In Science, One Learns The Most By

The Brain Happens To Be A Meat Machine.

Daniel Dennett Is Our Best Current Philosopher. He Is The Next Bertrand Russell. Unlike Traditional Philosophers, Dan Is A Student Of Neuroscience, Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, And Psychology. He's Redefining And Reforming The Role Of The Philosopher.

A Couple Of Hundred Years From Now, Maybe [science Fiction Writers] Isaac Asimov And Fred Pohl Will Be Considered The Important Philosophers Of The Twentieth Century, And The Professional Philosophers Will Almost All Be Forgotten, Because They're Just Shallow And Wrong, And Their Ideas Aren't Very Powerful.

Each Part Of The Mind Sees Only A Little Of What Happens In Some Others, And That Little Is Swiftly Refined, Reformulated And "represented." We Like To Believe That These Fragments Have Meanings In Themselves - Apart From The Great Webs Of Structure From Which They Emerge - And Indeed This Illusion Is Valuable To Us Qua Thinkers - But Not To Us As Psychologists - Because It Leads Us To Think That Expressible Knowledge Is The First Thing To Study.

A Computer Is Like A Violin. You Can Imagine A Novice Trying first A Phonograph And Then A Violin. The Latter, He Says, Sounds Terrible. That Is The Argument We Have Heard From Our Humanists And Most Of Our Computer Scientists. Computer Programs Are Good, They Say, For Particular Purposes, But They Aren’t flexible. Neither Is A Violin, Or A Typewriter, Until You Learn How To Use It.