Exploring Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind Since 1997
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 …
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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. …
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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. …
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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. …
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Science makes progress when it differentiates, discriminates, and separates out from all the messy stuff we call reality that we can then …
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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 …
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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. …
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In Part 1 of “Has Human Mentality Changed?” I discussed how the contributions of Julian Jaynes bolster a radical neuroplastic understanding of the mind, especially if the crucial role of the cultural acquisitions of adaptive cognitive capabilities are incorporated into the analysis of historical changes in psychology, …
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The media and scientific journals give much attention to “neuroplasticity” (the brain’s innate ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning or injury), “neurodiversity” (variations in the brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood, and other various mental functions), “neurotypical,” and “neuroatypical.” …
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While giving a talk some years ago at a conference about Julian Jaynes on Prince Edward Island in Canada, a member of the audience asked if I thought …
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