Daniel Dennett Quotes on Knowledge
Daniel C. Dennett (1942–2024), the American philosopher whose Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), and From Bacteria to Bach and Back (2017) shaped late-twentieth-century philosophy of mind and the broader Anglophone naturalist programme, defended a thoroughgoing third-person methodology that he called heterophenomenology. The framework treats the subject's own reports as data to be explained alongside other behavioural and neural evidence rather than as authoritative first-person disclosures of inner content, and the corresponding intentional stance — the strategy of treating an entity as if it had beliefs, desires, and rationality — supplies the principal cognitive tool by which Dennett extends the analysis from human cognition through animal cognition to the design of evolutionary processes themselves.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Daniel Dennett:
“Darwin's idea is a universal acid that eats through every traditional concept it touches.”
-
Attributed to Daniel Dennett:
“There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.”
-
Attributed to Daniel Dennett:
“If you have a good argument, you do not need to misrepresent your opponent's view.”
-
“Daniel Dennett in a panel under the title "Can Rationality Be Taught?" at TAM 2014.”
We really have to think of reasoning the way we think of romance, it takes two to tango. There has to be a communication. -
“Atheism Tapes, part 6", BBC TV documentation of Jonathan Miller, produced by Richard Denton, recorded 2003, broadcast 2004”
I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra. -
“Atheism Tapes, part 6", BBC TV documentation of Jonathan Miller, produced by Richard Denton, recorded 2003, broadcast 2004”
I was once interviewed in Italy and the headline of the interview the next day was wonderful. I saved this for my collection it was... "YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots" and I thought that's exactly right. Yes we have a soul, but it's mechanical. But it's still a soul, it still does the work that the soul was supposed to do. It is the seat of reason. It is the seat of moral -
“Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.”
Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (2005), p. 2