It is the nature of matter itself which is at stake; our despair follows from the belief that matter is machinelike.

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• How unfortunate that we should be forced to conclude that in its own sad reality nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colorless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly ...quote0.791
  Whitehead's lament on the bleakness of the mechanistic view of nature, capturing the spiritual cost.
• Consciousness and matter are different aspects of the same reality.claim0.774
  The identity hypothesis endorsed by von Weizsäcker and supported by Alexander.
• The issue is not whether the process will produce living structure if done faithfully — it will — but whether the maker has the stamina and will to keep rejecting versions that lack life.claim0.770
  Alexander's claim that the limiting factor in creating living structure is not method but the maker's persistence.
• Matter itself is not a mechanism: It is a potentially soul-like materiality which is essentially what we call self.claim0.768
  New cosmological assumption #7: the deepest claim about the nature of matter.
• I believe it is a necessary state of mind, without which it is not possible to reach the purity of structure needed to create a living thing.claim0.762
  The indispensability of the gift-to-God intention for creating life in buildings.
• The so-definite fact of this sadness which enters things, and the fact that through this sadness we—all of us, I, you, and the person I have never known—all experience life in those things—it is hard to believe that it is only a trick or a mental state.claim0.761
  The intersubjective reality of the sadness effect argues against its being merely psychological; it points to an objective quality.
• "It is certainly very hard, and perhaps impossible, for mere humans to anticipate and rule out in advance all the disastrous ways the machine could choose to achieve a specified objective."quote0.760
  Russell's statement opening Section 2 articulating the core motivation for the Contemplative AI approach
• "[W]e must confess that perception, and what depends upon it, is inexplicable in terms of mechanical reasons... we will find only parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception."quote0.758
  Load-bearing quote from Monadology §17 providing earliest clear statement of the Hard Problem