Daniel Dennett quotes - page 5

The trouble with the canons of scientific evidence [...] is that they virtually rule out the description of anything but oft-repeated, oft-observed, stereotypic behavior of a species, and this is just the sort of behavior that reveals no particular intelligence at all. (Daniel Dennett)
Good intentions and inspiration are simply not enough. View quote
Daniel Dennett
Wherever there is a conscious mind, there is a point of view. View quote
Daniel Dennett
I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love. Would a world with peace, but without love, be a better world? Not if the peace was achieved by drugging the love (and hate) out of us, or by suppression. Would a world with justice and freedom, but without love, be a better world? Not if it was achieved by somehow turning us all into loveless law-abiders with none of the yearnings or envies or hatreds that are wellsprings of injustice and subjugation. View quote
Daniel Dennett
Goodness comes in many forms, not just medicine and science. View quote
Daniel Dennett
Can a conscious entity do anything for itself that an unconscious. View quote
Daniel Dennett
Friends were anxious to learn if I had had a near-death experience, and if so, what effect it had had on my longstanding public atheism. View quote
Daniel Dennett
Evolution is all about processes that almost never happen. View quote
Daniel Dennett
It is commonly observed - but not commonly enough! View quote
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.' View quote
Daniel Dennett
In fact, of course, science is an unparalleled playground of the imagination, populated by unlikely characters with wonderful names (messenger RNA, black holes, quarks) and capable of performing the most amazing deeds: sub-atomic whirling dervishes that can be in several places - everywhere and nowhere - at the same time; molecular hoop-snakes biting their own tails; self-copying spiral staircases bearing coded instructions; miniature keys searching for the locks in which they fit, on floating odysseys in a trillion synaptic gulfs. (Daniel Dennett)
But if we ask where precisely in the brain that point of view is located, the simple assumptions that work so well on larger scales of space and time break down. It is now quite clear that there is no single point in the brain where all information funnels in, and this fact has some far from obvious consequences. View quote
Daniel Dennett