Moses Rabuka

“It's pretty much what novels do- take us into the minds of characters to satisfy our deep human curiosity to find out what, but also how, other people think.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“to date, no scientist or philosopher has charted a plausible path from the intricate gray-and-white folds of the cortex to the felt experience of an early winter’s day at the end of fall semester, an experience that layers perception and memory and feeling—all that information—with something that seems so much greater than information itself, a purely subjective quality that feels rich beyond words and indelible.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“First they fascinate the fools then they muzzle the intelligent.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Yet what are we to make of the fact that there is a whole suite of chemicals that, when introduced into the brain, utterly change our experience of consciousness? Think of how the caffeine in coffee subtly sharpens the feeling of being alive (or at least awake), or how the psilocybin in a mushroom (and what could be more material than a mushroom?!) can radically alter our sense of self and our subjective experience of the world. The fact that consciousness can be altered by chemicals does not necessarily prove that consciousness is, at its core, a material phenomenon, but it would seem to lend at least some credence to the idea.[* 7]”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness