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Quote by Julian Jaynes

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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

This book delves into the concept of the bicameral mind, a theory suggesting that early humans experienced a form of consciousness that was split between two parts of the brain. The author examines the implications of this theory on the development of human consciousness and society. more

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Julian Jaynes
Julian Jaynes

Julian Jaynes was a psychologist known for his hypothesis on the origin of human consciousness. His book 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' proposed a theory that human consciousness experienced a shift from collective unconsciousness to individual consciousness around 1000 BCE. more

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“"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.”

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“We have said that consciousness is an operation rather than a thing, a repository, or a function. It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog 'I' that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it. It operates on any reactivity, excerpts relevant aspects, narratizes and conciliates them together in a metaphorical space where such meanings can be manipulated like things in space.”

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“Conscious mind is a spatial analog of the world and mental acts are analogs of bodily acts. Consciousness operates only on objectively observable things. Or, to say it another way with echoes of John Locke, there is nothing in consciousness that is not an analog of something that was in behavior first.”

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“And when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgement are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.”

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Author:Julian Jaynes
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