Quotes About Awareness

When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.

Can we stand to gaze into the heart of our loss, the preciousness of what we are losing, and not look away?

What is it that we can do with conscious thought that cannot be done unconsciously? The problem is made more elusive by the fact that anything that we do seem originally to require consciousness for appears also to be able to be learnt and then later carried out unconsciously (perhaps by the cerebellum

Awareness, I take to be one aspect-the passive aspect-of the phenomenon of consciousness. Consciousness has an active aspect also, namely the feeling of free will.

Support for the Platonic viewpoint (as opposed to the formalist one) was an important part of Godel's initial motivations. On the other hand, the arguments from Godel's theorem serve to illustrate the deeply mysterious nature of our mathematical perceptions. We do not just 'calculate' in order to form these perceptions, but something else is profoundly involved-something that would be impossible without the very conscious awareness that is, after all, what the world of perceptions is all about.

Thus the robot is incapable of knowing that it was constructed according to the mechanisms M. Since we are aware-or at least can be made aware-that the robot was so constructed, this seems to tell us that we have access to mathematical truths, e.g. Omega (Q(M)), that are beyond the robot's capabilities, despite the fact that the robot's abilities are supposed to be equal of (or in excess of) human capabilities.

Does awareness play some kind of role as a 'bridge' to a world of Platonic absolutes.

The judgement-forming that I am claiming is the hallmark of consciousness is itself something that the AI people would have no concept of how to program on a computer.

anamnesis: the bringing to consciousness of forgotten things.

the good citizen is the one who knows when voting is the wrong way to decide a question, as well as when voting is the right way. For

In general we should be aware of, and protective towards, those precious legal instruments that we already possess, and which often depend on principles of equity and natural law and not on top-down legislation.

the mind, to borrow Hume's metaphor, 'spreads itself upon objects'.

There are plenty of artists who are awoken by criticism to the meaning of their own works: such, for example, was T. S. Eliot's response to Helen Gardner's book about his poetry—namely, at last I know what it means.

how can I know the world as it is? I can have knowledge of the world as it seems, since that is merely knowledge of my present perceptions, memories, thoughts, and feelings. But can I have knowledge of the world that is not just knowledge of how it seems? To put the question in slightly more general form: can I have knowledge of the world that is not just knowledge of my own point of view?

And so I acquired the consciousness of death and dying, without which the world cannot be loved for what it is. That, in essence, is what it means to be a conservative.

realities instead.

I wonder as to the value of consciousness," said Jack, "if it does not change the nature of a beast.

You are one of the few successful persons I know. Me? Why? You know precisely what you are doing and you do it well. But I don't really do much of anything. And of course the quantity means nothing to you, nor the weight others place upon your actions. In my eyes, that makes you a success. By not giving a damn? But I do, you know. Of course you do, of course you do! But it is a matter of style, an awareness of choice—

Before you are fully aware of anything else, you are aware whether you are awakening in your own bed.

Wheels turning, the motorcycle's roar grows steady, which, too, is a form of silence.

Moving quickly now, shadow amid shadows. Slipping ghostlike through brush and bramble. My senses extend me beyond my skull. I am become a piece of the night.

Stubama i dolje. Ni zvuka odozdo. Zna?i kasno je. Dobro. Još jedan dan, a još smo živi. Možda ?ak i malo mudriji. Dovoljno mudri da bismo shvatili da mnoge stvari još ne znamo. Doduše, imamo nadu.

Life is sufficiently furnished that one need not go looking about for extra guilt.

I just noticed I am morbid and drunk and bitter. I don't need that.