The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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Bald Hill Natural Area Preserve (dnr.wa.gov) This preserve supports an unusual number of habitats and plant communities, including streamsides, mossy rocks, cliff crevices, seasonally wet grassland, Oregon white oak woodland, and exposed rock outcrops. The 314-acre site also protects four state Sensitive plant species, including common blue-cup, nuttall’s quilwort, California sword fern, and small flowered trillium. The grassland community is delicately perched on massive rocky bald hillsides dotted with oak trees. Wildflowers are abundant in the spring, including camas lilies, blue-eyed grass, Puget balsamroot (a sunflower-like plant), yellow and blue violets, chocolate lilies, harvest brodiea, dwarf monkey-flower, farewell to spring, Nuttall’s larkspur, blue-eyed Mary, and others.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Wikipedia) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a 1976 book by the Princeton psychologist, psychohistorian and consciousness theorist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). The book addresses the problematic nature of consciousness – “the ability to introspect” – which in Jaynes’ view must be distinguished from sensory awareness and other processes of cognition. Jaynes presents his proposed solution: that consciousness is a learned behavior based more on language and culture than on biology; this solution, in turn, points to the origin of consciousness in ancient human history rather than in metaphysical or evolutionary processes; furthermore, archaeological and historical evidence indicates that prior to the learning of consciousness, human mentality was what Jaynes called “the bicameral mind” – a mentality based on verbal hallucination.