Emotion is set in our genome and that we all have with a certain programmed nature that is modified by our experience so individually we have variations on the pattern. But in essence, your emotion of joy and mine are going to be extremely similar.

We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.

Consciousness begins when brains acquire the power, the simple power I must add, of telling a story.

Of necessity, the autobiographical self is not just about one individual but about all the others that an individual interacts with. Of necessity, it incorporates the culture in which the interactions took place.

In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who we are' operate on precisely the same principles that we do.

There is no such thing as a disembodied mind. The mind is implanted in the brain, and the brain is implanted in the body.

We can be more or less conscious when you create grades of focus on a subject that is flowing in our stream of consciousness.