Bryan Kam
Curious what others who know the works listed think about #Jaynes on the Old Testament as the most detailed/gradual development of subjectivity in #literature and #philosophy. #Zhuangzi does seem abruptly personal compared to the #Tao
Nov 27, 2022 at 12:39pmWeb
Show threadfuryNov 27, 2022

@bryankam i'm not familiar with Jaynes, but this passage reminds me of R. Seaford's argument that the "soul" developed in India and Greece, with Buddhism being a response to and/or rejection of that development and ancient Greek philosophy being an embrace of it.

are these competing approaches to understanding subjectivity? or maybe the soul comes after an earlier "layer" of subjectivity?

Show threadBryan KamNov 27, 2022

@fury Fascinating! I'm not familiar with Seaford, where does he argue this?

I've been wondering whether this "truth" concept might come out of proto-Indo European grammar. And "self" or "soul" is an inferential mistake of the same nature (in Greece and India). It would be funny if this whole mess were just a PIE grammatical issue.

I think, for Jaynes, it's a similar process across cultures in contact with each other. Let me think a bit more and write a fuller response.

Show threadfuryNov 27, 2022

@bryankam for Seaford too, it's the spread of money across cultures in contact. The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India as well as Money and the Early Greek Mind are on my reading list for this, but I've only heard interviews so far.

it also reminds me of Sahlin's New Science of the Enchanted Universe. for him, lots of people are still around with the earlier form of consciousness, characterized by immanence as opposed to transcendence

Show threadfuryNov 27, 2022
@bryankam i'm attracted to the idea that there's more of a linguistic explanation, or maybe a medium-determined explanation, but i do think there's something more substantial at work too. i'm definitely interested in Jaynes now
Show threadDale FavierNov 27, 2022
@bryankam Absolutely, and I wouldn't particularly draw a line at the end of the Old Testament. Later Christianity pulls Jesus out of the line of Hebrew prophets to make him into something else, but we don't have to. He continues the arc.
Show threadDušan MitrovićNov 27, 2022
@bryankam This strikes me as a clear example of the author's bias towards their own culture. The stories in the old testament are great stories and I'd even argue there's a lot of insight into the human mind to be gained from it, but at the end of the day they're just that, stories. They aren't the supposed divine truth, neither were they divinely inspired. It's people being people and telling relatable stories to inspire one another.
Show threadBryan KamNov 27, 2022
@dusnm Right, the claim is that they're just stories for all cultures, and that those stories fundamentally change over time, from an impersonal story about Gods, to a kind of story with personal/individual concerns that don't exist in the earliest myths. The claim is that it's specifically the stories in the OT that change the "slowest" whereas in other places it is more abrupt. That's what I want to know, from people who know other cultures: is this shift slow or fast in the culture you know?
Show threadDušan MitrovićNov 27, 2022
@bryankam It's an interesting perspective. I'd have to say that I myself am living in a place that's widely considered a cultural crossroad between the west and the east and our stories certainly reflect that. But I'm afraid I can't offer a concrete perspective on the shift from impersonal to subjective since our culture has always been pretty subjective. It's best reflected in Serbian epic poems that tell stories of people bleeding for freedom from oppression, pretty subjective.
Show threadBryan KamNov 27, 2022
@dusnm Fascinating, thanks! Roughly what century are those poems from, out of curiosity?
Show threadDušan MitrovićNov 27, 2022
@bryankam They were created by various anonymous authors between the 14th and 19th centuries, roughly overlapping the time Serbs spent under Ottoman rule.