"We've seen it before people know now that if they do a big shooting spree like this, they will get attention, " says philosopher Julian Baggini.

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He is actually a calm man, an admirer of Seneca, a Roman philosopher, whom he says, was the essence of calmness.

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"For the last 20 years, the buzz about consciousness has been such that all kinds of smart people in all kinds of fields say this is mount Olympus, " says Daniel Dennett, the Tufts philosopher whose work has helped guide cognitive science.

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Philosopher Mark Sheehan, of Oxford University's James Martin 21st Century School, says moral complexities do arise because of the relationship between the artist and the art in the mind of the audience.

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Dennett, a Tufts University philosopher whose work on consciousness and free will has fundamentally influenced many scientists who study the brain, says he does not think Lanza's thinking meets the standard of a philosophical theory either.

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