Quote

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

Daniel Dennett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Daniel Dennett
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 28
Cognitive Scientist
Philosopher
Professor
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Daniel Clement Dennett III
Daniel Clement Dennett
Children
Raised
Sentient
Alone
Island
Child
Interaction
Language
Lacking
Social
Islands
Stills
Empathy
Still
Desert
Without
Thus

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

Image
I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
Daniel Dennett
Image
The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died
Daniel Dennett
Image
Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.
Daniel Dennett
Image
We should get used to the idea that we'll probably never be able to find - and confirm - a good explanation of the ultimate origin of the universe, though I see no reason to believe that we can't press much further on this question than we have managed to date.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
If the best the roboticists can hope for is the creation of some crude, cheesy, second-rate, artificial consciousness, they still win.
Daniel Dennett
Image
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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
Image
People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children―especially, apparantly, their daughters.
Daniel Dennett
Image
I'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.
Daniel Dennett
Image
I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.
Daniel Dennett
Image
... 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.
Daniel Dennett
Image
I don't think there is any religious revival. I think what we are hearing, the furor, is merely the hysterical response of the churches the handwriting on the wall that they are seeing.
Daniel Dennett
Image
The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences.
Daniel Dennett
Image
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