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
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.
Interpretation
Philosophers often grapple with the complexity of issues and may take time to acknowledge differing perspectives as valuable.
This quote by Daniel Dennett highlights the uncertainty inherent in philosophical discourse. It suggests that philosophers engage with complex issues but may not always have clear answers. They often take time to recognize and appreciate contributions from others who approach problems differently, emphasizing the importance of diverse viewpoints in philosophical discussions.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in academic settings.
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.
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.
If the concept of consciousness were to fall to science, what would happen to our sense of moral agency and free will? If conscious experience were reduced somehow to mere matter in motion, what would happen to our appreciation of love and pain and dreams and joy? If conscious human beings were just animated material objects, how could anything we do to them be right or wrong?
The passing of time and all of its crimes is making me sad again. The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes is making me sad again. But don't forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life.. Yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine. But they were the only ones who ever stood by you
The dialectic cannot stop short before the conceptsof health and sickness, nor indeed before their siblings reason and unreason.
Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.
The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
Purity of morals [is] the only sure foundation of public happiness in any country.
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