Hermann Ebbinghaus Quotes

Consciousness, rather than being something that we have, is something we participate in.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

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.

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.

But though cognition is not an element of mental action, nor even in any real sense of the word an aspect of it, the distinction of cognition and conation has if properly defined a definite value.

We cannot therefore say that mental acts contain a cognitive as well as a conative element.

I don't talk about consciousness. I talk about interiority.

The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.

Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.

Matter is plastic in the face of Mind.

The actuality of thought is life.

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

Remember, when we're conscious of something, that state is quite often generated by unconscious processes that happen right before it.

Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state.

This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words 'true' or 'false'.

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

I'm not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We're usually thinking all the time, aren't we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn't true either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally have the opposite effect.

Consciousness is cerebral celebrity--nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and "symptomatic" effects--on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth.

They do not think, therefore they are not.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own

Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject.

When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there

Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling.