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What you can imagine depends on what you know.

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

Alone Children Desert Empathy
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
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
Go ahead and believe in God , if you like, but don’t imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.
DANIEL DENNETT

Belief Believe God Ground Imagination Science
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

Clear Detail Mistake Risk Time Yourself
You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe Seminar Yourself
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Contribution Destination Philosophy Quite Recognition Talk
There’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?
DANIEL DENNETT

Life Polite Religious Wasted Time Yourself
What you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dreams Imagination Knowledge Yourself
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT

Discover Endorsement Evolution Reason
Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
DANIEL DENNETT

Conscious Human Mystery Survive
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Afraid Cure Fantasy Hope Information Myself
Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.
DANIEL DENNETT

Care Knowledge Yourself
Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe God People Religious
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
DANIEL DENNETT

Effect Mindset Science
There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.
DANIEL DENNETT

Care Complete Guide Knowledge Limitation Yourself

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

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What you can imagine depends on what you know.

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