"When you have strong desires to believe something, it is always possible to convince yourself that a decisive argument against one node wasn’t decisive after all, or that you have found a reply to it. Mending and making do can enable one to think a web of belief still holds together, even after a good critic has ripped it to shreds. But the fact that we know reason will not convince everyone is beside the point. Whether an argument is sound or whether it is persuasive are two different questions. It should come as no surprise that good rational arguments often fail to persuade people. The case for reason is not that it is always psychologically efficacious but that it genuinely helps us towards the truth. However, just as you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink, so you can lead a mind to reason but you cannot make it think."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chap. 1 : The Eternal God Argument
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julian_Baggini
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Julian Baggini
23 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Julian Baggini →
Related Quotes
"The rehabilitation of reason is urgent because it is only through the proper use of reason that we can find our way o…"
"Only our most intimate friends know our deepest flaws, and in the same way the greatest skeptics about reason should …"
"If it seems shocking to some that scientists are not cold computers but human beings with different preferences, disp…"
"Really good philosophising requires something more than a razor-sharp brain, something that is sometimes called subtl…"
"Philosophical autobiographies do much more than simply reveal the personalities and prejudices of their authors, howe…"
"That is why there can be no one account that is ‘the truth’, not because ‘truth’ is beyond us. We need to distinguish…"
"Many are now skeptical of Freud’s theory – and of psychoanalysis in general – but the broad idea that the unconscious…"
"Philosophers understandably focus on the nature of reason itself. However, in order for reason to flourish, it needs …"
"As I suggested at the opening of this part of the book, to avoid hubris we ought to think of this beast as more like …"
"If the house on the lake can become a new iteration of a philosophical retreat, that would pay homage to its first ow…"