Quotes About Cognition

People tend to seek and latch on to information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs while avoiding, disregarding, or minimizing evidence that challenges them.

The music is a vibration in the brain rather than the ear.

For some reason, it takes my brain a moment to process…the open-close symbols on elevators, which is which.

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.

Je dis la folie, et non point la démence. La démence est la perte des facultés intellectuelles. La folie n'est qu'un usage bizarre et singulier de ces facultés.

That is what is most lacking in our people," she said, "they do not think.

the key to improved mental performance of almost any sort is the development of mental structures that make it possible to avoid the limitations of short-term memory and deal effectively with large amounts of information at once.

Regular training leads to changes in the parts of the brain that are challenged by the training. The brain adapts to these challenges by rewiring itself in ways that increase its ability to carry out the functions required by the challenges.

Indeed, one could define a mental representation as a conceptual structure designed to sidestep the usual restrictions that short-term memory places on mental processing.

as the number of bytes in your random-access memory (RAM)

one could define a mental representation as a conceptual structure designed to sidestep the usual restrictions that short-term memory places on mental processing. The

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.

The man who can't visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.

The brain is a trashcan, though perhaps the best of all possible trashcans.

I'm pretty smart, and I like being smart.

Women, churchgoers, and conservative were more likely than men, nonchurch goers, and liberals to disagree with the reductionist (neural) account of human life.

The whole thinking process is still rather mysterious to us, but I believe that the attempt to make a thinking machine will help us greatly in finding out how we think ourselves.

I can remember weird things from way back, but not what I had for breakfast.

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask.

Not only have computers changed the way we think, they've also discovered what makes humans think - or think we're thinking. At least enough to predict and even influence it.

Prediction by analogy -creativity - is so pervasive we normally don't notice it.