Quotes About Reasoning

Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Besides language and music, mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind.

use our reasoning ability to drive away "all that excites or affrights us.

Evolutionary processes made us susceptible to suffering but also gave us—accidentally—a tool by which we can prevent much of this suffering. The tool, once again, is our reasoning ability. Because we can reason, we can not only understand our evolutionary predicament but take conscious steps to escape it, to the extent possible.

The Stoics became experts on argument forms, such as "If A, then B; but A, therefore B" or "Either A or B; but not A, therefore B." These argument forms, which are called modus ponens and modus tollendo ponens, respectively, are still used by logicians.

If you know why you believe something, you will not be upset by having that belief challenged.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.

As it was now evident that the future was to be one of renunciation, of self-forgetting, an oblivion tinged with bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of reconsidering his resolution against Fulkerson's offer.

It's astonishing how well the worse reason looks when you try to make it appear the better.

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.

the human brain is ill-equipped to make rational decisions. Our judgment is frequently torpedoed by emotions such as fear, greed, jealousy, and impatience; by prejudices that distort our perception of reality;

[Science is] the desire to know causes.

and line of cases. Justice Byron R. "Whizzer" White, a JFK appointee, dissented, calling Doe an act of "raw judicial power," as it took these decisions from the states and enshrined their determination in the Supreme Court's reasoning.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide.

G. W. Leibniz, codiscoverer of calculus and a towering intellect of eighteenth-century Europe, wrote: "The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?"[1] In other words, why does anything at all exist? This, for Leibniz, is the most basic question that anyone can ask. Like me, Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found, not in the universe of created things, but in God. God

Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe has a cause"). Second

THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: A SIMPLE FORMULATION

Thus, although arguments and evidence may be used to support the believer's faith, they are never properly the basis of that faith.

A fallacy is an error in reasoning. Fallacies can be either formal or informal. A formal fallacy involves breaking the rules of logic. An informal fallacy involves an argumentative tactic that is illicit, such as reasoning in a circle. The "taxicab fallacy" would be an informal fallacy.

Premise The steps of an argument that lead to the conclusion are called the premises of the argument.

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