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Daniel Dennett

I'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colours and pains.

Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.

Portrait of Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett (born 1942) is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centres on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Dennett is a firm atheist and secularist as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement.

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Watch Dennett's TED talk on 'consciousness'

Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless.

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.