Two Origins of Consciousness

Bill Rowe, in Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes (Julian Jaynes Society, 2016).

Excerpt: Consciousness has two origins, one in history and one in childhood. The first one we struggle to get even a glimpse of, the second we can watch emerge. The two are related. The more we understand the latter, the better we can theorize about the former. Perhaps looking at Julian Jaynes’s theory through the lens of child development can help make it feel less distant and more familiar to more people. After all, if Jaynes is right, all developmental roads lead to some form of subjective consciousness. …