Neuroscience Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

When I read philosophy or neuroscience papers about consciousness, I don't get the sense we're any closer to understanding it than we were 50 years ago. — Stuart J. Russell

I was born and raised in the high desert of Nevada in a tiny town called Searchlight. My dad was a hard rock miner. My mom took in wash. I grew up around people of strong values - even if they rarely talked about them. — Harry Reid

It is much easier to concentrate the mind on external things, than to concentrate on the mind itself. For example, a Neuroscientist can be the smartest man (or woman) on earth in his understanding of the human mind. He may know all the neurochemical changes underlying an outrageous behavior of a person. But when he gets mad himself, very little of his own scientific intellect would actually come in handy for him to control his rage. The virtue of self-control is a skill, which requires practice, regardless of all the neurobiological expertise in the world. — Abhijit Naskar

To construct is the essence of vision. Dispense with
construction and you dispense with vision. Everything you experience by sight is your construction. — Donald D. Hoffman

The reason I said earlier that the mind is neither the Cartesian, highly intellectualized, cranium-confined firm-and-frozen ego, nor the self-effaced, world-immersed, flowing, field-like non-thingy occurrence, is that even though I was feeling my limbs to be alien to myself, that did not mean that I felt them to be disconnected. Rather, they were intimately connected, yet, merely connected to me, and not phenomenologically proper parts of myself. The mind-world boundary seems to have moved from the skin/environment junction to the innervated/denervated junction within the body. So part of the body has become external to the mind, or 'de-minded'. — Istvan Aranyosi

In truth, there is no such thing as an "intuitive boundary" of a sensory state. That most philosophers take such states as brain-bound is not an intuition, but a prejudice. — Istvan Aranyosi

I would say to anybody who thinks that all the problems in philosophy can be translated into empirically verifiable answers - whether it be a Lawrence Krauss thinking that physics is rendering philosophy obsolete or a Sam Harris thinking that neuroscience is rendering moral philosophy obsolete - that it takes an awful lot of philosophy - philosophy of science in the first case, moral philosophy in the second - even to demonstrate the relevance of these empirical sciences. — Rebecca Goldstein

Morality does not come to this mortal world from some imaginary paradise. It rises from the neurons of mortal humans. — Abhijit Naskar

When phobia starts to build up in the psyche of thinking humanity against a part of its own kind, there is nothing more primordial and gruesome than that, especially when we are talking about a species that is supposedly the most intelligent one on Earth. Phobias recorded in DSM do not make a person lesser human, but Islamophobia does indeed define whether a person is really a thinking and sentient sapiens or an ignorant caveman. — Abhijit Naskar

Saw that I could make more money in one pot than what was in that entire paycheck selling a week of office supplies — Doyle Brunson

Current research in any field of Science has not yet reached the point where we could start exploring the existential question regarding God as a Supreme Entity driving causality in the universe. However, as modern Neuroscience progresses further and gets more advanced, we shall get to dive deeper into the physiological processes underneath the Qualia of God in human mind. — Abhijit Naskar

My philosophy is really based on humility. I don't think we know enough to fix either diagnostics or therapeutics. The future of psychiatry is clinical neuroscience, based on a much deeper understanding of the brain. — Thomas R. Insel

I am proud to say to you that, I am a scientist and I accept all religions to be biologically true and equal. My pursuit of understanding the human mind has taught me universal tolerance. — Abhijit Naskar

Many in Jesus' day saw him, but they didn't have communion with him. You can have more of Christ by faith than they had by sight. — Kevin DeYoung

Mignon' said the King, 'soon you are going to be a great king'. But he also told Anjou, in a memorable phrase
'Try to remain at peace with your neighbors: I have loved war too much ... — Antonia Fraser

[T]he cascade of discoveries in neuroscience and genetics has created an image of individuals as automata, slaves to their genes or neurotransmitters, with no more free will than a child's windup toy. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Our entire neurobiology acts as a giant input-output system, that receives information from the outside world, processes that information and makes a person react accordingly. — Abhijit Naskar

Citizenship in the 21st century requires more than paying your taxes and voting and occasionally running for office. That even if you're never in political office, you have political responsibilities. You can make your society stronger and better. — William J. Clinton

I picked up a book on wilderness survival by Laurence Gonzalez and found in it this telling sentence: "The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits." His point is that when the two seem incompatible, we often hang onto the plan, ignore the warnings reality offers us and plunge into trouble. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. (Woolf's Darkness) — Rebecca Solnit

Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life. — David J. Chalmers

Although a lot of my work on the mind has been rather abstract and philosophical, I'm interested in psychology and neuroscience and I don't think there are any principled distinctions between the kind of knowledge we get from science and the knowledge we get from philosophy. — Tim Crane

On a deeper level, I think many stories - especially thrillers - can be a journey to the heart of darkness. — Terry Hayes

Even though it is common knowledge in our field of Neuroscience, I take immense pleasure every time I realize that our perception of the whole universe emerges from the activity of the little specks of jelly inside our skull. — Abhijit Naskar

I've been asleep and I don't know if it's the same day or week or year, but who the hell cares anyway? — Beatrice Sparks

The road to rock and roll Heaven is paved by the bleached skulls of guys like me. I had no idea such things were nearly impossible. — Greg Kihn

The purpose of Neurotheology shall be to ease human sufferings with a deeper understanding of the neurobiological substrates of spirituality and divinity. — Abhijit Naskar

Neuroscientists rarely have to grapple with the issue of presentism versus existentialism. But in practice, neuroscientists are implicitly presentists. They view the past, present, and future as fundamentally distinct, as the brain makes decisions in the present, based on the memories of the past, to enhance our well being in the future. But despite its intuitive appeal, presentism is the underdog theory in physics and philosophy. — Dean Buonomano

I'm not looking for Miss Right, right now. I'm just sort of working on becoming Mr. Right. — Mario Lopez

Pathology can indeed cause experiences of the Kingdom of God, but not all God experiences are caused by pathology. — Abhijit Naskar

At the Kings' she daily saw all she wanted, for the children's older sisters were just out, and Meg caught frequent glimpses of dainty ball dresses and bouquets, heard lively gossip about theaters, concerts, sleighing parties, and merrymakings of all kinds, and saw money lavished on trifles which would have been so precious to her. Poor — Louisa May Alcott

She wanted to increase her own worth by giving herself the label of Chairwoman and she wanted to make sure of her superiority by labeling others and looking down on them.
That was the true form of the "growth" that Sagami spoke of.
But growth isn't something like that.
Don't go mixing up simple change with growth.
I don't want to call simple change and the end solution of compromise, "growth". I don't want to pretend that "to become an adult" is to resign to your fate. — Wataru Watari

Morality does not come from a book, it comes from the human mind. — Abhijit Naskar

Much like addictive drugs, power uses ready-made reward circuitries in the brain, producing extreme pleasure. — Nayef Al-Rodhan

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong. — Sarah Orne Jewett

Just making the cement now, only takes five minutes."
"I did it in four once," Pauly whispered boastfully to Johnny, "but if I'm honest, I was never completely happy that it set properly."
"Who was it for?"
"Big Joe the Hammer."
"Oh, yeah," Johnny nodded. "Didn't I hear he was spotted in Vegas a few weeks back?"
Pauly nodded morosely.
"Yeah, like I said, I didn't think it had set properly. — Clare Havens