Fundamentals of belief analysis

This post is a list of quotes intended to represent my views about belief analysis. The original post about belief analysis can be found at this link. There are 12 quotes divided into 5 sections.

A. Belief analysis is a formal method meant to represent the structure of a belief (1)
B. Belief analysis is meant for analyzing subjective reasons (3)
C. A reason is something intended to support the accuracy of a proposition (2)
D. Belief analysis attempts to make the structure of a belief more transparent (3)
E. Belief analysis can help opposing sides understand each other better (3)

A. Belief analysis is a formal method meant to represent the structure of a belief

Hesiod:

1. "It is best to do things systematically, since we are only human and disorder is our worst enemy." (AZQuotes.com)

B. Belief analysis is meant for analyzing subjective reasons

Gregory Bateson:
2. "As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of loose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science." (Culture Contact and Schismogensis, 1935)

Christian Huygens:

3. "There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgement." (Cosmotheoros, 1695)

George Boole:
4. "There is not only a close analogy between the operations of the mind in general reasoning and its operation in the particular science of algebra, but there is to a considerable extent an exact agreement in the laws by which the two classes of operations are conducted." (An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, 1854)

C. A reason is something intended to support the accuracy of a proposition

David Hume:
5. "In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence... A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence." (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748)

Antoine Lavoisier:

6. "The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof." (Rapport des commissaires charges par le roi de l'exemen du magnetism animal, 1784)

D. Belief analysis attempts to make the structure of a belief more transparent

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
7."If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained." (Culture and Value, 1980 posthumous)

Francis Bacon:
8. "Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion." (Novum Organum, 1620)

Rudolf Carnap:
9. "The function of logical analysis is to analyze all knowledge, all assertions of science and of everyday life, in order to make clear the sense of each assertion and the connections between them. One of the principal tasks of the logical analysis of a given proposition is to find out the method of verification for that proposition." (Philosophy and Logical Syntax, 1935)

E. Belief analysis can help opposing sides understand each other better

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
10. "To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth." (Philosophical Occasions, 1993 posthumous)

I. A. Richards:
11. "Rhetoric, I shall urge, should be a study of misunderstanding and its remedies." (Philosophy of Rhetoric)

Jane Goodall:
12. "Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries." (Quoted in Verge Magazine, 2010)

Fundamentals of Econ Analysis Tools

This post is a list of quotes regarding the goal of this blog. There are 17 quotes divided into 6 sections. The painting above is by Vincent van Gogh titled Wheat Field With Cypresses (1889).

A. Quotes are an effective way to communicate information (3)
B. I want to build a web of beliefs for various topics (3)
C. Clear language and simplicity is essential (4)
D. Consolidating information onto a single page is useful (2)
E. I want to create and update a dictionary of definitions (3)
F. Each post is a work in progress as my beliefs change (2)

A. Quotes are an effective way to communicate information

Marianne Moore:
1. "I've always felt that if a thing had been said the best way, how can you say it better?" (Paris Review Interview, 1960)

Marlene Dietrich:
2. "I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizably wiser than oneself." (Quoted in Presidential Wit and Wisdom by Brallier and Chabert)

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
3. "Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be open by dialing a certain word or number so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it." (Philosophical Occasions, 1993 posthumous)

B. I want to build a web of beliefs for various topics

Anatol Rapoport:
4. "A fundamental value in the scientific outlook is concerned with the best available map of reality." (Science and the Goals of Man, 1950)

Rene Descartes:
5. "Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems." (Discourse on Method, 1637)

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
6. "The child learns to believe a host of things, i.e. it learns to act according to those beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system, some things stand unshakably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it." (On Certainty, 1969 posthumous)

C. Clear language and simplicity is essential

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
7. "Are you a bad philosopher then if what you write is hard to understand? If you were better you would make what is difficult easy to understand but who says that's possible." (Quoted in Wittgenstein: A Wonderful Life documentary)

John Searle:
8. "Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself." (Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, 1993)

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
9. "If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained." (Culture and Value, 1980 posthumous)

Francis Bacon:
10. "Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion." (Novum Organum, 1620)

D. Consolidating information onto a single page is useful

Francois de La Rochefoucauld:
11. "True eloquence consists in saying all that need be said and no more." (Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1665-1678)

Jonathan Ive:
12. "I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity. In clarity. In efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter." (Presentation at WWDC 2013 for iOS 7)

E. I want to create and update a dictionary of definitions

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
13. "People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e. grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in."(Philosophical Occasions, 1993 posthumous)

Socrates:
14. "The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms." (Goodreads.com)

Baruch Spinoza

15. "A definition, if it is to be called perfect, must explain the inmost essence of a thing, and must take care not to substitute for this any of its properties." (On the Improvement of Understanding, 1622)

F. Each post is a work in progress as my beliefs change

Walter Isaacson:
16. "As [Leonardo da Vinci] did with many of his paintings, he would hang on to the treatises that he was drafting, occasionally make a few new strokes and refinements, but never see them through to being released to the public as complete." (Leonardo da Vinci, 2017)

Vincent van Gogh:
17. "Quick work doesn't mean less serious work, it depends on one's self confidence and experience... I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Don't you believe a word of it. Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one's feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and coherence like words in a speech or letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration. One must strike while the iron is hot and put the forged bars on the side." (Goodreads.com)