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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <7033@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 88 21:08:19 GMT
References: <569@epicb.UUCP> <1146@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <496@uceng.UC.EDU> <1154@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
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In article <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon
E. Banks) writes:
>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.


It is probably a good idea to have reservations about any author whose only
empirical evidence comes from introspection while under the influence of
hallucinogens.  However, Jaynes at least deserves points for telling us
this about these "sources" explicitly in his book.