in the modern world would grow up to be completely "normal."38 Jaynes notes the phenomena of imaginary playmates, and wonders if under the "right" social conditions, these voices might blossom into personal gods.

Jaynes also spends considerable effort relating the bicameral theory to the underlying neuro-physiological architecture. Essentially, he argues that the bicameral mind is generated by the two hemispheres of the brain, and he ascribes the voices to the region in the left hemisphere corresponding to the language areas on the right hemisphere. The details of this neurological theory are beyond the scope of this paper, and Jaynes considers the details of such an account to be dispensable in terms of confirming his theory—if they are incorrect, they will not disconfirm the theory.

When Julian Jaynes Meets Clark Glymour.

We have seen the basic outline of Jaynes' argument, and we will defer a discussion of its merits and fallacies, until we have taken a more abstract look at its pattern. The best comprehensive way to criticize any theory, is by first sneaking a peek backstage at the theoretical apparatus being employed. As it turns out, Jaynes' strategy is a classic example of the "Bootstrap Confirmation" method explicitly described by Clark Glymour in his book Theory and Evidence.39

There are two important aspects that need to be addressed regarding the bootstrapping strategy. First, we must specify exactly what the Bootstrap model describes, and determine if this model accurately characterizes Jaynes' project. Second, we must then question the epistemological foundations of this strategy, and attempt to generalize when, if ever, this strategy is justified, and yields positive confirmation of a theory.

"The central problem [Theory and Evidence] addresses is to explain how findings in one (observational) vocabulary can evidence propositions stated in a different (theoretical) vocabulary. The solution offered is that a hypothesis is confirmed with respect to a theory by deducing instances of that hypothesis from the evidence and assumptions of the theory, where these assumptions may include the very hypothesis under consideration. (It is the later feature that leads Glymour to label the procedure "bootstrapping). Confirmation is thus a ternary relation linking a bit of evidence e to a hypothesis h by way of a background theory T."40

Glymour contrasts this confirmation strategy with three other types of strategies that have been advanced by philosophers of science. (1) Elimination of Theory: Glymour attributes the explicit formulation of this approach to Reichenbach's student, Wesley Salmon.41 Essentially, this strategy relates theoretical language to observational language by "reducing" the theoretical sentences to sentences composed entirely in the language of evidence. (2) The deductive method: This view postulates a deductive connection between the theory and the evidence, and is shared by many empiricists, including Carnap, Ayer, and Hempel.42 The hypothetico-deductive model claimed that "evidence confirms a theory if the evidence can be deduced, in an appropriate way, from the theory."43 (3) Probabilistic strategies: "Typically, these theories suppose that there is a conditional probability function on pairs of sentences, and in particular that there is a conditional probability for any hypothesis given any evidence statement. Confirmation relations are analyzed in terms of probability relations."44 Some philosophers45 have argued that bootstrapping can be reduced, or expressed, as conditional probabilities. The boostrapping story that Gylmour presents can then be understood as a qualitative account of this process, which conforms to the Baysian model of confirmation.

Glymour argues that the bootstrap strategy is prevalent throughout the history of science, implying that it is a basic cognitive strategy of inference. Glymour analyzes some famous historical examples that demonstrate the bootstrap strategy in action, including well known arguments by Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Freud.

Consider the argument for the existence of Newtonian mass, an alleged observable. The only way to measure mass is to assume that the laws of motion hold, and use those laws—which already assume the existence of Newtonian mass— to calculate the quantity being measured. Thus, the only way to access the evidence which tests the theory, is by assuming the "truth" of the theory, and using it to gather and interpret the evidence. This is a simple example of what Glymour means when he talks about bootstrapping. A more complicated version of this strategy is found in Newton's argument for universal gravitation:

"Using Newton's three laws, instances of theoretical claims are deduced from the Phenomena and from other experimental claims; Newton's Rules of Reasoning function as rules of detachment—that is, Newton uses them to move from certain kinds of instances of hypotheses to the hypotheses themselves. These hypotheses are then used as instances of still broader claims, which are then detached and so on. The total effect is this a complex and sometimes even bewildering mixture of deductive and inductive moves. From instances of a hypothesis Newton proceeds to the hypothesis itself and then, using the hypothesis in the new cases, together with other laws and empirical relations, he obtains instances of a further hypothesis, and then, inductively, the further hypothesis itself, and so on."46

