“The Origin of Consciousness” is an academic article getting into one of the more wildly known works by Julian Jaynes: “The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.”
While the work itself might be too long for most people to get into, anyone with an interest in the beginnings of thought in minds – and the history of legislation – this descriptive article breaks the piece down easily.
Key Takeaways:
- Think of this sort of the bicameral experience in a Cartesian sense: rather than having a thought which you imagine yourself as the originator of, thoughts just happen.
- language precedes identity and consciousness. First you have words for things.
- They were there because people simply thought that’s where the voices were coming from.
“This moment of hallucinated epiphany was what the Ancient Greeks called divine inspiration, the whisperings of the poetic music, divination, or prophecy. It would lead Jaynes down a multidisciplinary rabbit hole, tumbling through archeology, cognitive science, psychology, art history, anthropology, and poetry, culminating in his masterpiece: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.”
Read the full article here: The Origin of Consciousness
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