Philosophy of Mind Quotes by Sam Harris

19 Philosophy of Mind quotes by Sam Harris

All Philosophy of Mind quotes Sam Harris’s page

Sam Harris blends neuroscience with philosophy, and these nineteen lines capture his habit of cutting straight to the core of what it means to think, feel, and be aware.

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We are all prisoners of our thoughts.

Sam Harris

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“Habitual identification with discursive thought is the source of human suffering”

Sam Harris

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“But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience.”

Sam Harris

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“A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than…

Sam Harris

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“Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion”

Sam Harris

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How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that…

Sam Harris

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Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and…

Sam Harris

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“While thinking is a practical necessity, the failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, moment after moment, is what gives each of us…

Sam Harris

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“How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that…

Sam Harris

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The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to…

Sam Harris

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“The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than…

Sam Harris

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Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and…

Sam Harris

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“Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive thought, is the primary source of human suffering.”

Sam Harris

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“If my brain were surgically divided by callosotomy tomorrow, this would create at least two independent conscious minds, both of which would…

Sam Harris

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Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love,…

Sam Harris

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“Long before reaching this kind of stability in meditation, however, one can discover that the sense of self—the sense that there is…

Sam Harris

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“This is an empirical claim: Look closely enough at your own mind in the present moment, and you will discover that the…

Sam Harris

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“The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand—that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character in this…

Sam Harris

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“The principal enemy of mindfulness—or of any meditative practice—is our deeply conditioned habit of being distracted by thoughts. The problem is not…

Sam Harris

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“Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern…

Sam Harris

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There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by…

Sam Harris

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We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends…

Sam Harris

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“Your principal concern appears to be that the Creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of…

Sam Harris

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“As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never…

Sam Harris

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About 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. If our polls are…

Sam Harris

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“If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours each night, renounce sex, and subsist…

Sam Harris

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The fact that one can lose one's sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one's consciousness is immaterial or…

Sam Harris

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The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second…

Sam Harris

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“But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience.”

Sam Harris

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“Whether or not one likes Huntington's formulation, one thing is clear: the evil that has finally reached our shores is not merely the evil…

Sam Harris

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The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

Sam Harris

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Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have…

Sam Harris

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The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology,…

Sam Harris

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“What could possibly cause billions of human beings to reconsider their religious beliefs? And yet, it is obvious that an utter revolution in our…

Sam Harris

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