We Are Not Thinking Machines

Leaving Out Appraisal Also Would Render The Biological Description Of The Phenomena Of Emotion Vulnerable To The Caricature That Emotions Without An Appraisal Phase Are Meaningless Events. It Would Be More Difficult To See How Beautiful And Amazingly Intelligent Emotions Can Be, And How Powerfully They Can Solve Problems For Us.

Consciousness Permits Us To Develop The Instruments Of Culture - Morality And Justice, Religion, Art, Economics And Politics, Science And Technology. Those Instruments Allow Us Some Measure Of Freedom In The Confrontation With Nature.

If I Use The Word Consciousness, In Our Lab, In Our Institute, What We Mean Is The Special Quality Of Mind, The Special Features That Exist In The Mind, That Permit Us To Know, For Example, That We, Ourselves, Exist, And That Things Exist Around Us.

We Are Not Thinking Machines That Feel; Rather, We Are Feeling Machines That Think.

A Mind Is So Closely Shaped By The Body And Destined To Serve It That Only One Mind Could Possibly Arise In It. No Body, Never Mind.