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Consciousness Quotes

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Consciousness Quotes

“The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10(14) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.”

Humans Brain Consciousness Wonderful Evidence Connections Machines Busy Dues Architecture Elegant

Author:Carl Sagan

“The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests upon an extreme position in a continuum. The Cartesian tradition, formulated explicitly in the seventeenth century, but developed in "folk" and other versions throughout human history no doubt, holds that other animals are little more than unfeeling machines, with only humans enjoying "consciousness," however defined.”

“I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.”

Thinking Men Kind Wish Consciousness Eternal Machines Miserable

Book:My Philosophical Development

Source: My Philosophical Development

“We are not the only avatars of humanity. Once our computing machines achieved self-consciousness, they became part of this design.”

Self Humanity Consciousness Design Machines Robots Self Consciousness Computing

Book:Endymion

Source: Endymion

“The machine not only does it relieve us mechanically of a crushing weight of physical and mental labor; but by the miraculous enhancing of our senses, through its powers of enlargement, penetration and exact measurement, it constantly increases the scope and clarity of our perceptions. It fulfills the dream of all living creatures by satisfying our instinctive craving for the maximum of consciousness with a minimum of effort! Having embarked upon so profitable a path, how can Mankind fail to pursue it?”

“Scientists who have dedicated their lives to building machines that think, feel that it's only a matter of time before some form of consciousness is captured in the laboratory.”

Thinking Feels Matter Form Consciousness Building Machines Scientist Dedicated Laboratory Captured Matter Of Time

Book:Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century

Source: Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century

“If human beings are losing every time, it doesn't matter whether they're losing to a conscious machine or an completely non conscious machine, they still lost. The singularity is about the quality of decision-making, which is not consciousness at all.”

Ifs Humans Stills Matter Lost Human Beings Decision Consciousness Quality Losing Conscious Machines Decision Making Singularity

Author:Stuart J. Russell

“When I'm on the operating table, I'm happy for the surgeon to treat me as a machine, but the moment I return to consciousness I have other needs and aspirations that should be recognized. We're not here only to survive or extend our individual or species life but to do something seemingly more difficult, for which I've used words and phrases like 'love' and the 'Kingdom of God'.”

Needs Should Moments Used Individual Difficult Consciousness Return Machines Treats Tables Species Kingdoms Phrases Aspiration Kingdom Of God Surgeons Like Love

Author:George Pattison

“In fact, the machine doesn't have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one's free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one's will to God.”

Matter Facts Spiritual Levels Consciousness Teacher Machines Surrender Free Will Spiritual Teachers

Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr