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 DennettRead
There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).
Interpretation
Consciousness is influenced by various factors which shape our actions and memories.
This quote by Daniel Dennett suggests that our understanding of consciousness is not a standalone reality; instead, it is significantly shaped by the different sources of content that we engage with. These sources affect how we perceive reality, how we act in the world, and ultimately how we remember our experiences, emphasizing the interconnectedness of mind, action, and memory.
In practice
In a psychology lecture discussing the nature of consciousness.
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.
Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
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.
You are dealing with people who have taken the responsibility of killing their own because they think that they are right, they think that they are serving the interests of their people. They not going to give that up easily, just because you've shown up.
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
This is the great work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God, and toexpect temptation to his last breath.
Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.
Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.
Now conscience wakes despair That slumber'd,-wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse.
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