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 DENNETTIt is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
More Daniel Dennett Quotes
-
-
Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
DANIEL DENNETT -
There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
DANIEL DENNETT -
Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.
DANIEL DENNETT -
Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
DANIEL DENNETT -
We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be “informavores”, epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
DANIEL DENNETT -
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT -
It’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.
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 -
The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.
DANIEL DENNETT -
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 -
Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.
DANIEL DENNETT -
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
DANIEL DENNETT -
A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
DANIEL DENNETT -
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 -
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT