The Voices in Your Head


syrakusos

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In the recent topic about the Washington Navy Yard shooting, an AP story was cited saying that Aaron Alexis was being treated for mental illness because "he heard voices in his head". And so I quipped, "Who does not?" Well... who does not?

I read about that in Julian Jaynes' The Bicameral Mind. Apparently, before literacy, humans had no right brain - left brain dichotomy. Our brains were like those of horses or dogs: bilaterally symmetrical. Humans did not have voices in their heads. Writing gave us internal selves.

In ancient Egypt, they had these figurines "ushabti" that they would talk to as a way to understand their own thoughts.

We can find this in the Gilgamesh and in the Iliad and Odyssey. In the Gilgamesh, to build the city, the people are told exactly what to do. Lift the brick. Place the brick. Left to themselves, they would wander off like zombies. It is why we have work songs today: "hoo-ray and up she rises" ... "yo-ho heave ho!"

In the (older; oral) Iliad, motives are attributed to gods, but the (more recent; written) Odyssey, the clever liar has a secret agenda, a hidden motive.

Even thousands of years later, when an illiterate French peasant girl "heard voices in her head" she thought it was God or an angel talking to her. She had a limited internal experience, so she externalized the experience.

so, apparently, the US Navy medical corps includes proto-literates who can only externalize their thoughts. Maybe that's why they write reports: the paper talks to them. Maya Angelou said the same thing: "I write to find out what I am thinking."

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The Jaynes book is my favourite popular science book, ever. His theory makes absolute sense to me. I looked at his Wiki and learned that new neuroscience discoveries are tending to support his ideas - also that he influenced the great Philip K. Dick!

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I have a question.

Is your reference to "voices in your head," are you refering to a self dialogue with your own "voice?"

Or, are you refering to outside, or, other voices with diferent sounds, or, personalities?

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I have a question.

Is your reference to "voices in your head," are you refering to a self dialogue with your own "voice?"

Or, are you refering to outside, or, other voices with diferent sounds, or, personalities?

Like Joan of Arc?

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I have a question.

Is your reference to "voices in your head," are you refering to a self dialogue with your own "voice?"

Or, are you refering to outside, or, other voices with diferent sounds, or, personalities?

Like Joan of Arc?

Bob, you know better than to make that a response to what I am asking, definitionally.

However, let me "put the question to you."

Have you now, or, have you ever been a citizen that has "heard voices," inside your head? Yes...or...No!

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Unfortunately there is little or no neurological evidence that supports Jaynes thesis. However it is a very witty and amusing thesis.

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Re the voices in our heads, Harold Bloom (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human) would beg to differ: "Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare's greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." Bloom claims--not without controversy--that our concept of "interiority" did not exist before WS. Not sure I agree with him, but it's an interesting thesis.

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Harold Bloom, oh please. Shakespeare recorded and transmuted the reality he knew, which existed around him as well as within him. The reality existed long before Shakespeare and long before Bloom's halfwitted musings on "concepts of interiority."

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Hi Michael,

I suspect that our "internal selves" started with speaking/talking, not writing.

Also, I suspect that Maya Angelou was saying something much more profound that what you are giving her credit for --- not that I'm a fan of hers. But, isn't it likely that she was talking about the how the effort of writing forces a person to make his or her thoughts much more precise? Sometimes our thoughts are a bit garbled, but writing forces us to make sense of them. You make it sound as if pre-literate people were completely thoughtless.

However, I do wonder whether mentally ill people sometimes simply don't understand the functioning of their own minds.

Darrell

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One more plea for clarity.

When, on this thread, we are to refer to "voices in the head," are we talking about an internal dialogue with our own voice, or, a completely different voice/personality, or, some other internal/external voice?

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Selene: Which ones do you experience?

Samson: You need to read some journal articles about the plasticity of the brain.

Carol: Amen, sister! It was the chemist John Dalton who gave his name to colorblindness. Apparently for millions of years, no one knew... As I have said, in language, people do not invent words for purple and brown until after they have differentiated blue from green -- which facts Samson Crowell will likely find preposterous. How the mind works... so many minds, so many theories...

I had class in Ethics in Physics in 2010 and one of the graduate students said that he has no voice in his head. He said that his father always told him to listen to the voice in his head, and he said that he knows that other people make similar references, but he does not have one. Apparently, you don't need one to do physics.

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Selene: Which ones do you experience?

Samson: You need to read some journal articles about the plasticity of the brain.

Carol: Amen, sister! It was the chemist John Dalton who gave his name to colorblindness. Apparently for millions of years, no one knew... As I have said, in language, people do not invent words for purple and brown until after they have differentiated blue from green -- which facts Samson Crowell will likely find preposterous. How the mind works... so many minds, so many theories...

I had class in Ethics in Physics in 2010 and one of the graduate students said that he has no voice in his head. He said that his father always told him to listen to the voice in his head, and he said that he knows that other people make similar references, but he does not have one. Apparently, you don't need one to do physics.

Some people are visualizers rather than verbalizers.

I am definitely a verbalizer. My "thoughts" are a silent me talking out loud in my head where only I can "hear" them.

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Selene: Which ones do you experience?

First of all, I am trying to get a definition of what you, and, others mean by the "voices in the head."

I understand that folks have a wide range, e.g., the alleged killer who said his dog spoke to him.

The only voice(s) that I have ever heard is/are my own.

A...

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Hi Michael,

I suspect that our "internal selves" started with speaking/talking, not writing.

Also, I suspect that Maya Angelou was saying something much more profound that what you are giving her credit for --- not that I'm a fan of hers. But, isn't it likely that she was talking about the how the effort of writing forces a person to make his or her thoughts much more precise? Sometimes our thoughts are a bit garbled, but writing forces us to make sense of them. You make it sound as if pre-literate people were completely thoughtless.

However, I do wonder whether mentally ill people sometimes simply don't understand the functioning of their own minds.

Darrell

Bingo. This is what I'm thinking.

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Harold Bloom, oh please. Shakespeare recorded and transmuted the reality he knew, which existed around him as well as within him. The reality existed long before Shakespeare and long before Bloom's halfwitted musings on "concepts of interiority."

Do you really consider Bloom halfwitted? He might be a lot of things, but that isn't one that comes to mind for me.

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Writing changed our brain physiology. I find that preposterous.

Samson,

That's the part with Jaynes that gives me pause. That's why I got the book. (So far, I've only seen a few YouTube videos where Jaynes is discussed.)

I can agree that writing created new neural pathways from the vast amount of extra knowledge the tool allowed. And maybe that prompted some furtherance of evolutionary development.

I don't know.

It's interesting to look at, though.

Michael

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