Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science...
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 March 1942
Daniel Dennett quotes about
atheist art looks
I look around the world and see so many wonderful things that I love and enjoy and benefit from, whether it's art or music or clothing or food and all the rest. And I'd like to add a little to that goodness.
philosophy philosophical humility
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.
fall competition atheism
Has it ever occurred to you how lucky you are to be alive? More than 99 percent of all the creatures that have ever lived have died without progeny, but not a single one of your ancestors falls into that group! ... Not a single one of your ancestors, all the way back to the bacteria, succumbed to predation before reproducing, or lost out in the competition for a mate.
religious crazy order
True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don't have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.
growing-up children scary
We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
answers philosopher scientist
I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
mistake giving risk
Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them - if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.
atheist religion president
We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn't admit it.
beauty attitude humble
If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.
dangerous-ideas cards-on-the-table law
Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea.
rude politeness obliged
There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude,
earth nervous nervous-system
The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.
mind causes effects
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
memes
Words are memes that can be pronounced.