American - Philosopher | March 28, 1942 -
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
MemoryActionRealityIndependent
As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
MindStupidYouEnemyWorstPanic
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
MindEffectCause
Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes; our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.
CultureResultBiologyFastMinds
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
WordsLanguageEvolutionSingleWord
We should get used to the idea that we'll probably never be able to find - and confirm - a good explanation of the ultimate origin of the universe, though I see no reason to believe that we can't press much further on this question than we have managed to date.
GoodBelieveUniverseFindNever
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.
GoodDayHorizonQuestionsLookBig
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.'
GoodDesignBiologyEvolutionCall
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.
InternetLandscapeNowWayBecome
Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.
ScienceGreatestExpressionBeen
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