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There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

Daniel Dennett

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Daniel Dennett
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 28
Cognitive Scientist
Philosopher
Professor
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Daniel Clement Dennett III
Daniel Clement Dennett
Thing
Philosophical
Honesty
Integrity
Conducted
Humility
Assumptions
Philosophy
Underlying
Free
Assumption
Science
Consideration
Without
Caring

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

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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.
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YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots
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Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
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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.
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Human freedom is not an illusion it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us.
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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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Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
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A scholar is just a library's way of making another library.
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It stands to reason that we love chocolate cake because it is sweet. Guys go for girls like this because they are sexy. We adore babies because they're so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny. This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.
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The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
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I even agree that the concept of god helps some people lead better lives. That does happen. Don't ever forget it. I just think there are better ways to help people lead better lives.
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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.
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
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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 every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.
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Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion!
Daniel Dennett
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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.
Daniel Dennett
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I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
Daniel Dennett
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There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
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I'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.
Daniel Dennett