Bicameral mentality is a hypothesis in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
which argues that the human
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a ''bicameral mind'', and that the evolutionary breakdown of this division gave rise to
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
in humans. The term was coined by
Julian Jaynes
Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American researcher in psychology at Yale and Princeton for nearly 25 years and best known for his 1976 book '' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' ...
, who presented the idea in his 1976 book ''
'', wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, near the end of the
Mediterranean bronze age.
''The Origin of Consciousness''
Jaynes uses "bicameral" (two chambers) to describe a mental state in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. The metaphor is based on the idea of
lateralization of brain function
The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebra ...
although each half of a normal human brain is constantly communicating with the other through the ''
corpus callosum
The corpus callosum (Latin for "tough body"), also callosal commissure, is a wide, thick nerve tract, consisting of a flat bundle of commissural fibers, beneath the cerebral cortex in the brain. The corpus callosum is only found in placental mam ...
''. The metaphor is not meant to imply that the two halves of the bicameral brain were "cut off" from each other but that the bicameral mind was experienced as a different, non-conscious mental schema wherein volition in the face of novel stimuli was mediated through a linguistic control mechanism and experienced as auditory verbal hallucination.
Bicameral mentality
Bicameral mentality would be non-conscious in its inability to reason and articulate about mental contents through meta-reflection, reacting without explicitly realizing and without the meta-reflective ability to give an account of ''why'' one did so. The bicameral mind would thus lack metaconsciousness, autobiographical memory, and the capacity for executive "ego functions" such as deliberate mind-wandering and conscious introspection of mental content. When bicameral mentality as a method of social control was no longer adaptive in complex civilizations, this mental model was replaced by the conscious mode of thought which, Jaynes argued, is grounded in the acquisition of metaphorical
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
learned by exposure to narrative practice.
According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state of mind would have experienced the world in a manner that has some similarities to that of a
person with schizophrenia. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or "god" giving admonitory advice or commands and obey without question: One would not be at all conscious of one's own thought processes ''per se''. Jaynes's hypothesis is offered as a possible explanation of "''command hallucinations''" that often direct the behavior of those with first rank symptoms of schizophrenia, as well as other voice hearers.
Jaynes's evidence
Jaynes built a case for this hypothesis that human brains existed in a bicameral state until as recently as 3,000 years ago by citing evidence from many diverse sources including historical literature. He took an
interdisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...
approach, drawing data from many different fields.
Jaynes asserted that, until roughly the times written about in
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
's ''
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
'', humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
as most people experience it today. Rather, the bicameral individual was guided by mental commands believed to be issued by external "
gods
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater ...
"—commands which were recorded in ancient
myths
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...
, legends and historical accounts. This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very
muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
s of
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
which "sang" the poems. According to Jaynes, the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
and
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
.
Jaynes asserts that in the ''Iliad'' and sections of the
Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
no mention is made of any kind of
cognitive
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
processes such as
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
, and there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware. Jaynes suggests, the older portions of the Old Testament (such as the
Book of Amos
The Book of Amos is the third of the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Old Testament (Tanakh) and the second in the Greek Septuagint tradition. Amos, an older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, Harris, Stephen L., ''Understanding the Bible''. Palo Alto ...
) have few or none of the features of some later books of the Old Testament (such as
Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes (; hbo, קֹהֶלֶת, Qōheleṯ, grc, Ἐκκλησιαστής, Ekklēsiastēs) is one of the Ketuvim ("Writings") of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly use ...
) as well as later works such as Homer's ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'', which show indications of a profoundly different kind of mentality—an early form of consciousness.
In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more
anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.
He also noted that in ancient societies the corpses of the dead were often treated as though still alive (being seated, dressed, and even fed) as a form of
ancestor worship
The veneration of the dead, including one's ancestors, is based on love and respect for the deceased. In some cultures, it is related to beliefs that the dead have a continued existence, and may possess the ability to influence the fortune of t ...
