Recently their has been some discussion of the Bicameral mind idea of Julian Jaynes. I personally find the idea absurd and ludicrous.

in his book Jaynes has a very interesting and informative section on the nature of conciousness at the beginning he then unfortunaterly blows it with his description of how people controled by a Bicameral mind with one side of the brain telling the other what to do. Jaynes then resorts to a truly tenditous rerading of the Bible, Homer and various Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts to "prove" his theory. For example Jaynes describes Apollo talking to people, i.e., telling them what to do, in the Iliad of Homer, and ignores that in the Iliad Apollo is described as firing arrows into the Greek camp. Well if one is a metaphor why not the other?

But what I felt was the worst was his truly lame attempts to explain the alleged breakdown of the Bicameral mind. Basically it has to do with the stresses and turmoil at the end of the Bronze age. but why then? There had been many disasters and stresses before, for example the development of agriculture, or the extreme chaos of the end of the pyramid age in Egypt or the end of the Empire of Agade in Mesopotamia. And of course what about the rest of the world?

It appears to be the case that a Bicameral society has never been found in situe has it where. And what about all of the primative societies the members of which seemed to have been fully conscious when found. For example in High Land New Guinea which was not explored or "invaded" until the late twenties / early thirties of the twentieth century people their seemed to be fully conscious.

For a reviewe of the book see:

[www.shaviro.com]

for a comment see:

[164.107.4.25]

Pierre