Julian Jaynes on Origin of Consciousness with Marcel Kuijsten & Brian McVeigh

Amazing!!!

Great interview, thank you!

Good to know that these ideas are still in circulation today.

The first speaker seems not to differentiate between consciousness & self-consciousness - & neither, at times, did Jaynes. Introspection is in the latter category. Self-awareness, ego etc are meta-awarenesses ... not necessary to live, but essential for 'free will' or rather, a sense of personal agency. Driving a car or doing anything 'on autopilot' = doing things unconsciously, through conditioning, repetition etc, where activities are reinforced by repetition to the extent that we are no longer aware of our reactions to normal stimuli, once they are established. I would add to the first speaker's piece that non-human animals do not ONLY live as response-to-stimuli ... there is also the internal drive of instinct. I agree with the rest of his talk.
However, none of the many people with whom I have discussed this over the decades has an 'analogue 'I''. I / we have never imagined the homunculus representing us, as if from outside ourselves, somehow split! :-o Everyone (besides myself) finds that idea very strange & psychologically unidentifiable with!
Those are my two big criticisms of Jaynes' otherwise brilliant theory (though civilisation is hugely older than he assumed, as recent archaeological evidence shows ... & there is no simplistic left/right-brain split, as was thought when Jaynes wrote the book.)

Whoever Homer was (if it even existed), NO MATTER HOW ANCIENT THE VERSION OF THE ILIAD READ BY JAYNES, the words chosen (say from VENETUS A) were translations or interpretations of ancient stories (either in other languages or oral traditions). You cannot infer conclusions from that. Perhaps are you meaning that in the 10th century people did NOT have self-awareness?

Mesopotamian gods ruling the land (same goes for Egyptian gods/pharaohs) doesn't match the idea of a Collective Consciousness, but the Collective Unconscious. If the god did not actually exist, who was the "Queen Bee", the leader "alpha male"? Who was he (or PROBABLY SHE) in hunter-gatherers population or first farmers?
And if language was a must for the raising of individual consciousness, Why should not it have happened among the Neanderthals, hunter-gatherers and first small farmer settlements (all of them being able to have a complex language)?

Those ideas of language providing complexity to human behaviour make sense. However, they exactly prove that ancient Egyptians could not have built pyramids, because our current civilization could not achieve to build 6 and 20 meters high pyramids, nor with the same accuracy even using to a certain extent current machinery (pneumatic hammers, trucks, and large barges). It means the hieroglyphic language was a leftover or a legacy from an ancient civilization, which had an advanced language, an evolved self-awareness (ego) and a widespread and complex society, that eventually was destroyed by an ancient cataclysm, giving place to the lose of knowledge (writing, farming, celestial mechanics...) So if these catastrophes were cyclical, that would explain the emergence and disappearance of such levels of self-consciousness and why almost all traces of such cultures vanished, forcing the survivors to engage in hive minds again in an effort to thrive.

I stop improving on my guitar playing when I'm practicing. I take a couple weeks off, and when I picked it back up, my playing has improved. Things that had frustrated me , flow without much deliberate focus.
BTW, I see that Les Paul sitting back there.

Thanks for this video. I'm half way through this very intriguing book...

Does the stoned ape hypothesis sit well with the bicameral mind and Jaynes' ideas?

The need to believe in GOD is endogenous in human psychology and it is impossible to discern as to its origin or intrinsic nature; i.e., if we are to assume that it is an authoritarian voice coming from the inside or outside. As to the need to believe and its nature another good book is: UFOs: I Want to Believe by Nahu Lanham.

Very true that there is a LOT more in the original book to think about.

Jaynes wouldn't have held we can at any time by will go back to the bicamwral mind. Nor would he have held the bards of Troy were UTTERLY without something resembling what we would call 'introspection'.

The idea that gods were living amongst mortals a veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy long time ago is incredibly common in myths. It's called the "Golden Age".

The interview flow suffers from the moderators interuption.

be careful of this video ! ; All is Consciousness it is either Sub-Consciousness or not! Sub-Consciousness is where your heart mind and inner parts of your body runs on its own! without being aware; this is the Sub-Consciousness where you don't have to check on its operation; Consciousness is the state of awareness. So are you conscious of what I've just wrote ?

Very well conducted colloquium! Regarding questions in reSearch of the bicameral mind, it might be better to consider 'addressing' questions versus '"answering" them.
Rock on!!

I was doing my Ph.D in Philosophy in the earlier 1980's when I first read Jaynes. Unfortunately, because of criticism from Ned Block and Patricia Churchland, Jaynes theory of mind never got a proper hearing.

The only philosopher who was sympathetic was Daniel Dennett, but even he rejected the theory of auditory hallucinations.

Amazing! So much little awakenings and connections after hearing this. Greetings from Mexico

Do you know what Julian jaynes means by “structure” being a combination of instruction and construction? And how this makes thinking automatic.

How are there 95K likes given the number of views?

im interested in if anyone kmowledgeable about this subject has throughly studied or experimented with goetia in the ancient greek sense (as opposed to the ars goetia of the lesser key of solomon). There is an obvious connection between the bicameral mind and ancestor worship/communication. Ancient goetia (meaning "wailing") was a magical method of ancestral spirit communication/petitioning. It changed into petitioning of various gods/goddesses in the classical period such as in the greek magical papyri and later into the grimore tradition of the medival period. I just wonder if anyone else sees this connection or has experimented along these lines while holding bicameral mind in consideration.

The religous traditionof vodoo and hoodoo, condemble, santeria is a modern example of intentional bicameral mind i suspect.