Mental Causation Quotes

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

The law of attraction is the law of creation. Quantum physicists tell us that the entire Universe emerged from thought!

Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider'd as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from cause to effects and effects to causes, according to their experienc'd union.

There is no matter as such—mind is the matrix of all matter.

...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.

All the physical comes from the mental.

The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion.

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions.

Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical.

There was never anything that did not proceed from a thought.

All your behavior results from the thoughts that precede it.

Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.

Consciousness does affect matter.

If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. It cuts its own throat.

Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?

To separate mind from body doesn't make any sense.

A theory that denies that thoughts can regulate actions does not lend itself readily to the explanation of complex human behavior.

No matter what the problem is, our experiences are just outer effects of inner thoughts.

Man is the product of two forces, action and reaction, which make him think.

Every thought has a consequence. And every experience has a causative thought behind it.

There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter.

How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

Mind is the cause; everything else is effect.

The worlds of thought and action overlap. What you think has a way of becoming true.