Mind

"Inductive reasoning is reasoning from particular facts to a general law, or proposition, called the conclusion. Inductive reasoning is synthetic; that is, it builds up the law (the proposition) by giving particular instances in which that law is true. It is by inductive reasoning that we have established most of our laws in the natural sciences. We have proved the proposition, Wild geese fly south in winter, by inductive reasoning, for we have noted particular instances, and from the particular facts we have reasoned to the proposition."

"The mistake frequently committed... has its origin in the vague and erroneous definition usually given of the inductive process... the method of induction... is indeed the only process of reasoning whereby it is possible to pass, at will, and in a given direction, beyond the boundaries of our knowledge."

"By scientific thought we mean the application of past experience to new circumstances by means of an observed order of events. By saying that this order of events is exact we mean that it is exact enough to correct experiments by, but we do not mean that it is theoretically or absolutely exact, because we do not know. The process of inference [is] in itself an assumption of uniformity, and... as the known exactness of the uniformity became greater, the stringency of the inference increased. By saying that the order of events is reasonable we do not mean that everything has a purpose, or that everything can be explained, or that everything has a cause; for neither of these is true. But we mean that to every reasonable question there is an intelligible answer, which either we or posterity may know by the exercise of scientific thought."

"These..., standing on the ground of inductive argument, place in our hands means to attain a certain end, of which there can be no doubt: whether we shall use them aright for the cure of disease, does not lie within the province of inductive reasoning."

"Induction... proposes to have to do with things; and, as a mode or principle of argumentation, it may perhaps be correctly defined as a process of reasoning from particulars to a general: a method which requires a scrupulous, accurate, and comprehensive examination of all the cases which come within the range of the subject of inquiry, and from these instances infers the great axiomatic truth, or the universal and invariable law, in which they are found to meet, and which they will be always found to obey. ...This is unquestionably the nature of the principle of induction as proposed by Lord Bacon. Its useful and successful application, however, to the various departments of knowledge,—and there is scarcely any department to which, under suitable modifications, it may not be advantageously applied,—requires much care, attention, and assiduous patience."

"There is no inductive method which could lead to the fundamental concepts of physics. Failure to understand this fact constituted the basic philosophical error of so many investigators of the nineteenth century. It was probably the reason why the molecular theory, and Maxwell's theory were able to establish themselves only at a relatively late date. Logical thinking is necessarily deductive; it is based upon hypothetical concepts and axioms. How can we hope to choose the latter in such a manner as to justify us in expecting success as a consequence?"

"It will seem a little paradoxical to ascribe a great importance to observations even in that part of the mathematical sciences which is usually called Pure Mathematics, since the current opinion is that observations are restricted to physical objects that make impression on the senses. As we must refer the numbers to the pure intellect alone, we can hardly understand how observations and quasi-experiments can be of use in investigating the nature of numbers. Yet, in fact, as I shall show here with very good reasons, the properties of the numbers known today have been mostly discovered by observation, and discovered long before their truth has been confirmed by rigid demonstrations. There are many properties of the numbers with which we are well acquainted, but which we are not yet able to prove; only observations have led us to their knowledge. Hence we see that in the theory of numbers, which is still very imperfect, we can place our highest hopes in observations; they will lead us continually to new properties which we shall endeavor to prove afterwards. The kind of knowledge which is supported only by observations and is not yet proved must be carefully distinguished from the truth; it is gained by induction, as we usually say. Yet we have seen cases in which mere induction led to error. Therefore, we should take great care not to accept as true such properties of the numbers which we have discovered by observation and which are supported by induction alone. Indeed, we should use such discovery as an opportunity to investigate more exactly the properties discovered and to prove or disprove them; in both cases we may learn something useful."

"The examples of plausible reasoning collected in this book... may throw light upon a much agitated philosophical problem: the problem of induction. The crucial question is: Are there rules for induction? ...the question should be... treated... in closer touch with the practice of scientists. ...older writers, such as Euler and Laplace, clearly perceived... that the role of inductive evidence in mathematical investigation is similar to its role in physical research. ...so the door opens to investigating induction inductively."

