Presuppositions Quotes

We'll start our analysis with a truism, stark, self-evident and understated: Sometimes things do not go well. That seems to have much to do with the terrible nature of the world, with its plagues and famines and tyrannies and betrayals. But here's the rub: sometimes, when things are not going well, it's not the world that's the cause. The cause is instead that which is currently most valued, subjectively and personally. Why? Because the world is revealed, to an indeterminate degree, through the template of your values…If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it's time to examine your values. It's time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It's time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

My mother taught me a lot of things, but they had big presuppositions built in - like her expectation that I'd be a missionary nurse in a religious order. ~ Faye Wattleton

Recently, a professor at Penn State told my son Joshua's class that during a trip to Africa, he had a mysterious encounter with a witch doctor of a tribe. He watched with horror as this witch doctor put a man into a trance and made the man put his face into burning coals and move them around with his nose on the ground. The man received no burns and wasn't even aware of the sensation of burning his flesh. The professor, being a committed naturalist, had no way to understand this obviously satanic phenomena. His scientific model didn't include any supernatural cause, whether it be godly or satanic. He admitted this fact to the class. He said that he saw what happened yet he did not believe it, because he couldn't fit it into what he called his scientific model . . . If their presuppositions rule out the supernatural, that is that! There is no more. ~ Jack Cuozzo

It seems to us that there are four great collective sociological assumptions in the modern world. By this we mean not only the Western world, but all the world that shares a modern technology and is structured into nations…. That man's aim in life is happiness, that man is naturally good, that history develops in endless progress, and that everything is matter.
The other great psychological reflection of social reality is the myth. The myth expresses the deep inclinations of a society. Without it, the masses would not cling to a certain civilization, or its process of development and crisis. It is a vigorous impulse, strongly colored, irrational, and charged with all of man's power to believe… In our society the two great fundamentals myths on which all other myths rest are Science and History. And based on them are the collective myths that are man's principal orientations: the myth of Work, the myth of Happiness (which is not the same thing as presupposition of happiness), the myth of the Nation, the myth of Youth, the myth of Hero.
Propaganda is forced to build on those presuppositions and to express these myths, for without them nobody would listen to it. And in so building it must always go in the same direction as society; it can only reinforce society. A propaganda that stresses virtue over happiness and presents man's future as one dominated by austerity and contemplation would have no audience at all. A propaganda that questions progress or work would arou ~ Jacques Ellul

...you cannot enter into an investigation with a philosophy that dictates the outcome. Objectivity is paramount; this is the first principle of detective work that each of us must learn. It sounds simple, but our presuppositions are sometimes hidden in a way that makes them hard to uncover and recognize. ~ J Warner Wallace

Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives
but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions
which is a philosophical activity
is morally as well as intellectually important. ~ Karl Popper

The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, and common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

As followers of Christ, we are to be careful not to remain victims of the many cultural presuppositions of who he is, and what he teaches, insofar as taking for granted our own caricatures of him. Let it boil in both mind and heart the question, 'If Jesus were to appear today, how many of us would actually recognize him and his teachings (or would it simply be a recount of his first visit)? ~ Criss Jami

When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word, we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don't quite fit our preferences and presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible's cacophony of voices into a single tone and turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Autodidacts tend to be cranks, obtuse and self-enclosed. A professor's most important role is to make you think with rigor: precisely, patiently, responsibly, remorselessly, and not only about your "deepest ingrained presuppositions," as my own mentor, Karl Kroeber, once wrote, but also about your "most exhilarating new insights, most of which turn out to be fallacious. ~ William Deresiewicz

An audience that is unwilling to suspend its own presuppositions and biases while considering an opposed (or even unopposed) viewpoint not only frustrates the function of extended argument but effectively denies its own beliefs a rational basis. ~ Vincent E. Barry

Modernist discourse [ ... ] incorporates semantic devices - such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' - that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open. ~ Phillip E. Johnson

The photograph is an incomplete utterance, a message that depends on some external matrix of conditions and presuppositions for its readability. ~ Allan Sekula

The hypothesis advanced by the propaganda model, excluded from debate as unthinkable, is that in dealing with the American wars in Indochina, the media were "unmindful", but highly "patriotic" in the special and misleading sense that they kept -- and keep -- closely to the perspective of official Washington and the closely related corporate elite, in conformity to the general "journalistic-literary-political culture" from which "the left" (meaning dissident opinion that questions jingoist assumptions) is virtually excluded. The propaganda model predicts that this should be generally true not only of the choice of topics covered and the way they are covered, but also, and far more crucially, of the general background of the presuppositions within which the issues are framed and the news presented. Insofar as there is debate among dominant elites, it will be reflected within the media, which in this narrow sense, may adopt an "adversarial stance" with regard to those holding office, reflecting elite dissatisfaction with current policy. Otherwise the media will depart from elite consensus only rarely and in limited ways. Even when large parts of the general public break free of the premises of the doctrinal system, as finally happened during the Indochina wars, real understanding based upon an alternative conception of the evolving history can be developed only with considerable effort by the most diligent and skeptical. And such understanding as can be reached through serious a ~ Noam Chomsky

