Annaka Harris > Quotes

“Our experience of consciousness is so intrinsic to who we are, we rarely notice that something mysterious is going on. Consciousness is experience itself, and it is therefore easy to miss the profound question staring us in the face in each moment: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious?”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“the truth of my situation: I’m floating around the universe on this giant sphere—suspended here by gravity and going for a ride.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Why do certain configurations of matter cause that matter to light up with awareness?”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“After all, an infant is composed of particles indistinguishable from those swirling around in the sun. The particles that compose your body were once the ingredients of countless stars in our universe’s past. They traveled for billions of years to land here—in this particular configuration that is you—and are now reading this book. Imagine following the life of these particles from their first appearance in space-time to the very moment they became arranged in such a way as to start experiencing something.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“The claim is just the opposite—that if consciousness exists as a fundamental property, complex systems, built from that-which-is-already-streaming -consciousness, could eventually give rise to physical structures such as human minds.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“In his research, Chamovitz discovered which genes are responsible for a plant’s ability to determine whether it’s in the dark or the light, and these genes, it turns out, are also part of human DNA. In animals, these same genes regulate responses to light and are involved in “the timing of cell division, the axonal growth of neurons, and the proper functioning of the immune system.” Analogous mechanisms exist in plants for detecting sounds, scents, and location, and even for forming memories.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“I was once at an event where my friend and meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein was asked if he believed we have free will. He answered the question with arresting clarity when he said that he couldn’t even figure out what the term could possibly mean. What does it mean to have a will that is free from the cause-and-effect relationships of the universe? As he gestured with his hands dancing above him in the air, trying to point to this imaginary free will, he asked, “How can we even try to picture such a will floating about?”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“being on the earth doesn’t separate us from the rest of the universe; indeed, we are and have always been in outer space.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Galen Strawson makes a similar point by turning the mystery of consciousness on its head. He argues that consciousness is in fact the only thing in the universe that is not a mystery—in the sense that it is the only thing we truly understand firsthand.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Additionally, when scientists assume they have bypassed the hard problem by describing consciousness as an emergent property—that is, a complex phenomenon not predicted by the constituent parts—they are changing the subject. All emergent phenomena—like ant colonies, snowflakes, and waves—are still descriptions of matter and how it behaves as witnessed from the outside.6 What a collection of matter is like from the inside and whether or not there is an experience associated with it is something the term “emergence” doesn’t cover. Calling consciousness an emergent phenomenon doesn’t actually explain anything, because to the observer, matter is behaving as it always does. If some matter has experience and some doesn’t (and some emergent phenomena entail experience and some don’t), the concept of emergence as it is traditionally used in science simply doesn’t explain consciousness.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Just think about YOU.”
― Annaka Harris

“Although nothing about its confirmation supports (or provides any evidence for) theories about consciousness, it helps us understand the analogous proposition in panpsychism—that perhaps consciousness is another property of matter, or of the universe itself, that we have yet to discover.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“It seems clear that we can’t decide what to think or feel, any more than we can decide what to see or hear. A highly complicated convergence of factors and past events—including our genes, our personal life history, our immediate environment, and the state of our brain—is responsible for each next thought. Did you decide to remember your high school band when that song started playing on the radio? Did I decide to write this book? In some sense, the answer is yes, but the “I” in question is not my conscious experience. In actuality, my brain, in conjunction with its history and the outside world, decided. I (my consciousness) simply witness decisions unfolding.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“How could something appear out of nothing?3 Likewise, how does felt experience arise out of nonsentient matter?”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“This book is devoted to shaking up our everyday assumptions about the world we live in. Some facts are so important and so counterintuitive (matter is mostly made up of empty space; the earth is a spinning sphere in one of billions of solar systems in our galaxy; microscopic organisms cause disease; and so on) that we need to recall them again and again, until they finally permeate our culture and become the foundation for new thinking. The fundamental mysteriousness of consciousness, a subject deeply perplexing to philosophers and scientists alike, holds a special place among such facts. My goal in writing this book is to pass along the exhilaration that comes from discovering just how surprising consciousness is.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“our subjective sense of time sits at the center of a perfect storm of unsolved scientific mysteries: consciousness, free will, relativity, quantum mechanics, and the nature of time.2”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Why do certain configurations of matter cause that matter to light up with awareness”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“As Michael Pollan explains in his book How to Change Your Mind”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“But one thing is certain: it’s possible for a vivid experience of consciousness to exist undetected from the outside.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“A striking example of this is the neurological condition called locked-in syndrome”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“In a system that we know has conscious experiences—the human brain—what evidence of consciousness can we detect from the outside? Is consciousness essential to our behavior?”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“The particles that compose your body were once the ingredients of countless stars in our universe’s past. They traveled for billions of years to land here—in this particular configuration that is you—and are now reading this book. Imagine following the life of these particles from their first appearance in space-time to the very moment they became arranged in such a way as to start experiencing something.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“It seems clear that we can’t decide what to think or feel”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“In an interview with Scientific American”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“As we go about our daily lives”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“In his research”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Sure”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“Figure 6.1: Emergence. A phenomenon that is not predicted by the constituent parts”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“We now have reason to believe that with access to certain activity inside your brain”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

“A phenomenon that is not predicted by the constituent parts, and is more complex than the sum of its parts, is referred to as an emergent phenomenon.”
― Annaka Harris, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind