Samuel Alexander Quotes

Australian - Philosopher | January 6, 1859 - September 13, 1938

Such being the nature of mental life, the business of psychology is primarily to describe in detail the various forms which attention or conation assumes upon the different levels of that life.

Samuel Alexander

LifeNatureBusinessDetailMental

Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience.

Samuel Alexander

MemoriesExperienceExpectationsMore

The perceptive act is a reaction of the mind upon the object of which it is the perception.

Samuel Alexander

MindPerceptionReactionActObject

Psychology is the science of the act of experiencing, and deals with the whole system of such acts as they make up mental life.

Samuel Alexander

LifeSciencePsychologyUpSystem

The interval between a cold expectation and a warm desire may be filled by expectations of varying degrees of warmth or by desires of varying degrees of coldness.

Samuel Alexander

ColdExpectationsWarmDesireWarmth

Curiosity begins as an act of tearing to pieces or analysis.

Samuel Alexander

CuriosityPiecesActAnalysisBegins

We cannot therefore say that mental acts contain a cognitive as well as a conative element.

Samuel Alexander

SayMentalWellCognitiveCannot

What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.

Samuel Alexander

TreeMindProblemMeaningPhilosophy

An expectation is a future object, recognised as belonging to me.

Samuel Alexander

FutureMeBelongingExpectation

An object is not first imagined or thought about and then expected or willed, but in being actively expected it is imagined as future and in being willed it is thought.

Samuel Alexander

FutureThoughtFirstBeingObject

But though cognition is not an element of mental action, nor even in any real sense of the word an aspect of it, the distinction of cognition and conation has if properly defined a definite value.

Samuel Alexander

ValueActionRealMentalSenseEven

But unfortunately Locke treated ideas of reflection as if they were another class of objects of contemplation beside ideas of sensation.

Samuel Alexander

ReflectionIdeasClassContemplation

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