Critique 8 – Hallucinations vs. Internal Dialogue Part 2
Critique: “But even if Jaynes were right about all the hallucinating he postulates, he fails to explain why that would have been inconsistent with consciousness as we know it. While he does put much weight on deficits in the sense of self that schizophrenics often report, they don’t lack it entirely; even hallucinators are conscious and introspective to a considerable degree. Jaynes’s hypothesis, however, has hallucination substituting for a sense of self.”
Response: Again Robinson conflates modern voice hearers, who have learned consciousness but nonetheless hear voices, with the bicameral mind. Jaynes characterizes schizophrenia as a vestige of the bicameral mind, not as synonymous with the bicameral mind. Jaynes presents evidence for the lack of introspection in the ancient world through the analysis of ancient texts and the etymology of words that came to be associated with introspection. Michael Carr has documented a similar transition in Chinese words that initially had bodily referents and later came to have meanings related to introspection (see “The Shi ‘Corpse/Personator’ Ceremony in Early China” in Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness). On this subject, see also Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind.
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.