Julian Jaynes
I've recently begun reading THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND by Julian Jaynes. I'm only 44 pages in, and it's already the most thrilling book I've ever picked up. I've long been absorbed with the hard problem of consciousness, and this is the first of its kind that addresses (and is going to attempt to solve it) in a totally accessible way. Among the many observations he's made so far: - We are not conscious all the time. Consider a piano piece you learned long ago and are playing for a recital. You are not actively conscious of which keys your fingers are falling on. If you injected consciousness into that experience, you'd probably mess it up! - Consciousness plays no part, or rather, no direct part, in our human ability to reason. Consider all the times you've meditated on a seemingly unanswerable problem, only to put it aside and, once you weren't thinking about it, come up with the solution. I jus