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Julian Jaynes Society featured blog posts on consciousness and bicameral mentality.

FeaturedJulian Jaynes's Theory

Incipient, Precomplex, Complex, and Latent Bicameral Mentality

Exploring human mentality’s evolution, this essay hypothesizes four types of bicameral mentality, their association with social complexities, and the continuity of lateralized brain structures shaping duplex psychology. Jaynes’ concept of a two-tiered mentality is linked to historical shifts and social control, with vestigial hallucinations and language intricacies playing fundamental roles. As human societies advanced, the essay traces a shift from external divine guidance to the rise of conscious interiority and self-reflexivity paralleling social and technological progress.

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FeaturedJJS Fact Checks

Fact Checking Scott Alexander’s Discussion of Julian Jaynes’s Theory on “Slate Star Codex” – Part 2

In June 2020, the psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander wrote a review of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for his popular “Star Slate Codex” blog. . His review contains a number of misconceptions and errors, and I will attempt to clear those up here.

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