Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated to theorize about, taken straight. The issue is, rather (since every idealization is a strategic choice), which idealizations might really shed some light... which will just land us... diverting fairy tales.

True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don't have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.

Consciousness is cerebral celebrity--nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and "symptomatic" effects--on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth.

If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.

In all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate in any American city.