Comments on: Top 5 Science Books You May Not Have Read – #4 Julian Jaynes ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:39:15 +0000

i really did, and still do, mean to get to #3. i started to overthink the “you may not have read” bit of the series title.

By: behnam

behnam — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:28:00 +0000

The theory is complete .

That was interesting while he explained
right Wernicke’s function.I’m a neurosurgery resident and it really happens at our patients.

Old literature provides great documents on neurologic functions of human and he shows them.

Animals like Gibbons remind me of “2001 ODYSSE” by Cubrick stanley and also articles of Bertrand Russel.He explains ancient time and draw a picture of Pleistocene period.My quetions were answered by Jaynes’ theory.

By: David

David — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:52:28 +0000

That last comment sounds like it was taken from Richard Dawkins’s comments on Jaynes in his latest book “The God Delusion.”

I just read a follow up book to Jaynes’s “Origin” that was quite good: “Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory Revisted,” by Marcel Kuijsten.

By: DV

DV — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:17:00 +0000

Skimming the book suggests that it is COMPLETE GENIUS even if the theory is also raving madness. I also find that thinking about its subject too much makes me start hearing voices… AM I TURNING BICAMERAL?

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:33:07 +0000

He does specifically suggest that it arose in the near/middle east and spread. I have to agree with you though – and I think there are many things wrong/implausuble in his specifics, but it’s still a fascinating idea given the evidence he cites in support.

Like most of the bits of his theory though, the rest can still stand even if the breakdown is not precipitated by the disasters he suggests. The journey from bicameral to conscious could be a progression driven by other processes – to pick another ‘just so’ story that’s out there, perhaps increased socialisation and the selective advantage of being able to plan and deceive people leads to more sophisticated language which leads to the reorganisation needed.

By: DV

DV — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:23:26 +0000

aha, they have this book in the Spy School library – I will go and borrow it now.

By: DV

DV — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:22:20 +0000

I have another problem with this book. Basically he is saying that people were not conscious before c. 1000BC and were thereafter following a crisis of some sort. Now, was this a crisis that happened everywhere in the world, affecting all people in the same way? This is somewhat unlikely. Maybe it was a crisis that happened in a localised area, making the people there conscious, and this consciousness spread virally to the other peoples they interacted with (like that Tharg’s future shock about the alien life form that is an idea). This is also problematic. I’m open to correction on this, but by 1000 BC people were very spread around the world, and there would have been substantial islands of people who had little or no interaction with people outside their area. So, did they remain unconscious until whitey showed up in the age of exploration? It seems a bit unlikely.

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:14:12 +0000

‘What consciousness is’ is so thorny that the ‘lets define our terms’ part of this book only goes into what consciousness is not. Which is the right approach for this book.

If you want to google, the idea of people who are otherwise identical to ourselves, in what they say, how they behave, but who are not conscious is often referred to as the ‘zombie problem’. (haha, though you can ignore the hits there that refer to computer ‘zombie processes’!)

By: DV

DV — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:27:05 +0000

a guy collared me at a party and went on about this book once. It sounds interesting, but I’m not entirely convinced. Or at least I find the concept of “consciousness” problematic. I’m not sure that people are really conscious, even if they think they are. Or maybe not all people are conscious all the time. How would you tell if someone was conscious or not, and what difference would it make to their behaviour?

Conversely, it might be that all living things are conscious in at least some sense.

I am also having problems with this bicameral mind thing and what it amounts to in practice, but maybe should give the book a go first.

By: Pete Baran

Pete Baran — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:43:52 +0000

I have just bought this on this recomendation. I got the last cheap one!

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:32:07 +0000

No – and that explaination works nicely, thanks!

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:29:19 +0000

In a sense there was no religion before the breakdown because we were always in touch with our gods. Religion, roughly speaking, is a response to the loss of contact with this authority. Or do you mean why was it was well after?

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:11:52 +0000

How does Jaynes explain the two most successful world religions beginning well after this trick was learned?