A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
DANIEL DENNETTA child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
DANIEL DENNETTThere is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.
DANIEL DENNETTHuman freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species – us.
DANIEL DENNETTAI makes philosophy honest.
DANIEL DENNETTThere is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude.
DANIEL DENNETTLife itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.
DANIEL DENNETTGo 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 DENNETTThanks 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 DENNETTThe secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
DANIEL DENNETTIn 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 DENNETTWe 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 DENNETTNot a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.
DANIEL DENNETTI 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 DENNETTThere’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?
DANIEL DENNETTIt is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
DANIEL DENNETTThe chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT