https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)
As the title indicates, this is more of a psychological theory than a philosophical one. The
RationalWiki article probably does a better job describing this one: essentially, the left and right sides of the human brain used to operate separately with the thoughts of one appearing as auditory hallucinations in the other, until just a few thousand years ago, when humans suddenly became conscious as we know it.
Jaynes supports his theory by stating that no people in ancient texts such as the Old Testament of the Bible or the Iliad are described as taking part in cognitive processes (which is fairly obvious, since some of the texts are in third-person and/or non-autobiographical) with Ecclesiastes, Psalms, and other later prophets being notable exceptions, and reasoning that people with schizophrenia are remnants of this state of mind.
There are many flaws in his theories, such as the fact that many human populations have been isolated for significantly longer than 3000 years, and yet still all think in the modern sense, and that the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known work of literature, describes Gilgamesh as performing introspection, something that would be impossible under Jaynes' hypothesis.
This idea is not widely accepted and there's some lack of falsifiable versions of the hypothesis, but at least a few psychologists consider the idea "interesting" rather than "crank."[citation needed] It has had a bit of a pop cultural influence regardless of its truth, notably featuring in multiple works by Neal Stephenson including Snow Crash.[3]
Sounds like certifiable nonsense to me, especially with the left-brain/right-brain idea having long been debunked, but maybe a good science fiction plot.
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