Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares. Daniel Dennett More Quotes by Daniel Dennett More Quotes From Daniel Dennett What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives. Daniel Dennett philosopher roles philosophy It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us. Daniel Dennett yarn humility brain The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement. Daniel Dennett evolution reason way In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure. Daniel Dennett information running long 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. Daniel Dennett risk mistake giving True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Daniel Dennett crazy atheist religious Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter. Daniel Dennett treasure church done Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare. Daniel Dennett given revolutionary expression Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us. Daniel Dennett phenomenon illusion found 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. Daniel Dennett risk hero past An inert historical fact is any fact about a perfectly ordinary arrangement of matter in the world at some point in the past that is no longer discernible, a fact that has left no footprints at all in the world today. Daniel Dennett historical ordinary past I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people. Daniel Dennett taught-us religious thinking A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being. Daniel Dennett empathy islands children In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us. Daniel Dennett elude-us doubt years People ache to believe that we human beings are vastly different from all other species - and they are right! We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture. Daniel Dennett communication believe people The point of asking questions is to find true answers; the point of measuring is to measure accurately; the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination... In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture. Daniel Dennett asking-questions goal truth Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language. Daniel Dennett genealogy evolution language How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound? Daniel Dennett music reading imagination Highly technical philosophical arguments of the sort many philosophers favor are absent here. That is because I have a prior problem to deal with. I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not such much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored. Daniel Dennett philosophical atheism fall Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.' Daniel Dennett design evolution successful
