Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited
Marcel Kuijsten (ed.), Julian Jaynes Society, 2007.
"In this book Marcel Kuijsten and his colleagues have integrated a quintessential collection of original thoughts concerning Jaynes’s concepts as well as some of Jaynes's original essays. I have rarely read a manuscript that so eloquently and elegantly examines a complex and pervasive phenomenon. The contributors of this volume have integrated the concepts of psychology, anthropology, archaeology, theology, philosophy, the history of science, and modern neuroscience with such clarity it should be considered an essential text for any student of human experience." — from the Foreword by Dr. Michael A. Persinger, Professor of
Behavioral Neuroscience, Biomolecular Sciences Program, Laurentian University
The Greeks and the Irrational
E. R. Dodds, University of Chicago Press, 1983.
In this philosophy classic, which was first published in 1951, E. R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, Dodds asks, "Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?" Praised by reviewers as "an event in modern Greek scholarship" and "a book which it would be difficult to over-praise," The Greeks and the Irrational was Volume 25 of the Sather Classical Lectures series.
Cited by Jaynes on pgs. 71, 162, 322, 330, 335, 344, 405.
The Discovery of the Mind In Greek Philosophy and Literature
Bruno Snell, Dover Publications, 1982.
European thinking began with the Greeks. Science, literature, ethics, philosophy — all had their roots in the extraordinary civilization
that graced the shores of the Mediteranean a few millennia ago. The rise of thinking among the Greeks was nothing less than a revolution; they did not simply map out new areas for thought and discussion, they literally created the idea of man as an intellectual being — an unprecedented concept which decisively influenced the subsequent evolution of Eurpopean thought.
In this immensely erudite book, German classicist Bruno Snell traces the establishment of a rational view of the nature of man as evidenced in the literature of the Greeks — in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, and in the drama. Here are the crucial stages in the intellectual evolution of the Greek world: the Homeric world view, the rise of the individual in the early Greek lyric, myth and reality in Greek tragedy, Greek ethics, the origin of scientific thought, and Arcadia.
Cited by Jaynes on p. 71.
The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size
Tor Norretranders, Viking Books, 1998.
Chapter 12, "The Origin of Consciousness" further discusses Jaynes's ideas.
Summary: Norretranders, a top Danish science writer, makes his American debut with this sophisticated, cogent, original, and startling study of the nature of consciousness. A best-seller in Europe and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in spite of its heady contents, this elaborate journey through the revelations of physics and chaos, complexity, and information theories elucidates the enormous changes wrought by our involvement with computers. It turns out that discarded information, or "exformation," is just as intrinsic to comprehension as selected information, and further, that conscious thought is "limited to a minute part of the abundance of information available as sensory input." In other words, the ratio between what our senses record and what we have conscious access to is on a par with the ratio between this concise review and the book it purports to summarize, that is, about one million to one. Our prized consciousness is a fine filter, designed, it would appear, to impose order, so, just as we suspected, we do "know" vastly more than we think.
