“The papers of Aristotle had suffered grievously and were in places illegible; but Apellicon occupied himself with copying and editing them. Tyrannion found that the editing of Apellicon was excessively bad. Ultimately, the peripatetic scholiarch Andronicus of Rhodes undertook the arrangement of the papers, the correction of the text, and the publication of the new edition.”
The papers of Charles Peirce may not have not suffered as grievously from damp and insects as those of Aristotle, but their general state of disorganization and partial subjection to arbitrary editing have long required peripatetic editors to undertake their arrangement and their correction in order to publish them in a new edition. Extensive information regarding the methods followed to produce the edition is given under the Methods tab.
As a selective but comprehensive chronological and critical edition, the Writings of Charles S. Peirce covers the full range of Peirce’s published and unpublished texts on any subject in a chronological sequence that reveals his often simultaneous work across many fields of study. Larger sequences of writings are grouped together within a volume if they represent a fairly concentrated period of work. The need for a chronological edition is especially strong in Peirce’s case; earlier editions were either topical or limited to a small selection of works, and provided little sense of his evolving thought or sufficient context for the massive body of his unpublished writings.
The core of the edition consists of several components:
“This new edition of Berkeley’s works is much superior to any of the former ones. It contains some writings not in any of the other editions, and the rest are given with a more carefully edited text. The editor has done his work well. The introductions to the several pieces contain analyses of their contents which will be found of the greatest service to the reader.”
This two-volume chronological edition makes available a comprehensive selection of Peirce’s most seminal philosophical writings. All the texts included are classics that will continue to influence the way philosophers think for centuries to come.
Work on this edition began in 1991 when Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel agreed to prepare a two-volume collection of Peirce’s philosophical volumes suitable for university seminars. Houser and Kloesel completed Volume 1 in 1992 and made a preliminary selection for Volume 2, but were unable to carry that work through to completion. In January 1997, the Peirce Edition Project agreed to finish the selection and to undertake the editing for Volume 2. It appeared in the spring of 1998. Royalties for both volumes have been assigned to the Peirce Edition Project.
Volume 1 presents twenty-five key texts, chronologically arranged, beginning with Peirce’s “On a New List of Categories” of 1867, a groundbreaking historical alternative to Kantian philosophy, and ending with the first sustained and systematic presentation of his evolutionary metaphysics in the Monist Metaphysical Series of 1891-1893. The book features a clear introduction and informative headnotes to help readers grasp the nature and significance of Peirce’s systematic philosophy and its development.
Volume 2 provides the first comprehensive anthology of Peirce’s mature philosophy. During his later years Peirce worked unremittingly to integrate new insights and discoveries into his general system of philosophy and to make his major doctrines fully coherent within that system. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its application to pragmatism. Included are 31 pivotal texts, beginning with “Immortality in the Light of Synechism” (in which Peirce proposes synechism—the tendency to regard everything as continuous—as a key advance over materialism, idealism, and dualism) and ending with Peirce’s late and unfinished investigations of the relative merits of different kinds of reasoning. Peirce’s Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism and selections from A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic are among the texts included.
“To explain is to show the unity at the heart of the manifold.”
Volume 1 takes up Peirce’s early years and presents the seminal writings that laid the groundwork for Peirce’s future studies in logic and the sign theory of cognition.
The volume opens with a sampling of the more philosophical compositions Peirce wrote during his last three years at Harvard College, from 1857 to 1859—essays that reveal a variety of nascent themes being explored by a precocious young man busy initiating himself to the methods of logical argumentation and rigorous expression while reading such works as Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Beneath his exploration of esthetic, moral, and psychological topics, Peirce already manifests a penchant for working out the logical structures that underlie them. This includes especially his attempts to improve upon and extend Kant’s list of categories. His assiduous reading of Kant, tempered by his father Benjamin’s prodding questions and by his own training in scientific reasoning (as in chemistry) and his growing experience in field research, turns Peirce into a metaphysician eager to transcend at once transcendentalism (an abuse of psychology), rationalism (an abuse of logic), and dialectics (an abuse of dogmatism) thanks to the adoption of a trusting fideism that does not seek to justify what needs no critical justification nor seeks to doubt what needs no skeptical dismissal. Such philosophical growth occurs notably in the 1861–62 “Treatise on Metaphysics,” a daring piece of innovative speculation for a thinker in his early twenties.
