Patricia Churchland Quotes

Quotes about:

• Brains are not magical; they are causal machines.

  Patricia Churchland

  Brain, Machines

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  17 Copy quote

• I am less attracted to guesses about what cannot be done, than about making progress on a problem.

  Patricia Churchland

  Progress, Done, Problem

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• If you give up because you announce the phenomenon cannot be explained, you are missing out.

  Patricia Churchland

  Giving Up, Missing, Phenomenon

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• Humility bids us to take ourselves as we are; we do not have to be cosmically significant to be genuinely significant.

  Patricia Churchland

  Humility, Significant

  "Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy". Book by Patricia Churchland, 2002.

  15 Copy quote

• Being engaged in some way for the good of the community, whatever that community, is a factor in a meaningful life. We long to belong, and belonging and caring anchors our sense of place in the universe.

  Patricia Churchland

  Meaningful, Atheist, Caring

  43 Copy quote

• Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was the software, not the hardware, increasingly philosophers have come to recognize that understanding how the brain works is essential to understanding the mind.

  Patricia Churchland

  Understanding, Brain, Mind

  "Morality and the Brain". brainworldmagazine.com. January 24, 2014.

  52 Copy quote

• It seems that the brain has a "small world" architecture - or at least the cortex does. Everything can connect to everything else in a few synaptic steps.

  Patricia Churchland

  Brain, Doe, World

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  12 Copy quote

• When that theory is isolated from known facts, it is likely not to be productive.

  Patricia Churchland

  Facts, Theory, Isolated

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• If you want to understand the nature of something, to find out the truth, that is one thing. If you want to play semantics, make up wild thought 'experiments', that is another thing. I am not so interested in the latter, though I do appreciate that it can be fun, however unproductive.

  Patricia Churchland

  Fun, Play, Appreciate

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  19 Copy quote

• I made the assumption, wrong of course, that conceptual analysis was a brief preliminary on the road to finding out about the nature of free will, consciousness, the self, the origin of values, and so forth.

  Patricia Churchland

  Self, Analysis, Assumption

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• In all probability, mental states are processes and activities of the brain. Exactly what activities, and exactly at what level of description, remains to be seen.

  Patricia Churchland

  Brain, Levels, States

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

• Knowing about the neurobiological and evolutionary basis for social behavior can soften the arrogance and self-righteousness that often attends discussions of morality. It may help us all to think a little more carefully and rationally.

  Patricia Churchland

  Thinking, Self, Knowing

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  14 Copy quote

• Even philosophers who did not mind psychology, claimed the brain was irrelevant because it was the hardware, and we only need to know about the software.

  Patricia Churchland

  Psychology, Brain, Mind

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

• If I want to know how we learn and remember and represent the world, I will go to psychology and neuroscience. If I want to know where values come from, I will go to evolutionary biology and neuroscience and psychology, just as Aristotle and Hume would have, were they alive.

  Patricia Churchland

  Psychology, Alive, World

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

• Theorizing is of course essential to make progress in understanding, but theorizing in the absence of knowing available relevant facts is not very productive.

  Patricia Churchland

  Knowing, Understanding, Progress

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• The neuroscience of consciousness is not going to stop in its tracks because some philosophers guesses that project cannot be productive.

  Patricia Churchland

  Track, Philosopher, Consciousness

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• It seems probable that humans have been on the planet, with much the same brain, for about 250,000 years.

  Patricia Churchland

  Years, Brain, Planets

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• Analyzing a concept can (perhaps) tell you what the concept means (at least means to some philosophers), but it does not tell you anything about whether the concept is true of anything in the world.

  Patricia Churchland

  Mean, Doe, World

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• It is surely important that the differences between coma, deep sleep, being under anesthesia, on the one hand, and being alert on the other, all involve changes in the brain.

  Patricia Churchland

  Sleep, Hands, Differences

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  20 Copy quote

• Suppression of impulses that would put you in danger is obviously an important neurobiological function.

  Patricia Churchland

  Important, Danger, Function

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

• When philosophers try to understand consciousness, much of what they claim is not conceptual analysis at all, though it may be shopped under that description.

  Patricia Churchland

  Trying, Analysis, May

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• Remember, in the heyday of vitalism, people said that when all the data are in about cells and how they work, we will still know nothing about the life force - about the basic difference between being alive and not being alive.

  Patricia Churchland

  Cells, Data, Differences

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• I had no idea what philosophy was until I went to college at UBC. I first read Hume and Plato, so naturally I was under the misapprehension that philosophers are trying to figure out what is true, and that contemporary philosophers are mainly trying to figure out what is true about the mind. Of course Hume and Plato were trying to do that, hence my misapprehension.

  Patricia Churchland

  Plato, Philosophy, College

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• It is important to understand that while oxytocin may be the hub of the evolution of the social brain in mammals, it is part of a very complex system. Part of what it does is act in opposition to stress hormones, and in that sense release of oxytocin feels good - as stress hormones and anxiety do not feel good.

  Patricia Churchland

  Stress, Oxytocin, Feel Good

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  13 Copy quote

• Studies of decision-making in the monkey, where activity of single neurons in parietal cortex is recorded, you can see a lot about the time-accuracy trade-off in the monkey's decision, and you can see from the neuron's activity at what point in his accumulation of evidence he makes his decision to make a particular movement.

  Patricia Churchland

  Decision, Movement, Neurons

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

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