Cognition Quotes

“Thinking isn't something you do. Most of the time, it's something that happens to you.”
― Thomas Metzinger

“The reality is, we don’t know the reality. Our brains are not equipped with the biological tools to have a proper understanding of reality whatsoever. We only have a taste of it through the virtual reality that our brain creates to make us live through space and time for an insignificant duration.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Conscience over Nonsense

“In order to decide, judge; in order to judge, reason; in order to reason, decide (what to reason about).”
― Philip Johnson-Laird

“Neuroscience in no longer simply the science of the nervous system. It is the actual empirical science of self-awareness.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Cognitive reality of an individual solely arises from the make-up of that individual’s brain structure. Any kind of damage, like stroke can alter this reality without the awareness of the individual.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Time to Save Medicine

“The purpose of a belief is self-preservation.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The doctors found one electrode contact that greatly relieved the woman's symptoms. But the unexpected happened when the electric current passed through one of the four contact sites on the patient's left side, precisely two millimeters below the contact that improved her condition. The patient stopped her ongoing conversation quite abruptly, cast her eyes down and to her right side, then leaned slightly to the right and her emotional expression became one of sadness. After a few seconds she suddenly began to cry. Tears flowed and her entire demeanor was one of profound misery. Soon she was sobbing. As this display continued she began talking about how deeply sad she felt, how she had no energies left to go on living in this manner, how hopeless and exhausted she was. [ . . . ]

The physician in charge of the treatment realized that this unusual event was due to the current and aborted the procedure. About ninety seconds after the current was interrupted the patient's behavior returned to normal. [ . . . ]

Why would this patient's brain evoke the kind of thoughts that normally cause sadness considering that the emotion and feeling were unmotivated by the appropriate stimuli? The answer has to do with the dependence of feeling on emotion and the intriguing ways of one's memory. When the emotion sadness is deployed, feelings of sadness instantly follow. In short order, the brain also brings forth the kind of thoughts that normally cause the emotion sadness and feelings of sadness. This is because associative learning has linked emotions with thoughts in a rich two-way network. Certain thoughts evoke certain emotions and vice-versa.”
― António R. Damásio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain

“Ideologies get corrupt in time, because humans following those ideologies cannot help but foster an implicit, i.e. subconscious hatred towards other humans following different ideologies.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Let The Poor Be Your God

“Your loyalty to one ideology inadvertently conditions you to favor humans from the same ideology over the humans from different ideologies. So, ideologies can never in a million years bring progress. We are what we are, that is humans. And we have to act as such without identifying ourselves with some manmade label to look good and pompous”
― Abhijit Naskar, Let The Poor Be Your God

“It has been said that when an old man dies, a library burns to the ground. But when a language dies, it is a whole world that comes to an end.”
― Neel Burton

“There are many ways of being clever, but only one way of being wise.”
― Neel Burton

“Neurons can create time – they can destroy time – those neurons can create future, they can destroy future – those neurons can create a beautiful world, they can also create a horrible planet to live on – those neurons are both the pedestrians and the path of truth and liberty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Time to Save Medicine

“Consciousness is the fabric of human reality. Consciousness allows humankind to engage in reason, make sense out of things, apply logic, verify facts, and adjust our actions based upon deliberate decision-making and hierological beliefs. We possess the ability to change our perspective, modify how we think, and alter our emotional responses. People can assimilate their thoughts and align their goals premised upon guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community or personal ideology based upon practical skills, wisdom, virtue, goodness, and community goodwill. Humans exhibit a creative spark that enables them to employ both their hunches and rational thoughts to adjust to changing situations. We can make logical, aesthetic, moral, and ethical judgments. The ability to modify their thinking patterns empowers all humans to alter their functional reality. By integrating our consciousness around our purpose in life, we can each become congruent in our daily thoughts and deeds.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Personal reason is admittedly a meager asset, but take away human reason and we would exist in a world of utter ignorance and perpetual darkness.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“[Mood allocates] investments of time, effort, resources, and risk taking to maximize Darwinian fitness in situations of varying propitiousness. High and low moods adjust cognition and behavior to cope with propitious and unpropitious situations.”
― Randolph M. Nesse, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

“Our imagination is so poor that we haven’t even imagined what it would be like to have imagination.”
― Neel Burton

“Space places two fundamental constraints on movement, constraints that are reflected in thought: proximity--near places are easier to get to than far ones; and gravity--going up is more effortful than going down.”
― Barbara Tversky, Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought

“An intuition involves a coming together of loosely linked facts, concepts, experiences, thoughts, and feelings, and we can encourage intuition by tearing down the psychological barriers that are keeping them apart. If intuition involves stepping back from our person, so does wisdom, insight, imagination, and even reason. What usually gets in the way of both reason and non-rational forms of cognition is not stupidity as such, or feeble-mindedness, but fear and the thing that fear protects, that is, our self-esteem, our sense of self, our ego. If we are to unleash our full cognitive and human potential, we need to love life more than we fear it, we need to suppress or destroy our ego, to commit metaphorical suicide—which will be the work of a life well spent.”
― Neel Burton, Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking

