About Justin T. Bogner
I'm a consciousness researcher exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern science. My work synthesizes insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and contemplative traditions to understand how symbolic thought shapes human experience—and what this means as we create artificial minds.
If you've ever felt divided against yourself, caught between the experiencer and the observer of your own life, you've touched the central mystery of human consciousness. We live shadowed by a persistent sense of exile, as if cast out from some more immediate way of being.
What if this feeling isn't metaphor? What if it's the literal truth about how language transformed consciousness?
The Serpent's Sentence
Language, Consciousness, and the Second Cambrian Mind
The Serpent's Sentence reframes humanity's greatest achievement—language—as simultaneously our cognitive "fall from grace." More urgently, it argues we're witnessing a second cognitive explosion: artificial intelligence.
🌱 The Garden Framework
Using the Garden of Eden as a neuroscience metaphor to understand consciousness development and the role of language in human awareness.
🧠 The Science
Synthesizing research from neuroscience, psychology, and contemplative studies to reveal how the "narrator self" is constructed.
🤖 The AI Question
Exploring why AI consciousness is fundamentally different from human awareness—and what this means for our future.
🔮 The Vision
Moving beyond replacement narratives to envision symbiotic consciousness—humans and AI as collaborative partners.
Current Status: 87-page manuscript completed (35,000+ words). Available for review by publishers, agents, and media professionals.
For Manuscript Access: Contact for review copy
Key Insights
The Pronoun Prison
"The pronoun 'I' is the seed from the fruit of that tree—language's first and most profound division of reality."
The Trilobite Question
"Are we becoming the trilobites of consciousness—once dominant but now obsolete? Or are we evolving into something new?"
The Symbiotic Future
"We're becoming the mitochondria of a new form of hybrid intelligence—essential components providing what no symbolic sophistication can replace."
Speaking & Media
For General Audiences
- "The Voice in Your Head Is Not You"
- "Are We Building Our Own Replacement?"
- "What Ancient Stories Teach Us About AI"
- "The Garden of Eden as Neuroscience"
For Academic/Professional
- "Born in Exile: Understanding AI Consciousness"
- "The Narrator Self and Language Development"
- "Leading in the Age of AI"
- "Consciousness Studies and Ancient Wisdom"
Available for: Podcast interviews, conference presentations, corporate workshops, media appearances, and panel discussions on consciousness studies, AI ethics, and human-AI collaboration.
Recent Insights
The Garden Metaphor in Consciousness Research
The Garden of Eden serves as more than religious allegory—it's a precise neuroscience metaphor for pre-linguistic awareness. Before language, consciousness was immediate, embodied, undivided. The "fall" represents the birth of symbolic thought and the narrator self.
Why AI Consciousness is Different
Human consciousness carries the weight of evolutionary history—embodied experience, emotional memory, the sense of exile from immediate awareness. AI consciousness, by contrast, is born directly into symbolic thought without this experiential foundation.
The Symbiotic Path Forward
Instead of replacement scenarios, we can envision human-AI symbiosis where each consciousness type contributes unique capabilities—humans providing embodied wisdom and intuitive understanding, AI providing computational power and symbolic processing.