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The most obvious refutation is that according to Jaynes' theory conciseness emerged just a few thousand years ago. Since humans took divergent paths across the
by DC-3 6y ago
The most obvious refutation is that according to Jaynes' theory conciseness emerged just a few thousand years ago. Since humans took divergent paths across the globe over a hundred thousand years ago, this raises the question of how all humans developed consciousness independently and simultaneously - unless you think that consciousness is spread in a sort of memetic fashion, in which case you are asserting that aboriginal people did not have a consciousness as we would understand it prior to their contact with European colonialists, which is - to say the least - a weighty assertion to make.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoJaynes argument makes a lot more sense when you take the modern psychiatric view that the way we respond to voices in our head is socially constructed. His claim that it is literally caused by the corpus collosum was bad biology (which was not his field).
- mr_toad 6y ago> the way we respond to voices in our head Voices plural? I doubt most of society experiences such a phenomenon, and if they do they’re not talking about it.
- adamjb 6y agoThe decomposition of the self into competing voices is a fairly common idea. It's present in phrases like "part of me thinks/wants X" or "I am of two minds about X". It's a key part of the whole Freudian id, ego, superego thing and related motifs like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.