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Book: From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
Quotes of Book: From Bacteria to Bach and
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  1. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    It's just that it would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once.
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  2. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT ARITHMETIC IS.
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  3. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    The real danger, I think, is not that machines more intelligent than we are will usurp our role as captains of our destinies, but that we will over-estimate the comprehension of our latest thinking tools, prematurely ceding authority to them far beyond their competence.
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  4. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    Words, I will argue, are the best example of memes, culturally transmitted items that evolve by differential replication-that is, by natural selection.
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  5. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    does require anyone who makes the trip to abandon some precious intuitions, but I think that I have at last found ways of making the act of jettisoning these "obvious truths" not just bearable but even delightful: it turns your head inside out, in a way, yielding some striking new perspectives on what is going on.
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  6. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    As I have often noted, a wagon with spoked wheels doesn't just carry grain or freight from place to place; it carries the brilliant idea of a wagon with spoked wheels. The
    book-quote

  7. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    Asked by a student for an example of infectious cultural junk that is hard to eradicate, I replied, "Well, it's like, when, like, you use a phrase which, like, isn't really, like, doing any serious work, but, like you go on, like, using it." To which the student replied, "I, like, understand the point, but I wanted, like, an example.
    book-quotemind

  8. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    If I burst into a house and yell to all assembled, "Put on the kettle!" I have uttered an imperative English sentence, but some will probably infer that I would like to have a cup of tea or other hot beverage, while another may further surmise that I feel myself at home here, and may in fact be the occupant of this house. Yet another person present, a monoglot Hungarian, may infer only that I speak English, and so does whomever I am addressing {well, it sounds like English to her}, while somebody really in the know will be instantly informed that I have decided after all to steam open that sealed envelope and surreptitiously read the letter inside in spite of the fact that it isn't addressed to me; a crime is about to be committed. What semantic information can be gleaned from the event depends on what information the gleaner already has accumulated. Learning that somebody speaks English can be a valuable update to your world knowledge, a design improvement that may someday pay big dividends.
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  9. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    Don't be afraid of a little metaphor; it won't bite you, but you should always make sure you know how to cash it in for unvarnished fact when you feel the urge.
    book-quotephilosophy-of-language

  10. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    Darwin's "strange inversion of reasoning" and Turing's equally revolutionary inversion were aspects of a single discovery: competence without comprehension. Comprehension, far from being a Godlike talent from which all design must flow, is an emergent effect of systems of uncomprehending competence: natural selection on the one hand, and mindless computation on the other. These twin ideas have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but they still provoke dismay and disbelief in some quarters, which I have tried to dispel in this chapter. Creationists are not going to find commented code in the inner workings of organisms, and Cartesians are not going to find an immaterial res cogitans "where all the understanding happens".
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  11. Daniel C. Dennett _ From Bacteria to Bach and

    That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.
    book-quoteknowledgereason
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