Michael S. Gazzaniga > Quotes

“Science results from a profoundly social process. The common portrayal—that science emerges from a solitary isolated genius, always laboring alone, not owing anything to anyone—is simply wrong.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience

“The brain has millions of local processors making important decisions. It is a highly specialized system with critical networks distributed throughout the 1,300 grams of tissue. There is no one boss in the brain. You are certainly not the boss of the brain. Have you ever succeeded in telling your brain to shut up already and go to sleep?”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“Chaos doesn’t mean that the system is behaving randomly, it means that it is unpredictable because it has many variables, it is too complex to measure, and even if it could be measured, theoretically the measurement cannot be done accurately and the tiniest inaccuracy would change the end result an enormous amount.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“I believe that things just happen in life, and pretty much after the fact, we make up a story to make it all seem rational. We all like simple stories that suggest a causal chain to life’s events. Yet randomness is ever present.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience

“Our brains renew themselves throughout life to an extent previously thought not possible.”
― Michael Gazzaniga

“the study of psychophysics proves that it is impossible to bore a German.” Thankfully,”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience

“Baruch Spinoza, who said, “There is no mind absolute or free will, but the mind is determined for willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause, and this one again by another, and so on to infinity.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“Reductionism in the physical sciences has been challenged by the principle of emergence. The whole system acquires qualitatively new properties that cannot be predicted from the simple addition of those of its individual components. One might apply the aphorism that the new system is greater than the sum of its parts. There is a phase shift, a change in the organizational structure, going from one scale to the next.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“Robert Sapolsky, professor of neurology at Stanford, makes the extremely strong statement: “It’s boggling that the legal system’s gold standard for an insanity defense—M’Naghten—is based on 166-year-old science. Our growing knowledge about the brain makes notions of volition, culpability, and, ultimately, the very premise of a criminal justice system, deeply suspect.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“Our subjective awareness arises out of our dominant left hemisphere’s unrelenting quest to explain these bits and pieces that have popped into consciousness. Notice that popped is in the past tense. This is a post hoc rationalization process. The interpreter that weaves our story only weaves what makes it into consciousness. Because consciousness is a slow process, whatever has made it to consciousness has already happened. It is a fait accompli. As we saw in my story at the beginning of the chapter, I had already jumped before I realized whether I had seen a snake or if it was the wind rustling the grass. What does it mean that we build our theories about ourselves after the fact? How much of the time are we confabulating, giving a fictitious account of a past event, believing it to be true? This post hoc interpreting process has implications for and an impact on the big questions of free will and determinism”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“We live in the era of the “bottom line” mentality, with TED talks, sound bites, and news summaries. There is so much information to digest, we can only hope to grasp the world with compact and seemingly complete stories. We don’t want to be left dangling.
We are all suckers for this information diet, and we all have come to depend on it, just like we have all succumbed to the instant gratification of texting and cell phones. And yet what separates the dilettante from the sophisticate is the appreciation that everything is not simple. The trick seems to be able to talk clearly while remaining fully aware of the underlying complexity of any story. For me it is the overwhelming realization that when trying to figure out how the brain does its masterful trick of
enabling minds, we are barely at the starting line. Dig as deep as you want into human history: As long as there is a written record of thought, there is a record of humans wondering about the nature of life. It becomes obvious that all of us are just hopping into an ongoing conversation, not structuring one with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Humans may have discovered some of the constraints on the thought processes, but we have not yet been able to tell the full story.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience

“Newton’s laws aren’t fundamental, they are emergent; that is, they are what happens when quantum matter aggregates into macroscopic fluids and objects. It is a collective organizational phenomenon.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“The classic example from biology is the huge, towerlike structure that is built by some ant and termite species. These structures only emerge when the ant colony reaches a certain size (more is different) and could never be predicted by studying the behavior of single insects in small colonies.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“At the end of the visit Steve asked, "What percent of the work is exciting?" After thinking for a moment, I replied, "Oh about ten percent. The rest is routine." As I have learned in life, 10 percent is a good number for most professions. I know it has been enough to keep me going to work every day with a smile on my face.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience

“The arts are not frosting but baking soda.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga

“stimulation of the medial frontal cortex gives one the feeling of the urge to move”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“Pattee explains there is a basic and extremely important distinction between laws and rules in nature.11 Laws are inexorable, meaning they are unchangeable, inescapable, and inevitable. We can never alter or evade laws of nature. The laws of nature dictate that a car will stay in motion either until an equal and opposite force stops it or it runs out of energy. That is not something we can change. Laws are incorporeal, meaning they do not need embodiments or structures to execute them: there is not a physics policeman enforcing the car’s halt when it runs out of energy. Laws are also universal: they hold at all times in all places. The laws of motion apply whether you are in Scotland or in Spain. On the other hand, rules are arbitrary and can be changed. In the British Isles, the driving rule is to drive on the left side of the road. Continental Europe’s driving rule is to drive on the right side of the road. Rules are dependent on some sort of structure or constraint to execute them. In this case that structure is a police force that fines those who break the rules by driving on the wrong side. Rules are local, meaning that they can exist only when and where there are physical structures to enforce them. If you live out in the middle of the Australian outback, you are in charge. Drive on either side. There is no structure in place to restrain you! Rules are local and changeable and breakable. A rule-governed symbol is selected from a range of competitors for doing a better job constraining the function of the system it belongs to, leading to the production of a more successful phenotype. Selection is flexible; Newton’s laws are not. In their informational role, symbols aren’t dependent on the physical laws that govern energy, time, and rates of change. They follow none of Newton’s laws. They are lawless rule-followers! What this is telling us is that symbols are not locked to their meanings.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“How on earth does lifeless matter become the building blocks for living things? How do neurons turn into minds? What should be the vocabulary used to describe the interactions between the brain and its mind? When humankind finds some answers, will we be disheartened by what they are? Will our future understanding of “consciousness” simply not be fulfilling? Will it be simple yet cold and harsh?”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“Emergence is when micro-level complex systems that are far from equilibrium (thus allowing for the amplification of random events) self-organize (creative, self-generated, adaptability-seeking behavior) into new structures, with new properties that previously did not exist, to form a new level of organization on the macro level.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“some types of neurons may be found only in specific species.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“In order to know the actual location of the electron, a measurement must be made, and here is where the troubles begin for the die-hard determinists. Once a measurement is made, the quantum state is said to collapse, meaning that all the other possible states the electron could have been in (known as superpositions) have collapsed into one. All the other possibilities have been eliminated. The measurement, of course, was irreversible and had constrained the system by causing the collapse. Over the next couple of years physicists realized that neither the classical concept of “particle” nor that of “wave” could fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects at any one point in time. As Feynman quipped, “They don’t behave like a wave or like a particle, they behave quantum mechanically.”18”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“People with a right parietal lobe injury, for example, will commonly suffer from a syndrome called spatial hemi-neglect. Depending on the size and location of the lesion, patients with hemi-neglect may behave as if part or all of the left side of their world, which may include the left side of their body, does not exist! This could include not eating off the left side of their plate, not shaving or putting makeup on the left side of their face, not drawing the left side of a clock, not reading the left pages of a book, and not acknowledging anything or anyone in the left half of the room. Some will deny that their left arm and leg are theirs and will not use them when trying to get out of bed, even though they are not paralyzed. Some patients will even neglect the left side of space in their imagination and memories.3 That the deficits vary according to the size and location of the lesion suggests that damage that disrupts specific neural circuits results in impairments in different component processes.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“chapter, however, the modern perspective is that brains enable minds, and that YOU is your vastly parallel and distributed brain without a central command center. There is no ghost in the machine, no secret stuff that is YOU. That YOU that you are so proud of is a story woven together by your interpreter module to account for as much of your behavior as it can incorporate, and it denies or rationalizes the rest.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“THE HUMAN INTERPRETER HAS SET US UP FOR A FALL. IT has created the illusion of self and, with it, the sense we humans have agency and “freely” make decisions about our actions. In many ways it is a terrific and positive capacity for humans to possess. With increasing intelligence and with a capacity to see relationships beyond what is immediately and perceptually apparent, how long would it be before our species began to wonder what it all meant—what was the meaning of life? The interpreter provides the storyline and narrative, and we all believe we are agents acting”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

“There obviously is a different feel to a wave of intense emotion versus an abstract thought, but each conscious form is an experience that gives us a unique perception of reality. The pattern in which these various conscious forms come in and out of awareness gives us our own personal life story. The vast variety of conscious forms and the ubiquity of consciousness in the brain are best explained by a modular architecture of the brain. The conceptual challenge now is to understand how hundreds, if not thousands, of modules, embedded in a layered architecture—each layer of which can produce a form of consciousness—give us a single, unified life experience at any given moment that seems to flow flawlessly into the next across time.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“Evolutionary theories allowed materialist theories of consciousness to come in two flavors: emergentism and panpsychism. The former proposes that consciousness emerges from unconscious matter once that matter achieves a certain level of complexity or organization. Sperry was leaning heavily in this direction. The latter, panpsychism, tosses the whole problem out by suggesting that all matter has subjective consciousness, albeit in a wide range of types. The idea here is that there is no need for the idea of emergence and complexity to explain consciousness. Consciousness is a primordial feature of all things, from rocks to ants to us.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“While there are more neural connections within a half brain than between the two halves, there are still massive connections across the hemispheres. Even so, cutting those connections does little to one’s sense of conscious experience. That is to say, the left hemisphere keeps on talking and thinking as if nothing had happened even though it no longer has access to half of the human cortex. More important, disconnecting the two half brains instantly creates a second, also independent conscious system. The right brain now purrs along carefree from the left, with its own capacities, desires, goals, insights, and feelings. One network, split into two, becomes two conscious systems. How could one possibly think that consciousness arises from a particular specific network? We need a new idea to cope with this fact.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“Schopenhauer’s framing kicked the problem of consciousness onto a much larger playing field. The mind, with all of its rational processes, is all very well but the “will,” the thing that gives us our “oomph,” is the key: “The will … again fills the consciousness through wishes, emotions, passions, and cares.”14 Today, the subconscious rumblings of the “will” are still unplumbed; only a few inroads have been made. As I write these words, enthusiasts for the artificial intelligence (AI) agenda, the goal of programming machines to think like humans, have completely avoided and ignored this aspect of mental life. That is why Yale’s David Gelernter, one of the leading computer scientists in the world, says the AI agenda will always fall short, explaining, “As it now exists, the field of AI doesn’t have anything that speaks to emotions and the physical body, so they just refuse to talk about it.” He asserts that the human mind includes feelings, along with data and thoughts, and each particular mind is a product of a particular person’s experiences, emotions, and memories hashed and rehashed over a lifetime: “The mind is in a particular body, and consciousness is the work of the whole body.” Putting it in computer lingo, he declares, “I can run an app on any device, but can I run someone else’s mind on your brain? Obviously not.”15”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“Do the lingering ideas of the past block us from seeing clearly how it comes about? Is consciousness just what brains do? Just as a pocket watch with all of its gears tells us the time, do brains with all their neurons just give us consciousness? The history of the topic is vast, swept by pendulum swings between the pure mechanists and the hopeful mentalists. Surprisingly, twenty-five hundred years of human history have not resolved the question or taught our species how to frame an understanding of our personal conscious experience. Indeed, our core ideas have not changed that much. While thinking explicitly about consciousness was ignited by Descartes three hundred years ago, two overarching and contradictory notions—that the mind either is part of the brain’s workings or works somehow independently of the brain—have been around seemingly forever. Indeed, these ideas are still with us.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

“Nagel states that “an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism.” “Like” does not mean “resemble,” such as in the question “What is ice skating like? Is it like roller skating?” Instead, it concerns the subjective qualitative feel of the experience, that is, what it feels like for the subject: “What is ice skating like for you?” (For instance, is it exhilarating?) Nagel called this the “subjective character of experience.” It has also been called “phenomenal consciousness,” and, although he doesn’t say it, it is also referred to as qualia.”
― Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind