Quotes About Reasoning

Formal logic is mathematics, and there are philosophers like Wittgenstein that are very mathematical, but what they're really doing is mathematics - it's not talking about things that have affected computer science; it's mathematical logic.

The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

You know, I've taught philosophy for years and one argues in the hypothetical all the time.

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

Reports in Washington show that our reasoning was just like that of your physicists. With all this information available, at least to privileged persons, I cannot understand why it is generally held in the United States that we completely missed the basic principle of the bomb until after Hiroshima.

Was it probably true that reasoning beings were equal? It seemed more like a belief than a fact, even if I agreed with it. If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at point of illogic, an article of faith?

If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitable end up at a point of illogic, an article of faith? Even an indisputable fact must be chosen as the place to start reasoning, given weight by a mind that believed in its worth.

You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.

Imitation and repetition are the keys to discipline with the young child, not reasoning or punishment.

There can be a reason for a reason already supplied and a reason for the reason for the initial reason.

When you have got a new idea, read Aristotle to find out what's wrong with it.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

First you decide to suffer, then search for reasons that justify your suffering!

On the surface, Thorne's mathematical reasoning is impeccable. Einstein's equations indeed show that wormhole solutions allow for time to pass at different rates on either side of the wormhole, so that time travel, in principle, is possible. The trick, of course, is to create the wormhole in the first place.

It is impossible to do math and be frightened at the same time.

Logic is not a science that discovers truths; it is just a collection of tautologies.

The British, like the Americans, demanded oaths of allegiance, reasoning that anybody who signed would have a vested stake in British victory.

I don't want to tell you what to buy. I just want to help you think about why you're buying it.

People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make.

It is often said that science must avoid any conclusions which smack of the supernatural.

Conscience without judgment is superstition.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness.