Claude Bernard Quotes

I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.

Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I dunno.

Every mental state is also physical.

To separate mind from body doesn't make any sense.

Internal and external nature, mind and matter, are in time and space, and are bound by the law of causation.

Contemporary science is based on the philosophy of materialism, which claims that all reality is material or physical.

I think the body is the ultimate thing. The soul and mind are part of the body. I don't think there is anything outside of that. Your physical self is who you are. Some people feel that that is reductionist, but I don't think it is. It's just true.

Body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body.

Mind is the cause; everything else is effect.

To believe that mind is all, that thought is all is only a higher materialism.

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.

The line that I am urging as today's conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, arepudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.

Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.

I'm very odd 'cause I think there's more than just a materialist planet, a materialist, reductionist planet.

We exist solely because we have a body and a mind ? a mind that arises out of the body. If this were true, we would cease to exist after our body was gone.

The mind and the body are like parallel universes. Anything that happens in the mental universe must leave tracks in the physical one

The most consistent versions of materialism deny the reality of anything beyond matter - no soul, no spirit, no will, no mind. This is called reductionism: Humans are reduced to biochemical machines.

All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics. That to me is pretty clear.

The more I think about myself, the more I'm persuaded that, as a person, I really don't exist. That is one of the reasons why I can't believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe in my own soul. No, I am a chemical compound, conditioned by environment and education. My "character" is simply a repertoire of acquired tricks, my conversation a repertoire of adaptations and echoes, my "feelings" are dictated by purely physical, external stimuli.

The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.

Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?

You can't separate the mind and body. It's impossible.

If minds are wholly dependent on brains and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?