M has been reading Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind (a summary of ideas can be found here), and today at work we discussed the latest insight: consciousness as a metaphor for reality. What a thought! Metaphors in language, by Jaynes' account, expand consciousness. Metaphors indicate understanding. So, to understand something a metaphor is created. Consciousness.
Then the question was raised by I, what then of dreams? Because they have no necessary relation to reality. Then it hit me - dreams are metaphors of consciousness! Smoke that, Sigmund.
Speaking of consciousness in this way still assumes its existence. I.e., as something that exists despite us and hence as a verifiable object of study, rather than an observer-related interpretation of signs. It may as well be a mirage - electrical baggage - an effect of our brains' ability to retain information over those miniature split seconds at which intervals we create the building blocks of our reality. If every moment was new, and memory impossible. Good god, nor would consciousness as we understand it.
Some support for likening consciousness to a metaphor. If human consciousness is able to invent metaphor as gateway to understanding more complex structures, then from the perspectve of language games the metaphor came into being as a result of a certain conjecture that illuminates the rules of the underlying structure at the same time that it supersedes it. In dreams that play is of a freer form, and the necessary referents (consciousness playing and being played upon, i.e. the necessary adherence to language rules) may fall away completely. Pure play. Like the child that Nietzsche spoke of.
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