Cognitive Quotes - Page 2

• I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.

  Donald Miller

  Reading, Writing, Ideas

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• The fact that we have been able to develop a successful science, which issues in ever more accurate predictions and broader explanations, is the real ground for confidence that we are in a position to gain knowledge of the world around us. At the same time, one might ask how it is that the cognitive equipment we have came about, and here, no doubt, our evolutionary origins are relevant.

  Hilary Kornblith

  Real, Successful, Issues

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence

  Francisco Varela

  Long, Phases, Cybernetics

  Eleanor Rosch, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela (1992). “The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience”, p.38, MIT Press

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• Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

  Derek Bok

  College, Thinking, Skills

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• How can we encourage other human beings to extend their moral sympathies beyond a narrow locus? How can we learn to become mere human beings, shorn of any more compelling national, ethnic, or religious identity? We can be reasonable. It is in the very nature of reason to fuse cognitive and moral horizons. Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love.

  Sam Harris

  Love, Religious, Identity

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.190, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I do believe that there are some universal cognitive tasks that are deep and profound - indeed, so deep and profound that it is worthwhile to understand them in order to design our displays in accord with those tasks.

  Edward Tufte

  Believe, Order, Profound

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• The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal.

  Steven Pinker

  Psychological Disorders, Brain, Genius

  "On Einstein's brain". The New York Times, June 24, 1999.

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• As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock. There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.

  Haruki Murakami

  Wall, Mean, Hands

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• The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. "Existential" in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence.

  Paul Tillich

  Attitude, Existentialism, Existence

  Paul Tillich (1988). “Writings on religion”

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• Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied.

  Steven Pinker

  Agency, Space, Research

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.355, W. W. Norton & Company

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• A willingness to engage in the give and take of argument displays a commitment to cognitive egalitarianism - the proposition that all people should be treated as intellectual equals, and that no individual can legitimately claim a privileged immunity from the burden of proof.

  George H. Smith

  Commitment, Burden Of Proof, Egalitarianism

  George H. Smith (2000). “Why Atheism?”, Pyr Books

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• Sperry's thinking about subjective experience, consciousness, the mind, and human values makes a powerful plea for a new scientific examination of ethics in the workings of consciousness. These ideas were crystallized in his paper "The Impact and Promise of the Cognitive Revolution" (1993).

  Roger Wolcott Sperry

  Powerful, Thinking, Impact

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• The new way of thinking, spawned by the cognitive revolution, shows strong promise. Reversing previous doctrine in science, the new paradigm affirms that the world we live in is driven not solely by mindless physical forces but, more crucially, by subjective human values. Human values become the underlying key to world change.

  Roger Wolcott Sperry

  Strong, Thinking, Keys

  "Science and the Problem of Values". Book by Roger Wolcott Sperry, 1972.

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• Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom.

  N. Katherine Hayles

  Long, Boredom, Focus

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• A good title holds magic, some cognitive dissonance, a little grit between the teeth, but above all it is the jumping-off place into wonder.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Book, Jumping, Magic

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• Without the instruments and accumulated knowledge of the natural sciences... humans are trapped in a cognitive prison. They are like intelligent fish born in a deep shallowed pool. Wondering and restless, longing to reach out, they think about the world outside. They invent ingenious speculations and myths about the origin of the confining waters, of the sun and the sky and the stars above , and the meaning of their own existence. But they are wrong, always wrong because the world is too remote from ordinary experience to be merely imagined.

  E. O. Wilson

  Stars, Intelligent, Thinking

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• Yes, expertise puts on in position to have further, cognitive pleasures, but these pleasures are distinct from the sensory pleasure of tasting wines

  Kent Bach

  Wine, Pleasure, Position

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• Buddhists were actually the first cognitive-behavioral therapists.

  Jack Kornfield

  Buddhist, Firsts, Therapists

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• The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands.

  Francisco Varela

  Organization, Brain, Behaviour

  "The brainweb: phase synchronization and large-scale integration", Nature Rviews Vol 2, p. 229, 2001.

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• Just as a man working with his tools should know its limitations, a man working with his cognitive apparatus must know its limitations.

  Charlie Munger

  Men, Tools, Should

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• Many of the cognitive enhancement drugs serve to increase focus and concentration. But 'letting your mind wander' is very often an important part of the creative process.

  Jamais Cascio

  Focus And Concentration, Creative, Drug

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• Though we have been stuffing them into classrooms and cubicles for decades, our brains actually were built to survive in jungles and grasslands. A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.

  John Medina

  Exercise, Brain, Cubicles

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• When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing... Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today... to pay partial attention - continuously. It is different from multi-tasking.

  Linda Stone

  Desire, Different, Tasks

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

  Samuel Alexander

  Elements, Mental Health, Wells

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• Love is a cognitive, willful act. Feelings have very little to do with it, particularly around three o'clock in the morning when the baby needs changing or somebody has "lost it" before getting to the bathroom to throw up.

  Kevin Leman

  Baby, Morning, Love Is

  Kevin Leman (1987). “Women who try too hard: breaking the pleaser habits”

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