Quotes About Cognition

SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.

The worst old age is that of the mind.

Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.

I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in the act of painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive, disoriented, and out of it.

I read passionately with a need to know and see the act of reading as an act of cognition and not simply a means of passing time.

we do not admire what we cannot understand.

the brain is like a bio-computer that manufactures whatever we feed into it with our thoughts.

I've always believed that a person is smart. It's people that are stupid.

It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them.

So perhaps the very idea of explanation is an error of anthropomorphism when it is applied to things that do not involve human intention.

Either because of mate selection, cognition, predator avoidance, or a combination of all three, our minds are attracted to and are finely tuned to the detection of symmetry. The question of whether symmetry is truly fundamental to the universe itself, or merely to the universe as perceived by humans, thus becomes particularly acute.

Qué clase de hombres seríamos si careciéramos de la facultad de razonar?

No hay placer más complejo que el pensamiento y a él nos entregamos»

It was never the act itself but our own understanding of it that defeated us, over and over again.

Many of the things overheard were redolent of deeper knowledge.

objective physical science methodology will never permit us to know a man; that such methodology limits us merely to knowing about a man.

Primitive agonies exist in many of us. Originating in painful experiences that occurred before we had the cognitive capacities to know what was happening, they tend to blindside us, traumatizing us again and again as we find ourselves enacting a pain we do not understand.

Intuitions are not to be ignored, John. They represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend.

How do you remember this stuff? But why had she forgotten? That was the real question.

And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer.

That was because when I was little I didn't understand about other people having minds.

Often we find it easier to think our way around things rather than to feel our way through them:

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.

Somewhere inside his head he's still all there, but moved into a cramped rear apartment overlooking the old brain.