Deductive Reasoning Quotes

“It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, — ‘Aye,’ asked he again, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’ And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.”
― Francis Bacon

“Children are rarely taught critical thinking anymore, and society has become so antirational that basic reason and evidence are the new counterculture: thought is the new punk.”
― Stefan Molyneux, The Art of The Argument: Western Civilization's Last Stand

“Puedes reconocer a un viejo maestro por el trayecto de su pincel.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“When a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation. (Sherlock)”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. and The Country of the Saints.

“Think of facts and figures as bricks and cement, and science or scientific understanding as a building. Without the vision of the architect, it's impossible to construct the building no matter how much bricks and cement you have.”
― Abhijit Naskar, All For Acceptance

“Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals?

A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals:

Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals.

Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals.

Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to
anymals.

Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries.

It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises:

Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering.

Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries.

Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries.

If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents

• to avoid purchasing products from industries that exploit anymals, and
• to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“As Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross (1980) point out, rationally defensible deductive logic involves a specification from the universal to the particular (“All men are mortal, therefore Robyn Dawes is mortal.”), but much less reliable inductive logic involves generalization from the particular to the universal (“This one Jewish merchant is dishonest, therefore all Jewish merchants are dishonest.”). However, we are prone to do the exact opposite: we under-deduce and over-induce.”
― Reid Hastie, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making

“His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The great principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leading proposition of Euclid's, and show by construction that its truth was known to us, to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced the angles on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the two other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we should demonstrate our possession of a reasonable intelligence.”
― H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon