Best Dennett Quotes & Sayings

Darwin's "strange inversion of reasoning" and Turing's equally revolutionary inversion were aspects of a single discovery: competence without comprehension. Comprehension, far from being a Godlike talent from which all design must flow, is an emergent effect of systems of uncomprehending competence: natural selection on the one hand, and mindless computation on the other. These twin ideas have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but they still provoke dismay and disbelief in some quarters, which I have tried to dispel in this chapter. Creationists are not going to find commented code in the inner workings of organisms, and Cartesians are not going to find an immaterial res cogitans "where all the understanding happens". — Daniel C. Dennett

I think many people are terribly afraid of being demoted by the Darwinian scheme from the role of authors and creators in their own right into being just places where things happen in the universe. — Daniel Dennett

The point of asking questions is to find true answers; the point of measuring is to measure accurately; the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination ... In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture. — Daniel Dennett

Reasons for declaring belief is not are not the same as reasons for believing in god. — Daniel Dennett

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

prosaic, pedestrian example, but everything — Daniel C. Dennett

Does that mean that religious texts are worthless as guides to ethics? Of course not. They are magnificent sources of insight into human nature, and into the possibilities of ethical codes. Just as we should not be surprised to discover that ancient folk medicine has a great deal to teach modern hightech medicine, we should not be surprised if we find that these great religious texts hold versions of the very best ethical systems any human culture will ever devise. But, like folk medicine, we should test it all carefully, and take nothing whatever on faith. — Daniel C. Dennett

I don't myself need that role for God. My view is that creation itself, the universe itself, is the most wonderful thing deserving awe and respect. And that satisfies me as my substitute for God. — Daniel Dennett

I even agree that the concept of god helps some people lead better lives. That does happen. Don't ever forget it. I just think there are better ways to help people lead better lives. — Daniel Dennett

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. — Daniel Dennett

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. — Daniel Dennett

The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died — Daniel Dennett

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism. — Daniel Dennett

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? — Daniel C. Dennett

In order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. All the works of human genius can be understood in the end to be products of a cascade of generate-and-test procedures that are, at bottom, algorithmic and mindless — Daniel Dennett

We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn't admit it. — Daniel Dennett

These bizarre examples attempt to prove one conceptual point or another by deliberately reducing all but one underappreciated feature of some phenomenon to zero, so that what really counts can shine through. The twin earth example sets internal similarity to a maximum (you are whisked off to Twin Earth without being given a chance to register this huge shift) so that external context can be demonstrated to be responsible for whatever our intuition tells us. — Daniel C. Dennett

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness - by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. — Daniel Dennett

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it. — Daniel Dennett

Religions exist primarily for people to achieve together what they cannot achieve alone. - David Sloan Wilson, Darwin's Cathedral — Daniel C. Dennett

[I]n all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand times greater than the highest homicide rate in any American city. — Daniel Dennett

In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us. — Daniel Dennett

That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: 'the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. — Richard Dawkins

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score, tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound? — Daniel Dennett

If I were to give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I'd give it to Darwin for the idea of natural selection - ahead of Newton, ahead of Einstein - because his idea unites the two most disparate features of our universe: the world of purposeless, meaningless matter and motion, particles jostling on the one side, and the world of meaning and purpose, design on the other. — Daniel Dennett

If the best the roboticists can hope for is the creation of some crude, cheesy, second-rate, artificial consciousness, they still win. — Daniel Dennett

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 species around us, is not the enemy of human freedom, but one of its best friends. — Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He's redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher. — Marvin Minsky

Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. It is not just a wonderful idea. It is a dangerous idea. — Daniel Dennett

Some of my scientific friends and colleagues confess that they cannot for the life of them see why I don't abandon ship and join them. The short answer is that I have managed, by straddling the boundaries, to have the best of both worlds. By working with scientists I get a rich diet of fascinating and problematic facts to think about, but by staying a philosopher without a lab or a research grant, I get to think about all the theories and experiments and never have to do the dishes — Daniel C. Dennett

We adore babies because they're so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny. This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why. — 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

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. — Daniel C. Dennett

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself. — Daniel Dennett

The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us. — Daniel Dennett

The more you have invested in your religion, the more you will be motivated to protect that investment. Stark — Daniel C. Dennett

While we tend to conceive of the operations of the mind as unified and transparent, they're actually chaotic and opaque. There's no invisible boss in the brain, no central meaner, no unitary self in command of our activities and utterances. There's no internal spectator of a Cartesian theater in our heads to applaud the march of consciousness across its stage. — Daniel Dennett

It's this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what's it made of? It's made of neurons. It's made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation. — Daniel Dennett

A mountain climber foolishly climbing alone slips off a precipice and finds himself dangling at the end of his safety rope, a thousand feet above a ravine. Unable to climb the rope or swing to a safe resting spot, he calls out in despair: "Hallooo, hallooo! Can anybody help me?" To his astonishment, the clouds part, a beautiful light pours through them, and a mighty voice replies, "Yes, my son, I can help you. Take your knife and cut the rope!" The climber takes out his knife, and then he stops, and thinks and thinks. Then he cries out: "Can anybody else help me? — Daniel C. Dennett

Scientism is in fact a mug's game, a grab bag of disparate accusations that are mostly inaccurate or overblown. Nearly all articles criticizing scientism not only fail to convince us that it's dangerous, but don't even give any good examples of it. In the end, as Daniel Dennett argues, scientism is a completely undefined term. It just means science that you don't like. — Jerry A. Coyne

Our manifest image, unlike the daisy's ontology or Umwelt, really is manifest, really is subjective in a strong sense. It's the world we live in, the world according to us. — Daniel C. Dennett

What you can imagine depends on what you know. — Daniel C. Dennett

Consciousness is cerebral celebrity
nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and "symptomatic" effects
on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth. — Daniel Dennett

No matter how smart you are, you're smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available. — Daniel Dennett

In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all. — Daniel Dennett

Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments, it is apt to emerge again and again, independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.' — Daniel Dennett

Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us. — Daniel Dennett

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language. — Daniel Dennett

There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude, — Daniel Dennett

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