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364b3df
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If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.
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science
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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99f357d
|
But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don't have free will, couldn't have fr..
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free-will
science
incompatibilism
sean-carroll
determinism
naturalism
consciousness
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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e2ec99b
|
Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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ba3dc91
|
If you want to teach your children that they are the tools of God, you had better not teach them that they are God's rifles, or we will have to stand firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no glory, no special rights, no intrinsic and inalienable merit. If you insist on teaching your children false-hoods--that the Earth is flat, that "Man" is not a product of evolution by natural selection--then you must expect, at the very least, that th..
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religion
science
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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1775558
|
Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckies..
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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755037d
|
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. --Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995
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science
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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60ba5b9
|
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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free-will
unconscious
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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22ebe66
|
People are afraid of being more ignorant than their children--especially, apparantly, their daughters.
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ignorance
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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5bd15eb
|
I should emphasize this, to keep well-meaning but misguided multiculturalists at bay: the theoretical entities in which these tribal people frankly believe -- the gods and other spirits -- don't exist. These people are mistaken, and you know it as well as I do. It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a very useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise in order to show respect for these people and their way..
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multiculturalism
relativism
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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6c3a379
|
But if it is true that human minds are themselves to a very great degree the creations of memes, then we cannot sustain the polarity of vision we considered earlier; it cannot be "memes versus us," because earlier infestations of memes have already played a major role in determining who or what we are. The "independent" mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth. There is a persisting tension between the biol..
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memetics
me
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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b18f0aa
|
To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant--inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
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evolution
science
creationism
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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9801f24
|
Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
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evolution
science
philosophy
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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8f63a3d
|
If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. Keeping that awestruck vision of the ..
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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02a1070
|
Those who feel guilty contemplating "betraying" the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so loyal--the "eternal" tradition introduced to them in their youth--is in fact the evolved product of many adjustments firmly but delicately made by earlier lovers of the same tradition."
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tradition
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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c8921d4
|
One reader of an early draft of this chapter complained at this point, saying that by treating the hypothesis of God as just one more scientific hypothesis, to be evaluated by the standards of science in particular and rational thought in general, Dawkins and I are ignoring the very widespread claim by believers in God that their faith is quite beyond reason, not a matter to which such mundane methods of testing applies. It is not just unsy..
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religion
science
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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dcccca0
|
Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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1088198
|
f you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only just scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.
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|
Daniel C. Dennett |
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c24e0ab
|
Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.
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science
philosophy
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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b2d8d80
|
One of the surprising discoveries of modern psychology is how easy it is to be ignorant of your own ignorance.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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072019c
|
I think we should stop treating ["God works in mysterious ways"] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, "Oh good! I love a mystery. Let's see if we can solve this one, too. Do you have any ideas?"
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philosophy
theology
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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4c3ad2f
|
I find that some philosophers think that my whole approach to qualia is not playing fair. I don't respect the standard rules of philosophical thought experiments. "But Dan, your view is so counterintuitive!" No kidding. That's the whole point. Of course it is counterintuitive. Nowhere is it written that the true materialist theory of consciousness should be blandly intuitive. I have all along insisted that it may be very counterintuitive. T..
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qualia
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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e1029ca
|
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."
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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5cb22cc
|
My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse--and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of--a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there!
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religion
science
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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2e7efd1
|
Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatical..
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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64fbd3d
|
If nobody cares, then it doesn't matter what happens to flowers.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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75a4937
|
Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t."
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philosophers
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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deb2086
|
No matter how smart you are, you're smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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c48c2a9
|
I didn't plan to become an atheist. I didn't even want to become an atheist. It's just that I had no choice. If I'm being honest with myself.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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d2316be
|
As the comedian Emo Phillips once said, "When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn't work in that way--so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!"
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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6b9efed
|
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. --Anonymous
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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78e87cd
|
Science, however, is not just a matter of making mistakes, but of making mistakes in public. Making mistakes for all to see, in the hopes of getting the others to help with the corrections.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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84adb85
|
There is a species of primate in South America more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering , under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapa..
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laughter
humor
popular-psychology
phenomenology
popular-science
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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0bbd36e
|
In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.
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free-will
indeterminism
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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f09903e
|
The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a..
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evolution
science
evolutionary-biology
dennett
scientific-theory
evidence
darwinism
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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4927541
|
Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly connecting and controlling the story we tell others - and ourselves - about who we are.
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story
self
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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ded9312
|
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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multiple-drafts-model
qualia
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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23eaa41
|
Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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6952823
|
Is he a dread genetic determinist, or a dread environmental determinist? He is neither, of course, for both these species of bogeyman are as mythical as werewolves. By increasing the information we have about the various causes of the constraints that limit our current opportunities, he has increased our powers to avoid what we want to avoid, prevent what we want to prevent. Knowledge of the roles of our genes, and the genes of the other sp..
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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e4388db
|
A good library has all the good books. A great library has all the books.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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32767af
|
Philosophy--in every field of inquiry--is what you have to do until you figure out what questions you should have been asking in the first place.
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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f96ea15
|
This 'web of discourses' as Robyn called it...is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world. (Clothes too, are part of the extended phenotype of Homo Sapiens almost every niche inhabited by that species.An illustrated encyclopedia of zoology should no more picture Homo Sapiens naked than it should picture Ursus arctus-the black bear- wearing a clown suit and riding a bicycle.
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science
humor
philosophy
dennett
philosophy-of-mind
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Daniel C. Dennett |
|
fa44d6c
|
It is not "scientism" to concede the objectivity and precision of good science, any more than it is history worship to concede that Napoleon did once rule in' France and the Holocaust actually happened. Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders."
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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c55cfeb
|
to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. You should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as..
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Daniel C. Dennett |
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4f716e4
|
You can't change your beliefs as an act of will, in the way you can decide to improve your skills with chainsaw or keyboard.
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Daniel C. Dennett |