Quotes About Cognition

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kant's idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, it's an evolved machine that we carry with us.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

I have a hard time recalling the titles of books.

I have a really bad memory, to be honest.

Our thoughts are certainly part of us; they come from us, but we are not our thoughts. Have you ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, 'I am not going to think today; I am too tired'? No, of course not. Just as breathing happens and is constant, thoughts happen, and they are also constant.

Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk.

I think of the brain as a computational device: It has a bunch of little components that perform calculations on some small aspect of the problem, and another part of the brain has to stitch it all together, like a tapestry or a quilt.

What I know intellectually doesn't change how I feel emotionally." She

Heather cocks her head to one side as if she's trying to make the information roll down a hill in her mind and come to rest in a place she can access it.

The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.

Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

We expect others to act rationally even though we are irrational.

The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to trurh.

Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness.

Around the start of the fourth year, the child begins to elaborate an understanding of metarepresentational agency: the child attributes intentional attitudes, such as belief and pretense, to people's representations of the world. Only then can children examine whether their and other people's thoughts about the world are true or fictive, likely or incredible, exaggerated or imprecise, worth changing one's mind for or forgetting.

the average person isn't that smart — and worse, half the population is dumber than that average person.

All our memories are reconstructed memories. They are the product of what we originally experienced and everything that's happened afterwards.

We're technically living about eighty milliseconds in the past because that's how long it takes our brain to process information.

This phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It's called closure. In our daily lives, we often commit closure, mentally completing that which is incomplete based on past experience.

The fact that we've heard a claim repeated over and over again doesn't make it correct. But it can lead us to accept this claim as correct even when it's not, because we can confuse a statement's familiarity with its accuracy

Memory is better than fact anyway, because it's created by feelings.

Having a brain hurt so much sometimes.

I don't read like other people do - back and forth, across the page. I tend to scan a page at a time.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.