Daniel Dennett passed away today at the age of 82.
He was widely read and fiercely debated, leaving a significant impact on the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, and the study of consciousness.
10 timeless wisdom from the world renowned philosopher 🧵
He was widely read and fiercely debated, leaving a significant impact on the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, and the study of consciousness.
10 timeless wisdom from the world renowned philosopher 🧵
1) “The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”
― Daniel Dennett
― Daniel Dennett
2) “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.”
― Daniel Dennett
― Daniel Dennett
3) “We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age.
It is scary, but the alternative is worse.”
― Daniel Dennett
It is scary, but the alternative is worse.”
― Daniel Dennett
4) “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.”
― Daniel Dennett
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.”
― Daniel Dennett
5) “What you can imagine depends on what you know.”
― Daniel Dennett
― Daniel Dennett
6) “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
― Daniel Dennett
7) “The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them – especially not from yourself.
Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.”
— Daniel Dennett
Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.”
— Daniel Dennett
8) “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
Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.”
— Daniel Dennett
9) “People ache to believe that we human beings are vastly different from all other species – and they are right!
We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture.”
— Daniel Dennett
We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture.”
— Daniel Dennett
10) “There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.”
— Daniel Dennett
— Daniel Dennett
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