Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb
From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 12 Dec 88 13:57:07 GMT
References: <569@epicb.UUCP> <1146@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <496@uceng.UC.EDU> <1154@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 14

In article <1154@arctic.nprdc.arpa> bickel@nprdc.arpa (Steven Bickel) writes:
>  Good Reading :-)
>
>  J. Jaynes, The origin of consciousness and the breakdown of the 
>  bicameral mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
>

Now I know where that idea about language and consciousness
evolving in the last 10000 years came from!  Jaynes' thesis is
considered quack by every anthropologist I have talked to.
It is highly interesting, but also highly unlikely.  Not quite
as bad as Velikovsky, but getting there.  Actually, Jaynes seemed
to base his theories more on literary evidence from ancient writings
such as the Iliad.  I didn't find his arguments convincing.