Steven Pinker Quotes

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

The mind-brain is lived only from a first-person perspective, and it is a dynamic, plastic organ that changes in relation to the environment.

If we were to lose the ability to be emotional, if we were to lose the ability to be angry, to be outraged, we would be robots. And I refuse that.

All I ask is that we compare human consciousness with spirochete ecology.

You know, if you're at home with children, you lose twenty-five IQ points.

The brain is behind the really big questions we have. Who am I, what is my identity? What is that based on? If memories are encoded in connectomes, your personality might be in your connectome. If that's the case, that's the basis of your uniqueness as a person.

The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.

I believe there is something going on in a conscious being, which includes many animals, as well as ourselves, that is not a computational activity. And to be conscious at all is not a quality that a computer as such will ever possess - no matter how complicated, no matter how well it plays chess or any of these things.

The quantity and quality of consciousness, one may say, have always been growing throughout geological times. In this respect man, in whom nervous organisation and therefore psychological powers have attained an undisputed maximum, may be considered, scientifically, as a natural centre of evolution of the primates.

I've always been skeptical of the idea that sentience is going to be an exclusively human attribute.

One of the most consistent defining qualities of sentience is that we define it as human, as the thing that we possess that others do not.

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, whereas consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. Throughout history, intelligence always went hand in hand with consciousness.

Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.

As human, we all have the same human potential, unless there is some sort of retarded brain function. The wonderful human brain is the source of our strength and the source of our future, provided we utilize it in the right direction. If we use the brilliant human mind in the wrong way, it is really a disaster.

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

Everything is a reenactment. We are reenacting the world in the mind. The world is not inside there. It does not reside in the gray matter of the brain.

Strictly speaking, you don't think: Thinking happens to you.

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.

That special substance according to whose mass and degree of development all the creatures of this world take rank in the scale of creation, is not bone, but brain.

Have you ever sat very quietly with closed eyes and watched the movement of your own thinking? Have you watched your mind working?or rather, has your mind watched itself in operation, just to see what your thoughts are, what your feelings are, how you look at the trees, at the flowers, at the birds, at people, how you respond to a suggestion or react to a new idea? Have you ever done this?

The information. Every bit that of information that was ever in your brain. But the information is not the mind Jenna. That we've never accomplished before. What we've done with you is groundbreaking. We cracked the code. The mind is an energy that the brain produces. Think of a glass ball twirling on your fingertip. If it falls, it shatters into a million pieces. All the parts of a ball are still there, but it will never twirl with that force on your fingertip again. The brain is the same way.

The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain, just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.