"Because we do not understand the brain very……" — John Searle
"Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard...Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill...At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer."
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John Searle
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19 Quotes by John Searle
John Searle has 19 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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We do not live in several different, or even two different, worlds, a mental world and a physical world, a…
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Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism
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Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and…
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We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but…
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It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of…
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Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to…
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My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business
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In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y;…
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I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand,…
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Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed
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Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it…
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You can't *discover* that the brain is a digital computer. You can only *interpret* the brain as a digital computer.
See all 19 quotes by John Searle »
More Assured Quotes
This quote is filed under Assured Quotes,
one of 383 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster…
— Norman Ralph Augustine
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Rest assured that whatever station of life we are placed, princely or lowly, it contains the lessons and experiences necessary…
— Edward Bach
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The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good…
— Russell Baker
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Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans.
— Max Baucus
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We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but…
— Mortimer Adler
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Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
— Ambrose Bierce
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Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left…
— Sitting Bull
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Haitians do not need development programs imposed on them by expatriates. Instead, they need help in developing as self-assured persons.
— Tony Campolo
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If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not…
— Maurice Chevalier
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Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be…
— Lawrence Hargrave
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The Author of nature has not given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves…
— John Playfair
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If we are right with the Lord, then, as we face adversity, we can be assured that we will be…
— Ronald E. Poelman
See all 383 Assured Quotes »