Julian Jaynes ( February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997 ) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind ( 1976 ), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious.

Jaynes later expanded on the ideas in his book in a series of commentaries in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in lectures and discussions published in Canadian Psychology, and in Art / World.

Richard Dawkins cited Jaynes ' ideas in his book The God Delusion, stating " It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between ...".

A 2012 book titled The Julian Jaynes Collection gathers together many of the lectures and articles by Jaynes relevant to his theory ( including some that were previously unpublished ), along with interviews and question and answer sessions where Jaynes addresses misconceptions about the theory and extends the theory into new areas.

Julian Jaynes, primarily in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, proposed that religion ( and some other psychological phenomena such as hypnosis and schizophrenia ) is a remnant of a relatively recent time in human development, prior to the advent of consciousness.

The full derivation can be found in Jaynes ' book, but it does admit an easier to understand alternative derivation, once the solution is known.

The term was coined by psychologist Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3000 years ago.

The book also contains an extensive biography of Julian Jaynes by historian of psychology William Woodward and June Tower, and a Foreword by neuroscientist Michael Persinger.

* Jaynes, E. T. Probability Theory: The Logic of Science.

A fundamental link among these fields was proposed by Edwin Jaynes in two seminal 1957 papers .< ref > Jaynes, E. T., 1957, " Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics ," Phys.

</ br > Jaynes, E. T., 1957, " Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics II ," Phys.

" The Shi ' Corpse / Personator ' Ceremony in Early China ," in Marcel Kujistan, ed., Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited, Julian Jaynes Society, 343-416.

At the April 2008 " Toward a Science of Consciousness " Conference held in Tucson, Arizona, Marcel Kuijsten ( Executive Director and Founder of the Julian Jaynes Society ) and Brian J. McVeigh ( University of Arizona ) hosted a workshop devoted to Jaynesian psychology.

Others who have written about the embodied mind include philosopher Andy Clark ( See his Being There ), philosopher and neurobiologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela and his student Evan Thompson ( See Varela, Thompson & Rosch's " The Embodied Mind "), roboticists such as Rodney Brooks, Rolf Pfeifer and Tom Ziemke, the physicist David Bohm ( see his Thought As A System ), Ray Gibbs ( see his " Embodiment and Cognitive Science "), John Grinder and Richard Bandler in their neuro-linguistic programming, and Julian Jaynes.

In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own " god " who reflected their own desires and experiences.

These regions are somewhat dormant in the right brains of most modern humans, but Jaynes noted that some studies show that auditory hallucinations correspond to increased activity in these areas of the brain.

Even in modern times, Jaynes notes that there is no consensus as to the cause or origins of schizophrenia ( the subject is still hotly debated ).

Jaynes ' definition of consciousness is synonymous with what philosophers call " meta-consciousness " or " meta-awareness " i. e. awareness of awareness, thoughts about thinking, desires about desires, beliefs about beliefs.

E. T. Jaynes, from a Bayesian point of view, pointed out probability is a measure of a human's information about the physical world.

As an example of an a priori prior, due to Jaynes ( 2003 ), consider a situation in which one knows a ball has been hidden under one of three cups, A, B or C, but no other information is available about its location.

Jaynes asserted that, until roughly the times written about in Homer's Iliad, humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggested that Jaynes may have been wrong about some of his supporting arguments, especially the importance he attached to hallucinations, but that these things are not essential to his main thesis.

Jaynes in the context of Bayesian probability

The Bayesian view has a number of desirable features — one of them is that it embeds deductive ( certain ) logic as a subset ( this prompts some writers to call Bayesian probability " probability logic ", following E. T. Jaynes ).

Priors can be constructed which are proportional to the Haar measure if the parameter space X carries a natural group structure which leaves invariant our Bayesian state of knowledge ( Jaynes, 1968 ).

Quantum mechanics under the Copenhagen Interpretation interpreted probability as a physical phenomenon, which is what Jaynes called a Mind Projection Fallacy.

There have been other attempts to derive Occam's Razor from probability theory, notable attempts made by Harold Jeffreys and E. T. Jaynes.

Jaynes strongly promoted the interpretation of probability theory as an extension of logic.

Edwin T. Jaynes introduced the principle of transformation groups, which can yield an epistemic probability distribution for this problem.

108: 171 .</ ref > Moreover, Jaynes elaborated an interpretation of probability theory as generalized Aristotelian logic, a view very convenient for linking fundamental physics with digital computers, because these are designed to implement the operations of classical logic and, equivalently, of Boolean algebra.

Finding the right method for constructing such " objective " priors ( for appropriate classes of regular problems ) has been the quest of statistical theorists from Laplace to John Maynard Keynes, Harold Jeffreys, and Edwin Thompson Jaynes: These theorists and their successors have suggested several methods for constructing " objective " priors:

Jaynes in two papers in 1957 where he emphasized a natural correspondence between statistical mechanics and information theory.

In particular, Jaynes offered a new and very general rationale why the Gibbsian method of statistical mechanics works.

A central example in Jaynes ' paper relies on the fact that, if one develops a theory based on the idea that the two different types of gas are indistinguishable, and one never carries out any measurement which detects this fact, then the theory will have no internal inconsistencies.

* 1957 – Edwin T. Jaynes gives MaxEnt interpretation of thermodynamics from information theory.

Brian McVeigh maintains that many of the most frequent criticisms of Jaynes ' theory are either incorrect or reflect serious misunderstandings of Jaynes ' theory, especially Jaynes ' more precise definition of consciousness.

He argues that this distinction is frequently not recognized by those offering critiques of Jaynes ' theory.

At the same conference, a panel devoted to Jaynes was also held, with John Limber ( University of New Hampshire ), Marcel Kuijsten, John Hainly ( Southern University ), Scott Greer ( University of Prince Edward Island ), and Brian J. McVeigh presenting relevant research.

An early criticism by philosopher Ned Block argued that Jaynes had confused the emergence of consciousness with the emergence of the concept of consciousness.

Directed by Peter Rowe and with music direction by Greg Palmer and choreography by Francesca Jaynes, the show was performed by a cast of 22 actor-musicians, with all music played live on stage by the cast.

Reid was born in Searchlight, Nevada, the third of four sons of Inez Orena ( née Jaynes ), a laundress, and Harry Vincent Reid, a miner who committed suicide with a gunshot to the head in 1972 at the age of 58 when Harry was 32 years old.

They offered to replace his recently stolen bicycle with a new one for sex but the boy refused and Jaynes killed Jeffrey in the car's backseat.

According to the Curleys ' $ 200 million suit, NAMBLA's " adult-child sexual relationship " propaganda, including Jaynes ' viewing the group's website, caused the violent predatory behavior and urge to have sex with and rape young male children.

Jaynes co-hosted the Morning Sports Page on KXTG 95. 5 The Game with Chad Doing and Antonio Harvey until 2011, when he began working full time for Comcast SportsNet Northwest.