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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

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Patricia Churchland
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: July 16
Neuroscientist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Patricia Smith Churchland
Life
Differences
People
Alive
Force
Stills
Heyday
Remember
Cells
Still
Data
Nothing
Basic
Work
Difference

More quotes by Patricia Churchland

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When that theory is isolated from known facts, it is likely not to be productive.
Patricia Churchland
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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
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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
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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
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If you give up because you announce the phenomenon cannot be explained, you are missing out.
Patricia Churchland
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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
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Humility bids us to take ourselves as we are we do not have to be cosmically significant to be genuinely significant.
Patricia Churchland
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Many mammals and birds have systems for strong self-control, and it is not difficult to see why such systems were advantageous and were selected for. Biding your time, deferring gratification, staying still, foregoing sex for safety, and so forth, is essential in getting food, in surviving, and in successful reproduction.
Patricia Churchland
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Many philosophers in the second half of the 20th century really seemed to think that they were laying the foundations for science by laying down the conceptual (necessary) truths.
Patricia Churchland
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Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed to lead to the truth about these phenomena, not just to tidy things up a bit.
Patricia Churchland
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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
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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
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Suppression of impulses that would put you in danger is obviously an important neurobiological function.
Patricia Churchland
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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
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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
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There are many levels of organization in nervous systems. Hence we aim to explain mechanisms at one level in terms of properties and dynamics at a lower level, and to fit that in with the properties at the higher levels.
Patricia Churchland
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I am less attracted to guesses about what cannot be done, than about making progress on a problem.
Patricia Churchland
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It seems probable that humans have been on the planet, with much the same brain, for about 250,000 years.
Patricia Churchland