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Portrait of Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett

(1942–2024) Philosopher United States

120 quotes in 841 categories

Daniel Dennett observes that churches have given us music and architecture, yet they also cause harm. He says the secret of happiness is finding something larger than yourself and devoting yourself to it. He adds that memes spread only through the human mind, which itself is shaped by those memes.

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Daniel Dennett was a philosopher from the United States, best known for Convergence of Biogenetics, Cognitive Neuroscience and Computing.

Quick Facts About Daniel Dennett

Born: March 28, 1942
Died: April 19, 2024
Nationality: United States
Profession: Philosopher
Notable works: Convergence of Biogenetics, Cognitive Neuroscience and Computing

About Daniel Dennett

His work focuses on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, especially how these areas connect with evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

Quotes by Daniel Dennett

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

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The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us.

Earth

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The mind is the effect, not the cause.

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There are no good reasons to believe in god.

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AI makes philosophy honest

Honest

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It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

Accuracy

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A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.

Knowledge

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We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn't admit it.

Atheist

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There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

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True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.

Atheist

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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died

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There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude,

Inspirational

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There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

Atheism

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In short, we need to recover the courage we celebrate in our heroes, and in particular, the courage to tolerate, for the…

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Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion!

Cosmology

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Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

Expression

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Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.

Breaking down

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The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every…

Anatomy

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The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a…

Character

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Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

Darwin

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If the best the roboticists can hope for is the creation of some crude, cheesy, second-rate, artificial consciousness, they still win.

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You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and…

Atheism

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In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as…

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Try to acquire the weird practice of savoring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, when…

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I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all…

Buddhism

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If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after…

Computers

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The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated…

Choices

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“The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make…

Academia

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We should get used to the idea that we'll probably never be able to find - and confirm - a good explanation…

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Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species- back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication…

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“Some of my scientific friends and colleagues confess that they cannot for the life of them see why I don't abandon ship…

Friendship

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I have shown that those who deplore Artificial Intelligence are also those who deplore the evolutionary accounts of human mentality: if human…

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Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever…

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“These bizarre examples attempt to prove one conceptual point or another by deliberately reducing all but one underappreciated feature of some phenomenon…

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The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes…

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“Looking on the bright side, let us remind ourselves of what has happened in the wake of earlier demystifications. We find no…

Bright side

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After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures great and small to being the designer of the laws…

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There's no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) 'Do you realize you've wasted your life?

Atheism

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You can't get through seminary and come out believing in God!

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The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

Happiness

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Daniel Dennett by topic

Religion (26) People (15) Evolution (14) Thinking (13) Humans (12) Atheism (12) Life (11) Psychology (10) Mind (10)