Psychology

"There are also third-sex citizens, sometimes greatly attached to one another and with complete faith in one another, who get married together."

"A male child is produced by a greater quantity of male seed, a female child by the prevalence of the female; if both are equal, a third-sex child [napumsaka] or boy and girl twins are produced; if either are weak or deficient in quantity, a failure of conception results."

"All I know is this: he went out for his walk a man and came home female."

"The eyes were the same. But in the shocking V of the shirt were breasts. When he uttered my name in a woman’s voice I passed out."

"Ehrenhaft came well prepared. He set up a few of his simple experiments in one of the country houses of Alpbach and invited everyone he could lay hands on to have a look. Every day from two or three in the afternoon participants went by in an attitude of wonder and left the building (if they were theoretical physicists, that is) as if they had seen something obscene. Apart from these physical preparations Ehrenhaft also carried out, as was his habit, a beautiful piece of advertising. The day before his lecture he attended a fairly technical talk by von Hayek on 'The Sensory Order' (now available, in expanded form, as a book). During the discussion he rose, bewilderment and respect in his face, and started in a most innocent voice: 'Dear Professor Hayek. This was a marvellous, an admirable, a most learned lecture. I did not understand a single word. ...' Next day his lecture had an overflow audience."

"Most theoretical work since the proposals of Hebb (1949) and Hayek (1952) has relied upon particular forms of dependent synaptic rules in which either pre- or postsynaptic change is contingent upon closely occurring events in both neurons taking part in the synapse."

"The first proponent of cortical memory networks on a major scale was neither a neuroscientist nor a computer scientist but … a Viennes economist: Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992). A man of exceptionally broad knowledge and profound insight into the operation of complex systems, Hayek applied such insight with remarkable success to economics (Nobel Prize, 1974), sociology, political science, jurisprudence, evolutionary theory, psychology, and brain science (Hayek, 1952).""

"Since [the idea that modification of synaptic function can provide a basis for memory arose shortly after the first anatomical description of the synapse] a number of models (Hebb 1949 … Hayek 1952 … Kendel 1981) have been proposed in which various cognitive activities are represented by combinations of the firing patterns of individual neurons."

"Donald O. Hebb] placed the Law of Effect at the synaptic level by proposing a correlation model of synaptic modification similar to that of Hayek (1952). This work was seminal in providing a basis for many subsequent theoretical studies."

"Consider the two lines in the Wudt-Hering illusion … This rather banal exercise serves to demonstrate that there is only a rough correspondence between what has been called the sensory order (Hayek 1952) and the physical order. Furthermore it bears upon point … that the perceptual world is a world of adaptation rather than a world of complete veridicality."

"The main reasons for dwelling … on Hayek's model is simply that it has certain properties, absent from most others, that conform exceptionally well to recent neurobiological evidence on memory and that make it particularly suited to the current discourse.""

"My eventual aim [in Neural Darwinism] is to show the bearing of this [structural] diversity [of individual nervous systems] upon the problem of generalization and upon phenomena that point up the difference between the sensory and the physical orders (Hayek 1952)."

"I do not for a moment believe it is the last word on this matter [i.e. a physicalistic system of psychology, mind and consciousness], but it is . the best word I have ever heard spoken from this platform."

"Hayek’s early work as a student in psychology (mostly before Wittgenstein’s Tractatus was published) led him to ask himself the questions:“What is mind?” and “What is the place of mind in the realm of nature?” Hayek essentially adopted a Kantian view of the nature of the world. He saw mind as implanting order on the world rather than the world necessarily having any properties of, as it were, itself. In The Sensory Order, Hayek wrote that if the “account of the determination of mental qualities which we have given is correct, it would mean that the apparatus by means of which we learn about the external world is itself the product of a kind of experience.” Hayek did not ultimately ascribe much significance to the brain as an accurate (whatever, in this circumstance, accuracy would be) receptacle of reality. Reality, such as it is, is what brain makes of it. This Kantian ontological (theory of being) perspective had, in Hayek’s view, significant philosophical consequences or repercussions for epistemology. Since there is no ultimate reality apart from what brain makes of it, knowledge is not of ultimate essences but merely of mental states that themselves are liable to change during the lifetime of an organism or over the evolution of a species. Hayek’s ontology ultimately reduces the role of absolute knowledge absolutely."