If we replace the Newtonian terms with Jaynesian terms in the above quotation, we will find a remarkably accurate account of the structure of Jaynes' argument. Essentially, Jaynes assumes his first and second theoretical hypothesis (consciousness is learned, and humans pass through a bicameral phase en route to consciousness), and uses them to gather the historical and neurological evidence which he uses to support them. Jaynes calls the historical and neurological evidence "hypotheses" indicating that he was sensitive to the fact that this evidence was not purely observational. But it is a mistake to confuse the levels that his four hypotheses are operating on. Jaynes uses the first two hypotheses to gather the historical and neurological evidence that he uses to confirm these "higher level", theoretical hypotheses. The web of relationships between Jaynes' hypotheses and data is more complex than what I have just described, but it is clear that Jaynes is a flagrant bootstrapper, who artfully employs this strategy to transform preposterous hypotheses, into compelling and convincing ones.

Pulling Your Feet Out From Under You: The Use and Abuse of Bootstrapping.

Having identified bootstrapping in action, we must turn to the all important question: When is bootstrapping justified? So far, bootstrapping has been presented as a circular system of verification, in which, roughly, A supports B and B supports A, making both A and B more believable. One way to defend this mode of reasoning is by arguing that bootstrapping is epistemologically sound precisely since it is a central cognitive strategy, has been employed throughout the history of science, and has produced unquestionably solid results. However, as it stands, the bootstrapping strategy is ripe for abuse, and indeed, it is a strategy that is often used by pseudo-scientists to advance what most people consider to be "crack-pot" theories.

For example, in his series of bestselling books47, Eric von Däniken advances the hypothesis that Extra Terestrials visited the Earth in ancient times, interbred with mankind, and taught man the rudiments of civilization. Interestingly enough, von Däniken draws on much of the same archeological and literary evidence that Jaynes' does, using his own hypothesis to interpret the word "god" as alien astronaut, instead of personel halucinated voice. When the same peice of evidence is invoked by competing theories in mutually excliusive ways, it immeadiatly tells us that bootstrapping is in the air. While von Däniken's hypotheses are certainly logically possible, many scholars find the theory highly improbable, and search for flaws in the structure of von Däniken's argument. The trouble, as we have seen, is that many of the most vernerable and succesful scientific theories, employ a version of bootstrapping akin to von Däniken's. So how can we tell the difference between "good" science, and "pseudo" science, or more poignantly, is there one?

For the bootstrapping model of confirmation to be of any use, it must be able to discriminate between the Newtons and the Von Dänikens, and be able to tell us which side of the fence Jaynes falls. In his response to Kuhn, Scheffler defends the possibility of objectivity in science, and presents an argument can be applied to the issue of bootstrap confirmation.48 Scheffler casts his version of the problem of bootstrap confirmation as an inherent psychological reality that cannot be avoided, and which threatens to undermine the possibility of objectivity in science.

"You will no doubt remind me that the psychological considerations earlier cited provide strong empirical support not only for the importance of categorical schemata in observation, but also for the enormous influence of expectations and beliefs, that is, of particular hypotheses, upon observational mode and even upon content... Accepting a hypothesis tends to restrict our view to certain of our categories, that is, to those which accord with the hypothesis itself. Expecting the next item to belong to a particular category, we tend generally to see it so."

He counters this point by noting that although "observational support for an assignment contrary to an accepted hypothesis needs to persist longer and fight harder for a hearing than observational data which accord to expectations, [nevertheless] such contrary indications can and do make themselves felt. Our expectations strongly structure what we see, but do not wholly eliminate unexpected sights."49

Dashing the dreams of the turn of the century logical positivists, contemporary philosophers of science have found it is difficult to demand that confirmation precede free of theoretical language. Such a criterion is far too restrictive, as it would effectively undue most of the progress science has claimed, and would render the confirmation of theoretical hypotheses virtually impossible.

A corollary of this development is that theories need not be directly verifiable for them to be meaningful. Indeed, "theoretical laws, by contrast, are expressed in a more abstract idiom and typically postulate unobservable elements and functions; unlike observational laws, they cannot be subjected to the test of direct inspection or experiment."50 However, we can still preserve the spirit of Popper's falsifiability criterion,51 (scientific sentences are falsifiable, unscientific sentences are not) by understanding falsifiability in the sense of indirectly falsifiable. Thus, we can stipulate that the bootstrapping strategy confirms hypotheses if and only if "the observation or experiment that issues in e be such that it could have issued in a disconfirming, rather than a confirming, instance. In short, the experiment must place the hypothesis in jeopardy."52

Armed with this criterion which tells us when we ought to take bootstrap confirmation seriously, we are now equipped to critically evaluate theories which we have identified as bootstrapers. A theory which is confirmed by any possible evidence, and is never placed in jeopardy, is not a scientific theory. However, if a theory which can be indirectly disconfirmed, in the same manner that it is indirectly confirmed, then bootstrapping is justified, and we ought to take the theory seriously.

Using this criterion, we find that Newton's arguments could have been disconfirmed had the measurements not turned out right. On the other had, von Däniken's claims cannot be similarly tested, since there is no piece of evidence which would disconfirm his theory, nor is there any positive evidence which his theory relies upon, leaving the status of his theory possible, not very probable, and ultimately untestable. Returning to our original question, what should we make of Jaynes?

Although Jaynes might have used history as an imaginative springboard to generate his hypotheses, history is probably not the best arena to draw confirming evidence from, since it is subject to an extremely wide variety of interpretations. Jaynes repeatedly disclaims the importance of the historical details, and insists that his theory would withstand the removal of any individual piece of historical evidence. This type of posturing reeks of pseudo-science, but Jaynes' ideas do not belong in the same category as von Däniken's.

It seems that a clever series of experiments in various scientific domains, would be able to produce kosher bootstrapping which would test Jaynes' theoretical hypotheses. Psychology has many glaring gaps that Jaynes' theory might shed some light upon, and which in turn, would test the theory in the bootstrap manner described above. Some of these unsatisfactorily explained experiential phenomena include madness, hypnosis, and hallucinogenic drugs. In a parallel vein, detailed studies of childhood development might uncover if, in fact, consciousness is learned, as well as the processes involved in its evolution. Psychologists may find that children demonstrate innate tendencies to hallucinate voices (imaginary playmates?) at certain stages of maturation.

Similarly, much of the work in animal minds might be brought to bear on the Jaynsian hypotheses. The Philosopher/Animal Trainer Vicky Hearne has written extensively on the cognitive changes that dogs and horses undergo during "language" acquisition.53 David Premack has demonstrated that an African born chimpanzee can be taught to understand higher relational mappings by studying a form of artificial language.54 Finally, some time in the future, progress in Artificial Intelligence may reach a point where Jaynes' theory becomes highly relevant. Can consciousness be taught and learned? Does the best way to teach consciousness involve a "bicameral" stage?

These examples exhibit the theoretical breadth of Jaynes' hypotheses, and they can all benefit from the Jaynesian paradigm, which would allow them to relate these observational findings to a theoretical framework. Furthermore, in contrast to the historical evidence, these domains can each provide definite disconfirmations of Jaynes' theories, and it is within these experimental contexts that Jaynes' theories may truly be put in jeopardy of the first time. If these techniques prove successful, they might lend support to the historical interpretation that Jaynes proposes. Otherwise, we will be left with an impressive possibility that forced us to think about old questions in radically new ways. While Jaynes' theories have not been tested yet, his theoretical hypotheses are, in principle, testable, and should be considered unresolved scientific questions.

I. Summary of Jaynes' Theory - 4 Hypotheses

1. Cs is generated and accessed by lang: "You can't have Cs until you have the
concept of Cs" Dennet

2. Preceding Cs there was a different mentality based on verbal hallucinations

3. Cs. was only learned after the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind.

4. Neurological model of bicameral mind

II. Methodology

abduction generates theoretical language - p. 8 - not directly testable: bootstrap confirmation - one method (widely used) for relating theoretical to observation lang. inverse of IBE. Confirm theory using evidence vs. generate theory given evidence.

1. Why Jaynes' fits the bootstrap model of confirmation

2. Other examples of bootstrapping

1. Cognitive examples

2. Confirmation of Newtonian Physics

3. Von Däniken

0. When is it OK to bootstrap

Verifiability and inference to the best explanation

a. why verificationism had to go, and the problems with implementing abduction.

b. baysenism, and bootstrap confirmation as an implementation of IBE.

c. Bayesian bootstrap confirmation.

b. Shefler's defense of bootstrapping - its ok as long as there are disconfiming	examples that can come out

3. What Jaynes should have done (which would also make him more believable).

a. other predictions/ways to independently confirm - boundary cases

1. ai/animal models (Vicky Hearne) - Teaching Cs.

2. childhood development

3. hypnosis, madness