Quotes About Reasoning

A rational man proportions his belief to the evidence," Hume said. The brain study cited by Shermer indicates that we too often do the opposite. We proportion our beliefs to our emotions and process the evidence as our feelings demand

A very clear and succinct statement is in the introduction to his Methods of Logic, fourth edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982

Of course, in meeting Hume's challenge, we do have to concede that he was right in that no degree of evidence can confirm a universal generalization. However, it does not follow that we are slobbering dogs.

There are two basic ways to criticize an argument: â–  Challenge the premises-show that at least one is false. â–  Challenge the reasoning-show that the premises are not a good reason for the conclusion.

En realidad, una de las grandes fortalezas de la ciencia es la habilidad para inferir cosas que no podemos observar directamente a partir de las que sí podemos.

There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!

He learned by experience that one train of thought left him sad, the other joyful. This was his first reasoning on spiritual matters.

To philosophize is to think without the benefit of proof (if proof exists, it is no longer philosophy), which is not to say that any thought and all ways of thinking are, philosophically speaking, equally valid.

I've thought of a reason," Kit MacNeill said

Never could Mathias give the right answer, but always had he an excuse for being wrong. "I was just a thinkin'," he'd fend himself. "If I hadn't been a thinkin', I wouldn't a thought that way.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else

We hold it to be true that circular reasoning is the only reasoning that is possible to finite man...We must go round and round a thing to see more of its dimensions and to know more about it, in general, unless we are larger than that which we are investigating. Unless we are larger than God we cannot reason about Him by any other way, than by a transcendental or circular argument.

Why the forty five." "Because they don't make a forty six.

Are you thinking with your head or your dick?" Izaak demanded. "Asking for a friend. Asking because you're a dumbass and—

circular logic is explicit in devotional biographies of religious leaders, whose biographers provide readers with various reasons for having the faith they already have in their leaders. Lives of the Saints is a Catholic example, while biographies published by Deseret Book and Bookcraft are Mormon examples.107 That is the circular logic of every world view.

Sometimes I implant thoughts, sometimes I extract thoughts, but I don't like to explain it too much. It's based on science, deduction, and reasoning - it's a bit like what 'Sherlock' does, except that's a dramatised version. I look at every clue around me.

In math, you could get 100 percent. It was very fair. That's what I liked about math. You could figure it out, and the teacher couldn't have a stupid opinion about it.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.

People get so attached to a position which they identify themselves with that they just spurt it out, but they can't really give you a viable reason why they feel that way.

You cannot oppose reasoning to pride, the principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud man refuses to listen to it.

Inwardly she argued with herself, reflecting that it never ended well when one did something morally questionable for the right reasons.

But Lachlan always reasoned that a teenage boy had little enough good sense as it was; a clout upside the head might knock it right out of him.