“Consciousness is an incredibly delicate subject because it offend. It's a subject that scientific groups kept away from. They said it was a philosophical concept.”
The simple things are hardest (2005)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Igor Aleksander 9
scientist 1937Related quotes

“Consciousness becomes a matter of philosophical debate; it's not scientifically reliable.”
"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
"Towards a queer dharmology of sex," Culture and Religion, vol. 5, no. 2 (2004)
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 175

These deep-rooted affinities are normally passed over in pious silence; they nevertheless constitute, from Epicurus to Spinoza and Hegel, the premises of Marx's materialism. They are hardly ever mentioned, for the simple reason that Marx himself did not mention them, and so the whole of the Marx-Hegel relationship is made to hang on the dialectic, because this Marx did talk about!
Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (1976), "Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?"
A - F, Louis Althusser

The Relation of the State to the Invididual (1890)
Context: Anarchism, in dealing with this subject, has found it necessary, first of all, to define its terms. Popular conceptions of the terminology of politics are incompatible with the rigorous exactness required in scientific investigation. To be sure, a departure from the popular use of language is accompanied by the risk of misconception by the multitude, who persistently ignore the new definitions; but, on the other hand, conformity thereto is attended by the still more deplorable alternative of confusion in the eyes of the competent, who would be justified in attributing inexactness of thought where there is inexactness of expression. Take the term "State," for instance, with which we are especially concerned today. It is a word that is on every lip. But how many of those who use it have any idea of what they mean by it? And, of the few who have, how various are their conceptions! We designate by the term "State" institutions that embody absolutism in its extreme form and institutions that temper it with more or less liberality. We apply the word alike to institutions that do nothing but aggress and to institutions that, besides aggressing, to some extent protect and defend. But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care. Some champions of the State evidently consider aggression its principle, although they disguise it alike from themselves and from the people under the term "administration," which they wish to extend in every possible direction. Others, on the contrary, consider defence its principle, and wish to limit it accordingly to the performance of police duties. Still others seem to think that it exists for both aggression and defence, combined in varying proportions according to the momentary interests, or maybe only whims, of those happening to control it.

“It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.”
Religion and Literature (1935)

Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 5