Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism Iām hoping to define a new position - one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.
David EaglemanThose with Anton's syndrome are not pretending they are not blind; they truly believe they are not blind. Their verbal reports, while inaccurate, are not lies. Instead, they are experiencing what they take to be vision, but it is all internally generated.
David EaglemanPeople wouldn't even go into science unless there was something much bigger to be discovered, something that is transcendent.
David EaglemanWe spend our lives on a thin slice between the unimaginably small scales of the atoms that compose us and the infinitely large scales of galaxies.
David EaglemanKeep in mind that every single generation before us has worked under the assumption that they possessed all the major tools for understanding the universe, and they were all wrong, without exception.
David EaglemanAmong all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.
David EaglemanThe brain "fills in" the missing information from the blind spot. Notice what you see in the location of the dot when it's in your blind spot. When the dot disappears, you do not perceive a hole of whiteness or blackness in its place; instead your brain invents a patch of the background pattern. Your brain, with no information from that particular spot in visual space, fills in with the patterns around it. You're not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.
David Eagleman