The core of Volume 1 consists of two series of lectures: the nine extant Harvard Lectures of February-May 1865 on “The Logic of Science,” and the ten extant Lowell Lectures of September–November 1866 on “The Logic of Science; or Induction and Hypothesis.” Those sets of lectures exhibit a broadening command of the history of logic and philosophy.
Already well read in Aristotle’s major works, Peirce in the Harvard Lectures shows familiarity with the major thinkers of the modern period and has begun reading medieval treatises in logic with uncommon interest. Right away Peirce militates in favor of an “unpsychological view of logic” and argues powerfully about the advantages of doing so, partly on the basis of fundamentally semiotic considerations. He studies the intricacies of the interplay between extension and comprehension and their connection with different types of signs and syllogistic reasoning. He shares his cutting-edge forays into Boolean algebra and illustrates the benefits of its symbolical notation for the analysis of intricate propositions, quantified or not. He studies induction with the help of Whewell, Mill, and Comte, and identifies the insufficiencies of their positions. He turns back to Kant and grapples with the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, and between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. And he puzzles again about Kant’s table of the functions of judgment and criticizes them on the basis of new logical distinctions. The last Harvard lectures see Peirce return to induction, and also to hypothesis, and display multiple analyses of those inferences in a syllogistic context as well as from the standpoint of the logical quantity of propositions. A definite trichotomic method gets deeply rooted in those lectures, a direct consequence of Peirce’s natural attraction to the fundamental patterns of logical structures.
Many texts at the center of Volume 1 help trace out Peirce’s progress in framing a new theory of categories, a theory that sees him both redefine the very notion of category and work out the logical methodology in identifying and testing any concept that would be a candidate for such an elementary status among conceptions. Especially striking is Peirce’s early conviction that the method that discovers categories cannot be deductive, a priori, or transcendental, but must be inductive. Equally fascinating is his framing the categories as the fundamental logical steps that govern the passage from substance to being, a passage that can only be made out by navigating it back from being to substance.
In the Lowell Lectures, Peirce reprises all the themes of his Harvard Lectures, taking advantage of one year and a half of considerable further reading and logical research. He classifies all the forms of deductive reasoning and takes up Aristotelian and Theophrastean syllogisms. He tests the extent to which syllogistic can accommodate relative predicates and mathematical demonstrations. He returns to induction, but now explores it in the context of the calculus of probabilities, and also in the context of a criticism of J. S. Mill’s conception of the uniformity of nature. He develops his information theory based on both the multiplication of the extension and comprehension of a proposition and on the conception of the interpretant as an equivalent representation. He presents publicly for the first time (in the non-extant lecture 8) his new list of three categories (within the passage from substance to being), and returns to it in the ninth lecture in considerable detail. And he vividly suggests how logic can apply to metaphysics.
The volume closes with Peirce’s important “Memoranda Concerning the Aristotelean Syllogism,” in which he demonstrates that no syllogism of the second or third figure can be reduced to the first figure, and with [“On a Method of Searching for the Categories”], the most extensive (and illuminating) draft of the 1867 essay “On a New List of Categories.”
“A certain child who is rather backward in learning to speak . . . has got to use three words only; and what are these? Name, story, and matter. . . . Already he has made his list of categories, which is the principal part of any philosophy.”
Preface | xi |
Acknowledgments | xiv |
Introduction |
xv |
1. My Life written for the Class-Book | 1 |
2. Private Thoughts principally on the conduct of life | 4 |
3. The Sense of Beauty never furthered the Performance of a single Act of Duty | 10 |
4. Raphael and Michael Angelo compared as men | 13 |
5. A Scientific book of Synonyms | 17 |
6. Think Again! | 20 |
7. Analysis of Genius | 25 |
8. The Axioms of Intuition. After Kant | 31 |
THREE ESSAYS ON INFINITY AND GOD |
|
9. An essay on the Limits of Religious thought written to prove that we can reason upon the nature of God | 37 |
10. [The Conception of Infinity] | 40 |
11. Why we can Reason on the Infinite | 42 |
12. Proof of the Infinite Nature of the Creator | 44 |
13. I, IT, and THOU: A book giving Instruction in some of the Elements of Thought | 45 |
14. The Modus of the IT | 47 |
15. Views of Chemistry: sketched for Young Ladies | 50 |
16. [A Treatise on Metaphysics] | 57 |
17. Analysis of Creation | 85 |
18. S P Q R | 91 |
19. The Chemical Theory of Interpenetration | 95 |
20. [The Place of Our Age in the History of Civilization] | 101 |
21. Letter Draft, Peirce to Pliny Earle Chase | 115 |
22. [Shakespearian Pronunciation] | 117 |
23. Analysis of the Ego | 144 |
24. A Treatise of the Major Premisses of Natural Science | 152 |
25. On the Doctrine of Immediate Perception | 153 |
26. Letter, Peirce to Francis E. Abbot | 156 |
ON THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE [HARVARD LECTURES OF 1865] |
|
27. Lecture I | 162 |
28. Lecture II | 175 |
29. Lecture III | 189 |
30. Lecture on the Theories of Whewell, Mill, and Compte | 205 |
31. Lecture VI: Boole's Calculus of Logic | 223 |
32. Lecture on Kant | 240 |
33. Lecture VIII: Forms of Induction and Hypothesis | 256 |
34. Lecture X: Grounds of Induction | 272 |
35. Lecture XI | 286 |
36. Teleological Logic | 303 |
37. An Unpsychological View of Logic to which are appended some applications of the theory to Psychology and other subjects | 305 |
38. Logic of the Sciences | 322 |
39. [The Logic Notebook] | 337 |
40. Logic Chapter I | 351 |
THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE; OR, INDUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS [LOWELL LECTURES OF 1866] |
|
41. Lecture I | 358 |
42. Lecture II | 376 |
43. Lecture III | 393 |
44. Lecture IV | 407 |
45. Lecture V | 423 |
46. [Lecture VI] | 440 |
47. Lecture VII | 454 |
48. Lecture IX | 471 |
49. Lecture X | 488 |
50. Lecture XI | 490 |
51. Memoranda Concerning the Aristotelean Syllogism | 505 |
52. [On a Method of Searching for the Categories] | 515 |
APPENDIX |
|
53. [Diagram of the IT] | 530 |
Editorial Notes | 531 |
Bibliography of Peirce’s References | 564 |
Chronological List, 1849-1866 | 569 |
Essay on Editorial Method | 578 |
Explanation of Symbols | 586 |
Textual Notes | 588 |
Emendations | 591 |
Word Division | 685 |
Index | 688 |
When Peirce graduated from Harvard College in 1859, he was not yet twenty. Shortly before graduation, each member of his class wrote an entry in the Harvard Class Book of 1859. Peirce’s was a humorous autobiography-in-miniature, with a sub-entry for each of the years from 1839 through 1859. The last was: "1859. Wondered what I would do in life." In a private notebook, "My Life written for the Class-Book" is continued through 1861. The last sub-entry reads: "1861. No longer wondered what I would do in life but defined my object." What was the reason for the wonder of 1859, and what had happened by 1861 to dispel that wonder and define the object?
In the male line, Peirce was descended from a John Pers (ca. 1588-1661) who came from Norwich, England, in 1637, and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. For four generations, the Peirces were craftsmen, shopkeepers, or farmers. Then Jerathmiel (1747-1827) married Sarah Ropes, settled in Salem, entered the East India shipping trade, prospered, and built the elegant Peirce-Nichols house at 80 Federal Street. His son Benjamin (1778-1831) graduated from Harvard College, married Lydia Ropes Nichols, entered the shipping trade with his father, became a state senator, and, when Salem's shipping trade declined, became Librarian at Harvard, published a four-volume Catalogue of the library's holdings, and wrote a history of the university, which was published shortly after his death. His son Benjamin (1809-1880) graduated from Harvard College in 1829, taught for a time at the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts, and married Sarah Hunt Mills, daughter of Elijah Hunt Mills, a lawyer, co-founder of a law school there, and immediate predecessor of Daniel Webster as United States senator from Massachusetts. This Benjamin Peirce, father of our Charles S. Peirce, became professor of astronomy and mathematics at Harvard, and was the leading American mathematician of his day. He was active in the Lazzaroni, an informal group of "beggars" for federal support of scientific research, and in the movement for a national university. He published several mathematical textbooks of high quality. His major works were Analytic Mechanics (1855-57) and Linear Associative Algebra (1870). He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1853-54, and one of the founders of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. Just beyond our period, he was superintendent of the U. S. Coast Survey from 1867 to 1874. His brother Charles Henry Peirce was a physician, and his sister Charlotte Elizabeth Peirce had kept school and taught privately, and was at home in German and French literature.
