Quotes About Evidence

There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.

Both humans and dogs love to play well into adulthood, and individuals from both species occasionally display evidence of having a conscience.

If the evidence of the gospel depended only on history, and such reasonings as learned men only are capable of, it would be above the reach of far the greatest part of mankind. But persons with but an ordinary degree of knowledge are capable, without a long and subtile train of reasoning, to see the divine excellency of the things of religion: they are capable of being taught by the Spirit of God, as well as learned men.

And many other places to the like purpose. And therefore men can be justified by their words, no otherwise than as evidences or manifestations of what is in the heart. And it is thus that Christ speaks of the words in this very place, as is evident by the context, ver. 34, 35. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart," &c. The words

So in the sense in which the apostle James seems to use the word justify for manifestative justification, a man is justified not only by faith, but also by works; as a tree is manifested to be good, not only by immediately examining the tree, but also by the fruit,664 Prov. xx. 11. "Even a child is known by his doing, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.

Always give more weight to peer-reviewed research than to results announced solely in the media.

In recent philosophy there has been a growing awareness of the gap between the abstract principles proposed by philosophers and the ways in which people actually think. The kind of rationality admired in the theory of knowledge is idealization. In the real world people have to act on beliefs often based on fragmentary and unreliable evidence.

In the age of social media, cyber trolls, and fake news, it is a national and global crisis that people so readily follow their feelings to embrace outlandish stories about their enemies. A community in which members hold one another accountable for using evidence to substantiate their assertions is a community that can, collectively, pursue truth in the age of outrage.

As scholars challenge one another within a community that shares norms of evidence and argumentation and that holds one another accountable for good reasoning, claims get refined, theories gain nuance, and our understanding of truth advances.

There is now a great deal of evidence that religions do in fact help groups to cohere, solve free rider problems, and win the competition for group-level survival.

many moral matrices coexist within each nation. Each matrix provides a complete, unified, and emotionally compelling worldview, easily justified by observable evidence and nearly impregnable to attack by arguments from outsiders.

When we want to believe something, we ask ourselves, "Can I believe it?" Then, we search for supporting evidence, and if we find even a single piece of pseudo-evidence, we can stop thinking. We now have permission to believe. We have justification, in case anyone asks. In contrast, when we don't want to believe something, we ask ourselves, "Must I believe it?" Then we search for contrary evidence, and if we find a single reason to doubt the claim, we can dismiss it.

But when people know in advance that they'll have to explain themselves, they think more systematically and self-critically. They are less likely to jump to premature conclusions and more likely to revise their beliefs in response to evidence.

sesgo de confirmación-, la tendencia a buscar e interpretar nuevas pruebas de formas que confirmen lo que uno piensa. A las personas se les da muy bien cuestionar las afirmaciones hechas por otros, pero cuando se trata de su creencia, entonces es su posesión, casi como una hija, y en ese caso lo que quieren es protegerla, no cuestionarla y arriesgarse a perderla.

Wason called this phenomenon the confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out and interpret new evidence in ways that confirm what you already think. People are quite good at challenging statements made by other people, but if it's your belief, then it's your possession—your child, almost—and you want to protect it, not challenge it and risk losing it.19

The author found participants in a study able to come up with more reasons to support their position but not anymore likely to change their minds based on contradictory evidence. In effect, they enlist their IQ on behalf of their instincts.

skilled arguers Ã¢â'¬Â¦ are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views."50

each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is.

We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.43 Yet friends can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves: they can challenge us, giving us reasons and arguments (link 3) that sometimes trigger new intuitions, thereby making it possible for us to change our minds.

had found evidence for Hume's claim. I had found that moral reasoning was often a servant of moral emotions, and this was a challenge to the rationalist approach that dominated moral psychology.

There is some pretty solid scientific evidence that babies in the womb can learn songs and sounds, one of the most important sounds being mommy's voice.

Little questions," continued Facher. "Little bricks build big walls. Too many of you are afraid to ask simple questions. The tools of the trade are the English language and the rules of evidence.

Donald Trump of the crime scene," I said.