"Paranoia ain't the way to live your life from day to day, so leave your doubts and your fears behind."

"Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you."

"It's not paranoia if they're really after you."

"Just because you're paranoid Don't mean they're not after you"

"Paranoia is infectious. It’s also an incredibly useful tool. If you can make people afraid enough, uncertain enough, they will simply stop moving."

"A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on."

"In a captive environment, paranoia is unavoidable. Only the prison authorities call it paranoia; prisoners call it sensible precautions... Most prisoners are perfectly mentally healthy compared with the paranoia of prison officials."

"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and we're told to report suspicious-looking characters. That primes people to be more paranoid."

"In a world full of threat, it may be kind of beneficial for people to be on guard. It's good to be looking around and see who's following you and what's happening. Not everybody is trying to get you, but some people may be."

"I think in the paranoid spectrum it's quite clear that you're more likely to have paranoid thoughts if you're younger and if you live in cities or were raised in cities, for example. It also links to taking illicit substances such as cannabis. But as a psychologist what I'm particularly interested in is that people who tend to worry more, people who aren't sleeping so well, people who feel more miserable about themselves, are also more vulnerable to paranoid thoughts."

"You get paranoid in this business. But maybe paranoids get that way because of all the people out to get them."

""Some people have become so cynical that they don't believe in anything any more. In them, healthy scepticism has been replaced by a total breakdown in trust, the belief that everybody lies."

"Only the severe end was even considered. There was no sense of spectrum. Paranoia was very much seen as inexplicable, un-understandable, if anything some kind of biological system that had gone wrong. I remember thinking that seemed very reductionalist, that there must be some kind of psychology to it. Once I started looking at it as a spectrum, once you make the connection to things such as depression and anxiety, it really opens it up. People with depression have higher levels of paranoia because of a sense of vulnerability and low self-esteem. Anxiety is linked too. But whereas anxiety may lead to fearing harm from a spider, or of being humiliated in a social situation, it doesn't lead to a belief that the spider or others intend to humiliate or hurt us. It's the attribution of intent that distinguishes paranoia."

"There is no sort of 'them and us', it is not that most people don't have paranoid thoughts and a few people have many, it seems that they are evenly distributed across the population, or many of us have them, much more than was previously thought. And actually there is also evidence that societies that are perhaps more unequal, have less social cohesion, are all societies where there is a bit more suspicion in the general population. So paranoia certainly can be a problem for the individual, and I work in hospitals and see people who have severe experiences, but also it's perhaps the mark of the health of a society, the levels of mistrust within it."

"This is another main reason why I believe paranoia is on the increase. Because we are constantly reminded, in the press, of threats from other people, we overestimate the chances of these events happening to us. There is a lot of research on this. It is what is known as the 'availability heuristic'. We make an estimate of the likelihood of a particular event simply by how easily we bring it to mind. Our children are getting fat because we aren't letting them out to play enough. We're scared they will be run over or abducted by strangers. In fact, the risks to the health from obesity are much higher than the risks of either of those events."

"Paranoia all too often leads to isolation, unhappiness, and profound distress. But the exceptionally positive immediate results for the patients in this study show a new route forward in treatment. In just a thirty minute session, those who used the right psychological techniques showed major reductions in paranoia."

"If a given activity fails and it causes the death of a follower, it is because the rest of the group had insufficient faith or that it was done too late. Should the extraterrestrial beings not descend at the appointed time, then it may also be explained as due to their being frightened by the non-believers. Thus all plots and prophecies become possible — the capacity to reduce cognitive dissonance is the cement of the cult when it confronts reality, and this is why the layman is helpless before the nonsense that is spread by these speeches."

"By turning over all their possessions, members were making an irreversible commitment to the cult. Once such a commitment is made, people are unlikely to abandon positive attitudes toward the group (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1982). After expending so much effort, questioning commitment would create cognitive dissonance (Osherow, 1988). It is inconsistent to prove devotion to a belief by donating all of your possessions and then to abandon those beliefs. In other words, to a large extent, cult members persuade themselves."

"The Court finds, based upon the evidence introduced at trial, that Marlboro Lights and Cambridge Lights were introduced into the market by Philip Morris with the intent to provide smokers who were concerned about their health with a product that could reduce the cognitive dissonance associated with smoking and thereby allow them to continue to smoke cigarettes."

"Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

"Human behavior is consciously and unconsciously shaped by mental models of culture that, while mutable, impose barriers to change."

"Resolving cognitive dissonance often takes considerable mental gymnastics."

"Very rare is the person who will resolve psychological dissonance by saying, "Actually, I am a monster.""

"Despite the best efforts of Stallman and other hackers to remind people that the word "free" in free software stood for freedom and not price, the message still wasn't getting through. Most business executives, upon hearing the term for the first time, interpreted the word as synonymous with "zero cost," tuning out any follow up messages in short order. Until hackers found a way to get past this cognitive dissonance, the free software movement faced an uphill climb, even after Netscape."

"As a low-level experience of cognitive dissonance, how does one maintain faith in an organization when some of the most basic claims are contradicted by evidence and ordinary experience?"

"The thing that enabled the evolution of our high intelligence and its ability to understand and act on problems is the same thing that causes our problems and prevents us from acting on them…"

"Somewhere between the primordial soup and the dirty cell phone pic, our minds invented a sneaky way to course-correct for our mistakes and disappointments. Leon Festinger called it cognitive dissonance. Worst part is it works, if only for a while."

"Much of the research literature has reintroduced classic cognitive dissonance theory to provide theoretical justification for a sequence of behavior change–belief change. The focus has been upon maintenance of conversion within groups when prophecy appears to fail."

"Most people are not liars. They can't tolerate too much cognitive dissonance. I don't want to deny that there are outright liars, just brazen propagandists. You can find them in journalism and in the academic professions as well. But I don't think that's the norm. The norm is obedience, adoption of uncritical attitudes, taking the easy path of self-deception."

"He accepts scientific findings, on the same grounds we do, unless those findings challenge or refute his existing beliefs – at which point he labels them faith-based, and rejects them. Yet while claiming he won’t believe things on faith, the entire justification for his closed-minded certainty about the existence of god is predicated on faith…faith that his perception of the experience he attributes to a god are actually reliable. This is not only hypocritical, it’s a particularly nefarious bit of self-deception that results in some of the most painful examples of cognitive dissonance that I’ve ever seen. In any other area, Ray seems to grasp that independent confirmation is a grand tool for increasing the accuracy of our perceptions of reality, but on the subject of the biggest questions – his own experience not only needs no independent verification, it trumps all information to the contrary."

"In the state of ultimate commitment, a true believer feels better for having raised and or given money to the cause. It also aids in overcoming cognitive dissonance (the cause "must be" worthwhile to have attracted these funds). All kinds of rationales are given and accepted for the displayed wealth of the leaders, but it is fascinating to see the blind acceptance being replaced by questioning and scorn as the hypocrisies and double standards begin to make themselves felt."

"Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously."

"If we have no aptitude or natural taste for geometry this does not mean that our faculty for attention will not be developed by wrestling with a problem or studying a theorem. On the contrary it is almost an advantage. ... Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul. ... Every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit."

"Attention is love. To notice fully—without agenda—is a rare and supreme devotion."

"Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called."

"Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?"

"If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers, loses all its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of concentration—of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme."

"If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit your field of vision and shut out the world. And, in the same way, the people or the things which stand nearest, even though they are of the very smallest consequence, are apt to claim an amount of attention much beyond their due, occupying us disagreeably, and leaving no room for serious thoughts and affairs of importance. We ought to work against this tendency."

"Attention is a biological phenomenon. When you empty your mind, be that by breath, floatation, meditation, exercise… it works by allowing our brains to do some discharge of the junk and let us go back to work."

"That kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. And it worries me greatly that today’s children can recognize 100 corporate logos and fewer than 10 plants."

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."

"Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop."