Just about everything I've read about this book has gotten it wrong in the particulars. Jaynes's is a nuanced argument, with many caveats and exceptions. It m

Just about everything I've read about this book has gotten it wrong in the particulars. Jaynes's is a nuanced argument, with many caveats and exceptions. It may be impossible to do justice to it with a summary. Anybody interested should just read Part I of the book. Parts II and III are where he starts to run off the rails a bit. Although not a neuroscientist, my understanding is that a quite a few of his observations in Part I have been reproduced, along with a few of his speculative hypotheses. In my experience, the main benefit of reading the book was in gaining a more precise definition of consciousness. We tend to have many different things in mind when we talk about consciousness. :-) Jaynes gets very precise about what he means by "consciousness" before he introduces his theory. Within the scope of his narrow definition, I find compelling his argument that consciousness developed after and as a result of language. Also, for those who are also familiar with and fans of Tim Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis you should note that Gallwey first published a few years before Jaynes.