Quotes by Thomas Metzinger

Thomas Metzinger

All attention is introspection.

Attention

Introspection

As far as inner action is concerned, we are only rarely truly self-determined persons, for the major part of our conscious mental activity rather is an automatic, unintentional form of behavior on the subpersonal level.

Action

Levels

Self

As modern-day neuroscience tells us, we are never in touch with the present, because neural information-processing itself takes time. Signals take time to travel from your sensory organs along the multiple neuronal pathways in your body to your brain, and they take time to be processed and transformed into objects, scenes, and complex situations. So, strictly speaking, what you are experiencing as the present moment is actually the past.

Brain

Information Processing

Past

At 19, I basically held the position that if you were intellectually honest and really wanted to get in touch with political reality then you had to smell tear-gas.

Political

Reality

Smell

Conscious experience as such is an exclusively internal affair: Once all functional properties of your brain are fixed, the character of subjective experience is determined as well.

Brain

Character

Determined

Consciousness is phenomenologically subjective whenever there is a stable, consciously experienced first-person perspective.

Consciousness

Firsts

Perspective

Dolphins frequently leap above the water surface. One reason for this behaviour could be that, when travelling longer distances, jumping can save the dolphins energy as there is less friction while in the air.

Air

Distance

Jumping

For a human being, to possess a consciously experienced first-person perspective means to have acquired a very specific functional profile and distinctive level of representational content in one’s currently active phenomenal self-model: It has, episodically, become a dynamic inner model of a knowing self.

Knowing

Mean

Self

I believe that gut feelings, the sense of balance, and spatial self-perception are so firmly coupled to our biological body that we will never be able to leave it experientially on a permanent basis.

Believe

Feelings

Self

I believe that if we would carefully apply the distinction between transparency and opacity to the different layers of the human self-model, looking at self-consciousness in a much more careful and fine-grained manner, then we might also arrive at a new answer to your original question: What a “first-person perspective” really is.

Believe

Perspective

Self

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Action

Air

Attention

Behaviour

Believe

Brain

Character

Communicate

Consciousness

Creating

Determined

Distance

Ego

Feelings

Firsts

Flow

Fundamentals

Humans

Information Processing

Introspection

Jumping

Knowing

Levels

Long

Looks

Mean

Mind

Past

Persons

Perspective

Political

Real

Reality

Risk

Self

Self Esteem

Single Mom

Smell

Thinking

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Thomas Metzinger

Thomas Metzinger

All attention is introspection.

As far as inner action is concerned, we are only rarely truly self-determined persons, for the major part of our conscious mental activity rather is an automatic, unintentional form of behavior on the subpersonal level.

At 19, I basically held the position that if you were intellectually honest and really wanted to get in touch with political reality then you had to smell tear-gas.

Conscious experience as such is an exclusively internal affair: Once all functional properties of your brain are fixed, the character of subjective experience is determined as well.

Consciousness is phenomenologically subjective whenever there is a stable, consciously experienced first-person perspective.

Dolphins frequently leap above the water surface. One reason for this behaviour could be that, when travelling longer distances, jumping can save the dolphins energy as there is less friction while in the air.

I believe that gut feelings, the sense of balance, and spatial self-perception are so firmly coupled to our biological body that we will never be able to leave it experientially on a permanent basis.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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