Merlin Donald – What We Were, What We Are Becoming: The Human Cognitive Journey

Section for discussing lectures related to Julian Jaynes's theory of the origin of consciousness and a previous bicameral mentality.
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Merlin Donald – What We Were, What We Are Becoming: The Human Cognitive Journey

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What We Were, What We Are Becoming: The Human Cognitive Journey
Merlin Donald, Keynote address at The Julian Jaynes Society Conference on Consciousness and Bicameral Studies, Charleston, WV, June 2013.

Abstract: Culture includes every human invention and convention, from customs to institutional facts (like languages) to symbolic technologies and cognitive artifacts. Culture literally furnishes the tools the mind needs to think and imagine. Without it, we are extremely limited creatures. For a variety of reasons, the evolution of the human brain gave us vastly more cognitive potential than we could immediately realize. That potential is closely tethered to consciousness, and its symbiotic relationship with culture. I will reflect on the cognitive an intellectual trajectory we have followed as a species, over many millennia, and its close link to cultural change.

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