Science & Tech Quote by Daniel Dennett

Dennett is poking at a modern comfort blanket: the hope that morality can be “solved” the way physics solves motion or math proves theorems. The line works because it refuses that fantasy without sliding into despair. He’s not saying ethics is arbitrary; he’s saying it’s a different kind of human project, and pretending otherwise is how smart people smuggle in dogma under the lab coat.

The key move is the comparison. Mathematics and much of science generate consensus through shared methods: proofs, experiments, error correction. Ethics, by contrast, collides with plural values, competing intuitions, and the fact that moral “data” includes messy things like empathy, power, history, and self-interest. Dennett’s subtext is evolutionary and pragmatic: moral norms are tools societies adapt, not discoveries waiting in the universe like a new particle. That’s why disagreement is persistent, not a temporary glitch.

“This is a source of concern” is doing more work than it seems. It signals a political and cultural anxiety: if there’s no consensus mechanism, moral debates get decided by rhetoric, institutions, and force as much as by reasons. In an era where people invoke “science” to certify everything from parenting to policy, Dennett warns against moral scientism - and against the cynical backlash it breeds when science can’t deliver a final answer.

Contextually, this fits Dennett’s broader project: naturalizing big questions without flattening them. The intent isn’t to downgrade ethics, but to demand better intellectual hygiene: treat moral inquiry as ongoing negotiation, not as a field awaiting its Euclid.