朱利安·杰恩斯

朱利安·杰恩斯（英语：Julian Jaynes，1920年2月27日—1997年11月21日）是一位美国心理学家，普林斯顿大学教授，在其作品《神的沉默： 意识的诞生与文明的兴衰》（The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind，也称为《二分心智的崩塌：人类意识的起源》）中提出了“二分心智理论”。

Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist who worked at the universities of Yale and Princeton for nearly 25 years and became best known for his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. His work focused on the problem of consciousness: "the difference between what others see of us and our sense of our inner selves and the deep feelings that sustain it. ... Men have been conscious of the problem of consciousness almost since consciousness began." Jaynes's solution touches on many disciplines, including neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, archeology, history, religion and analysis of ancient texts.

Early life

Jaynes was born and lived in West Newton, Massachusetts, son of Julian Clifford Jaynes (1854–1922), a Unitarian minister, and Clara Bullard Jaynes (1884–1980). He had an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Robert. The family had a summer home in Keppoch, Prince Edward Island, which was a place Jaynes loved, and which gave him a Canadian connection for his entire life.

In the summer of 1939 he registered to attend Harvard University but took a scholarship from McGill University, where he graduated in 1941 with a bachelor's degree in psychology, and then began graduate studies at the University of Toronto to learn more about the brain. His studies were interrupted during the Second World War: because of his Unitarian principles, he applied for and received official recognition as a conscientious objector, but refused to comply with the U.S. government's law for pacifists; Jaynes spent three years in the penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, working in the prison hospital. On his release in 1946 he enrolled at Yale University hoping that in animal behavior he would find clues to the beginnings of consciousness. Jaynes received his master's degree in 1948, and then refused to accept his doctorate, again on a dispute of "principle" regarding educational credentials. After Yale, Jaynes spent several years in England working as an actor and playwright.

Academic career

He returned to Yale in 1954, working as an Instructor and Lecturer until 1960, making significant contributions in the fields of experimental psychology, learning, and ethology, and co-publishing some papers with Frank A. Beach. Jaynes had begun to turn his focus to comparative psychology and the history of psychology, and in 1964 he became a research associate at Princeton University. There he befriended Edwin G. Boring, and with plenty of time to pursue the problem of consciousness, Princeton became his academic home until 1995.

Research and motivations

Jaynes had dedicated years of research in psychology to the problem of consciousness and he had sought the roots of consciousness in the processes of learning and cognition that animals and humans shared in common, in accord with prevailing evolutionary assumptions that dominated mid-20th century thinking. He had established his reputation in the study of animal learning and natural animal behaviour, and in 1968 he lectured on the history of comparative psychology at the National Science Foundation Summer Institute. In September 1969 he gave his first public address on his "new theory of consciousness" at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.