My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them." I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits - the relevant fruits - are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice. And whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Sometimes the very presence of God is barred by our presuppositions and our intense and constant desire for triumph. ~ Ravi Zacharias

To admit one's own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting-point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another. ~ Cornelius Van Til

Racial reasoning conceals these presuppositions behind a deceptive cloak of racial consensus - yet racial reasoning is seductive because it invokes an undeniable history of racial abuse and racial struggle. ~ Cornel West

Language as putative science. -

The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world. The sculptor of language was not so modest as to believe that he was only giving things designations, he conceived rather that with words he was expressing supreame knowledge of things; language is, in fact, the first stage of occupation with science. Here, too, it is the belief that the truth has been found out of which the mightiest sources of energy have flowed. A great deal later - only now - it dawns on men that in their belief in language they have propagated a tremendous error. Happily, it is too late for the evolution of reason, which depends on this belief, to be put back. - Logic too depends on presuppositions with which nothing in the real world corresponds, for example on the presupposition that there are identical things, that the same thing is identical at different points of time: but this science came into existence through the opposite belief (that such conditions do obt ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

'Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant-so that he constantly called different things by that name-but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of pain'-in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundations on which we live and more and have our being. ~ James W. Sire

When we smuggle our conclusions into our investigation by beginning with them as an initial premise, we are likely to beg the question and end up with conclusions that match our presuppositions rather than reflect the truth of the matter. ~ J. Warner Wallace

It is interesting to me to note that those who most frequently call for fair play are those who are advantaged by the play as it currently is, and that only when that position of privilege is endangered are they likely to benefit from the change required to "play by the rules." What if the "rules" are inherently unfair or simply wrong, or a greater good is to be accomplished by changing them? When the gospel says, "The last will be first, and the first will be last," despite the fact it is counterintuitive to our cultural presuppositions, it is invariably good news to those who are last, and at least problematic news to those who see themselves as first. ~ Peter J. Gomes

Intelligence without risk is an empty thought, as is an intelligence whose realization takes no time. Risk and time are the presuppositions for the history of intelligence in which nothing is given in advance and nothing is completed as the totality of that history. ~ Reza Negarestani

Countries which have a different base, for example, a Christian one (or at least one with the memory of a Christian foundation) may indeed act most inconsistently and horribly. But when a state with a materialistic base acts arbitrarily and gives no dignity to man, internally or externally, it is being consistent to its basic presuppositions and principles. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year's model. The system attempts to remake people to fit its own presuppositions. If people's wants are not naturally insatiable we must make them so, in order to keep the system going. ~ Herman E. Daly

[W]hen the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions. ~ Karl Mannheim

So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Anyone who has worked within biblical scholarship knows, or ought to know, that we biblical scholars come to the text with just as many interpretative strategies and expectations as anyone else, and that integrity consists not of having no presuppositions but of being aware of what one's presuppositions are and of the obligation to listen to and interact with those who have different ones. ~ N. T. Wright

One must drop all presuppositions and dogmas and rules - for there only lead to stalemate or disaster; one must cease to regard all patients as replicas, and honor each one with individual reactions and propensities; and, in this way, with the patient as one's equal, one's co-explorer, not one's puppet, one may find therapeutic ways which are better than other ways, tactics which can be modified as occasion requires. ~ Oliver Sacks

Our presuppositions shape our perspective, our perspective shapes our priorities, and our priorities shape our practice. ~ Kenneth Boa

If anything in Kafka's theology can be called Jewish, it is his virtual lack of any concept of 'Nature'. There is in a sense no 'Nature' in Genesis either, since the world is created for man. There may, however, be more modern reasons for the absence of this concept in Kafka's case. His position here resembles that of Heidegger, whose Existential philosophy represents an attack on Naturalism (while adopting its atheistic presuppositions) and therefore finds no place for nature as such, but only for the world in so far as the world exists 'for human existence', i.e., as 'material'. Heidegger and Kafka are radically original in that aspect of their thought which does away with the natural and the supernatural at the same time. In Kafka the absence of Nature is due to the fact that for him what might be termed the 'institutionalization' of the world is total, indeed totalitarian. There is no room in it for that unoccupied and unused space beyond the sphere of human needs which we are in the habit of revering or enjoying as 'Nature'. Yet there is truth in Kafka's omission of Nature from his world, to the extent that the mechanized civilization of to-day may be described as appropriating and exploiting everything there is as raw material or fuel, and destroying whatever cannot be exploited - even human beings. ~ Günther Anders