A sister of Benjamin Peirce’s wife married Charles Henry Davis, who after seventeen years in the Navy (1823-1840) took up residence in Cambridge, studied mathematics with Benjamin, joined the Coast Survey, and in 1849 became the first superintendent of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac.
Benjamin and Sarah had five children: James Mills (1834-1906), Charles Sanders (1839-1914), Benjamin Mills (1844-1870), Helen Huntington (1845-1923), and Herbert Henry Davis (1849-1916). James Mills (Jem), after graduating from Harvard in 1853, spent a year in the Law School, was tutor in mathematics for several years, graduated from the Divinity School in 1859, spent two years in the ministry, returned to the teaching of mathematics, and eventually succeeded to his father's professorship. Benjamin Mills, after graduating from Harvard in 1865, studied at the Paris School of Mines and later at the Lawrence Scientific School, became a mining engineer, and compiled A Report on the Resources of Iceland and Greenland, which was published by the U.S. State Department in 1868; but he died early in 1870 at Ishpeming in northern Michigan. Helen married William Rogers Ellis, who went into the rolling mill business and eventually into real estate. Herbert, after some years in the interior decorating and other businesses, became a diplomat, was secretary of legation at the U.S. embassy in St. Petersburg, then Third Assistant Secretary of State, and later minister to Norway.
The full range of the learned professions of law, medicine, divinity, and higher education, as well as business, engineering, politics, and diplomacy, was represented in the immediate family or by near relatives. Literature, the theater, and other arts were cherished if not represented. Benjamin Peirce, Charles's father, was a member of the Saturday Club, along with Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and other literary figures. The Peirces were devotees of the theater, attended plays in Boston, and entertained actors in their home. Amateur theatricals were a common form of home entertainment. But what stood out for Charles in looking back from later years was that he had grown up in the Cambridge "scientific circle." The biologist and geologist Louis Agassiz lived but a stone's throw from the Peirces, and was a frequent visitor. Peirce, Agassiz, and Davis were leading members of the Cambridge Scientific Club. That club had at least fifteen meetings in the Peirce home before Charles defined his object, and another five during the years 1861-66. The Cambridge Astronomical Society (1854-57), which met every two weeks, began with Benjamin Peirce as president and Joseph Winlock as recording secretary. It was succeeded by a Mathematics Club presided over by Benjamin Peirce, which met on Wednesday afternoons for several years. It was attended by all the members of the Nautical Almanac staff. To that club Charles himself presented a paper on the four-color problem in the 1860s.
The items in the Class Book entry that shed most light on Charles's intellectual development are all extra-curricular: (1) "taking up the subject of Chemistry" (1847); (2) "Wrote a 'History of Chemistry'" (1850); (3) "Worked at Mathematics for about six months" (1854); (4) "Read Schiller's AEsthetic Letters and began the study of Kant" (1855).
We begin where Charles began, with chemistry. His father was one of the moving spirits behind the establishment within Harvard University of the Lawrence Scientific School in 1847. Eben Norton Horsford had then recently returned from two years at Giessen studying chemistry under Liebig, who combined laboratory instruction with demonstration experiments during lectures. To Liebig more than to anybody else it was due that the experimental method of teaching was more highly developed in chemistry than in any other science, so that the study of chemistry offered at that time the best entry into experimental science in general. Horsford was now made professor of chemistry in the Lawrence Scientific School, where he established, on the Liebig model, the first laboratory in America for analytical chemistry. Charles's uncle, Charles Henry Peirce, until then a practicing physician in Salem, became Horsford's assistant and was encouraged by him to translate Stockhardt's Die Schule der Chemie for textbook use. Charles's aunt, Charlotte Elizabeth Peirce, whose German was excellent, did most of the actual work of translation. During the years in which the chemical laboratory was being established and the translation was in progress, Charles's uncle and aunt helped him set up a private laboratory at home and work his way through Liebig's hundred bottles of qualitative analysis. In 1850, when the translation appeared, Charles, then eleven, wrote a "History of Chemistry" (which has not been found) . In the same year, his uncle became federal inspector of drugs for the port of Boston, and two years later, in 1852, published Examinations of Drugs, Medicines, Chemicals, Etc., as to their Purity and Adulterations, giving some of the results of his official labors. Not long before Charles entered Harvard College in 1855, his uncle died, and Charles inherited his chemical and medical library. Charles's college teacher of chemistry was Josiah P. Cooke, the initiator of laboratory instruction at the undergraduate level. The textbook he used was Stockhardt's, as translated by Charles's aunt and uncle under the title Principles of Chemistry, Illustrated by Simple Experiments.
