Reflection on Julian Jaynes' THe Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Sorting out one’s place in the universe. This describes the web of activities  I pursue, some activities I employ to attempt to grasp

my way or ‘place’ in the universe---thinking my ‘out of the puzzle’ or rather ‘into the puzzle’. Like a bunny lop born into the cellar or the rabbitry ‘knows’ it’s place and its way around the cage floor or the enclosure of the rabbit house, and the outdoor corral, then one day, miraculously the rabbit having escaped the enclosure of the rabbitry now roams as far as heart allows. Now this is an experience that is novel to the rabbit! ...Experience of... let’s call it the great wide open world, the world of God’s light. Don’t forget that this mini-lop's ancestors used to roam in the wild in Germany mid-19th century. All of its domesticated  predecessors were bred in captivity and some travelled to the US to find their way into my breeding line via: Blackberry and Snowflake.Wikipedia; Mini-Lops Entry

Like a rabbit I am puzzling my way out of this or rather ‘into all of this’---the language is of assistance---up to a certain point. Do you see how the use of the expressions referring to puzzling: ‘into all of this’ or ‘out of this’ refer to a direction --- and yet the universe may be dimensionless---hence the in vs. out is arbitrary depending on the scale of the enclosure under discussion (cf. the rabbit house analogy above). In or out find their meaning when we get out of or into a new enclosure, but if there is no getting in or out with regard to being in the great wide open, then inside or outside is a question of relative scale----a home inside a cage, a cage within a rabbit house, the corral attached to the rabbitry, the yard and then the open beyond!

One comes up against the actual day, one surfaces ‘there’ this particular ‘there’ that is here! The source and fountain of this experience. This day is so magnificently beautiful that I blaspheme to remain indoors writing about ‘this day’ (and perhaps, reader, you blaspheme as well, by reading this thing---while all around you the day clusters like a scrapping wind in the oak’s bony fingertips setting the merry leaves into their frolic ::;)  

In searching ‘further, outside, inside---does not matter what I am searching for...because by definition like the rabbit I have no way of knowing if I am working my way into or out of the “problem”, “answer,” God”, “Being”, “truth”, “universe”, I am searching severally, questing for what...? How can the rabbit having escaped from the rabbitry orient himself or herself? What is the new enclosure?

Next Essay: The limit of the speakable as we learn from Wittgenstein. Encyclopedia Entry: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Knowledge of God is always indirectly stated---the idea is found in Kierkegaard---Encyclopedia Entry: Soren Kierkegaard

Immediate Perceptual Grasping of Truth

Each small social mammal perceives, opens their eyes, and sees the truth just as humans do. This initial act of 'seeing' directly into the nature of truth immediately and completely occurs when the tree appears or the bird whistles and the branches bend----this act of seeing is the greatest and most stupendous act of the mind whether human or not. To see---what an exalted gift!

To denigrate the act of seeing, to reduce this act to a "neurological act" is simply bad prose. The actual event is instantaneous grasping of the "thing" in its truth of being---be it frog, or stream or tree---direct immediate grasping of the truth of the thing. I don't see where the academic debate concerning the phenomenon versus the 'ding an sich' arises, to be honest with you. I simply do not see the need for bifurcation. Kant's project was a sort of over the top paranoid virtuosity to defend the truth against Hume's acid bath of skepticism. Paranoid because it is much simpler and elegant (recall Ockham) to allow the thing to be what it is! A rose by any other name is yet a rose! Is this not a bunny pictured above? Indeed it is---what is to be gained by dividing the phenomenal and noumenal?

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason paves the way for cybernetic science and "artificial intelligence". The thematic of apperception. the a priori, schematization, to announce the first evidence. But after all this is another "paranoid" fiction. The first was Descartes 'malin genie'--- that evil genius who convinces Descartes that what he sees may not be really real. But at the end of the day, its is still hypothetical----as he begins his First Philosophy he opens with a subjunctive hypothetical---i.e. imagine that a deceiver (malin genie) convinced you that the report of your senses was errant and might ever be so. Well this is fine and good but in all actuality there is no doubt concerning my perception unless I am severely inebriated, hallucinatory, or dreaming. As a matter of fact when I see the tree in front of me I have not the slightest doubt that it is a tree, as I said, unless I am very paranoid or under the influence of some very good mushrooms.

No, I do not buy this! The effect is purely literary---granted both Descartes and Kant were intellectual virtuosos and culture rightly erects fitting tribute to their genius. But as philosophers, personally I think they fell short. To my mind, realism is the great intellectual achievement---to account for the being of this phenomenon qua this phenomenon! To reduce qua phenomenon to other said phenomena is rather a disappointment akin to the dissection of a frog---well you have something in the corpse but it is no longer the frog. Life itself is the elixir we seek---the summum bonum, the telos and value of human existence. Yet it is a transparent medium and like quicksilver cannot be handled.