Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Just as all men," he continues, "have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images."

If all bodies are seen in a mirror and the bodies themselves become transparent but the mirror images remain, my body will be where the mirror image is. And the criterion for something being my nose will be very different from its belonging to the body to which it is attached.

That the statement "Only the present experience is real" seems to mean something is due to familiar images we associate with it, images of things passing us in space.

They think in images of words.

It motivates the science of cognitive psychology, in which experimenters characterize the mind’s information structures and processes (arrays for images, tree structures for sentences, networks for long-term memory, and so on).

We shadow out the objects of our faith, say they, in sensible types and images, and render them more present to us by the immediate presence of these types, than it is possible for us to do merely by an intellectual view and contemplation.

Superstitious people are fond of the reliques of saints and holy men, for the same reason, that they seek after types or images, in order to enliven their devotion, and give them a more intimate and strong conception of those exemplary lives, which they desire to imitate.

I need not insist upon the more trite topics, employed by the sceptics in all ages, against the evidence of sense; such as those which are derived from the imperfection and fallaciousness of our organs, on numberless occasions; the crooked appearance of an oar in water; the various aspects of objects, according to their different distances; the double images which arise from the pressing one eye; with many other appearances of a like nature.

It seems also evident, that, when men follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images, presented by the senses, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but representations of the other.

But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object.