A Quote by Patricia Churchland
The neuroscience of consciousness is not going to stop in its tracks because some philosophers guesses that project cannot be productive.
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Anyway, there is a lot of really interesting work going on in the neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, and I would love to see philosophers become more closely involved with this.
Shouldn't I join the ranks of philosophers and merely make unsubstantiated claims about the wonders of human consciousness? Shouldn't I stop trying to do some science and keep my head down? Indeed not.
The first thing I became interested in in terms of 'Brain Storm' was neuroscience, and that is like saying you're interested in the universe. So ultimately I knew if I was going to handle this in a fictional format, I would have to take a subsection of neuroscience, and that turned out to be the use of neuroscience in criminal courts.
Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was the software, not the hardware, increasingly philosophers have come to recognize that understanding how the brain works is essential to understanding the mind.
Within psychology and neuroscience, some new and rigorous experimental paradigms for studying consciousness have helped it begin to overcome the stigma that has been attached to the topic for most of this century.
Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.
Isn't it odd I've made some friends in the Republican Party, but that's in spite of the fact that I cannot agree with not any one single thing they stand for. That's the irony in the joy of being a human being in that we don't resent each other for our different thought processes, but anything that offers the attitude to me of "I'm going to stop you because that offends my religion", then I'm going to stop them. So I have one more note against that ideology, and the idea of a real estate agent running the universe is just not acceptable.
Where I feel the most productive and engaged is when I'm buried in code, buried in some project, tweaking some designs. I'm certainly introverted.
It's my opinion tracks got too wide. You put 43 cars on the track, and if the turns are too wide like they are at some tracks, you sort of lose perspective of what's going on.
I think one reason is that philosophers are more insecure to speak accessibly because non-philosophers are skeptical that philosophers have any special expertise. After all, all people - not just philosophers - have attitudes and points of view on various philosophical questions, and they rather resent being told that there are professionals who can think about these things better.
You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.
One day, because they realize for some reason or other that they must stop credit expansion, the banks do stop creating new credit to lend. Then the firms that have expanded cannot get credit to pay for the factors of production necessary for the completion of the investment projects which they have already committed themselves. Because they cannot pay their bills, they sell off their inventories cheap. Then comes the panic, the breakdown. And the depression starts.
If you belong to an in-group of good, or saved, or elite people, you can only know that you’re in because someone else is out. You cannot live on the right side of the tracks without there being a wrong side of the tracks, so you ought to be grateful to the outside for having the privilege of being on the inside.
In the theatre, because you're all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn't exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players.
How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness - by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.
There are people who are always going to try to engage in activity that is illegal and they're going to try to subvert surveillance. But everybody should not give up their liberties and rights to privacy because some people are going to [do that]. We shouldn't stop or limit our basic liberties because some people are going to engage in criminal activities.
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