Remember, in the heyday of vitalism, people said that when all the data are in about cells and how they work, we will still know nothing about the life force - about the basic difference between being alive and not being alive.

I am less attracted to guesses about what cannot be done, than about making progress on a problem.

When philosophers try to understand consciousness, much of what they claim is not conceptual analysis at all, though it may be shopped under that description.

It is surely important that the differences between coma, deep sleep, being under anesthesia, on the one hand, and being alert on the other, all involve changes in the brain.

It seems probable that humans have been on the planet, with much the same brain, for about 250,000 years.

Suppression of impulses that would put you in danger is obviously an important neurobiological function.

Humility bids us to take ourselves as we are; we do not have to be cosmically significant to be genuinely significant.