Inference Quotes - Page 3

• These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Progress, Human Nature, Affair

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2014). “The Federalist Papers”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• Inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided upon a number, than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction . . . will often hurry the persons of whom they were composed into improprieties and excesses for which they would blush in a private capacity.

  James Madison

  Fall, Numbers, Excess

  Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison (2018). “America's Founding Documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights”, p.128, First Avenue Editions

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• The development of mathematics toward greater precision has led, as is well known, to the formalization of large tracts of it, so that one can prove any theorem using nothing but a few mechanical rules... One might therefore conjecture that these axioms and rules of inference are sufficient to decide any mathematical question that can at all be formally expressed in these systems. It will be shown below that this is not the case, that on the contrary there are in the two systems mentioned relatively simple problems in the theory of integers that cannot be decided on the basis of the axioms.

  Kurt Gödel

  Simple, Two, Development

  "Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936".

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• In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Men, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Analysis of Mind”, p.54, Bertrand Russell

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• Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."

  John B. S. Haldane

  God, Might, Study

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• Second, I use inference from technical studies and theories in order to provide practical information for therapists. Those thoughts are several steps removed from scientific validity.

  Virgil Miller Newton

  Order, Use, Information

  "Adolescence: Guiding Youth Through the Perilous Ordeal". Book by Miller Newton, 1995.

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• It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.

  William Hazlitt

  Principles, Egotism, Contrary

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1492, Delphi Classics

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• [T]ruly grand and powerful theories [...] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information. The failure of a particular claim usually records a local error, not the bankruptcy of a central theory. [...] If I mistakenly identify your father's brother as your own dad, you don't become genealogically rootless and created de novo. You still have a father; we just haven't located him properly.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Brother, Powerful, Dad

  "Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Mr. Sophia's Pony", p. 155, 1998.

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• Since reasoning , or inference, the principal subject of logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of words , and in complicated cases can take place in no other way: those who have not a thorough insight into both the signification and purpose of words, will be under chances, amounting almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly.

  John Stuart Mill

  Mean, Way, Purpose

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive: Mill's Works”, p.20, VM eBooks

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• I think the reality is Michael Jackson's humanity is so deep, the implications and inferences of his art so monumentally and magnificently global, that nothing American television could do to besmirch his character could ever, if you will, deny the legitimate genius that he represents and America has responded, as indeed has the globe.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Art, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does, and my pretensions to infer from what your body does to what your mind does all collapse, since the premises for such inferences are either inadequate or unknowable.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Believe, Mind, Doe

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Knowledge about limitations of your data collection process affects what inferences you can draw from the data.

  Nick Bostrom

  Data Collection, Process, Draws

  Director of the Future of Humanity Institute Nick Bostrom, Nick Bostrom (2013). “Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy”, p.1, Routledge

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• Suppose that the organism is given the problem of determining the analysis of a stimulus at a certain level of representation - e.g., the problem of determining which sequence of words a given utterance encodes. Since, in the general case, transducer outputs underdetermine perceptual analyses, we can think of the solution of such problems as involving processes of nondemonstrative inference. In particular, we can think of each input system as a computational mechanism which projects and confirms a certain class of hyputheses on the basis of a certain body of data.

  Jerry Fodor

  Thinking, Data, Class

  "Wittgenstein, Mind, and Meaning". Book by Meredith Williams, 2002 edition.

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• While no inference is intended here, it is worth noting, in connection with Milton Friedman's comment that "Kelso just turned Marx upside down," that it is not necessarily amiss to turn a fellow upside down if that in fact straightens out his thinking.

  Louis O. Kelso

  Wisdom, Thinking, Connections

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• You put three facts together - that all organisms produce more offspring that can survive, that there's variation among organisms, and that at least some of that variation is inherited - and the syllogistic inference is natural selection.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Together, Three, Variation

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, color and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye.

  Jessica Helfand

  Eye, Light, Color

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• The inference to which we are brought is that the causes of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.

  James Madison

  Mean, Relief, Causes

  James Madison, John Jay (1847). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.35

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• Leibniz endeavored to provide an account of inference and judgment involving the mechanical play of symbols and very little else. The checklists that result are the first of humanity's intellectual artifacts. They express, they explain, and so they ratify a power of the mind. And, of course, they are artifacts in the process of becoming algorithms.

  David Berlinski

  Play, Humanity, Intellectual

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.

  Edward Abbey

  Ordinary, Logic, Instruments

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

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• This desire of knowledge and the wonder which it hopes to satisfy are the driving power behind all the changes that we, with careless, question-begging inference, call progress.

  Nicholas Murray Butler

  Knowledge, Progress, Desire

  Nicholas Murray Butler (1911). “Philosophy”

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• The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.

  David Hume

  Religious, Believe, Exercise

  David Hume (2016). “The Natural History of Religion: Revision of Great Book”, p.50, VM eBooks

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• All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Reflection, Self, Ideas

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Baldwin (2004). “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings”, p.170, Psychology Press

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• The conjuror or con man is a very good provider of information. He supplies lots of data, by inference or direct statement, but it's false data. Scientists aren't used to that scenario. An electron or a galaxy is not capricious, nor deceptive; but a human can be either or both.

  James Randi

  Men, Data, Religion

  "Another New Fan". Swift, archive.randi.org. September 02, 2005.

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• An axiomatic system comprises axioms and theorems and requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination before it works. A formal system comprises an explicit list of symbols, an explicit set of rules governing their cohabitation, an explicit list of axioms, and, above all, an explicit list of rules explicitly governing the steps that the mathematician may take in going from assumptions to conclusions. No appeal to meaning nor to intuition. Symbols lose their referential powers; inferences become mechanical.

  David Berlinski

  Eye, Hands, Intuition

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• The death rate is a fact; anything beyond this is an inference.

  William Farr

  Facts, Rate

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