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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, (original 1976; edition 1976)

by Julian Jaynes

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1,247285,823 (4.17)30
Member:Smethers
Title:The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,
Authors:Julian Jaynes
Info:Houghton Mifflin (1976), Paperback
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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)

  1. 20
    Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited by Marcel Kuijsten (mkuijsten)
  2. 00
    Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher (chmod007)
    chmod007: The first few chapters of Through The Language Glass talk about color as a cultural construct, drawing upon 19th century inquiries into the works of Homer and his seeming indifference to the finer hues of the spectrum. The beginning of TOOCITBOTBM starts with a similar exploration of ancient conceptions (or lack thereof) of consciousness, supported by linguistic evidence.… (more)
  3. 00
    In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life by Robert Kegan (nnii)
    nnii: Both extremely ambitious and interesting books on human cognition, one in the archaic period and one in the modern period.
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Showing 1-5 of 28 (next | show all)
Jaynes argues that consciousness, and self consciousness, are recent cultural developments. His argument has been comprehensively critiqued, debunked and dismissed. It remains, however, a marvellously stimulating book, filled with sharp insights, which will survive many of the well founded, and tedious, objections of his critics. Take and enjoy it as a stimulant to the imagination and as an enjoyable tour of Homeric and other ancient literature. ( )
2 vote LeaderElliott | Sep 26, 2012 |
Origin of Consciousness, Julian Jaynes. Human consciousness is a learned process brought into being out of earlier hallucinatory mentality. "learned process" dubious - Egyptian princess Ankhesenamiin offered the kingship to enemy empire Hittite prince. Thought provoking anyway. ( )
  edwbennett | May 26, 2012 |
I finished this book several months ago and have been since attempting to figure out how I would review it.

Whether the book's thesis concerning the origin of consciousness is true or not, it presents a compelling and original view of how ancient humans thought. The author readily admits the difficulty in confirming his theory; but I did find what evidence there was to be good.

This book has also radically changed my views and extended my understanding of religion. ( )
2 vote math_foo | Dec 28, 2011 |
An absolutely fascinating work. Although there are times where it seems that large trucks can be driven through the holes in his arguments, the overall picture presented makes this quite convincing that Jaynes's theories (particularly the main one, which is that humans only gained consciousness 3,000 - 4,000 years ago, acting only based on voices they heard coming from the right hemisphere of their brains), are worth further study. ( )
  waitingtoderail | Dec 9, 2011 |
Extraordinary book; Asks many important questions about how our mind has evolved.
  460200 | Nov 16, 2011 |
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O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind!
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Men have been conscious of the problem of consciousness almost since consciousness began.
And the feeling of a great uninterrupted stream of rich inner experiences, now slowly gliding through dreamy moods, now tumbling in excited torrents down gorges of precipitous insight, or surging evenly through our nobler days, is what it is on this page, a metaphor for how subjective consciousness seems to subjective consciousness.
For if we ever achieve a language that has the power of expressing everything, then metaphor will no longer be possible. I would not say, in that case, my love is like a red, red rose, for love would have exploded into terms for its thousands of nuances, and applying the correct term would leave the rose metaphorically dead.
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0618057072, Paperback)

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 04 Jan 2013 03:01:45 -0500)

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