Daniel Dennett Quotes

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear. - Daniel Dennett

There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory). - Daniel Dennett

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern. - Daniel Dennett

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! - Daniel Dennett

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush. - Daniel Dennett

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

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

Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. - Daniel Dennett

After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures, great and small, to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being just perhaps the chooser of the laws. - Daniel Dennett

[Moreover, the eye contains a big flaw: the retina is inside out. Why would an almighty designer do such a thing?] No intelligent designer, ... would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of the hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process. - Daniel Dennett

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