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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.

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
Words
Language
Genealogy
Trace
Evolution
Easier
Single
Word

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

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Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
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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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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... 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
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There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).
Daniel Dennett
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I think many people are terribly afraid of being demoted by the Darwinian scheme from the role of authors and creators in their own right into being just places where things happen in the universe.
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.
Daniel Dennett
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As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
Daniel Dennett
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery... a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist - and hope - that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.
Daniel Dennett
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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 other branch of the life sciences.
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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The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
Daniel Dennett
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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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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!
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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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
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YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots
Daniel Dennett
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In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.
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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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
Daniel Dennett