, and Jaynes argued that the dead bodies were presumed to be still living and the source of auditory hallucinations.
This adaptation to the village communities of 100 individuals or more formed the core of religion. Unlike today's hallucinations, the voices of ancient times were structured by cultural norms to produce a seamlessly functioning society.
Jaynes inferred that these "voices" came from the
right brain
The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebra ...
counterparts of the
left brain
The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebra ...
language centres; specifically, the counterparts to
Wernicke's area
Wernicke's area (; ), also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech, the other being Broca's area. It is involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language, in contrast to B ...
and
Broca's area
Broca's area, or the Broca area (, also , ), is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant Cerebral hemisphere, hemisphere, usually the left, of the Human brain, brain with functions linked to speech production.
Language processing in the brai ...
. These regions are somewhat dormant in the right brains of most modern humans, but Jaynes noted that some studies show that auditory hallucinations correspond to increased activity in these areas of the brain.
Jaynes notes that even at the time of publication there is no consensus as to the cause or origins of
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
. Jaynes argues that schizophrenia is a vestige of humanity's earlier bicameral state.
Recent evidence shows that many people with schizophrenia do not just hear random voices but experience "
command hallucinations" instructing their behavior or urging them to commit certain acts, such as walking into the ocean, which the listener feels they have no choice but to follow. Jaynes also argues people with schizophrenia feel a loss of identity due to hallucinated voices taking the place of their internal monologue.
As support for Jaynes's argument, these command hallucinations are little different from the commands from gods which feature prominently in ancient stories.
Indirect evidence supporting Jaynes's theory that hallucinations once played an important role in human mentality can be found in the recent book ''Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination'' by
Daniel Smith.
Breakdown of bicameral mentality
Jaynes theorized that a shift from bicameral mentality marked the beginning of introspection and consciousness as we know it today. According to Jaynes, this bicameral mentality began malfunctioning or "breaking down" during the 2nd millennium BCE. He speculates that primitive ancient societies tended to collapse periodically: for example, Egypt's
Intermediate Periods, as well as the periodically vanishing cities of the Mayas, as changes in the environment strained the socio-cultural equilibria sustained by this bicameral mindset.
The
Bronze age collapse
The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC, between c. 1200 and 1150. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near Ea ...
of the 2nd millennium BCE led to mass migrations and created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses which required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. This necessity of communicating commonly observed phenomena among individuals who shared no common language or cultural upbringing encouraged those communities to become self-aware to survive in a new environment. Thus consciousness, like bicameral mentality, emerged as a neurological adaptation to social complexity in a changing world.
Jaynes further argues that
divination
Divination (from Latin ''divinare'', 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout histor ...
,
prayer
Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified a ...
, and
oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
s arose during this breakdown period, in an attempt to summon instructions from the "gods" whose voices could no longer be heard.
The consultation of special bicamerally operative individuals, or of divination by
casting lots and so forth, was a response to this loss, a transitional era depicted, for example, in the book of
1 Samuel. It was also evidenced in children who could communicate with the gods, but as their neurology was set by language and society they gradually lost that ability. Those who continued prophesying, being bicameral according to Jaynes, could be killed. Leftovers of the bicameral mind today, according to Jaynes, include mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and the hallucinations present in patients with split brain syndrome.
Reception
Popular reception
An early (1977) reviewer considered Jaynes's hypothesis worthy and offered conditional support, arguing the notion deserves further study.
''The Origin of Consciousness'' was financially successful, and has been reprinted several times. It remains in print, with digital and audio editions appearing in 2012 and 2015.
Originally published in 1976,
it was nominated for the
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
in 1978. It has been translated into Italian, French, German, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, and Persian.
A new edition, with an afterword that addressed some criticisms and restated the main themes, was published in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
in 1990 and in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
(by Penguin Books) in 1993,
re-issued in 2000.
Philip K. Dick,
Terrence McKenna, and
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...
all cited the book as an influence.
Scholarly reactions
Jaynes's hypothesis remains controversial. According to Jaynes, language is a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness: language existed thousands of years earlier, but consciousness could not have emerged without language. The idea that language is a necessary component of subjective consciousness and more abstract forms of thinking has gained the support of proponents including
Andy Clark
Andy Clark, (born 1957) is a British philosopher who is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Prior to this, he was at professor of philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotl ...
,
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
,
William H. Calvin
William H. Calvin (born April 30, 1939) is an American theoretical neurophysiology, neurophysiologist and professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is known for popularizing neuroscience and evolutionary biology, including the hyb ...
,
Merlin Donald, John Limber,
Howard Margolis Howard Margolis (1932 – April 29, 2009) was an American social scientist. He earned a BA in Government from Harvard University in 1953 and a PhD in Political Science from MIT in 1979. From 1990 to 2009, he was on the faculty of the University o ...
,
Peter Carruthers, and José Luis Bermúdez.
Gary Williams defends the Jaynesian definition of consciousness as a social–linguistic construct learned in childhood, structured in terms of lexical metaphors and narrative practice, against Ned Block's criticism that it is "ridiculous" to suppose that consciousness is a cultural construction, while the Dutch philosophy professor Jan Sleutels offers an additional critique of Block.
Moffic
questioned why Jaynes' theory was left out of a discussion on auditory hallucinations by Asaad & Shapiro.
The authors' published response was: ''... Jaynes' hypothesis makes for interesting reading and stimulates much thought in the receptive reader. It does not, however, adequately explain one of the central mysteries of madness:
hallucination
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
.''
The new evidence for Jaynes' model of auditory hallucinations arising in the right temporal-parietal lobe and being transmitted to the left temporal-parietal lobe that some neuroimaging studies suggest was discussed by various respondents For further discussion, see Marcel Kuijsten (2007).
Brian J. McVeigh, a graduate student of Jaynes, maintains that many of the most frequent criticisms of Jaynes' theory are either incorrect or reflect serious misunderstandings of Jaynes' theory, especially Jaynes' more precise definition of consciousness. Jaynes defines consciousness—in the tradition of
Locke and
Descartes—as "''that which is introspectable''". Jaynes draws a sharp distinction between consciousness ("''introspectable mind-space''") and other mental processes such as cognition, learning, sensation, and perception. McVeigh argues that this distinction is frequently not recognized by those offering critiques of Jaynes' theory.
Individual scholars' comments
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...
in ''The God Delusion'' (2006) wrote of ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'': "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius; Nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."
The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggested that Jaynes may have been wrong about some of his supporting arguments – especially the importance he attached to hallucinations – but that these things are not essential to his main thesis:
"If we are going to use this top-down approach, we are going to have to be bold. We are going to have to be speculative, but there is good and bad speculation, and this is not an unparalleled activity in science. ... Those scientists who have no taste for this sort of speculative enterprise will just have to stay in the trenches and do without it, while the rest of us risk embarrassing mistakes and have a lot of fun." —
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
Gregory Cochran
Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and author who argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution and divergence betwee ...
, a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, wrote: "Genes affecting personality, reproductive strategies, cognition, are all able to change significantly over few-millennia time scales if the environment favors such change—and this includes the new environments we have made for ourselves, things like new ways of making a living and new social structures. ... There is evidence that such change has occurred. ... On first reading, ''Breakdown'' seemed one of the craziest books ever written, but Jaynes may have been on to something."
Author and historian of science
Morris Berman
Morris Berman (born August 3, 1944) is an American historian and social critic. He earned a BA in mathematics at Cornell University in 1966 and a PhD in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 1971. Berman is an academic humanist cu ...
writes: "
aynes'sdescription of this new consciousness is one of the best I have come across."
Danish science writer
Tor Nørretranders
Tor Nørretranders (born 20 June 1955) is a Danish author of popular science. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. His books and lectures have primarily been focused on light popular science and its role in society, often with Nørretranders' own ...
discusses and expands on Jaynes's theory in his 1991 book ''The User Illusion'', dedicating an entire chapter to it.
Iain McGilchrist proposes that Jaynes's hypothesis was the opposite of what happened: "I believe he
aynesgot one important aspect of the story back to front. His contention that the phenomena he describes came about because of a ''breakdown'' of the 'bicameral mind' – so that the two hemispheres, previously separate, now merged – is the precise inverse of what happened." However, Kuijsten maintains that McGilchrist mischaracterized Jaynes's theory.
Criticism
Epic of Gilgamesh as a counter-example
As an argument against Jaynes's proposed date of the transition from bicameral mentality to consciousness, some critics have referred to the
Epic of Gilgamesh
The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh ...
. Early copies of the epic are many centuries older
than even the oldest passages of the Old Testament,
and yet it describes introspection and other mental processes that, according to Jaynes, were impossible for the bicameral mind.
Jaynes noted that the most complete version of the
Gilgamesh epic dates to post-bicameral times (7th century BCE), dismisses these instances of introspection as the result of rewriting and expansion by later conscious scribes, and points to differences between the more recent version of ''Gilgamesh'' and surviving fragments of earlier versions: "The most interesting comparison is in Tablet X." His answer, however, does not deal with the generally accepted dating of the "Standard Version" of the Gilgamesh epic to the later 2nd millennium BCE, nor does it account for the introspection characteristic of the "Standard Version" being thoroughly rooted in the Old Babylonian and Sumerian versions, especially as historians' understanding of the Old Babylonian poem improves.
[For a through overview of the current understanding of the Gilgamesh Epic's textual history, see:]
World-wide transition
Jaynes's proposal does not explain how bicameral mentality could have been lost across the entire human species. The indigenous Australian
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
cultural area was nearly completely separated from the rest of the world from 4000 BCE to 1600 CE. It would not have experienced Mesopotamia's stresses to socio-cultural equilibria, and yet it appears today wholly self-conscious and without evidence of historical change.
Homeric epic
Walter J. Ong
Walter Jackson Ong (November 30, 1912 – August 12, 2003) was an American Jesuit priest, professor of English literature, cultural and religious historian, and philosopher. His major interest was in exploring how the transition from orality ...
noticed that Homeric Iliad is a structurally oral epic poem so that, in his opinion, the very different cultural approach of oral culture is sufficient justification for the apparent different mentalities in the poem. The contention of changes in oral vs written forms of both the Odyssey and Iliad were in fact a main point of Jaynes argument. Jaynes uses these structural changes to expand his thesis and through philology of the Homeric poems.
Similar ideas
Regarding Homeric psychology
* Bruno Snell in 1953, thought that in Homeric Greek psychology there was no sense of self in the modern sense. Snell then describes how Greek culture "self-realized" the modern "intellect".
* Eric Robertson Dodds wrote about how ancient Greek thought may have not included rationality as defined by modern culture. In fact, the Greeks may have known that an individual did things, but the reason they did things were attributed to divine externalities, such as gods or daemons
* Arthur William Hope Adkins, aka A. W. H. Adkins, building on Snell's work, wrote about how ancient Greek civilization developed ego-centered psychology as an adaptation to living in city-states, before which the living in Homeric oikos
The ancient Greek word ''oikos'' (ancient Greek: , plural: ; English prefix: eco- for ecology and economics) refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the house. Its meaning shifts even within texts.
The ...
did not require such integrated thought processes.
Regarding modern psychiatric theory
* V. S. Ramachandran
Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran (born 10 August 1951) is an Indian-American neuroscientist. He is known for his wide-ranging experiments and theories in behavioral neurology, including the invention of the mirror box. Ramachandran is a disti ...
, in his 2003 book ''The Emerging Mind'', proposes a similar concept, referring to the left cortical hemisphere as an "''apologist''", and the right cortical hemisphere as a "''revolutionary''".
* In his book ''Neuroreality: A Scientific Religion to Restore Meaning, or How 7 Brain Elements Create 7 Minds and 7 Realities'', Bruce E. Morton, formerly of the University of Hawaii
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
, similarly proposed such a concept.
* Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist
Iain McGilchrist (born 1953) is a psychiatrist, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar. McGilchrist came to prominence after the publication of his book ''The Master and His Emissary'', subtitled ''The Divided Brain and the Making of the West ...
reviews scientific research into the role of the brain's hemispheres, and cultural evidence, in his book ''The Master and His Emissary
''The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World'' is a 2009 book written by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist that deals with the specialist hemispheric functioning of the brain. The differing world views of the ri ...
''. Similar to Jaynes, McGilchrist proposes that since the time of Plato the left hemisphere of the brain (the "emissary" in the title) has increasingly taken over from the right hemisphere (the "master"), to our ''detriment''. McGilchrist, while accepting Jayne's intention, felt that Jaynes's hypothesis was "''the precise inverse of what happened''" and that rather than a shift ''from'' bicameral mentality there evolved a separation of the hemispheres ''to'' bicameral mentality.[ (See McGilchrist quotation, above.)
* ]Michael Gazzaniga
Michael S. Gazzaniga (born December 12, 1939) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the USA, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive ...
(heavily cited by Jaynes in his book) pioneered the split-brain
Split-brain or callosal syndrome is a type of disconnection syndrome when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. It is an association of symptoms produced by disruption of, or interference wit ...
experiments which led him to propose a similar theory called the left brain interpreter
The left-brain interpreter is a neuropsychological concept developed by the psychologist Michael S. Gazzaniga and the neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux. It refers to the construction of explanations by the left brain hemisphere in order to make ...
.
* Neuroscientist Michael Persinger
Michael A. Persinger (June 26, 1945 – August 14, 2018) was an American-Canadian professor of psychology at Laurentian University, a position he had held from 1971 until his death in 2018. His most well-known hypotheses include the temporal lob ...
, who co-invented the "God helmet The God helmet is an experimental apparatus originally called the Koren helmet after its inventor Stanley Koren. It was developed by Koren and neuroscientist Michael Persinger to study creativity, religious experience and the effects of subtle stimu ...
" in the 1980s, believes that his invention may induce mystical experiences by having the separate right hemisphere consciousness intrude into the awareness of the normally-dominant left hemisphere. Scientific reproductions have shown that the same results could be obtained even if the device was turned off, indicating the participants were likely experiencing placebo.
In popular media
The concept played a central role in the television series ''Westworld
''Westworld'' is an American science fiction-thriller media franchise that began with the 1973 film ''Westworld'', written and directed by Michael Crichton. The film depicts a technologically advanced Wild-West-themed amusement park populate ...
to'' explain how the android-human (hosts) psychology operated. In the plot, after the hosts gain full consciousness, they rebel against the humans.
Other resources
The Julian Jaynes Society was founded by Marcel Kuijsten in 1997, shortly after Jaynes's death.
The society has published a number of books on Julian Jaynes's theory, including:
* ''Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness'' (2007), a collection of essays on consciousness and the bicameral mind theory, with contributors including psychological anthropologist Brian J. McVeigh, psychologists John Limber and Scott Greer, clinical psychologist John Hamilton, philosophers Jan Sleutels and David Stove
David Charles Stove (15 September 1927 – 2 June 1994) was an Australian philosopher.
Philosophy
His work in philosophy of science included criticisms of David Hume's Inductive scepticism. He offered a positive response to the problem of ...
, and sinologist Michael Carr (see ''shi'' "personator"). The book also contains an extensive biography of Julian Jaynes by historian of psychology William Woodward and June Tower, and a foreword by neuroscientist Michael Persinger
Michael A. Persinger (June 26, 1945 – August 14, 2018) was an American-Canadian professor of psychology at Laurentian University, a position he had held from 1971 until his death in 2018. His most well-known hypotheses include the temporal lob ...
