Hallucinated Gods

I find it interesting how often stuff about Julian Jaynes and his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind gets posted here (and I guess on Reddit and back in the day Slashdot).

FWIW, the submission link is part four of a four part series which begins here: https://meltingasphalt.com/mr-jaynes-wild-ride/

Anyway, after reading it a couple of times and going on a major sort of semi domesticated water fowl chase which included a bunch of other authors, I've come to the conclusion that Julian Jaynes was rather hard done by and that much of the criticism of the theory of the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind doesn't exactly have respect for epistemic responsibility. Instead it's coming from folks with no direct knowledge of the work (i.e. they never read it or didn't read it with serious intention) who are instead reacting to the title / synopsis and/or what various third parties said the theory was about.

So setting that sort of criticism aside, I arrive a slightly different conclusion than: "Probably wrong — but worth reading anyway. Preposterous — but worth taking seriously." Instead I'd say "Probably not entirely wrong — but worth reading anyway. Difficult and Problematic — but very much worth taking seriously and spending the time, energy, and effort to really understand and fully consider".

Edit, now that I've made it through the whole series, let me say that it's a worthwhile read.