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Self-awareness Is A Trait That Not Only Makes Us Human But Also Paradoxically Makes Us Want To Be More Than Merely Human. As I Said In My Bbc Reith Lectures, “science Tells Us We Are Merely Beasts, But We Don’t Feel Like That. We Feel Like Angels Trapped Inside The Bodies Of Beasts, Forever Craving Transcendence

-Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

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Self-awareness Is A Trait

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

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Self-awareness Is A Trait That Not Only Makes Us Human But Also Paradoxically Makes Us Want To Be More Than Merely Human. As I Said In My Bbc Reith Lectures, “science Tells Us We Are Merely Beasts, But We Don’t Feel Like That. We Feel Like Angels Trapped Inside The Bodies Of Beasts, Forever Craving Transcendence

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Think About What Artists, Novelists And Poets Have In Common: The Ability To Engage In Metaphorical Thinking, Linking Seemingly Unrelated Ideas, Such As, 'it Is The East, And Juliet Is The Sun.'

Curiosity Illuminates The Correct Path To Anything In Life. If You're Not Curious, That's When Your Brain Is Starting To Die.

Great Art Allows You To Transcend Your Mortal Frame And To Reach For The Stars. I Think Great Science Does The Same Thing.

There Are 100 Billion Neurons In The Adult Human Brain, And Each Neuron Makes Something Like 1,000 To 10,000 Contacts With Other Neurons In The Brain. Based On This, People Have Calculated That The Number Of Permutations And Combinations Of Brain Activity Exceeds The Number Of Elementary Particles In The Universe.

In Fact, On One Occasion, A Rather Pedantic Experimental Psychologist Was Telling Him About A Long, Complicated Experiment He Had Done, Incorporating All The Proper Controls And Using Considerable Technical Virtuosity. When He Saw Crick's Exasperated Expression He Said, "but Dr. Crick, We Have Got It Right - We Know It's Right," Crick's Response Was, "the Point Is Not Whether It's Right. The Point Is: Does It Even Matter Whether Its Right Or Wrong?"

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Your Conscious Life Is An Elaborate After-the-fact Rationalization Of Things You Really Do For Other Reasons.

Yet As Human Beings We Have To Accept-with Humility-that The Question Of Ultimate Origins Will Always Remain With Us, No Matter How Deeply We Understand The Brain And The Cosmos That It Creates.

The Brain Abhors Discrepancies.

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If We Knew About The Real Facts And Statistics Of Mortality, We’d Be Terrified.

The Minute You Succumb To Outside Pressure, You Cease To Be Creative.

A Culture Without Mythology Is Not Really A Civilisation.

People Often Ask How I Got Interested In The Brain; My Rhetorical Answer Is: 'how Can Anyone Not Be Interested In It?' Everything You Call 'human Nature' And Consciousness Arises From It.

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If You're A Thinking Person, The Liver Is Interesting, But Nothing Is More Intriguing Than The Brain.

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There Is No Real Independent Self, Aloof From Other Human Beings, Inspecting The World, Inspecting Other People. You Are, In Fact, Connected Not Just Via Facebook And Internet, You're Actually Quite Literally Connected By Your Neurons.

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The Adage That Fact Is Stranger Than Fiction Seems To Be Especially True For The Workings Of The Brain.

The Visual System Of The Brain Has The Organization, Computational Profile, And Architecture It Has In Order To Facilitate The Organism's Thriving At The Four Fs: Feeding Fleeing, Fighting, And Reproduction.

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Our Ability To Perceive The World Around Us Seems So Effortless That We Tend To Take It For Granted.

Self-awareness Is A Trait That Not Only Makes Us Human But Also Paradoxically Makes Us Want To Be More Than Merely Human. As I Said In My Bbc Reith Lectures, “science Tells Us We Are Merely Beasts, But We Don’t Feel Like That. We Feel Like Angels Trapped Inside The Bodies Of Beasts, Forever Craving Transcendence

With The Arrival Of Humans, It Has Been Said, The Universe Has Suddenly Become Conscious Of Itself. This, Truly, It The Greatest Mystery Of All.

Here Is A Neuron That Fires When I Reach And Grab Something, But It Also Fires When I Watch Joe Reaching And Grabbing Something. ... It's As Though This Neuron Is Adopting The Other Person's Point Of View.

Even Though Its Common Knowledge These Days, It Never Ceases To Amaze Me That All The Richness Of Our Mental Life - All Our Feelings, Our Emotions, Our Thoughts, Our Ambitions, Our Love Life, Our Religious Sentiments And Even What Each Of Us Regards Us His Own Intimate Private Self - Is Simply The Activity Of These Little Specks Of Jelly In Your Head, In Your Brain. There Is Nothing Else.

We Are Not Angels, We Are Merely Sophisticated Apes. Yet We Feel Like Angels Trapped Inside The Bodies Of Beasts, Craving Transcendence And All The Time Trying To Spread Our Wings And Fly Off, And It's Really A Very Odd Predicament To Be In, If You Think About It.

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Even Today No Computer Can Understand Language As Well As A Three-year-old Or See As Well As A Mouse.

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