From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again: Difference between revisions

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 {{author|Daniel Dennett}} <br>
 ===On how to philosophise with a hammer===
-{{quote|''Truth cannot be out there — cannot exist independently of the human mind — because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own, unaided by the describing activities of humans, cannot.''
+{{quote|{{rorty on truth}}}}
-:- {{author|Richard Rorty}}, {{br|Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity}} }}
 {{author|Daniel Dennett}} has a knack for a pithy aphorism. He writes technical philosophy in clear, lively prose which invites engagement from enthusiastic amateurs like me. He is best known for 1995’s {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}, an exposition about natural selection. Dennett’s insight was to present [[evolution]] as an algorithm:
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 <center>***</center>
-This abstraction between data and language puts a back on the table a distinction between the “self” and “the brain that generates it” which Dennett has been very keen to banish. Isn’t this [[dualism]]? It might seem like it but, to co-opt another of Dennett’s coinages, it’s not ''greedy'' dualism. It doesn’t impose a supernatural creator or any other kind of sky-hook. It just observes something special is going on: if you want to go from binary code to rice pudding and income tax, you’ve got a bit more explaining to do.
+This abstraction between data and language puts a back on the table a distinction between the “self” and “the brain that generates it” which Dennett has been very keen to banish. Isn’t this [[dualism]]? It might seem like it but, to co-opt another of Dennett’s coinages, it’s not ''greedy'' dualism. It doesn’t impose a supernatural creator or any other kind of sky-hook. It just observes something special is going on: if you want to go from binary code to [[rice pudding and income tax]], you’ve got a bit more explaining to do.
 Dennett barely mentions language or [[metaphor]]. He spends a great deal of time talking about words and memes (in their technical sense: gene-like replicating units of cultural transmission, and not cat videos on YouTube).