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I have not read anything written by Jaynes, but it seems that both this article and the one on bicameralism suffer from the same problems: the articles are mostly about The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and seem to be biased. The reception section only talks about positive reception, and the criticism just talks about how the critics are wrong or have failed to understand his theory, with every critic being followed by some kind of explanation on why it is wrong. I am not from the field, but his idea seem to be far from the mainstream in psychology and this should be made clear in both articles. Even more, the sentence 'Rejection, of course, is not refutation' is completely absurd in the article, as this is an article an not a debate: if his work is rejected by the scientific community, this should be mentioned and not discussed. Vms42 ( talk) 05:03, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
When a person is primarily known for one of their works, usually the redirect is towards that work. It's awkward that it's the other way around here. Almost the entirety of the article is about the book. As examples: The ==Jayne's Theory== section starts "In his book[...]", the beginning to ==Reception and influence== is "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and the entirety of ==Controversy and criticism== is about the book. (Similarly, Bicameralism (psychology) could be merged in; it too is almost entirely about the book).
I don't want to be too bold here (it's a big change). Does anyone have any thoughts or objections? Xavexgoem ( talk) 07:45, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Oh, FFS. It's worse than I thought. This has even been further forked to a third article, Bicameral mentality. What a trainwreck. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Our article is presently treating this subject and his work as if generally well-accepted science, when it is not. While certain aspects of his model have "inspired" later research into things like schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations, this research has not proven him correct about a "bicameral mind", nor has any research in any discipline shown that his broader notion of concsciousness developing only a few millennia ago is supportable by any evidence.
This WP:NPOV (especially WP:DUE) problem is present in both this bio article and the article on the book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And these should probably re-merge (into the article on the book), since the person is not notable for anything other than the one book.
This WP:CFORKing into two article has doubled the maintenance burden and doubled the problematic PoV-pushing in support of Jaynes as a proper scientist and his idea as scientifically valid, while offering no benefit of any kind to our readers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:19, 26 March 2024 (UTC); clarified 13:31, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Next, there is no such thing as "deserve" here; WP is not about passing value judgments on "importance" or "fame". It is entirely and only about WP:GNG, and there is virtually zero in-depth coverage of Jaynes in reliable, independent sources that is not primarily coverage of his book, so this erstwhile bio should merge to the book article, since the person is not notable for anything at all beyhond that specific work. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:31, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
However, even the hypothesis article has related problems to some extent. While it is more inclusive of the criticism and including enough of it (from a certain era and sector) to lean already in the FRINGE direction, it is missing most of the more recent conclusions of cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and related fields (the super-concise gist of which is that the best accepted current view is that consciousness as we know it arose simultaneously with complex language and various other complex behaviors somewhere in the 70–35 kya range). Various ethology and animal pyschology studies of primates are also of relevance.
Overall, Jaynes's ideas about concsciousness are much like Joseph Campbell's about religion and mythology, and John Grey's "Mars and Venus" quasi-psychology, and the Timothy Leary/Robert Anton Wilson/Antero Alli eight-circuit model of consciousness: all are extremely theoretical, inductive, metaphor-driven philosophical ideas, not scientific models, which have become popularized and even influential among a certain class of quasi-educated non-skeptics looking for simplistic, easy answers to bewilderingly complex questions (and which have attracted remarkably cult-like followings), but which are not well received by modern specialists in the related fields and are strongly contradicted by actual evidence and proper science. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:02, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I'll have to remind myself about the meaning of FRINGE wrt what if anything it says about the contrast between:
I believe the guideline addresses mostly #1. Most of the theories that come to mind when I think about fringe theories are in group 1; some even have dedicated articles. Others are in group 2, such as the origin of life, the origin of sexual reproduction, quantum interpretations of the behavior of subatomic particles, origin and evolution of the Universe, origin of language, human migration patterns, factors driving evolutionary change, and the nature of dark matter and energy, and I wouldn't call any of the supporting theories FRINGE (well, any I've heard of; no doubt there are crackpot theories in every field)—there's just a lot of disagreement. I would think that the origin of consciousness is possibly type 3. It seems to me, that to declare something FRINGE does not mean that it has very little, or even no support (apart from its proponent), but that a ratio or proportion is involved, where a fringe theory has very little, or even no support among X number of competing theories. I don't know what X should be, but it can't be zero, and still call a theory FRINGE, imho. I think that is what makes me balk in labeling Jaynes's theory as fringe, and I would not label it so. On what basis would we declare it FRINGE— that nobody has a better idea, but Princeton folks think he's kooky? Mathglot ( talk) 22:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
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Julian Jaynes article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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I have not read anything written by Jaynes, but it seems that both this article and the one on bicameralism suffer from the same problems: the articles are mostly about The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and seem to be biased. The reception section only talks about positive reception, and the criticism just talks about how the critics are wrong or have failed to understand his theory, with every critic being followed by some kind of explanation on why it is wrong. I am not from the field, but his idea seem to be far from the mainstream in psychology and this should be made clear in both articles. Even more, the sentence 'Rejection, of course, is not refutation' is completely absurd in the article, as this is an article an not a debate: if his work is rejected by the scientific community, this should be mentioned and not discussed. Vms42 ( talk) 05:03, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
When a person is primarily known for one of their works, usually the redirect is towards that work. It's awkward that it's the other way around here. Almost the entirety of the article is about the book. As examples: The ==Jayne's Theory== section starts "In his book[...]", the beginning to ==Reception and influence== is "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and the entirety of ==Controversy and criticism== is about the book. (Similarly, Bicameralism (psychology) could be merged in; it too is almost entirely about the book).
