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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's necessarily true. There could be an in-between.

My guess is `The Bicameral Mind` is a nice hypothesis that's likely pushed too far but still quite useful. It assumes "the gods speaking through you" and personal self-talk/self-awareness are something fundamentally distinct but it seems plausible to me that this "talk of the gods" could shade into personal self-awareness.

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Yes, I'm inclined to believe such an "in-between" might possibly arise from Iain McGilchrist's line of research into the difference between the brain hemispheres and the relatively recent dominance of left-hemispheric thinking in society. I always highly recommend his book 'The Master and His Emissary' as a follow up to anyone interested in Jaynes' ideas. While it doesn't necessarily imply the full spectrum of schizophrenic-like symptoms in early peoples the way 'The Bicameral Mind' did, it's presentation of right-hemisphere driven societies of the past isn't a far leap from what Jaynes seemed to be grasping at.

I read Jaynes and found it an utterly compelling read. An actual page turner.

I followed it up with “The Master and His Emissary” a few months later and couldn’t get more than 5-10% through it. Just complete drudgery of writing full of nearly pointless asides.

I listened to McGilchrist describe the basics of the idea on a few podcasts and found that quite interesting, but the book itself seems like it could be edited to 1/3 the length without losing anything fundamental. Am I totally off the mark here and should give it another go?

McGilchrist did publish a 30-page summary called “Ways of Attending”, which might be better. It seems to cost as much to buy as a full-size book, but perhaps some Googling can reveal a cheap copy somewhere.

Thanks for mentioning this -- I hadn't heard of it. Google did indeed return a PDF link as the top result. Will give it a read!

I don’t do audio or visual recall. I’m sure someone here has heard voices in mind before. It’s not typically shared publicly, due to stigma. Either way, I bet how we think individually is likely to affect are awareness capabilities. It would be nice to hear my dads voice now and again.

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