Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was "Sì, abbiamo un'anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot – "Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots." And I thought, exactly. That’s the view. Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have - powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we’re here. No buffalo knows it’s a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we’re members of Homo sapiens, and it’s the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.
It’s this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what’s it made of? It’s made of neurons. It’s made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.
Tags: truth beauty soul mind robots matter
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.
Vladimir NabokovI tell you about a fact and truth. In physical reality of matter,
there's no such thing as an imaginary spirit nor spiritual ghost.
They are also made of matter, but totally different in size and
laws of physics which rule their life and the way they interact.
Tags: life truth reality spirit physics laws ghost size matter differ govern
Some people say, ‘Do not judge the book by its cover!’ Well, I say not to judge at all. People can say anything they want to say, but for me, cover does matter.
Toba BetaTags: truth perception judge book cover matter
Customer is king.
I am his treasurer.
Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.
Pierre Teilhard de ChardinWithout you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.
Pierre Teilhard de ChardinThe pure power of a life can manifest as beatitude, or as an unspeakable, sheer violence...
Jane BennettTags: life energy meaning-of-life matter life-force
A life thus names a restless activeness, a destructive-creative force-presence that does not coincide fully with any specific body. A life tear the fabric of the actual without ever coming fully 'out' in a person, place, or thing. A life points to ... 'matter in variation that enters assemblages and leaves them. A life is a vitality proper not to any individual but to 'pure immanence,' or that protean swarm that is not actual though it is real: 'A life contains only virtuals. It is made of virtualities.
Jane BennettTags: science life energy meaning-of-life matter life-force
Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.
Erwin SchrödingerTags: science consciousness physics matter
Page 1 of 5.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.