Quotes About Reasoning

It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.

First, higher mental functions are grounded in and emerge out of a practical, prereflective form of intelligence.

If you must argue, the best way to win is to start by being right.

Danny had this habit of sounding dreadfully reasonable, and then no matter what Wendell said, he sounded like an idiot, or worse, a wimp, and then before the iguana quite knew what was happening, he was doing something that would require firefighters, long explanations to his parents, or on one memorable occasion, sixteen stitches.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

I look wildly for facts and I can only find arguments.

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.

We rarely make mistakes in analysis. We usually make them in our assumptions.

Women, intelligent or not, were rarely reasonable.

Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.

If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't do it.

You can't show me an ad on TV with hard bodies and say I have to buy that car. You have to tell me why that car is better and safer than another car.

If a man of real sensitivity and correct reasoning feels concerned about the evil and injustice of the world, he naturally seeks to correct it first where it manifests itself closest to home and that, he will find, is in his own being. This task will take him his whole lifetime.

System 2 thinking tries to follow proper rules of reasoning

Inner speech seems to be an important part of System 2 thinking.

Most of us know that our heart is our center, not our head. But apologetics gets at the heart through the head. The head is important precisely because it is a gate to the heart. We can love only what we know.

Some philosophers

In a heated debate, the novice at working with mental models will have to make an effort to identify the assumptions he is making and why. Often the beginner's efforts in a discipline are characterized by time displacement: only after the debate, does one see one's assumptions clearly and distinguish them from the "data" and reasoning upon which they are based.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Whether particular people with the capacity to take an objective point of view actually do take this objective viewpoint into account when they act will depend on the strength of their desire to avoid inconsistency between the way they reason publicly and the way they act.

Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upwards and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be travelled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we will end.

Since reasoning alone proved incapable of fully resolving the clash between self-interest and ethics, it is unlikely that rational argument will persuade every rational person to act ethically.

Their reliance on biblical quotations does not augur well for their for their openness to moral reasoning....