Quotes About Logic

Ghazali frames his argument simply: "Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.

it attempts to show that the necessary conditions of logical and mathematical reasoning, which undergird the natural sciences as a human activity, require the rejection of all broadly materialist worldviews. Reppert

Reductio ad absurdum, or reduction to absurdity, is a form of argument that proves a statement by demonstrating that its opposite is absurd.

A good argument must obey the rules of logic; express true premises; and have premises more plausible than their opposites.

Antes de crear el mundo, Dios conocía todos los mundos lógicamente posibles que podía crear, poblados por todos los individuos lógicamente posibles que podía crear

Two statements are logically equivalent if it is impossible for one to be true and the other false. They are either both true or both false. One of the most important logical equivalences is called contraposition. It tells us that any statement of the form "If P, then Q" is logically equivalent to "If not-Q, then not-P." The example in the text of statements A and B is an example of contraposition.

There is a certain internal logic to Paul's argument which suggests that he sees a close link between denying God's true nature in idolatry and then going on to deny the true nature of human sexual relations: both are marks of sinfulness and alienation. This is all the more likely if the allusion to those deserving death in 1.32 derives directly from the prohibition of same-sex relations in Leviticus 20.13.

Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.

Turing believes machines think. Turing lies with men. Therefore machines cannot think.

To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.

I wouldn't be surprised if poetry - poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs - is how the world works. The world isn't logical; it's a song.

Stop making sense

Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better.

All fiction that does not violate the laws of physics is fact.

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

This inductively justifies the conclusion that induction cannot justify any conclusions.

So we seek explanations that remain robust when we test them against those flickers and shadows, and against each other, and against criteria of logic and reasonableness and everything else we can think of. And when we can change them no more, we have understood some objective truth. And, as if that were not enough, what we understand we then control. It is like magic, only real. We are like gods!

Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

There is an explanatory link between ought and is, and this provides one of the ways in which reason can indeed address moral issues.

Solipsism, the theory that only one mind exists and that what appears to be external reality is only a dream taking place in that mind, cannot be logically disproved.

Bad philosophy before the Enlightenment was typically of the because-I-say-so variety. When the Enlightenment liberated philosophy and science, they both began to make progress, and increasingly there was good philosophy. But, paradoxically, bad philosophy became worse.

After all, computers play chess mindlessly – by exhaustively searching the consequences of all possible moves – but humans achieve a similar-looking functionality in a completely different way, by creative and enjoyable thought.

What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?

A logical argument and a story are two ways of putting fragments in proper relationship and guessing where the whole sequence leads and how it gets there. This is the logic-versus-narrative axis. Spectrum Law: The mind is in business to make sense. Up-spectrum, it makes sense by making logic. Down-spectrum, it makes sense by creating stories.