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All Samuel Alexander Quotes
In the perception of a tree we can distinguish the act of experiencing, or perceiving, from the thing experienced, or perceived.
Samuel Alexander

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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

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For psychological purposes the most important differences in conation are those in virtue of which the object is revealed as sensed or perceived or imaged or remembered or thought.
Samuel Alexander

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Hence, in desiring, the more the enjoyment is delayed, the more fancy begins to weave about the object images of future fruition, and to clothe the desired object with properties calculated to inflame the impulse.
Samuel Alexander

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

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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

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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

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Mental life is indeed practical through and through. It begins in practice and it ends in practice.
Samuel Alexander

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

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

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The sensory acts are accordingly distinguished by their objects.
Samuel Alexander

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

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The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis.
Samuel Alexander

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

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

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