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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bicameral mentality | 3/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T08:50:16.060514+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Popular reception === Early coverage by Sam Keen in the November 1977 issue of Psychology Today considered Jaynes's hypothesis worthy and offered conditional support, arguing the notion deserves further study. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind was a successful work of popular science, selling out the first print run before a second could replace it. It received dozens of positive book reviews, including those by well-known critics such as John Updike in The New Yorker, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times, and Marshall McLuhan in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Articles on Jaynes and his ideas appeared in Time in 1977, and in Quest/78 in 1978. The book was nominated for the National Book Award in Contemporary Thought in 1978. Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and David Bowie have all cited the book as an influence.
=== Scholarly reactions === According to Jaynes, language is a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness: Language existed thousands of years earlier, but consciousness did not emerge as soon as language did. 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, Daniel Dennett, William H. Calvin, Merlin Donald, John Limber, Howard Margolis, Peter Carruthers, and José Luis Bermúdez. An early criticism by philosopher Ned Block argued that Jaynes had confused the emergence of consciousness with the emergence of the concept of consciousness. In other words, according to Block, humans were conscious all along but did not have the concept of consciousness and thus did not discuss it in their texts. Daniel Dennett countered that for some things, such as money, baseball, or consciousness, one cannot have the thing without also having the concept of the thing. 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. H. Steven Moffic questioned why Jaynes's theory was left out of a discussion on auditory hallucinations by Asaad & Shapiro (1986). 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." The new evidence for Jaynes's 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. Jaynes described the range of responses to his book as "from people who feel [the ideas are] very important all the way to very strong hostility. ... When someone comes along and says consciousness is in history, it can't be accepted. If [psychologists] did accept it, they wouldn't have the motivation to go back into the laboratory ..." Marcel Kuijsten, founder of the Julian Jaynes Society, wrote that in the decades since the book's publication, "there have been few in-depth discussions, either positive or negative" about it, rejecting as too simplistic the criticism that "Jaynes was wrong".