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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

Daniel Dennett

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 only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Care Effort Examination Life Meaning Worth
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
Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.
DANIEL DENNETT

Cost Law Object Science See
I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
DANIEL DENNETT

Better Philosophy Question Science Way Yourself
Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
DANIEL DENNETT

Failure Imagination Mistake Necessary Philosophy
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
Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
DANIEL DENNETT

Hold Life Paint Philosophy
True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.
DANIEL DENNETT

Crazy Help Religious Yourself
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
The earth has grown a nervous system, and it’s us.
DANIEL DENNETT

Earth Growth Nervous Ourselves
Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.
DANIEL DENNETT

Natural Religion Social System
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.
DANIEL DENNETT

Assumption Freedom Lying Philosophy Science
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
A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.
DANIEL DENNETT

Library Scholar Way
Now that mobile phones and the internet have altered the epistemic selective landscape in a revolutionary way, every religious organisation must scramble to evolve defences or become extinct.
DANIEL DENNETT

Evolution Internet Organization Phone Revolution Selection

The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

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The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

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