Bicameral Mentality in Ancient Mesopotamia: A Deep Dive Discussion
A deep dive discussion delving into the evidence for bicameral mentality in ancient Mesopotamia, building on Julian Jaynes's chapter "A Change of Mind in Mesopotamia" by drawing upon a wide range of scholarly sources.
Introduction read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: A Deep Dive Book Discussion
A deep dive discussion delving into the book "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes's Theory."
This book is highly recommended for those new to Julian Jaynes and long time Jaynes enthusiasts alike:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1737305534/
Introduction read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Contents:00:00 - Introduction03:12 - Resistance to New Ideas03:52 - Defining Consciousness09:40 - Consciousness and Language Part 113:38 - When Consciousness Developed16:39 - Comparing the Iliad and the Odyssey18:30 - The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind19:35 - Vestiges of Bicameral Mentality19:59 - Hearing Voices24:02 - The Feeling of a Sensed Presence25:18 - Hypnosis27:58 - Creative Inspiration28:40 - The Evolution of Religion30:28 - Spirit Possession30:54 - Cave Art31:25 - Seeking External Authorization32:18 - Consciousness and Language Part 235:55 - Jaynes's Neurological Model41:17 - Implications of the Theory45:20 - The Future of Consciousness47:00 - Concluding Remarks
Consciousness and Bicameral Mentality: A Deep Dive Discussion Exploring Nearly Every Aspect of Julian Jaynes's Theory
A fascinating, deep dive discussion that provides an in-depth exploration of nearly every aspect of Julian Jaynes's theory of the origin of consciousness and an earlier mentality he called the bicameral mind.
Highly recommended for those new to Julian Jaynes and long time Jaynes enthusiasts alike!
Produced by Camille Tillier. Introduction read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Contents:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:51 - Jaynes's Core Claims
00:03:22 - The Origin of Consciousness
00:10:40 - Bicameral Mentality
00:17:52 - Wide-Ranging Implications
00:27:42 - Literary Evidence: Ancient Greece
00:32:50 - Literary Evidence: Mesopotamia
00:38:55 - Literary Evidence: Ancient Egypt
00:41:00 - Archeological Evidence
00:45:02 - Neurological Evidence
00:48:00 - What It Was Like to Be Bicameral
00:52:03 - Absence of Deception and Morality
00:57:21 - The Causes of Consciousness
01:03:06 - Bicameral Vestiges: Omens
01:06:18 - Bicameral Vestiges: Angels and Genii
01:07:43 - Bicameral Vestiges: Oracles and Divination
01:10:37 - Bicameral Vestiges: Tourette Syndrome and Glossolalia
01:11:24 - Bicameral Vestiges: Poetry and Music
01:14:42 - Bicameral Vestiges: Hypnosis
01:17:46 - Bicameral Vestiges: Schizophrenia
01:20:54 - Bicameral Vestiges: Imaginary Companions
01:21:57 - Bicameral Vestiges: Totalitarian States
01:23:12 - New Evidence for Jaynes's Theory
01:30:23 - Profound Implications: Consciousness
01:32:16 - Profound Implications: Religion
01:33:12 - Profound Implications: The Nature of Reality
01:33:55 - Profound Implications: The Human Condition
01:35:25 - Concluding Remarks and the Future of Consciousness
Consciousness and Dreams
By Marcel Kuijsten“In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes discusses a variety of forms of evidence for the transition from a bicameral mentality to consciousness. The study of dreams provides another window through which to examine this transition. By extension, historical changes in the nature of dreams support the idea that consciousness is in a learned process based on language and not biologically innate. There is a common assumption that the nature of dreams has been consistent throughout recorded history, yet this is not the case. If we analyze the first recorded accounts of dreams and compare these accounts with modern dreams, we see a stark contrast. …”
This essay originally appeared in The Jaynesian, Marcel Kuijsten & Brian J. McVeigh (eds.), Winter 2010, Volume 4, Issue 1.
An interview with Julian Jaynes Society Founder and Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten and Julian Jaynes Society Senior Researcher and author Brian J. McVeigh on Julian Jaynes's theory of the origin of consciousness and the bicameral mind.
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org. Read Marcel Kuijsten's books on Julian Jaynes's theory: "Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes's Theory" "Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes" "The Julian Jaynes Collection" "Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited"
Falling between the Cracks: Julian Jaynes’s Defiance of Scholarly Conventions Challenged Cherished Methodological Assumptions — This Is What Makes Him Hard to Appreciate
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Academics make progress when they are inspired by the cross-pollination of ideas, and most researchers, arguably, utilize a multi-disciplinary approach to some degree, i.e., no piece of research fits perfectly into one scholarly field. Much of the academic landscape can be described as combinatory endeavors — social psychology, psychological anthropology, psychology of religion, neuropsychology, neurotheology, etc., to name just a few. Cross-fertilization is a wonderful and much-needed antidote to specialization, subspecialization, sub-subspecialization, etc. ...
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/12/05/falling-between-the-cracks-jayness-defiance-of-scholarly-conventions/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
The Myth of “Pure Consciousness” - The Belief in a Fundamental Psychic Process Hinders Progress in Psychology
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
“If understanding a thing is arriving at a familiarizing metaphor for it, then we can see that there always will be a difficulty in understanding consciousness. For it should be immediately apparent that there is not and cannot be anything in our immediate experience that is like immediate experience itself. There is therefore a sense in which we shall never be able to understand consciousness in the same way that we can understand things that we are conscious of” (Julian Jaynes, 1976, p. 53).
I have often wondered why so many well-credentialed researchers continue to bark up the wrong tree in their quest to understand consciousness. Many reasons could be offered, but in a recent discussion on the “Julian Jaynes — The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” Facebook page someone brought up Jaynes’s aforementioned quote. ...
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/10/18/the-myth-of-pure-consciousness/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
A Resurgence of Julian Jaynes’ Theory of Consciousness
By Peter Sellick
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Adam Mars-Jones begins his review of Alvaro Enrigue’s “You Dreamed of Empires” (London Review of Books, Volume 46, Number 10) with the following:
“Culture shock seems too mild a phrase to describe the arrival of Europeans in South and Central America. In his 1976 maverick classic, The Origin of consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (its category speculative neurohistory, at a guess), Julian Jaynes proposes that, at the time Pizarro and his men reached them, the Inca didn’t have full mental autonomy but only ‘protosubjectivity’. They functioned largely by a sort of automatism, acting according to unchanging patterns and ritual clues, able to absorb only slight disruptions to their routines, so that this was less a clash of civilisations than of mental structures.”
This sent me scrambling for my old copy of Jaynes’ monumental book that I read in the late 80s.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2024/08/16/a-resurgence-of-julian-jaynes-theory-of-consciousness/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Julian Jaynes Is Not for the Intellectually Fainthearted — But Breaking Jaynesian Psychology Down into Four Hypotheses Makes Things Easier
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
I first encountered Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind almost 45 years ago. Though the book made sense to me, I could see why people would reject its arguments. Nevertheless I assumed that once carefully explained, people may not agree but would at least be able to discern a certain logic behind Jaynesian psychology. How naïve I was.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/06/07/julian-jaynes-is-not-for-the-intellectually-fainthearted/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
The Need to Acknowledge Bicameral Vestiges: Jaynesian Psychology Finds Support not just from the Ancient World
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
This post is inspired by a recent exchange I had with a commentator who saw little value in relying on biblical accounts as evidence to support Jaynes’s theories because they were “fairytales.” Presumably such a criticism could be extended to other writings that constitute humanity’s extensive religious tradition. It is worth responding to this line of critique because it is not an uncommon reaction from those who find fault with Jaynes (and for what it’s worth, Jaynes did not set out to explain the origins of religion; his research was on the origin of consciousness).
