Date: 1999

"In fact, the same empirical evidence presented for the assumption that the mind functions like a digital computer tends, when considered without making this assumption, to show that the assumption is empirically untenable."

— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)

Date: 1999

"There was always a subject, a "transcendental ego," applying the rules, which simply postponed a scientific theory of behavior by installing a little man (homunculus) in the mind to guide its actions."

— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)

Date: 1999

"Human beings are somehow already situated in such a way that what they need in order to cope with things is distributed around them where they need it, not packed away like a trunk full of objects, or even carefully indexed in a filing cabinet."

— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)

Date: 1999

"In the absence of any empirical or a priori argument that such a formalism for processing physical inputs does or must exist, and given the empirical evidence that the brain functions like an analogue computer, there is no reason to suppose and every reason to doubt that the processing of...

— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)

Date: 1999

"Working memory has been called the 'chalkboard of the mind.'"

— Siegel, Dan J. (b. 1957)

Date: 1999

"As the brain gets more complex in the womb, then, like a dimmer switch, consciousness gradually grows and burgeons until, of course, in adulthood it reaches its particular pinnacles or depths."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"On its own this trigger, as we can see from the earlier definition, is not going to generate consciousness. Imagine a candyfloss machine with a stick in the centre that then gathers more and more candyfloss as time goes on. Think of the epicentre as the stick in the centre, the burgeoning candy...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"Another rather simplistic analogy might be a boss, at the centre of a big organization that is eventually going to recruit managers and submanagers. What in the brain could be the equivalent of the boss? The most obvious candidate, and one that might immediately spring to mind, is the basic comp...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"Perhaps the consciousness of dreaming is the almost random formation of little groups forming in different configurations like pebbles thrown very gently into the water. One can imagine the gentle ripples easily being displaced by the next pebble as it hits the water."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"But fiction is not empirical truth. It is simulation that runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers."

— Oatley, Keith