“There seems to be an important relationship between language and thought: I often speak—or write, as I am doing right now—to define or refine my thinking on a particular topic, and language is the scaffolding by which I arrive at my more subtle or syncretic thoughts.”
― Neel Burton, Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking

“If your part of the world is undeveloped, then take actions to make it develop, not in the name of nationality or religiosity, but in the name of equality. If your gender is under-privileged or discriminated, then take actions to restore gender equality in the minds of your people, not in the name of feminism or other gender based ideologies, but in the name of egalitarianism. Where we put our focus, determines a lot about the subtle subconscious elements of our mind in the long run.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Let The Poor Be Your God

“All answers lie unmanifested in the form of neurochemicals in your head. Seek for them genuinely enough and they will naturally begin to manifest in your neurons.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Conscience over Nonsense

“Neurons don’t come up with questions that neurons cannot answer.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Conscience over Nonsense

“The truth is that no one knows what the truth is.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Conscience over Nonsense

“The anatomy of the human mind is reportedly responsible for how our conscious and unconscious mind is organized. The physiological contours of the human mind are responsible for interpreting and comprehending the physical world that surrounds us employing our five basic senses as its datum antennas. The gears of the human mind work to classify our perceptions into five basic orders: animals, plants, tools, natural objects, and people. How a person’s brain perceives the tangible world and interprets ongoing interactions with its functional apparatus becomes the operating representation of each person’s physical reality. People rely upon their physical reality to make life-altering decisions.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Since we routinely express ideas and feelings in language, we may be forgiven for assigning a role to it, but isn't it remarkable how often we struggle to find our words? It's not that we don't know what we thought or felt, but we just can't put our verbal finger on it. This would of course be wholly unnecessary if thoughts and feelings were linguistic products to begin with. In that case, we'd expect a waterfall of words!”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“Consciousness is an evolutionary step in human life that must never cease transforming individual persons and the species as a whole. Perchance by using cognitive thought processes to eliminate aguish, reduce fear, and control personal desires, I will learn to follow a path of balance, avoid extremism, and someday attain a state of mental quietude. I aspire to live simply, strive for humility and peacefulness, and not allow prior failures or other people’s perceptions to intimidate me from developing into my truest being. I need to exhibit curiosity, willingly experiment, create dangerously, and steadfastly seek authenticity and spiritual enlightenment. I cannot allow prior failures or disgraceful stumbles to deter me from metamorphosing into the final manifestation of my being. A hidden aspect of my nature patiently waits unveiling by the interactive duality of the conscious and unconscious mind as my physical body marches through time.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The human mind is a product of nature. Resembling other forms of nature, does it follow an ancient code by adhering to universal rules of structure, time, and rhythm? Does the human mind establish through training and education its own pulse, tempo, pace, and lilt? Does reading allow us to witness the rhythm, beat, and intonation of other people’s minds? Does writing allow us to develop, monitor, and train the pulsating pulse of our own surfing mental cadence? Does reading enable us to see the groundswell of our own life refracted through a prism of other people’s storm of words? Does reading depict the upsurge of images and thoughts of a working mind, which casement frames humankind? Does writing spur us to scrutinize the indistinct pictures taken by the viewfinder submerged in our own minds? Does inspired writing draw out of us what composed material binders the structures of our multi-dimensional mind?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Our cognitive abilities are good but limited. There will always be things that will be beyond our understanding.”
― Rajesh`, Random Cosmos

“While in "filling in", the brain fills in the gaps in perception, in "change blindness" on the other hand, the brain cancels out unnecessary environmental information from our perception. For example, when the viewers at a basketball match are focused on the movement of the player with the ball, they turn blind towards any changes or event that may be occurring in the background. Even if a gorilla passes the basketball court, the viewers won’t notice it (and I mean this literally) because their brain cancels out that information in order to focus on the ball (pun absolutely intended).”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mission Reality

“Our memories are not static. Each time we reach for one, we refresh and form new neuron connections, in fact changing the memory itself via our contemplation of it. Like Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle — we can observe a particle’s momentum or its position but not both simultaneously — each time we recall a particular event, we change it due to that recollection. After the mental touch, the memory is no longer the same. And this is true not just in some metaphorical sense, but in a real, tangible, physical way — the act of recall alters the neuron structures forever! And yet we eagerly recollect our favorite memories, and we just as eagerly try to forget the painful ones (and the very act of thinking of those painful memories makes them that much stronger, that much more connected and integrated into our neural memory networks).”
― Olga Werby, Becoming Animals