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

Post by goto11 » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

armitron wrote: post #35

Apocryphon wrote: post #7

Like the phantom time hypothesis, bicameralism is a sort of massively revisionist theory that relies on wild interpretations of historical information. And both are pretty entertaining, regardless.

Unlike the phantom time hypothesis, you can find actual non-historic evidence for the bicameral theory of mind. The strongest of which you can actually experience yourself by triggering psychotic states (through the use of psychedelics or other practices). There were times where I fully regressed into a psychological state perfectly described by Jaynes in his book, voices and all.

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

AltruisticGap wrote: post #32

> Jaynes recognizes that consciousness itself is only a small part of mental activity and is not necessary for sensation or perception, for concept formation, for learning, thinking or even reasoning. Thus, if major human actions and skills can function automatically and unconsciously, then it is conceivable that there were, at one time, human beings who did most of the things we do – speak, understand, perceive, sol…

Post by michaelmrose » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

starbeast wrote: post #17

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…

>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…

Post by starbeast » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #45

starbeast wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Between 1 and 84% isn't a very useful range "The wide range of estimates can be attributed in part to differences in definitions, survey instructions, and other methodological variations." Kind of burying the lead. "Taking into consideration" Making shit up I'm more interested in how many people actually hear voices, not memory, interior monologue, or day dreaming. Unbidden commentary by a voice of another that is di…

Post by karpodiem » Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

apk-d wrote: post #36

goto11 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can we even prove whether a modern person is conscious? If so, shouldn't we be able to occasionally encounter such unconscious people, either occurring randomly by natural variation (especially given how recently the breakdown is claimed to have happened), or in people who had very little contact with language (hard but not impossible to come by)?