Dennett, Daniel

"Cognitive science shows us we are less in control than we believe."

"Implicit processes drive much of our behavior."

"We are not transparent to ourselves, and that should humble us."

"Rationality is a skill that must be learned and practiced."

"Emotions are not obstacles to reason; they are part of our reasoning."

"Evolution created minds for survival, not for truth."

"Belief in God can be explained by cognitive biases without invoking theism."

"The design argument for God is undermined by understanding evolution."

"Religion addresses human concerns that science does not answer."

"We should separate our understanding of nature from our hopes about meaning."

"Scientific materialism is the best framework we have, even if it is incomplete."

"Zombies are logically possible but causally impossible."

"The explanatory gap is an epistemic problem, not an ontological one."

"Panpsychism is a desperate attempt to hold onto dualism."

"We should study how humans actually make decisions, not how ideal rationalists would."

"Cognitive biases are not flaws; they are features of efficient processing."

"The brain evolved to navigate the social world, not to discover physics."

"Our sense of agency is partly constructed by the brain."

"Decisions happen before we become conscious of them."

"This does not eliminate responsibility; it relocates where responsibility lies."

"The patterns we perceive are the patterns that mattered to our ancestors."

"We live in a user interface created by evolution."

"Art and music reveal truths about our minds, not about reality."

"Beauty is subjective in the way colors are subjective."

"That does not make beauty arbitrary or unreal."

"The wonder of existence is real, even if it does not require the supernatural."

"Mystery often surrounds ignorance rather than genuine inscrutability."

"We should work to shrink the domain of mystery by expanding knowledge."

"Technology changes how we think, for better and worse."

"The internet has amplified both human cooperation and human irrationality."