One episode not recorded in his Class Book entry, but more often recalled in later life than any that is recorded there, was that of his introduction to logic, within a week or two of his twelfth birthday, in 1851. His older brother Jem was about to enter upon his junior year at Harvard College and had bought his textbooks for the year. Among them was Whately's Elements of Logic. Charles dropped into Jem's room, picked up the Whately, asked what logic was, got a simple answer, stretched himself on the carpet with the book open before him, and over a period of several days absorbed its contents. Since that time, he often said late in life, it had never been possible for him to think of anything, including even chemistry, except as an exercise in logic. And so far as he knew, he was the only man since the Middle Ages who had completely devoted his life to logic.
In his freshman year at college, Charles began intensive private study of philosophy with Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. From that he moved on to Kant's Critic of the Pure Reason. In his later college years, while continuing with Kant, he added modern British philosophy. In his junior year, he had to recite on Whately's Elements of Logic, as Jem had done six years before him. But all the while, as he later said, he "retained . . . a decided preference for chemistry," and it was taken for granted in the family that he was headed for a career in that science. The obvious next step after graduating would have been to enter the Lawrence Scientific School. But he felt the need of experience at earning his own living, and he had suffered so from ill health during his senior year that an interval of outdoor employment in science seemed desirable before he proceeded further. His father's friend, Alexander Dallas Bache, superintendent of the Coast Survey, offered him a place in his own field party in Maine in the fall of 1859, and in another field party around the delta of the Mississippi in the winter and spring of 1860. In early August 1859, before joining Bache's party, Charles spent a week at Springfield reporting sessions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for six issues of the Boston Daily Evening Traveler.
On 18 December 1859 Charles wrote Jem, who was then a minister, a long letter from Pascagoula, Mississippi, in which he sought Jem's counsel. A man's first business, thought Charles, is to earn a living for himself—and for his family if he has any. Scientific research is for such leisure as that may leave him; society cannot be expected to pay for what it may have for nothing. It would appear, then, that his wondering in the Class Book what he would do in life meant wondering how he would earn a living, whether he would marry, what leisure he would have for science and for the logic of science. Jem replied at great length on 10 January. Society does pay for science, he wrote, at least if the scientific man has a practical side to his profession. And if one has a strong preference for science one will never be happy in any other occupation. "I have often thought what a fine thing it would be if you & Benjy & I should go into different departments of science: Chemistry, Natural History, & Mathematics."
During Charles's absence in Maine and Louisiana, Darwin's Origin of Species appeared, and also a separate edition of Agassiz's Essay on Classification. Chemistry was an experimental but also a classificatory science. Biology was the chief other classificatory science. The differences between these two sciences were being brought into focus by the controversy between supporters of Darwin and supporters of Agassiz. In the latter half of 1860, while serving as proctor and tutor at Harvard College, Charles was for six months a private student of Agassiz's, to learn his method of classification. One of the tasks that Agassiz set him was sorting out fossil brachiopods.
In the spring of 1861 Charles at last entered the Lawrence Scientific School. Two and a half years later he graduated as a summa cum laude Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. But during his first term the Civil War had begun, and his father had lost, by resignation, the computing aide who assisted him in his chief service to the Coast Survey, that of determining the longitudes of American in relation to European stations from occultations of the Pleiades by the moon. Charles asked his father to obtain that appointment for him. His father wrote Superintendent Bache that he had at first urged his son to "keep to his profession and wait until he could get money by his chemistry—to which he replied that he wants to get the means to buy books and apparatus and devote himself longer to the study of his profession." Bache authorized Charles's appointment as aide beginning 1 July 1861, and he was launched on the career that occupied his next thirty and a half years and took him from chemistry into astronomy, geodesy, metrology, spectroscopy, and other sciences. Some measure of his attainments in them may be found in the facts that his father proposed him for the chair of physics at The Johns Hopkins University to which Henry Augustus Rowland was appointed, and that he was the first modern experimental psychologist on the American continent.
