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The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

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Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#11

Post by goto11 »

friendstock wrote: post #6
goto11 wrote: post #4

Sounds like a crackpot theory by someone not understanding literature. Because the Illiad does not contain the word "mind" and describes events and actions but not thoughts and mental states, it follows that people at the time did not have consciousness. I guess Hemmingway did not have consciousness either?

Jaynes was a professor at Princeton University, so he must've built up enough credibility to get this appointment. I was a student at Princeton and actually sat in on his class for a few sessions.

I'm sure he was credible enough in the field of psychology, but that does not automatically make him an expert in classical literature or religion, which is where he finds the purported evidence for the theory. Therefore the theory have to be judged on its own merit, not just the academic title of the originator.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#12

Post by bloak »

goto11 wrote: post #9
akvadrako wrote: post #5

Regardless of the historical evidence (or lack thereof) for his theory, I found his book very enlightening. It really helped me understand religion, schizophrenia and the split brain, showing why it would be so important to early human society and how it could came about, biologically and culturally.

Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are still speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion. The theory can "rationally" explain…

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal.

If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a literal description of a real experience.

For me one of the biggest problems with the theory is how people's perception (whether they hear voices or not) could change en masse, presumably because of a change in culture or education, because I don't believe there can have been a biological change over that period. Therefore, if people educated in the right way could hear voices I'd expect there still to be groups of people (members of some religious sect perhaps) who hear voices. So I'd like to see a detailed description of one of those groups. Then I could perhaps believe that the phenomenon was mainstream in ancient Greece.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#13

Post by goto11 »

nsajko wrote: post #8

A nice way to look at Bicameralism is as (good) science fiction. (Wikipedia calls it a "radical hypothesis".)

It is also non-falsifiable since it is impossible to prove or disprove whether ancient people were conscious or not. Or for that matter whether a present-day schizophrenic is conscious or not in the same sense.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#14

Post by bencollier49 »

bloak wrote: post #12
goto11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are still speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion. The theory can "rationally" explain…

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal. If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a li…

I'd be willing to bet that if you took a sample of people who'd trained themselves to lucid dream, you'd find a high proportion of people who heard voices. Specifically upon sleeping and waking.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#15

Post by goto11 »

bloak wrote: post #12
goto11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are still speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion. The theory can "rationally" explain…

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal. If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a li…

I actually don't reject the theory that accounts of Gods appearing and speaking to people could be actual mental processes, guided by culture. I find this more believable than it is all fiction or lies (or that Gods have physical existence outside the human mind). But I do reject the bicameral hypothesis that we either have Gods speaking or we have consciousness, and that shift happened a particular point in time around the eight century.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#16

Post by starbeast »

When I first read it, I felt he was trying to find a solution for a problem that doesn't exist, that of; 'given humans are conscious and animals are not, what mechanism could bring about an incredibly sudden evolution of consciousness out of nowhere?'

The answer being that there was not a sudden evolution of consciousness out of nowhere. Human conscious states may be greatly more reflective that other animals, with a greater proportion of our neurons experiencing memory than sensory data, when compared to, say, a squirrel. However, the fundamental aspect of direct awareness is a shared trait, we are just directly aware of a far greater magnitude of internal states than the squirrel.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#17

Post by starbeast »

bloak wrote: post #12
goto11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are still speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion. The theory can "rationally" explain…

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal. If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a li…

>There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill.

The sane ones know better than to tell people that they hear voices.

>"Research supports the view that hearing hallucinatory voices is not by itself an indicator of mental illness. Estimates of the percentage of people in the general population without a known psychiatric illness who report auditory hallucinations vary widely. One review of seventeen surveys from nine countries found prevalence estimates as low as fewer than 1% to as high as 84%. Estimates of college students who have reported hearing hallucinatory voices have ranged from 13% to 71%. The wide range of estimates can be attributed in part to differences in definitions, survey instructions, and other methodological variations. Taking into consideration such methodological differences, some researchers estimate the prevalence of hearing voices in the general population to be between 5% and 28%, with 75% of people who report hearing voices to be psychologically healthy. Research suggests also that the prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations varies by gender, age and culture."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/longing-nostalgia/...

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#18

Post by xfs »

goto11 wrote: post #15
bloak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal. If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a li…

I actually don't reject the theory that accounts of Gods appearing and speaking to people could be actual mental processes, guided by culture. I find this more believable than it is all fiction or lies (or that Gods have physical existence outside the human mind). But I do reject the bicameral hypothesis that we either have Gods speaking or we have consciousness, and that shift happened a particular point in time aro…

Surely the hypothesis has be to rejected in all its specificity but what new hypothesis can be proposed in the negation of the previous one? Could it be that the shift happened but not in the precise time or not all at once or the shift manifested in a more individualistic manner instead of a collective manner? Precisely in Lacanian psychoanalysis the symbolic consciousness (language) emerges as the reaction to an external traumatic encounter with the chaotic impossibility of the real. The hypothesis of bicameral mind may not have much scientific value but isn't it interesting to coincide so much with structuralism?

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#19

Post by gaius »

nsajko wrote: post #8

A nice way to look at Bicameralism is as (good) science fiction. (Wikipedia calls it a "radical hypothesis".)

If you like the sound of that I highly recommend the Westworld reboot, but I don’t want to spoiler it.

Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)

#20

Post by gaius »

bloak wrote: post #12
goto11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if the theory is bullshit then surely it does not actually help anyone understand religion? So the Gods are speaking to people in the Iliad because it was actually one half of the brain speaking to the other. But the Odyssey allegedly is composed after the watershed moment, but Gods are still speaking to people. So the theory does not actually explain anything about religion. The theory can "rationally" explain…

There are people today who hear voices, but they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill. The Jaynes hypothesis, as I understand it, is that in early civilisations the majority of the population heard voices and it was considered normal. If you see a reference in literature to a god speaking to someone, you can't easily tell whether that's fiction, metaphor, an exaggeration, a lie, a narrative style, or a li…

they are a minority and we label them as mentally ill

The scope for this is highly in flux at present.

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