Julian Jaynes Quotes

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• The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all.

  Julian Jaynes

  Needs, Logic, Reason

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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.

  Julian Jaynes

  Moving, Space, Together

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure.

  Julian Jaynes

  Adventure, Play, Consciousness

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• The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.

  Julian Jaynes

  Mind, Way, Divine

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.323, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Reading in the third millennium B.C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense.

  Julian Jaynes

  Reading, Matter, Hearing

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.192, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry begins as the divine speech of the bicameral mind. Then, as the bicameral mind breaks down, there remain prophets.

  Julian Jaynes

  Mind, Speech, Breaking Down

  Julian Jaynes (1990). “The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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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.

  Julian Jaynes

  Self, Civilization, Understanding

  "LIFE" Magazine, December 1988.

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• Indeed, it is sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.

  Julian Jaynes

  Problem, Sometimes, Forgotten

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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.

  Julian Jaynes

  Loss, Self, Order

  "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, (Book I, Chapter 3, p. 79), 1976.

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• Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size the everyone does not know everyone else.

  Julian Jaynes

  Art, Civilization, Doe

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• Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of the theory of natural selection. Following their twin announcements of the theory in 1858, both Darwin and Wallace struggled like Laocoöns with the serpentine problem of human evolution and its encoiling difficulty of consciousness. But where Darwin clouded the problem with his own naivete, seeing only continuity in evolution, Wallace could not do so.

  Julian Jaynes

  Twins, Evolution, Problem

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• We can only know in the nervous system what we have known in behavior first.

  Julian Jaynes

  Firsts, Nervous, Behavior

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The importance of writing in the breakdown of the bicameral voices is tremendously important. What had to be spoken is now silent and carved upon a stone to be taken in visually.

  Julian Jaynes

  Taken, Writing, Voice

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.312, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I shall state my thesis plain. The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind.

  Julian Jaynes

  Mind, Firsts, Poet

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.371, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.

  Julian Jaynes

  Consciousness, Conscious

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We invent mind-space inside our own heads as well as the heads of others ... we assume these 'spaces' without question. They are a part of what it is to be conscious. Moreover, things that in the physical-behavioural world that do not have a spatial quality are made to have such in consciousness. Otherwise we cannot be conscious of them.

  Julian Jaynes

  Space, Mind, Quality

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• One does one's thinking before one knows what one is to think about.

  Julian Jaynes

  Thinking, Doe, Knows

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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.

  Julian Jaynes

  Echoes, Mind, World

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression.

  Julian Jaynes

  Expression, Events, Becoming

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.284, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the _Iliad_. Good and evil do not exist.

  Julian Jaynes

  Evil, Puppets, Moral

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.285, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is no such thing as a complete consciousness.

  Julian Jaynes

  Consciousness

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.291, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The king dead is a living god.

  Julian Jaynes

  Kings

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world.

  Julian Jaynes

  Real, Vocabulary, Mind

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of much more recent origin than has been heretofore supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.

  Julian Jaynes

  Serious, Language, Consciousness

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The legend of the parting of the Red Sea probably refers to tidal changes in the Sea of Reeds related to the Thera eruption.

  Julian Jaynes

  Sea, Eruption, Legends

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.223, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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