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
religious atheism way
There's no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) 'Do you realize you've wasted your life?
religion world causes
In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.
answers alternatives economics
The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died
problem ethical mathematics
The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.
hero past risk
In short, we need to recover the courage we celebrate in our heroes, and in particular, the courage to tolerate, for the sake of a free society, a level of risk we hardly ever imagined in the past.
illusion found phenomenon
Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us.
smart effort matter
No matter how smart you are, you're smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
knowledge library way
A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.
consciousness more-time better-than-you
If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.
fighting simple four
Up till now, we can suppose, nervous systems solved the Now what do I do? problem by a relatively simple balancing act between a strictly limited repertoire of actions - if not the famous four F's (fight, flee, feed, or mate), then a modest elaboration of them.
order brain mind
The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.
evolution language genealogy
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
stupid worst-enemy self
As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
religious phones landscape
Now that mobile phones and the internet have altered the epistemic selective landscape in a revolutionary way, every religious organisation must scramble to evolve defences or become extinct.