Author: Brian J. McVeigh

The nature-versus-nurture debate has framed discussions about the origins of mind for centuries: Is it innate or acquired? Has it biologically evolved or is it better understood as the product of historical development…

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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 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 …

It always astounds me when people express surprise at the psychological sophistication of animals. Their amazement seems premised on the assumption that an organism either has a mind or does not. A misguided corollary of this idea sometimes heard is that if an organism possesses a mind …

For many (mis)interpreters of Jaynes, the word consciousness acts as blank canvas upon which they draw and impose their own definitions of what they assume Jaynes meant by this term. The result is serious misunderstanding and a distortion of his arguments. …

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. …

Many of those who have read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind are drawn to what Jaynes wrote about long-forgotten civilizations and ancient religions. Safely tucked away in the historical past, we do not have to face what is disturbingly different. …

Science makes progress when it differentiates, discriminates, and separates out from all the messy stuff we call reality that we can then …

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 …

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. …