Throughout those thirty and a half years and on beyond them, however, when he had occasion to state his profession, or even his occupation, he continued to call himself a chemist. His first professional publication, in 1863 at the age of twenty-three, was on "The Chemical Theory of Interpenetration." In later years he found in Mendeleev's work on the periodic law and table of the elements the most complete illustration of the methods of inductive science. And he took satisfaction in having, in June 1869, when he was not yet thirty, published a table of the elements that went far in Mendeleev's direction, before Mendeleev's announcement of the law, a little earlier in the same year, became known in western Europe and America. At that year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science it was remarked that Peirce "had greatly added to the illustration of the fact of pairing by representing in a diagram the elements in positions determined by ordinates representing the atomic numbers."
At the end of 1891, after thirty-one and a half years in the service of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, his appointment was terminated, and he set up in private practice as a chemical engineer, thereby returning to the profession to which he had committed himself before he entered the Survey, and from which his career in the Survey had been in some sense a diversion.
It was not until 1906, in the first edition of American Men of Science, that for the first time in any biographical reference work, logic was named as the chief field of his investigations. In the first five editions of Who's Who in America, from 1899-1900 through 1908-1909, his profession appears as that of lecturer and engineer. In the sixth edition, that of 1910-1911, for the first time in any reference work, it appears as that of logician. Only after his death did he begin to be called a philosopher.
How then had he defined his object when in 1861 he no longer wondered what he would do in life? There are no letters or other records of that year from which an explicit, complete, and confident answer can be drawn. We are reduced therefore to piecing together the few indications we have from that time, and filling them out from subsequent events and from Peirce’s later recollections and autobiographical remarks.
Chemistry at that time offered the best entry into experimental science in general, and was therefore the best field in which to do one's postgraduate work, even if one intended to move on to other sciences and, by way of the sciences, to the logic of science and to logic as a whole. Moreover, chemical engineering was then the most promising field in which to make a living by science, if one had no opportunity to do so by pure science or by logic.
That Peirce had no intention of confining himself to chemistry appears from his spending six months in private study of zoological classification under Agassiz before entering the Lawrence Scientific School. It appears also from his oration on "The Place of Our Age in the History of Civilization" (1863) and from "Shakespearian Pronunciation" (1864). It becomes fully evident from the two courses of lectures on the logic of science which he delivered in the spring of 1865 and the fall of 1866, and from the course on the history of logic in Great Britain which he delivered in 1869-70. The first and third of these courses were "University Lectures" at Harvard, each a part of an extensive program of such courses intended primarily for graduates of the college, and each offered but once. One of the men who attended the third course, along with others given in 1869-70, described them many years later as "The Germ of the Graduate School." Both in the university and in the Lowell Institute, in which the second course was given, each lecturer was expected to devote his lectures to the field and topics of his greatest competence, or on which he had most to offer that was new.
The most striking evidence, however, may be found in Peirce’s election in January 1867 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in April 1877 to the National Academy of Sciences. To the former academy, in March, April, May, September, and November 1867 he presented five papers, all in logic, and all his subsequent papers in the Proceedings and Memoirs of that academy were in logic. Before his election to the National Academy, he was asked to send a list of his scientific papers, but sent instead the titles of four of his papers in logic and said he wished to be judged by those alone; and after his election he wrote to the secretary expressing his gratification at the implied recognition of logic as a science. Of the thirty-four papers he presented to the National Academy from 1878 to 1911, nearly a third were in logic. Others were in mathematics, physics, geodesy, spectroscopy, and experimental psychology; but in none of these fields did the number approach that in logic.
