“I was once interviewed in Italy and the headline of the interview the next day was wonderful. I saved this for my collection it was… "YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots" and I thought that's exactly right. Yes we have a soul, but it's mechanical. But it's still a soul, it still does the work that the soul was supposed to do. It is the seat of reason. It is the seat of moral responsibility. It's why we are appropriate objects of punishment when we do evil things, why we deserve the praise when we do good things. It's just not a mysterious lump of wonder stuff… that will out live us.”

— Daniel Dennett

"Atheism Tapes, part 6", BBC TV documentation of Jonathan Miller, produced by Richard Denton, recorded 2003, broadcast 2004

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I was once interviewed in Italy and the headline of the interview the next day was wonderful. I saved this for my colle…" by Daniel Dennett?

Daniel Dennett 86

American philosopher 1942

Related quotes

“Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Letter to Henri Cazalis (April 1866), published in Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé (1988), p. 60.
Observations
Context: Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowl edge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!

“Kind souls, you wonder why, love you,
When you, you wonder why, love none.
We love, Fool, for the good we do,
Not that which unto us is done!”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book I, Canto VI, IV A Riddle Solved.
The Angel In The House (1854)

“My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

“It is the natural duty of souls to do their work in the body; are we to suppose that when once they leave the body they spend all eternity in idleness?”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XX. On Transmigration of Souls, and how Souls are said to migrate into brute beasts.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: It is the natural duty of souls to do their work in the body; are we to suppose that when once they leave the body they spend all eternity in idleness? Again, if the souls did not again enter into bodies, they must either be infinite in number or God must constantly be making new ones. But there is nothing infinite in the world; for in a finite whole there cannot be an infinite part. Neither can others be made; for everything in which something new goes on being created, must be imperfect. And the world, being made by a perfect author, ought naturally to be perfect.