While working on the Göbekli Tepe Series, a reader suggested some possible intersections with the work of Julian Jaynes. At her suggestion I’m reading The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) and some of Jaynes’ other writings, including his 1970 essay on “The Problem of Animate Motion in the Seventeenth [...]
Tags:agency attribution·agency detection·animation·animism·Edward Tylor·Fabricus ab Aquapendente·folk physics·HADD·Julian Jaynes·motion·movement
Many of the recent books and articles about the evolutionary origins of religion claim that natural selection targeted “moral” behaviors and that these behaviors coalesced into “religion.” This is a story told primarily by group level selectionists (who have the bad habit of confusing biological evolution with something they call “cultural evolution”) and evolutionary psychologists [...]
Tags:David Sloan Wilson·Edward Tylor·Frans de Waal·Marc Hauser·Matt Rossano·morality·morals·Nicholas Wade·Rodney Stark·shamanism