"Half the time I read [Hayek's The Sensory Order] with amazement at the extent of his reading and comprehension … he is right … most of the time."

"I feel sure that no one has done this particular kind of job [i.e. a physicalistic system of psychology, mind, and consciousness] nearly so well."

"I must say that I have been deeply gratified by reading a book [Hayek's "The Sensory Order"] of which I had not been aware when I wrote my little essay on group selection theory … I was deeply impressed … I recommend this book to your attention [i.e. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences], as an exercise in profound thinking by a man who simply considers knowledge for its own sake. What impressed me most is his understanding that the key to the problem of perception is to comprehend the nature of classification. Taxonomists have struggled with this problem many times, but I think von Hayek considered this problem in a broader sense."

"What we call ‘mind’ is thus a particular order of a set of events taking place in some organism and in some manner related to but not identical with, the physical order of events in the environment."

"[Hayek] made a quite fruitful suggestion, made contemporaneously by the psychologist Donald Hebb, that whatever kind of encounter the sensory system has with the world, a corresponding event between a particular cell in the brain and some other cell carrying the information from the outside word must result in reinforcement of the connection between those cells. These day, this is known as a Hebbian synapse, but von Hayek quite independently came upon the idea. I think the essence of his analysis still remains with us."

"It is truly amazing that, with much less neuroscientific knowledge available, Hayek's model comes closer, in some respects, to being neurophysiologically verifiable than those models developed 50 to 60 years after his.""

"It is important not to identify the distinction between the phenomenal and the physical order with the distinction between either of these and what in ordinary language is described as the ‘real’ world. The contrast with which we are concerned is not between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ but between the differences of events in their effects upon each other and the differences in their effects on us. It is indeed doubtful whether on the plane on which we must examine these problems the term ‘real’ still has any clear meaning."

"The relation between the physical and the phenomenal order raises two distinct but related problems. The first of these problems presents the task of the physical sciences while the second creates the central problem of theoretical psychology. The task of the physical sciences is to replace that classification of events which our senses perform but which proves inadequate to describe the regularities in these events, by a classification which will put us in a better position to do so. The task of theoretical psychology is the converse one of explaining why these events, which on the basis of their relations to each other can be arranged in a certain (physical) order, manifest a different order in their effect on our senses."

"We shall eventually find it in the fact that these organisms are able within themselves to reproduce (or ‘build models of’) some of the relations which exist between the events in their environment."

"Friedrich Hayek … seems to have been the first to postulate what is the core of this paper, namely, the idea of memory and perception represented in widely distributed networks of interconnected cortical cells. Subsequently this idea has received theoretical support, however tangential, from the fields of cognitive psychology, connectionism and artificial intelligence. Empirically, it is well supported by the physiological study and neuroimaging of working memory."

"People are much poorer at almost every task when they are close to a cell phone"

"[Listening to podcasts while doing other things] doesn't feel like it eats away at other time, except—and this is the real key to me—it eats away at your brain's time to just be your brain on its own. If you're always filling your mind with the thoughts of others, how do you know what you think about anything? This is another place where I feel concerned about this attentionness of the modern world. ... all of a sudden the podcasts are just eating up all of the mental space of my life. I'm just listening to other people talk about things. ... it is eating away at chunks of time where the brain has nothing to do. And this again I feel like, goes right back into the idea of an attention-deficit disorder society."

"It is perhaps the saddest, most hopeless thing we can say about our culture that it is a culture of distraction. “Attention deficit” is a cultural disorder, a debasement of spirit, before it is an ailment in our children to be treated with Ritalin."

"Bodily delight ... is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge. And it is not our acceptance of it that is bad; what is bad is that most people misuse this learning and squander it and apply it as a stimulant on the tired places of their lives and as a distraction rather than as a way of gathering themselves for their highest moments."

"All the saints assiduously avoided distraction. Constantly, or at the very least as often as possible, they concentrated their thoughts within themselves, paying attention to every movement of the mind and heart, directing these according to the commands of the Gospels."

"Conversation injures more than it benefits. Men talk to escape from themselves, from sheer dread of silence. Reflection makes them uncomfortable, and they find distraction in a noise of words. They seek not the company of those who might enlighten and improve them, but that of whoever can divert and amuse them. Thus the intercourse which ought to be a chief means of education, is for the most part, the occasion of mental and moral enfeeblement."

"Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude."

"Our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn—and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness—all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us."

"The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one’s thoughts to cease to be aware of life."

"If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers, loses all its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand."

"the things which for the most part offer themselves in life, and which, to judge from their actions, men regard as the highest good, can be reduced to these three headings: riches, honour, and sensual pleasure. With these three the mind is so distracted that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other good."

"Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives—in short, all the technical laws and customs—which he encounters in office or factory."

"Just as the eye which constantly shifts its gaze, now turning to the right or to the left, now incessantly peering up and down, cannot see distinctly what lies before it, ... so too man's mind when distracted by his countless worldly cares cannot focus itself distinctly on the truth."

"The mind which does not have a place to turn or any stable base will undergo change from hour to hour and from minute to minute due to the variety of its distractions. ... By the things that come to it from outside it will be continually transformed."

"A person whose mind is distracted lives between the fangs of mental afflictions."

"We live in a politically polarized environment. In an ideological war one side or another will try to use language as a weapon. If you’re writing a report, one of the things reporters are taught to avoid is loaded language."

"Loaded words appeal to emotion rather than to reason. A copywriter using loaded language might describe a company as carrying on the tradition of free enterprise while claiming that a competitor is price gouging. A politician might call himself a progressive while calling an opponent a do-gooder."

"[to Bishop, after offering her anger management counseling] You would do that for me? I appreciate that. I really do. But I think I'd rather you just WASH THE FUCKING DISHES AND SHUT THE FUCK UP! Fucking psychobabble bullshit asshole!"

"Maria: Look, you wanna know why you look like Grandpa 1935? She has the key. So, you have two choices, all right? You can let her in on the whole alien conspiracy thing and hope that it shakes something loose from the dusty corners of her brain, or you can... No. You know what? That's not gonna work, so look... You have that one option, all right? Michael: No, no, no. What's my second option? Maria: You're not capable of it, I promise. Michael: Just say it. Maria: Form an emotional bond with Laurie. [Michael shakes his head] All right, fine. You don't like that answer, then go show her the secret alien handshake. Michael: [sighs] Okay, fine. What kind of psychobabble, Oprah crap do I gotta tell her? Maria: I can't put the words in your mouth, Michael. It's gotta come from you. It's gotta come from your-- it's gotta come from whatever organ you have sitting in for your heart. Just go over there and tell her in your own words that she can trust you, and make sure that she feels that you're being completely, emotionally honest."

"We've all had the experience of talking about a long-lost friend with someone, and then out of the blue the phone rings and it's that same long-lost friend. Famous psychobabble quack Carl Jung called these occurrences "synchronicity." Skeptics regard these synchronicities events as mere coincidences. Others posit a pie-in-the-sky cosmic connection linking all things. Take a guess on which side of the argument I fall."

"Brennan: Sweets has trust issues involving finding a home. Since he grew up an orphan, the anger he's sublimated has paralyzed him from developing a healthy perspective on what having a home means. That made him bond with us and our home so he didn't have to deal with his own emotional insecurities. Booth: Bones shoots from the outside! Three points! Sweets: Where's that psychobabble coming from? Booth: Well, you left one of your psychobabble books in our bathroom."

"Let's knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester, he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say we don't need Michael Jackson. He died, he had some talent, fine. There's men and women dying every day in Afghanistan. Let's give them the credit they deserve."

"Just as bad, to declare everyone an addict may be even more psychobabble about people's compulsive, self-indulgent habits in need of the one true cure from the latest self-help regimen."

"Joey: You know, maybe-- and this is just a shot in the dark-- she didn't mean to send it to the gossips at large. Maybe she's just trying to get some private closure, never dreamed she'd be subjected to the Oprah psychobabble of her life-lacking peers. Now, do you guys want something to eat, or should I just bring over a nice tray of bon-bons so you guys can hunker down and watch your stories?"

"The first is that of total milieu control — control of all information exchange and imagery in an environment that seeks to extend itself to internal controls of every kind."

"A second way in which milieu control is affects group members is linked to groups' conscious efforts in that regard. That is, the groups maintain milieu control especially by way of labeling recalcitrant members as 'subjective' or 'objective agent.' The former term is used for those who are thought to have harmed the organization by their mistakes or failures in groups' operations."