Bernard Beckett Quotes

Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

I think that cognitive scientists would support the view that our visual system does not directly represent what is out there in the world and that our brain constructs a lot of the imagery that we believe we are seeing.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The world is real. Consciousness is the illusion.

I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that.

You must consider, when reading this treatise, that mental perception, because connected with matter, is subject to conditions similar to those to which physical perception is subject.

Maybe I don't believe things myself, as well. Truth is such a transient thing.

From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.

In every story of solipsism, there is always a conspiracy. Why? Because there is always a background involved in every perception.

So, as one sees, I by no means deprive my world of stubborn reality, if I merely call it a world of ideas.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years.

This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view.

What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.

Studying consciousness tells us more about how the world is fundamentally strange. I think we have a few revolutions to go yet before we get to the bottom of it.

Einstein said, if everything exists as a substance of qualities, and qualities exist only in mind, then all is mind.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

I'm not interested in observed reality.

Truth is an illusory notion.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence.

All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.

One cannot conceive of objectivity without subjectivity.

Your perception of the world is ... really a fabrication of your model of the world. You don't really see light or sound. You perceive it because your model says this is how the world is, and those patterns invoke the model. It's hard to believe, but it really is true.