Quotes About Logic

I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.

most historical relationships are ironical in character, or, to put it differently, that the course of history has little to do with the intrinsic logic of ideas that served as causal factors in it

But therein lies the logician's trap: past data from real life constitute a sequence of events rather than a set of independent observations, which is what the laws of probability demand.

Whetstone of Witte introduced the symbol "_" because "noe 2 thynges can be more equalle than a pair of paralleles.

Common sense is in medicine the master workman.

We had to be up early in the morning. We had a goat race to go to... We asked the old man confident in the knowledge that he, like every Frenchman, would be an expert. "The goats who make the most droppings before the race are likely to do well. An empty goat is faster than a full goat. C'est logique.

Science is about truth,

The Word is formed only when it is performed; it exists in the world only when it is lived out by a subject who dwells fully in the world. Is this not the logic of incarnation?

illusion of rationality." We are all vulnerable to this illusion. It happens when ideas or assumptions seem logical in a plan, spreadsheet model, PowerPoint, or memo, yet they haven't been validated on the ground or in the real world.

scepticism by means of classical arguments, the most effective means initially to promote arousal. And

This approach shares an assumption, one dating from the ancient Greeks, that human reasoning can be a source of knowledge.

Let us always remember Abraham Lincoln's undeservedly neglected riddle: How many legs has a dog got if you call a tail a leg? The answer, said Lincoln, and he was right, is four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Add to that the age-old principle of Ockham's razor in problem-solving: "If there are a number of possible solutions, the simplest one, based on the fewest assumptions, is most likely to be correct.

Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn't evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will.

We can use logic when we want to, of course. We have tools of reason at our command; but according to at least some experts1 we have those tools not to glean truth from falsehood but to help us win arguments; to make others do what we want; to use as a weapon. It's rhetoric and manipulation that evolution selected for: logic just tagged along as a side effect. Sweeping oratory, rational debate, it's all just a way to bend others to your will.

properly basic belief' is any belief that's rational to hold without its being based on any other beliefs

Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.

Herr Docktor Getwin Mittelmind (PhD, MD, BFA, University of Salzburg) was a spark who specialized in mad psychology. A specialized field to be sure. He was not locked away in Castle Heterodyne because he built giant anteaters. No, he was locked away in Castle Heterodyne because he could take a perfectly ordinary group of people and within six days they would build a giant anteater—because it was the logical thing to do.

In the world of alters, anything is possible. This is because alters are partly based upon make-believe, and the underiying reasoning is not derived from normal linear logic but consists of 'trance logic', the toleration of completely unrealistic and contradictory ideals which might be found in a state of hypnosis.

Like everyone else, scientists have intuitions. Indeed, hunches and flashes of insight—the sense that something is true even if you can't prove it—have been behind countless breakthroughs. The interplay between System 1 and System 2 can be subtle and creative.

That is normal human behavior. We tend to go with strong hunches. System 1 follows a primitive psycho-logic: if it feels true, it is. In the Paleolithic world in which our brains evolved, that's not a bad way of making decisions. Gathering

The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.

One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.

In order to decide, judge; in order to judge, reason; in order to reason, decide (what to reason about).