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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

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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
Believe
Beings
Ache
People
Design
Preservation
Humanity
Extra
Culture
Extras
Human
Medium
Humans
Mediums
Right
Communication
Different
Species
Vastly

More quotes by Daniel Dennett

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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.
Daniel Dennett
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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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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.
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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died
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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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YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots
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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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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.
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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
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Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
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The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness - by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.
Daniel Dennett
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The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.
Daniel Dennett
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There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.
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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...but I also can't prove that mushrooms could not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us.
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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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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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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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
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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