BecauseWithoutCausePi

Because Without Cause? is one of the few books I've found impossible to understand, so today I'm going to start talking myself through it from the perspective of developing an approach to any such unfamiliar topic.

As metaphor or analog to behavior, consciousness is an operator bound up with volition and decision. Julian Jaynes controversially argued that consciousness is not biologically innate (nature); rather, it is culturally constructed (nurture). In other words, it is not a consequence of evolution but rather a sociocultural, historical invention that appeared in full form about three millennia ago. Jaynes defined consciousness as: 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. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision” (Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976, p. 56). — Brian J. McVeigh

re. TheOriginOfConsciousnessInTheBreakdownOfTheBicameralMind