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David Eagleman

David Eagleman Quotes

Neuroscientist

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Famous David Eagleman Quotes

“We are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanism, a group of competing factions. The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystem inside brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems doing what they do best while we overlay stories about choices.”

MindMadeSometimesStoriesActionChoicesBrainPiecesGroupsConsciousDrivenLocalsExpertsCollectionsMechanismCompetingParliamentOur ActionsDynamicsFactionsInexplicableConscious MindOverlappingFabricate
Book:Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain
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“Reductionism is not the right viewpoint for everything, and it certainly won't explain the relationship between the brain and the mind. This is because of a feature known as emergence. When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something greater than the sum.”

MindWholeTogetherNumbersBrainKnownGreaterPiecesFeaturesViewpointsLarge NumbersEmergenceReductionism
Book:Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain
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“Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I’m hoping to define a new position - one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.”

KnowsMenMindPersonsIdeasStoriesReligiousToo MuchAtheismPossibilityPositionIgnoranceParticularComfortableThirdsCloudsCommitTraditionalCosmosExplorationNot InterestedMultipleBeardAgnosticismStanceNew Position
Author:David Eagleman
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