I don't want to be too bold here (it's a big change). Does anyone have any thoughts or objections? Xavexgoem ( talk) 07:45, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Oh, FFS. It's worse than I thought. This has even been further forked to a third article, Bicameral mentality. What a trainwreck. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Our article is presently treating this subject and his work as if generally well-accepted science, when it is not. While certain aspects of his model have "inspired" later research into things like schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations, this research has not proven him correct about a "bicameral mind", nor has any research in any discipline shown that his broader notion of concsciousness developing only a few millennia ago is supportable by any evidence.
This WP:NPOV (especially WP:DUE) problem is present in both this bio article and the article on the book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And these should probably re-merge (into the article on the book), since the person is not notable for anything other than the one book.
This WP:CFORKing into two article has doubled the maintenance burden and doubled the problematic PoV-pushing in support of Jaynes as a proper scientist and his idea as scientifically valid, while offering no benefit of any kind to our readers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:19, 26 March 2024 (UTC); clarified 13:31, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Next, there is no such thing as "deserve" here; WP is not about passing value judgments on "importance" or "fame". It is entirely and only about WP:GNG, and there is virtually zero in-depth coverage of Jaynes in reliable, independent sources that is not primarily coverage of his book, so this erstwhile bio should merge to the book article, since the person is not notable for anything at all beyhond that specific work. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:31, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
However, even the hypothesis article has related problems to some extent. While it is more inclusive of the criticism and including enough of it (from a certain era and sector) to lean already in the FRINGE direction, it is missing most of the more recent conclusions of cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and related fields (the super-concise gist of which is that the best accepted current view is that consciousness as we know it arose simultaneously with complex language and various other complex behaviors somewhere in the 70–35 kya range). Various ethology and animal pyschology studies of primates are also of relevance.
Overall, Jaynes's ideas about concsciousness are much like Joseph Campbell's about religion and mythology, and John Grey's "Mars and Venus" quasi-psychology, and the Timothy Leary/Robert Anton Wilson/Antero Alli eight-circuit model of consciousness: all are extremely theoretical, inductive, metaphor-driven philosophical ideas, not scientific models, which have become popularized and even influential among a certain class of quasi-educated non-skeptics looking for simplistic, easy answers to bewilderingly complex questions (and which have attracted remarkably cult-like followings), but which are not well received by modern specialists in the related fields and are strongly contradicted by actual evidence and proper science. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:02, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
I'll have to remind myself about the meaning of FRINGE wrt what if anything it says about the contrast between:
I believe the guideline addresses mostly #1. Most of the theories that come to mind when I think about fringe theories are in group 1; some even have dedicated articles. Others are in group 2, such as the origin of life, the origin of sexual reproduction, quantum interpretations of the behavior of subatomic particles, origin and evolution of the Universe, origin of language, human migration patterns, factors driving evolutionary change, and the nature of dark matter and energy, and I wouldn't call any of the supporting theories FRINGE (well, any I've heard of; no doubt there are crackpot theories in every field)—there's just a lot of disagreement. I would think that the origin of consciousness is possibly type 3. It seems to me, that to declare something FRINGE does not mean that it has very little, or even no support (apart from its proponent), but that a ratio or proportion is involved, where a fringe theory has very little, or even no support among X number of competing theories. I don't know what X should be, but it can't be zero, and still call a theory FRINGE, imho. I think that is what makes me balk in labeling Jaynes's theory as fringe, and I would not label it so. On what basis would we declare it FRINGE— that nobody has a better idea, but Princeton folks think he's kooky? Mathglot ( talk) 22:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)