Critique 11 – Bicameral Mentality in Other Cultures
Critique: “Importantly, Jaynes is also conspicuously silent about any human communities outside the Near East and Mediterranean areas (apart from a throw-away speculation that the Spaniards so easily rolled the Incas because the latter were still non-conscious bicamerals). But as for how the Chinese, black Africans, and many other peoples, became conscious, Jaynes has no answer. Certainly his arguments invoking social upheavals 3000 years ago would have no applicability in those other regions with very different histories.”
Response: Jaynes focused much of his research on Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia. Evidence for bicameralism can be seen worldwide, for example in Mesoamerica and places like Eastern Island, with the large (and otherwise inexplicable) moai serving as hallucinatory aids. Different cultures likely transitioned to consciousness at different times. Jaynes did not speak Chinese, but the sinologist Michael Carr has meticulously documented the evidence for bicameralism in early China in a series of articles (available in the Member’s Area) and in a lengthy chapter titled “The Shi ‘Corpse/Personator’ Ceremony in Early China” in Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness. Here again, Robinson failed to do his homework.
Learn about about Julian Jaynes’s theory by reading our latest book, Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory.