What is consciousness?

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990611.html

Here’s a definition from a book on consciousness I have been reading… It is outragous and slanders the gods!
I will hold back my fury… but my inbred cousin on mt. sin admits to being a ‘jealous’ God. For thousands of years, I’ve been screaming that this third-rate sky deity ripped me off wholesale!

The whole fearsome, patriarchal, white-beard, thunderbolt thing?
I was doing that eons before this two-bit hustler started horning in on the action." anyway…

‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’ by Julian Jaynes
http://www.commonreader.com/5/5250.html

Defining both what consciousness is and what it is not. After speculating on its location, he demonstrates that consciousness itself has no physical location, but rather is a particular organization of the mind and a specific way of using the brain. Jaynes then demonstrates that consciousness is only a small part of mental activity and is not necessary for concept formation, learning, thinking, or even reasoning. He illustrates how all those mental functions can be performed automatically, intelligently, but unconsciously. Furthermore, consciousness does not contribute to and often hinders the execution of learned skills such as speaking, listening, writing, reading --as well as skills involving music, art, and athletics. Thus, if major human actions and skills can function automatically and without consciousness, those same actions and skills can be controlled or driven by external influences, “authorities”, or “voices.” Consciousness requires metaphors (i.e., referring to one thing in order to better understand or describe another thing – such as the head of an army, the head of a household, the head of a nail). Consciousness also requires analog models, (i.e., thinking of a map of California, for example, in order to visualize the entire, physical state of California). Thinking in metaphors and analog models creates the mind space and mental flexibility needed to bypass the automatic, bicameral processes. Metaphors of “me” and analog models of “I” allow consciousness to function through introspection and self-visualization. In turn, consciousness expands by creating more and more metaphors and analog models. That expanding consciousness allows a person to “see” and understand the relationship between himself and the world with increasing accuracy and clarity.

Consciousness is a conceptual, metaphor-generated analog world that parallels the actual world. Man, therefore, could not invent consciousness until he developed a language sophisticated enough to produce metaphors and analog models. With a conscious mind, man can introspect; he can debate with himself; he can become his own god, voice, and decision maker. But before the invention of consciousness, the mind functioned bicamerally: the right hemisphere (the poetic, god-brain) hallucinated audio instructions to the left hemisphere (the analytical, man-brain), especially in unusual or stressful situations. Essentially, man’s brain today is physically identical to the ancient bicameral brain.
The result is that consciousness is not a biological genetic giver, but a linguistic skill learned in human history. Previous to that transitional period, human volition consisted of hearing voices called gods, a relationship I am calling the bicameral mind.

Ancient civilizations seem to have been governed by such hallucinations called gods, a mentality known as the bicameral mind. It was concluded that the reason verbal hallucinations are found so extensively, in every modern culture, in normal students, schizophrenics, children, and vividly reported in the texts of antiquity is that such hallucinations are an innate propensity, genetically evolved as the basis of an ancient preconscious mentality. Julian Jaynes

There you have it. says I…Son of Kronos,Lord of Hera,Zeus of the thunderbolt and father of gods and men…

“Those who judge others will burn in Hell!” The Beast?

I’ve read Jaynes’ book several times. I find his thoughts on what constututes consciousness to be insightful and thought-provoking (which is, I guess, appropriate). On the other hand, every time I read it I am less impressed. Jaynes sometime veers perilously close to pseudoscience. His account of the Delphic Oracle is not, I find, completely accurate (read Frothingham’s book on the topic). And the big question that keeps coming to me is “why the hell would pre-conscious automatons want to write epics like “Gilgamesh?””. When he suggests that American civilizations like the Aztecs and Incas were preconscious and lost out to the conscious Europeans, he’s gone off the deep end.

I’m glad your with your Father! The duality of the mind is crazy thinking… Why its insanity! The blending of it would be interesting though. Most people are not to this day or ever will be conscious most of the their life in his definition. More than the good days of old though! That I agree is as it should be. The majority of mortals are like sheep and should be herded. What use but anarchy. Even if he’s mostly right though. No…its not "completely accurate"but he’s fairly… nailed it. And about “Gilgamesh?” Essentially, man’s brain today is physically identical to the ancient bicameral brain. Few got away from their place… and invented their own consciousness. Wow they wake up one day and find out everyone is seeing ang talking to things that are not there…scary. But fun for us gods though…

There you have it says I…Son of Kronos,Lord of Hera,Zeus of the thunderbolt and father of gods and men…
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men

Is this an April Fool’s persona?