Quotes About Reasoning

There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.

All definite knowledge—so I should contend—belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.

The fact is you cannot be intelligent merely by choosing your opinions. The intelligent man is not the man who holds such-and-such views but the man who has sound reasons for what he believes and yet does not believe it dogmatically. And opinions held for sound reasons have less emotional unity than the opinions of dogmatists because reason is non-party, favouring now one side and now another. That is what people find so unpleasant about it.

Perfect rationality consists, not in believing what is true, but in attaching to every proposition a degree of belief corresponding to its degree of credibility.

In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are evidence of bias.

The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.

All definite knowledge -- so I should contend -- belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

His most important books are his two Logics, and these must be understood if the reasons for his views on other subjects are to be rightly apprehended.

to justify any such inference.

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.

philosopher's job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing.

And where a solution appears possible, the new logic provides a method which enables us to obtain results that do not merely embody personal idiosyncrasies, but must command the assent of all who are competent to form an opinion.

When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.

To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory.

The discovery of geometry had intoxicated them, and its a priori deductive method appeared capable of universal application. They would prove, for instance, that all reality is one, that there is no such thing as change, that the world of sense is a world of mere illusion; and the strangeness of their results gave them no qualms because they believed in the correctness of their reasoning.

I find among many people at the present day an indifference to truth which I cannot but think extremely dangerous.  When people argue, for example, in defense of Christianity, they do not, like Thomas Aquinas, give reasons for supposing that there is a God and that He has expressed His will in the Scriptures.  They argue instead that, if people think this, they will act better than if they do not.

To begin with rationality in opinion: I should define it merely as the habit of taking account of all relevant evidence in arriving at a belief. Where certainty is unattainable, a rational man will give most weight to the most probable opinion, while retaining others, which have an appreciable probability, in his mind as hypotheses which subsequent evidence may show to be preferable.

all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom; and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our natures.

If any one asks: 'Why should I accept the results of valid arguments based on true premisses?' we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact, the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the philosopher, for they show that we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense. The

Hegel thought that, if enough was known about a thing to distinguish it from all other things, then all its properties could be inferred by logic. This was a mistake, and from this mistake arose the whole edifice of his system. This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences.

Între teologie ÅŸi ÅŸtiin?? exist? îns? un No Man's Land, expus atacurilor din ambele p?rÅ£i; acest teritoriu intermediar este cel al filozofiei.

Any theory on the principles of mathematics must always be inductive i.e. it must lie in the fact that the theory in question enables us to deduce ordinary mathematics.

For my part, I prefer the ontological argument, the cosmological argument and the rest of the old stock-in-trade, to the sentimental illogicality that has sprung from Rousseau.