George Lakoff Quotes

I became really interested in the study of consciousness.

Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with.

The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.

I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle.

Macaulay somewhere says, that it is extraordinary that, whereas the laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies, far removed as they are from us, are perfectly well understood, the laws of the human mind, which are under our observation all day and every day, are no better understood than they were two thousand years ago.

Do you even recognize your own consciousness?

Thought is the thought of thought.

Properly speaking, should any individual ever have exact, clear knowledge of his own core consciousness?" "I wouldn't know," I said. "Nor would we," said the scientists.

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.

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.

Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

We use concepts like "consciousness"---"mind"---"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all.

Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery... a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist - and hope - that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

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.

Consciousness is the perception of what passes in man's own mind.

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

What's most interesting about trying to figure out AI is the questions that it forces you to ask about the nature of consciousness.

What do you think of the human mind? I mean, in case you think there is a human mind.

To explicate the uses of the Brain seems as difficult a task as to paint the Soul, of which it is commonly said, that it understands all things but itself.

Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.

The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.

The Behaviorist cannot find consciousness in the test-tube of his science.