Patricia Churchland Quotes

science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

My caution kicks in when I encounter either one of two sorts of dramatic theories: those that claim to have found the secret of consciousness, and those that claim that the brain mechanisms for consciousness can never be found.

What I can and cannot imagine is a psychological fact about me. It is not a deep metaphysical fact about the nature of the universe.

Certainty is the enemy of knowledge.

I may long for certainty, but I have to live with doing the best I can.

You became conscious of precisely what you unconsciously intended to say only when you said it. You modify your speech depending on wether you are talking to child, a colleague, a student, or a dean. Not consiously, most probably. Paradoxically, speech is usually considered the case of conscious behavior - behavior for which we hold people responsoble. Certainly, it require consciousness: you cannot have a conversation while in deep sleep or in coma. Nevertheless, the activities that organize your speech output are not conscious activities. Speaking is a highly skilled business, relyling on uncounscious knowledge of precisely what to say and how.

Why doesn’t the brain make it self-evident that it is doing all these things? “Oh, by the way, it is me, Brainsy—in here in your head. I am what allows you to maintain balance and chew your food; I am the reason you fall asleep or fall in love.” Nothing in the ancient environment of brain evolution would select for brains that could reveal themselves thus. Similarly, there is nothing in our current environment to select for kidneys or livers that announce their existence and modus operandi. They just work the way they evolved to work.

Certainty about one’s moral stance might be soothing, but it tends to blinker us to damage we are about to cause.

Heartfelt conviction is not, alas, a guarantee of moral decency.

Science itself does not adjudicate on moral values. When all available facts are in, we may still face the questions “What should we do?

Statistically, male-to-female transsexuals are about 2.6 times as common as female-to-male transsexuals.

It is tempting to believe that our conscience can be tapped to deliver universal moral truths, and that as long as we heed our conscience, our choice will indeed be the morally right choice. The uncomfortable fact that has to be reckoned with, however, is this: conscientious people frequently differ on what their conscience bids them do, and hence differ in their choices.

Living in a community normally boosts one’s chances of surviving and thriving. We can share food and huddle against the cold; we can organize to attack prey or to defend each other against invaders.

If our sociality motivates caring for others, it is also true that we are given to hate. We humans regularly derive pleasure from hating those we consider outsiders. We tend to find hating energizing.

Woolly as it is, the best advice is perhaps to allow yourself broad life experience and exposure to the human condition in all its beauty and horror. Do your best, but even then you will make mistakes.

All animals must have the basic circuitry for self-care, or they will fail to survive long enough to reproduce. In the evolution of the mammalian brain, the range of myself was extended to include my babies.

The data indicate that just before the eyes make their next jump (saccade), your nonconscious attention scans the next chunk, selects a meaty word for your center of gaze to light on (a word like murder, not a word like indeed), and guides the eye movement accordingly.

In general, those who advertise themselves as having superior moral judgment or unique access to moral truth need to be looked at askance. Not infrequently there is great advantage—in money, sex, power, and self-esteem—in setting oneself up as a moral authority. The rest of us can easily be exploited when we acquiesce in these authoritative claims. Scam artists aplenty proclaim themselves as moral gurus, willing to tell the rest of us how our conscience should behave. They can seem authoritative because they are especially charismatic or especially spiritual or especially firm in their convictions.

the masculinizing of the gonads (making testes, penis, and prostate) occurs before the masculinizing of the brain. Owing to variability in the pathways controlled by genes and the interactions among the items in the suite of neurochemicals, sometimes the masculinizing of the brain does not follow the typical path and may be incomplete in various ways. You could have male genitalia and a female brain.

The first and most basic evolutionary point is that the primary targets and beneficiaries of sociality are the offspring. Why? Because mammalian babies are immature at birth and will certainly die without care. Baby turtles, after hatching from their eggs, immediately dig their way up out of the sand, scuttle down to the water, and begin to look for food. No parents are anywhere close by, nor are any needed.

Were I a solitary creature like a salamander, none of this would trouble me. I would have no moral conflicts, no social conscience. I would feed and mate and lay my eggs. I would not fret about other salamanders, not even those hatching from my very own eggs. I would see to my own needs, and care not a whit for others. But I am a mammal, and like other mammals, I have a social brain. I am wired to care, especially about those I am attached to.

I don’t believe it too harsh to say that the history of philosophy when boiled down consists mostly of failed models of the brain. A few of the modern neurophilosophers such as Patricia Churchland and Daniel Dennett have made a splendid effort to interpret the findings of neuroscience research as these become available. They have helped others to understand, for example, the ancillary nature of morality and rational thought. Others, especially those of poststructuralist bent, are more retrograde. They doubt that the “reductionist” or “objectivist” program of the brain researchers will ever succeed in explaining the core of consciousness. Even if it has a material basis, subjectivity in this view is beyond the reach of science. To make their argument, the mysterians (as they are sometimes called) point to the qualia, the subtle, almost inexpressible feelings we experience about sensory input. For example, “red” we know from physics, but what are the deeper sensations of “redness”? So what can the scientists ever hope to tell us in larger scale about free will, or about the soul, which for religious thinkers at least is the ultimate of ineffability?

La hipótesis predominante es que lo que nosotros, los humanos, llamamos «ética» o «moralidad» es una estructura de conducta social en cuatro dimensiones que viene determinada por la interrelación de distintos procesos cerebrales: (1) el cuidado o la atención a los demás (enraizado en el apego a nuestros familiares y la preocupación por su bienestar),11 (2) el reconocimiento de los estados psicológicos de los demás (basado en las ventajas de predecir la conducta de terceros), (3) la resolución de problemas en un contexto social (por ejemplo, cómo deberíamos distribuir los bienes cuando son escasos, cómo resolver disputas territoriales

We can’t will what we don’t think about, and the subjects we think about enter our consciousness by entirely unconscious processes. Our brain offers us things to think about, and we can only use our will power on that limited array of topics. It may be, as Patricia-Churchland suggests, that the only action by an effort of will is the act of saying “No!

Uncertainty, a tonic to some, is toxic to others. Trumped-up certainty, a balm to the gullible, is anathema to the skeptical.

Martin Luther confidently claimed that the Holy Spirit writes the moral truths on our conscience. Free of all misgivings, Luther claimed that the assertions of the Holy Spirit “are more sure and certain than life itself and all experience.” 9 Realism intervenes: different devout hearts often deliver opposite moral assertions.

The great advantage with nay-saying is that it leaves lots of time for golf.

The principle chore of brains is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing [the world] is advantageous so long as it... enhances an organism's chances for survival. Truth, whatever that is, takes the hindmost.

If you root yourself to the ground, you can afford to be stupid.