Callan

“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“I personally cannot imagine that consciousness will be fully understood without reference to Godelian loops or level-crossing feedback loops.”
― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

“To rise again - to be the same person that you were - you must have your memory perfectly fresh and present; for it is memory that makes your identity.

If your memory be lost, how will you be the same man?

Why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?

Perhaps from their inordinate vanity.

I am persuaded that if a peacock could speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Labels such as ‘‘the culture wars,’’ ‘‘the science wars,’’ or ‘‘the Freud wars’’ are now widely used to refer to some of the disagreements that
plague contemporary intellectual life ... But I would like to register a gentle protest. Metaphors influence the mind in many unnoticed ways. The willingness to describe fierce disagreement in terms of the metaphors of war makes the very existence of real wars seem more natural, more inevitable,
more a part of the human condition. It also betrays us into an insensibility toward the very idea of war, so that we are less prone to be aware of how totally disgusting real wars really are.”
― Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What?