I speak, therefore I think, therefore I am?

Recently I became aware of the work of Walker Percy (1916-1990), an American writer who had an interest in human behaviour, in particular the peculiar ability of humans to use language. He wrote a number of novels between the 1961 and 1987, one of which I’ve read – The Thanatos Syndrome (1987), which is an interesting but at times disturbing read – and a few non-fiction ruminations on humankind, language, and the like, including one I am reading now. The one I’m reading now has the rather long and intriguing title: The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975).

I came across Walker Percy by accident. I had been searching for papers about language and consciousness, and one of the ones that came up was an old (1993) but interesting article in the journal Language and Communication by Laura Mooneyham, who compared and contrasted the ideas of Percy and a psychologist of the same period, Julian Jaynes.

Like much of the biographical information I’ve seen about Percy (e.g. the entry on Wikipedia as a start), Mooneyham draws attention to Percy’s Catholicism, crediting this as a major influence on his ideas about humans and their unique capability for language and higher order consciousness (incorporating self-awareness and the ability to communicate with others through symbols). His search for a metaphysical explanation of events (that is, explaining phenomena from first principles, which include time, substance and existence) is contrasted with Jaynes’ materialistic explanation (that is, explaining phenomena only as the result of interactions of physical matter). Percy's dissatisfaction with such materialistic explanations is nicely captured in a question he poses (one of many presented one after the other over several pages!) in the opening chapter of The Message in the Bottle:

“Why is it that scientists know a good deal about what it is to be an organism in an environment but very little about what it is to be a creature who names things and utters and understands sentences about things?” (1975, p.8).

One of the main ideas discussed in Mooneyham’s paper is the distinction between primary consciousness (which animals have; 'bicamerality' in Jaynes' terms) and higher order consciousness (which humans have), and the notion that humans once had only this primary consciousness. The theory is that higher order consciousness came with the ability for complex, autonomous language (see also Halliday 2004 for a similar argument from systemic functional linguistics).

I was intrigued to learn that both Percy and Jaynes had drawn parallels between the Fall of Man and the shift from primary to higher-order consciousness in humans. The idea here was that for a time, humans were living in such a way that all their responses to external stimuli were dictated by God/gods (according to the various creation/fall narratives). They “could neither reflect upon their past nor future actions nor upon the possible consequences of those actions; therefore, they were without the moral consciousness which makes guilt possible” (Mooneyham, 1993, p.176). But then the ‘Fall’ happened (they tasted ‘the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’) and there was a shift, and their minds became capable of introspection and seeing how others saw them, so they felt guilt and shame.

 I'm still working out my views on how to read the story of Creation presented in Genesis in light of theories of human development, but there are some principles in the Genesis account, particularly about God's character, that are reiterated throughout the Biblical account and therefore can be trusted regardless of whether one takes the '6 day' narrative literally or figuratively.

One such principle is that humans were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). So I find it hard to accept this conception of the development of human consciousness because the Bible is consistent on the notion that God Himself has higher-order consciousness and the ability to communicate with others (see also related blog posts I wrote in August and October).

Another such principle is that God is inherently good and can't abide evil. The idea that humans went from being “neither good nor evil” in their state of primary consciousness to capable of both good and evil in their higher-order consciousness denies the pronouncement of God on the 6^th day, when he had created humans, that his creation was ‘very good’. God is good, and would not have been able to make this declaration if humans had not been ‘good’ from the beginning (at least until the Fall), not ‘neutral’ as supposed.

I welcome comments or clarifying questions on any of these thoughts.

References

Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). On Grammar as the Driving Force from Primary to Higher-order Consciousness. In G. Williams & A. Lukin (Eds). The Development of Language: Functional Perspectives on Species and Individuals, pp.15-44. London: Continuum.

Mooneyham, L. (1993). The Origin of Consciousness, Gains and Losses: Walker Percy vs Julian Jaynes. Language & Communication, 13(3), 169-182.

Percy, W. (1975). The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.