It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
DANIEL DENNETTWe 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.
More Daniel Dennett Quotes
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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.
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I’m the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.
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In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.
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Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species – us.
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Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.
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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
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The mind is the effect, not the cause.
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I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.
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The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.
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Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about – about what the issues really are – and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
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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.
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Words are memes that can be pronounced.
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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.
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Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.
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True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don’t have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.
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What you can imagine depends on what you know.
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I look around the world and see so many wonderful things that I love and enjoy and benefit from, whether it’s art or music or clothing or food and all the rest. And I’d like to add a little to that goodness.
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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.
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You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!
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Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
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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.
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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.
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Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.
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Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
DANIEL DENNETT