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

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
Alternatives
Chains
Economics
Endless
Died
Answer
Answers

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

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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
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In order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. All the works of human genius can be understood in the end to be products of a cascade of generate-and-test procedures that are, at bottom, algorithmic and mindless.
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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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Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
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People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children―especially, apparantly, their daughters.
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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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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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Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its member to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!
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There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
Daniel Dennett
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A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
Daniel Dennett
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... there could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains. There could be, I suppose, but there aren't-so my theory doesn't have to explain them.
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
Daniel Dennett
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Thanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, and our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn't kept pace.
Daniel Dennett
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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
Daniel Dennett
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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.
Daniel Dennett
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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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I don't myself need that role for God. My view is that creation itself, the universe itself, is the most wonderful thing deserving awe and respect. And that satisfies me as my substitute for God.
Daniel Dennett
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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
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To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
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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.
Daniel Dennett