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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

In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.
DANIEL DENNETT

Beginning Purpose Reason World
Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
DANIEL DENNETT

Failure Imagination Mistake Necessary Philosophy
We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
DANIEL DENNETT

Children Growth Knowledge Need Ourselves Worst
I think that what one can see from a Darwinian account is how the addition of culture in our species turns us into a very special sort of animal, an animal that can be a moral agent in a way that no other animal can be.
DANIEL DENNETT

Agency Animal Culture Moral See Thinking
I’m the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.
DANIEL DENNETT

Color Criticism Deny Experience Myself Pain People Repeat
AI makes philosophy honest.
DANIEL DENNETT

Artificial Honesty Intelligence Philosophy
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT

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

Alone Children Desert Empathy
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

Imagination Live Mystery Ourselves Philosophy
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

Condition Freedom Human Mistake Objection Oneself
Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe God People Religious
Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.
DANIEL DENNETT

Competition Consider Mindset Possible
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

Brain Depend Human Mindset Place Reach
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

Moral Ourselves Technology Understand
No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
DANIEL DENNETT

Easy Smart Way Yourself
You don’t get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.
DANIEL DENNETT

Advertisement Better Religion Subtract Yourself

It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

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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.

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