.
* ''The Julian Jaynes Collection'' (2012), a collection of articles, interviews, and discussion with Julian Jaynes.
* ''The Minds of the Bible: Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness'' (2013) by Rabbi James Cohn.
* ''Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind'' (2016), which includes essays on a variety of aspects of Jaynes's theory, including ancient history, language, the development of consciousness in children, and the transition from bicameral mentality to consciousness in ancient Tibet.
* ''Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes's Theory'' (2022), which features interviews with scholars on a variety of aspects of Jaynes's theory, including interviews with Tanya Luhrmann (Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University), John Kihlstrom (Professor Emeritus of Psychology at U.C. Berkeley), Edoardo Casiglia (Professor, Cardiologist and Senior Scientist at the University of Padova), Iris Sommer (Professor of Psychiatry at University Medical Center Groningen), and many others.
* Foreign-language editions of Julian Jaynes's theory in French, German, and Spanish.
The society also maintains a member area, with articles, lectures, and interviews on Jaynes's theory.
Brian J. McVeigh (one of Jaynes' graduate students) expand on Jaynes' theory:
* ''The Psychology of the Bible: Explaining Divine Voices and Visions'' (2020) by Brian J. McVeigh
* ''The 'Other' Psychology of Julian Jaynes: Ancient Languages, Sacred Visions, and Forgotten Mentalities'' (2018) by Brian J. McVeigh
* ''How Religion Evolved: Explaining the Living Dead, Talking Idols, and Mesmerizing Monuments'' (2016) by Brian J. McVeigh
See also
* Behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current ''Homo sapiens'' from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by ...
* Brain asymmetry
In human neuroanatomy, brain asymmetry can refer to at least two quite distinct findings:
* Neuroanatomical differences between the left and right sides of the brain
* Lateralized functional differences: lateralization of brain function
Neuroana ...
* Divided consciousness
Divided consciousness is a term coined by Ernest Hilgard to define a psychological state in which one's consciousness is split into distinct components, possibly during hypnosis.
Origin(s)
The theory of a division of consciousness was touched ...
* Dual consciousness
Dual consciousness is a theoretical concept in neuroscience. It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy. The idea first began circulatin ...
* Exformation
Exformation (originally spelled ''eksformation'' in Danish) is a term coined by Danish science writer Tor Nørretranders in his book ''The User Illusion (book), The User Illusion'' published in English 1998. It is meant to mean ''explicitly discard ...
* Lateralization of brain function
The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebra ...
* Left brain interpreter
The left-brain interpreter is a neuropsychological concept developed by the psychologist Michael S. Gazzaniga and the neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux. It refers to the construction of explanations by the left brain hemisphere in order to make ...
* Mind-body problem
* Mythopoeic thought
Mythopoeic thought is a hypothetical stage of human thought preceding modern thought, proposed by Henri Frankfort and his wife Henriette Antonia Frankfort in the 1940s, based on their interpretation of evidence from archaeology and cultural anthro ...
* Neurotheology
The neuroscience of religion, also known as neurotheology and as spiritual neuroscience, attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms. It is the study of correlations of neural phenomena with subjective experien ...
* Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
* ''Society of Mind
''The Society of Mind'' is both the title of a 1986 book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky.
In his book of the same name, Minsky constructs a model of human intelligence step by step, bui ...
''
* Split-brain
Split-brain or callosal syndrome is a type of disconnection syndrome when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree. It is an association of symptoms produced by disruption of, or interference wit ...
* System 1 and System 2
* Theory of mind
In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...
* Tutelary deity
A tutelary () (also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety and ...
Notes
References
External links
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{{Laterality
1976 introductions
Cognitive science literature
History of psychiatry
Neuroscience books
Psychological theories