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I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity.

— John Carew Eccles Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self (1989)

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More quotes by John Carew Eccles

In order that a "self" may exist there must be some continuity of mental experiences and, particularly, continuity bridging gaps of unconsciousness.

I can now rejoice even in the falsification of a cherished theory, because even this is a scientific success.

the Introduction of Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

The more we discover scientifically about the brain the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become.

How the Self Controls Its Brain (1994)

The hypothesis has been proposed that all mental events and experiences, in fact the whole of the outer and inner sensory experiences, are a composite of elemental or unitary mental experiences at all levels of intensity.

How the Self Controls Its Brain (1994)

The materialist critics argue that insuperable difficulties are encountered by the hypothesis that immaterial mental events can act in any way on material structures such as neurons.

How the Self Controls Its Brain (1994)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Carew Eccles (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.