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/2022/04/26/the-need-to-acknowledge-bicameral-vestiges/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Disentangling Inner Speech, Self-dialogue, and Auditory Hallucinations: The Mind Is a Machine for Sociopsychological Communication
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (https://www.theungoogleable.com, https://www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
How are inner speech, self-dialogue, auditory imagery, and hallucinations related? And what exactly are hallucinations? Some have suggested that hallucinations are caused by a monitoring defect in inner speech (also termed inner voice, silent speech, subvocal speech, covert speech, self talk, internal monologue, verbal thought, etc.) (Fernyhough, The Voices Within, 2016). Such a claim, however, ignores the overwhelming evidence concerning hallucinations before about 1000 BCE. Any theoretical linkage must take into account one crucial datum: hallucinations were central to normal sociopsychological functioning. Hallucinations, which were ubiquitous in the ancient world, were a mechanism for social control (until about the first millennium BCE). The “monitoring defect” hypothesis confuses matters: Rather than hallucinations resulting from a problem with inner speech, inner speech is a type of watered-down hallucination. This is why, arguably, for some an inner voice possesses agent-like properties or is accompanied by a felt presence, suggesting vestigial bicameral mentality.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at https://www.julianjaynes.org.
Consciousness, Cognition, and Free Will: A Jaynesian Perspective
An Interview by Vinay Kolhatkar with Julian Jaynes Society Founder and Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten.
Marcel Kuijsten discusses the uniquely human consciousness from a Jaynesian perspective with the show's host, Vinay Kolhatkar. Also covered are free will and cognition, the cognitive explosion of Ancient Greece, pre-conceptual ancient cultures prevalent today, the human disposition to obeying authorial voices, and the enormous canvas for future research.
Courtesy of the Savvy Street Show (https://www.thesavvystreet.com/).
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/tAE5WL5XvDQ
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
History, Not Evolution, Is the Key Variable for Understanding Consciousness: The Temporal Extension Thesis and the Adaptive Psyche By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
The human mind is always adjusting, accommodating, and adopting resources from outside itself to expand and improve its capabilities. Such adaptation, if broadly understood, unfolds across different temporal spans. But a glaring weakness of mainstream research psychology is its almost complete neglect of a time-scale that would illuminate how the human mind changes over a few generations or several centuries.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
Has Human Mentality Changed?
Part 2: Cognitive Relativism and Jaynesian Psychology
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
In Part 1 of “Has Human Mentality Changed?” I discussed how the contributions of Julian Jaynes bolster a radical neuroplastic understanding of the mind, especially if the crucial role of the cultural acquisitions of adaptive cognitive capabilities are incorporated into the analysis of historical changes in psychology, i.e., a neurocultural perspective. Here I want to explore some of the implications of psychic diversity. Three different perspectives illustrate well the significance of psychic plasticity. Though my present discussion is about psychic plasticity as an enculturating (extra-genetic) process, neurophysiological changes cannot be ignored (thus, “neurocultural”).
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/julian-jaynes-theory/has-human-mentality-changed-part-2/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
Has Human Mentality Changed?
Part 1: Neuroplasticity and Jaynesian Psychology
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
The media and scientific journals give much attention to “neuroplasticity” (the brain’s innate ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning or injury), “neurodiversity” (variations in the brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood, and other various mental functions), “neurotypical,” and “neuroatypical.” From an intellectual historical perspective these terms elicit interest because they call into question, at least in a very general sense, what has been a foundational concept of the social sciences: Psychic unity. Introduced by the anthropologist Adolf Bastian (1826‒1905), psychic unity was further conceptualized early in the twentieth century as an intellectual assault on racism by enlightened, well-meaning, anthropologists. Psychic unity is a universalist idea postulating that that human mentality is more or less the same everywhere; it challenged the previously dominant view of social Darwinism that viewed societies climbing a ladder of civilizational progress. At the top were late-nineteenth century industrially-advanced societies whose technological prowess was assumed to grant them superiority. In the case of northern European and American powers, it was assumed that their “white,” Christian identity explained their success (though Japan, which was not far behind the Euro-American sphere in terms of “progress,” obviously did not rely on white racialism and Christianity to account for its achievements). It was thought that less successful societies had not acquired the cognitive capabilities to compete with those higher up the ladder of civilization. The premises of psychic unity are still prevalent among not a few psychologists and configures assumptions that restrict research, despite recent interest in neuroplasticity and neurodiversity.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/julian-jaynes-theory/has-human-mentality-changed-part-1/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
Putting Julian Jaynes’s Theory to the Test
Jaynes’s Theorizings, Like All Great Systems of Thought, Require Hypotheses-testing and Experimentation to Be Substantiated
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
It is easy to forget that the Newtonian, Darwinian, and Einsteinian intellectual edifices were built over many years, painstakingly solidified brick by brick through batteries of well-designed experiments and careful analyses. Science is the sturdy house that such patient construction continually erects.
Consider the work of Julian Jaynes. Over the years I have heard many dismissively say “it’s an interesting theory but it can’t be proven.” Such remarks demonstrate a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific progress as well as what is needed to come to terms with Jaynesian theorizing. The contributions of Jaynes constitute an entire paradigm that reaches far beyond psychology. It is a constellation of bold, innovative ideas with far-ranging implications and great breadth that sheds new light on neurology, history, religious studies, psychotherapeutics, archaeology, linguistics, philosophy, literature, and other arts. So what is needed, then, is a breaking down of Jaynes’s core theories into numerous propositions, postulations, and hypotheses appropriate to different disciplines and fields of expertise. That way his claims can be systematically tested. That is a tall order and demands the contributions of a legion of specialists.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/julian-jaynes-theory/putting-julian-jaynes-theory-to-the-test/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
Fact Checking Scott Alexander’s Discussion of Julian Jaynes’s Theory on “Slate Star Codex”
By Marcel Kuijsten
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
In June 2020, the psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander wrote a review of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for his popular “Slate Star Codex” blog. His discussion of Jaynes’s theory contains a number of misconceptions and errors, and I will attempt to clear those up here. While the first three sections of his review are more or less just a summary of Jaynes’s main arguments and some topics he feels are related or supportive, the issues I’d like to address can be found in the fourth and fifth sections of his post.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/fact-checks/fact-checking-scott-alexander-part2/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
Conscious Interiority Is a Constellation of Processes
But Attention-grabbing Headlines in the Scientific Literature Mistakenly Suggest that Consciousness is an All-purpose Psychological Stuff
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Pretend you’re from another dimension and unfamiliar with cars, planes, trains, and ships. But you quickly notice what they share in common: Motion. You’re interested in discovering exactly how these contraptions work and decide that to understand them you need to investigate motion-ness. So you begin to take them apart, piece by piece, looking for the essence of movement. However, try as you might, you can’t discover the mysterious potency animating the operation of going from point A to point B. But you’re absolutely convinced that motion-ness must exist somewhere in or around anything imbued with the power of mobility.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
Conscious Interiority and the Language Trap
Why We Struggle to Explain Consciousness
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
Cleaning up the mess surrounding the uses of “consciousness” is not an airy, abstruse, or esoteric subject, a topic only for absent-minded academics with their heads in the clouds. This discussion has serious, profound, and practical implications. Neuroscientists employ terminology to delineate the differences between being asleep, in a coma, or in a state of ordinary consciously interiorized mentation. Physicians, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counselors, and other mental health care providers need to be able to differentiate various forms of cognition to facilitate healing.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/julian-jaynes-theory/conscious-interiority-and-the-language-trap/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
A Relay-Race Model of Conscious Interiority
A Cultural Invention, Consciousness Needs to Be Relearned with Each Generation
By Brian J. McVeigh
Read by Michael R. Jacobs (www.theungoogleable.com, www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen).
The word “consciousness” usually evokes something neuroanatomical, intimately bound up with perceptual experiences, an evolutionary psychological feature from our very distant past that is inherent to the brain itself. Consciousness for many seems to be a general term for any type of sensory, conceptual, or thinking process. This leads to muddled theorizing.
Read the complete text from this episode here:
https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/julian-jaynes-theory/a-relay-race-model-of-conscious-interiority/
Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org.
