>it is my general impression that Jayne's theory
>has been largely discredited.
I think it is more that Jaynes' theory was in large part conjecture with no or little corroborating tactical evidence. It may indeed not be possible to be proven one way or the other, since we do not have access to an active brain from pre-Homeric times, and we do not have a baseline reference for what we would like to look for even if we were to get one. (Although I kind of suspect that we would see something....)
Jaynes has died before he could elaborate any further. There has been no attempt, to my knowledge, to collect any writings he did after the publication of TOOCITBOTB-CM, and from what Dennett said when I asked him about this (I love dropping names...), Jaynes died a broken and alcoholic death, horridly depressed- there may have been no further writings at all.
The subject line of this thread is, of course, incorrect, according to Jaynes.
Wade T. Smith
morbius@channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."