Et Jaynes Quotes & Sayings

Thinking, then, is not conscious. Rather, it is an automatic process following a struction and the materials on which the struction is to operate. — Julian Jaynes

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

Indeed I have begun in this fashion, and place great importance on this opening chapter, for unless you are here convinced that a civilization without consciousness is possible, you will find the discussion that follows unconvincing and paradoxical. — Julian Jaynes

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

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

The unlocatable location of things thought about — Julian Jaynes

Your words become the mirror in which others see themselves. — Sharon Jaynes

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

Lord, I'm glad You're sticking with me today ... and I'm sticking with You. I acknowledge Your presence now and through my entire day. I'm not saying "See you later," with this Amen. We're going into this day together! — Sharon Jaynes

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

The pupils were black as like every other human being's. But at the fringe of the pupils were thin heliotrope rings. Radiating from the rings were mauve and lilac swirls that swam in a plum hue. The cilia of the irises were amethyst.

Nashira Jaynes, the alien with purple eyes , I thought. Enough to make anyone regard me as a freak — Deepika Kumaaraguru

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

Signal learning (or classical or Pavlovian conditioning) is the simplest example [of leaning without consciousness]. If a light signal immediately followed by a puff of air through a rubber tube is directed at a person's eye about ten times, the eyelid, which previously blinked only to the puff of air, will begin to blink to the light signal alone, and this becomes more and more frequent as trials proceed. Subjects who have undergone this well-known procedure of signal learning report that it has no conscious component whatever. Indeed, consciousness, in this example the intrusion of voluntary eye blinks to try to assist the signal learning, blocks it from occurring. — Julian Jaynes

This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles. — Julian Jaynes

Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure. — Julian Jaynes

It was our use of probability theory as logic that has enabled us to do so easily what was impossible for those who thought of probability as a physical phenomenon associated with "randomness". Quite the opposite; we have thought of probability distributions as carriers of information. — Edwin Thompson Jaynes

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

There is no such thing as a complete consciousness. — Julian Jaynes

The bicameral mind with its controlling gods was evolved as a final stage of the evolution of language. And in this development lies the origin of civilization. — Julian Jaynes

What was then an augury for direction of action among the ruins of an archaic mentality is now the search for an innocence of certainty among the mythologies of facts. — Julian Jaynes

That's what God does. He doesn't try to cover up our flaws; He starts from scratch and makes us new. — Sharon Jaynes

And as you read, you are not conscious of the letters or even of the words or even of the syntax or the sentences and punctuation, but only of their meaning. As you listen to an address, phonemes disappear into words and words into sentences and sentences disappear into what they are trying to say, into meaning. To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech. — Julian Jaynes

We are thus conscious less of the time than we think, because we cannot be conscious of when we are not conscious. — Julian Jaynes

I'm not a rebel. I just like finding solutions by myself - Nashira Jaynes. — Deepika Kumaaraguru

As the stag pants after the waterbrooks, So pants my mind after you, O gods! My mind thirsts for gods! for living gods! When shall I come face to face with gods? - Psalm 42 — Julian Jaynes

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

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

The lexicon of language, then, is a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby. — Julian Jaynes

Jesus set us free to live the abundant life by being all that He has created us to be and accomplishing all that He has planned for us to do. — Sharon Jaynes

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 ... concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world about us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects. — Julian Jaynes