#cognition

Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have. ↗

— Criss Jami

#brain #cognition #content #contentment #creativity

Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith," said Coleridge, bringing the lecture to a close, "and a kind of faith more independent, autonomous - more truly strong, as a matter of fact - than the Puritans really sought. Faith, he tells us, is not an exotic bloom to be laboriously maintained by the exclusion of most aspects of the day to day world, nor a useful delusion to be supported by sophistries and half-truths like a child's belief in Father Christmas - not, in short, a prudently unregarded adherence to a constructed creed; but rather must be, if anything, a clear-eyed recognition of the patterns and tendencies, to be found in every piece of the world's fabric, which are the lineaments of God. This is why religion can only be advice and clarification, and cannot carry any spurs of enforcement - for only belief and behavior that is independently arrived at, and then chosen, can be praised or blamed. This being the case, it can be seen as a criminal abridgement of a person's rights willfully to keep him in ignorance of any facts - no piece can be judged inadmissible, for the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God. ↗

— Tim Powers

#clarification #faith #father-christmas #god #john-milton

There is a sense in which all cognition can be said to be motivated. One is motivated to understand the world, to be in touch with reality, to remove doubt, etc. Alternately one might say that motivation is an aspect of cognition itself. Nevertheless, motives like wanting to find the truth, not wanting to be mistaken, etc., tend to align with epistemic goals in a way that many other commitments do not. As we have begun to see, all reasoning may be inextricable from emotion. But if a person's primary motivation in holding a belief is to hue to a positive state of mind, to mitigate feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, or guilt for instance. This is precisely what we mean by phrases like "wishful thinking", and "self-deception". Such a person will of necessity be less responsive to valid chains of evidence and argument that run counter to the beliefs he is seeking to maintain. To point out non-epistemic motives in an others view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt on a persons connection to the world as it is. ↗

— Sam Harris

#emotion #morality #motivation #religion #motivational

There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself in the mirror. ↗

— Melika Dannese Lux

#kindred-spirits #olga-belododia #partners #realization #recognition

But though cognition is not an element of mental action, nor even in any real sense of the word an aspect of it, the distinction of cognition and conation has if properly defined a definite value. ↗

— Samuel Alexander

#any #aspect #cognition #conation #defined

I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. ↗

— Susan B. Anthony

#earnestly #god #i #maxim #obedience

Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature. ↗

— Manolo Blahnik

#away #beautiful #beautiful things #because #blah

The Great Idea in advertising is far more than the sum of the recognition scores, the ratings and all the other superficial indicators of its success; it is in the realm of myth, to which measurements cannot apply. ↗

— Leo Bogart

#apply #cannot #far #great #great idea

Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition. ↗

— Karel Capek

#cognition #creating #even #fighting #method

In the perception of the incongruous stimuli, the recognition process is temporarily thwarted and exhibits characteristics which are generally not observable in the recognition of more conventional stimuli. ↗

— Jerome Bruner

#conventional #exhibits #generally #incongruous #more