The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
functionalneurology.com
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)
#2(2007)
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#3Hm.. Is Functional Neurology (the journal in which this published) related in any way to the field of functional neurology? I think the latter is a rebranding of chiropractic neurology, which some would argue purports some less than scientific ideas.
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#4Sounds 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?
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#5Regardless 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.
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#6Sounds 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.
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#7Like 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.
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#8A nice way to look at Bicameralism is as (good) science fiction. (Wikipedia calls it a "radical hypothesis".)
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#9Regardless 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 how Aphrodite speaks to Paris, but it does not explain how she teleports him from the battlefield to his chamber. So you still have to accept either supernatural events or that the story contains fictional elements. In which case the gods are much easier explained than through this theory, which have no other evidence.
And the narrative style of the Iliad (describing events and actions but not thought processes and introspection) is known throughout history.
Re: The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)
#10Like 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.
And the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky. Like the bicameral mind, the theories of Velikovsky are attractive to modern lay people because they give a "rational" explanation for mythology.