Quotes About Cognition

There is no relation between using the mind — as one does, in repairing shoes, and seeing it.

People are very determined to see only what they can explain.

The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded.

Even if the rest of man's history were lost, the vocabularies, the grammars, and the literature of all his present languages would testify to a mind infinitely above the level of any other living creature's. And if some sudden mutation afflicting the progeny of the entire human race resulted in the birth of only deaf-mutes, the outcome would be almost as fatal to human existence as that of a nuclear chain reaction.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

Though man a thinking being is defined, Few use the grand prerogative of mind. How few think justly of the thinking few! How many never think, who think they do!

There's an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice.

Human beings cannot comprehend very large or very small numbers. It would be useful for us to acknowledge that fact.

Although most of us don't spend time thinking about our thoughts, increasing your awareness of your thinking habits proves useful in building resilience.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

You'd expect, as good Darwinian creatures, we would evolve to be fascinated with how the world really is, and we would use language to convey real-world information, we'd be obsessed with knowing the way things are, and we would entirely reject stories that aren't true. They're useless. But that's not the way we work.

A new laboratory technique, positron emission tomography, uses radioactively labeled oxygen or glucose that essentially lights up specific and different areas of the brain being activated when a person speaks words or sees words or hears words, revealing the organic location for areas of behavioral malfunction.

Depression is so smart - it uses all your references and patterns.

I obtain great satisfaction out of using my intellect.

My mind is vacant on names, but I know him as well as anything. When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back.

Rodents can come across as being quite vacant in the personality stakes.

I became interested in structure when I was in graduate school. How is it that the brain perceives structure in a sometimes disorganized and chaotic world? How and why do we categorize things? Why can things be categorized in so many different ways, all of which can seem equally valid?

The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless. SAT scores do measure both specific knowledge and valuable thinking skills.

Factual knowledge is not always sufficient by itself to motivate an adaptive behavior. At times a symbolic belief system that departs from factual reality fares better.

our cognitive abilities as adults are heavily influenced by the social environment that we experienced during childhood, making it hard to discern any influence of preexisting genetic differences.

tests of cognitive ability (like IQ tests) tend to measure cultural learning and not pure innate intelligence, whatever that is.

One way of thinking about science is that it's a check against the natural human tendency to see patterns that might not be there. It's a way of knowing when a pattern is real and when it's a trick of your mind.

But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.

the perception of a threat was eight times as good as a real one