Quotes About Cognition

We shall adopt an analogous formula, with the reservation that feelings and cognitive configurations do not depend solely on the existing "field," but also on the whole previous history of the acting subject.

After all, your head only had so much room in it. No surprise if it overflowed once in a while with little bits of sparkle and electrical fizz.

Not only are we subject to cognitive biases, we also frequently seek out things that reinforce them. We interpret facts through the prism of our beliefs; we read the newspapers and seek the company of people who will confirm us in those beliefs; and thus we stick obstinately to these beliefs, whether or not they are correct.

We all suffer from flawed thinking and decision making.

you've either got a brain or you haven't. If you have, then you don't need me to spell things out to you. If you haven't, there's no point in talking to you.

Prediction is not just one of the things your brain does. It is the primary function of the neo-cortex, and the foundation of intelligence.

When you ask yourself, What does an intelligent system do?, it is intuitively obvious to think in terms of behavior. We demonstrate human intelligence through our speech, writing, and actions, right? Yes, but only to a point. Intelligence is something that is happening in your head. Behavior is an optional ingredient. This is not intuitively obvious, but it's not hard to understand either.

I believe consciousness is simply what it feels like to have a neocortex.

The neocortex is not like a computer, parallel or otherwise. Instead of computing answers to problems the neocortex uses stored memories to solve problems and produce behavior.

Being human and being intelligent are separate matters.

You can't simulate a brain without first understanding what it does.

feedback plays a minor or "modulatory" role in the brain.

With each movement, the neocortex predicts what the next sensation will be.

You have control over the pictures that occupy your mind. — Jeff Keller

the brain is like a muscle, and if you don't exercise it by reading and doing creative stuff, it'll get weak and mushy.

I think I would remember forgetting that.

La memoria es engañosa porque está coloreada por los acontecimientos de hoy.

What is imagining like? Like being a plant. What is imagining? It is not-perception: it is instead the quasi-percipient, slightly percipient, almost percipient, not yet percipient, after-percipient of perceptual mimesis. Like the rolled-back pale peach of the daylily Oakleigh, it is not sentience but sentience rolled back.

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405

If you tell me slowly, I can understand quickly.

Not merely alive, but outfitted with a mind that was functioning at the uppermost limits of its capacity—a mind that was seeing everything, and understanding everything, as though watching it all from the highest imaginable ridge.

If you cannot read it, how could you catalog it?

I have been accused of being somewhat abrupt in my actions and decisions, but I never act without thought; it is simply that I think more quickly and more intelligently than most people.