Latest Patricia Churchland Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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.

• I used to suspect that in the brain, time is its own representation. I now think the problem is so much more complicated. Initially I was rather impressed by the experiments showing that on complex problems, subjects who are distracted do better in getting an answer than either those who answer immediately or those who spend time reflecting on the problem.

  Patricia Churchland

  Thinking, Brain, Answers

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

  Strong, Sex, Successful

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

• 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.

• Brains are not magical; they are causal machines.

  Patricia Churchland

  Brain, Machines

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• Early studies of sleep and dreaming were crucially dependent on waking subjects up during sleep to find out whether they are dreaming or not. Using that strategy, it was found that when the eyes are rapidly moving (REM sleep) people are usually dreaming; when the eyes are not moving, there may be some mentation, but little in the way of visually rich dreams.

  Patricia Churchland

  Dream, Moving, Sleep

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

• 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.

• 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

  Organization, Levels, Dynamics

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

• Given how long philosophers have been at conceptual analysis (I mean the 20th century stuff), and how many have been doing it, what can we say are the two most important concept results of all that effort?

  Patricia Churchland

  Mean, Two, Long

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

  Thinking, Foundation, Half

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

• 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.