Conversations on Consciousness Interviews

Watch segments from interviews that were done for our book Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory.

Watch full-length lectures and interviews in the Member Area, including lectures by Julian Jaynes, interviews with Julian Jaynes and experts on Jaynes’s theory, conference lectures on Jaynes’s theory, and much more. Log in or Sign up. To get the latest updates, please subscribe to our mailing list and to our YouTube Channel.

Boban Dedović
“The Evolution of Mind Words in the Iliad and the Odyssey”
The interview includes discussion of the authorship and dating of the Iliad and Odyssey; later additions to the Iliad; an explanation of Jaynes’s preconscious hypostases and how they relate to dating the development of consciousness; the acknowledgement of Jaynes’s work in this area by other scholars; the research methods, results, and conclusions of Boban’s linguistic analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey; and much more. Read the entire interview in Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory.
Tanya Luhrmann
“Hearing Voices, Sensed Presences, and Imagined ‘Others'”
Tanya Luhrmann, the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, discusses Julian Jaynes’s theory of consciousness and bicameral mentality. Read the entire interview in Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory.
Brian J. McVeigh
“Evidence for the Bicameral Mind in the Old Testament”
Includes discussion of why the Bible is an important document to test Jaynes’s theory, methodological challenges, the “Bicameral Civilizational Inventory Hypothesis,” the role of music in the Old Testament, the use of idols by the ancient Israelites, the role of writing, the emergence of angels and demons, the role of prophesy, the changing definitions of Yahweh, Biblical linguistic analysis, how the personage of Jesus factors in changes in ancient mentality, vestiges of the bicameral mind in the New Testament, and more. Read the entire interview in Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory.