Julian Jaynes Quotes About Consciousness

Quotes about: Consciousness

• 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

• Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.

  Julian Jaynes

  Essence, Justice, Consciousness

  Julian Jaynes (2000). “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, p.290, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Julian Jaynes

  Adventure, Play, Consciousness

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• The changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II can certainly be scanned in terms of this long retreat from the sacred which has followed the inception of consciousness into the human species.

  Julian Jaynes

  Long, Catholic, Church

  "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, (Book III, Chapter 6, p. 439), 1976.

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