Meaning of bicameral mind | Babel Free

Definitions

The hypothetical mentality, neurology and sociology of the theory that before the historical emergence of introspective consciousness ancient humans and the earliest civilizations were governed by auditory hallucinations ‘spoken’ by the right cerebral hemisphere and ‘heard’ by the left hemisphere as the voices of gods.

Equivalents

Examples

“In distinction to our own subjective conscious minds, we can call the mentality of the Myceneans a bicameral mind. pg.75 The bicameral mind is ... that form of social control which allowed mankind to move from small hunter-gatherer groups to large agricultural communities… pg.126 The two hemispheres of the brain are not the bicameral mind… [It] is an ancient mentality demonstrated in the literature and artifacts of antiquity. pg.456 [At Delphi in C.E. 363] the bicameral mind had come to one of its many ends. pg.331”

“The present paper provides a brief summary of the bicameral mind model, followed by a critical reappraisal of […] the putative cerebral basis of bicamerality.”

“[…] one should not regard the connections discovered here as an attempt to "prove" Jaynes's theory of the bicameral mind. Although his theory certainly accounts for the whole of the data presented here more concisely and cleanly than any alternative yet proposed, in the end, theories are only theories, […]”

CEFR level