In connection with Peirce’s private study of zoological classification under Agassiz, we mentioned that biology, like chemistry, is a classificatory science. We may add now that logic also is a classificatory science; that in Peirce’s first series of published papers in logic, which will appear early in our second volume, the second paper was called "On a Natural Classification of Arguments"; that his first privately printed paper in logic, his "Memoranda Concerning the Aristotelean Syllogism," near the end of the present volume, contained his first original contribution to the classification of arguments; that he at that time conceived logic to be a branch of semeiotic, the general theory of signs; that he later adopted a much broader conception of logic in which, if it was not coextensive with semeiotic, it was so nearly so that for some time to come logicians were likely to be the chief cultivators of the general theory of signs; and that, in his own lifetime as a whole, he devoted more labor to the classification of signs than to any other single field of research. His pragmatism, for example, lay wholly within its scope.
How then had Peirce defined his object in 1861? Somewhat as follows, we may safely infer from all the evidence, early and late. In mathematics and in as wide a range of the sciences, physical and psychical, as possible—including the history of science and of mathematics—he would reach the point of carrying out and publishing original researches. He would begin with chemistry, the open sesame to the experimental sciences. He would earn his living by science as far as possible, so that his hours of employment as well as of leisure should further his object. He would prefer employment that gave him scope for diversity of researches over a period of years. His researches in sciences other than logic would in the first place be for the sake of those sciences themselves, but all would be brought to a second focus in logic, as including both the logic of mathematics and the logic of science, and eventually as including the general theory of signs. By bringing logic (and thereby metaphysics) abreast of the exact sciences in which he had been bred, he would at the same time serve the several sciences at a second and higher level.
But why should Peirce have supposed that by first making positive contributions to mathematics and to a wide range of the sciences he would then become a better contributor to logic? Because a scientific logic must take full account of the reasonings of mathematics and the sciences and because the traditional logic has failed to do so. It has failed in part because mathematicians who are not logicians, and logicians who are not mathematicians, are not fully competent to analyze the reasonings of mathematicians; and because scientists who are not logicians, and logicians who are not scientists, or who are scientists in only a single science or in but two or three closely related sciences, are not fully competent to analyze the reasonings of scientists.
If we think of the literature of the logic of science as including on the one hand Descartes's Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Searching for the Truth in the Sciences; and on the other Bacon's Novum Organum and Whewell's Novum Organon Renovatum it will seem at least an hypothesis worth trying that a logician's ability to contribute to the logic of science may be enhanced by extending the range of his scientific researches. For Whewell had done just that, and had also written and published a three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), before publishing his two-volume Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History (1840). His Novum Organon Renovatum (1858) was Part 2 of the third edition of the latter work.
In his 1865 Harvard University Lectures on the Logic of Science, in the present volume, Peirce speaks of Whewell as "man of science," "historian of science," and "the most profound writer upon our subject." But he speaks at much greater length in the lecture on Whewell in his Harvard University Lectures of 1869 on the British Logicians, which will appear in volume 2. That may be our best evidence of the way in which Peirce had defined his object in life.
But whether in fact, and to what extent, Peirce’s contributions to the logic of science can be traced to the diversification of his scientific researches is still to be determined, and it is one of the aims of the present edition of his writings to open the way toward answering that question .
When Bacon gave the title Novum Organum to the second part of his major work, The Great Instauration, and when Whewell gave the title Novum Organon Renovatum to the second part of his major work in its third edition, they thereby claimed to be making great advances in logic, the science founded by Aristotle in his Organon Advances not in the whole range of the Organon, to be sure, but only in the logic of science; more exactly, in the theory of how the inductive and especially the experimental sciences are advanced. But the Organon itself began with a treatise on Categories, in which ten were listed and discussed; and Peirce began where the Organon began.
Aristotle's categories were substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and passion. Many lists differing more or less from his were drawn up by later logicians. In Peirce’s time the best known of these were Kant's short list of twelve and the long list of Hegel's Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Bacon had used the phrase "Transcendentals, or Adventitious Conditions of Essences." Whewell used the phrase "Fundamental Ideas" but offered no inclusive list; it was for the future progress of the sciences to evolve one.
Looking back from 1898, Peirce wrote: "In the early sixties I was a passionate devotee of Kant, at least as regards the Transcendental Analytic in the Critic of the Pure Reason. I believed more implicitly in the two tables of the Functions of Judgment and the Categories than if they had been brought down from Sinai." In Meiklejohn's translation of 1855, which Peirce owned and used beginning not later than 1856, the two tables appear six pages apart. To facilitate comparison, we present them here in parallel columns.
[TABLE OF JUDGMENTS]
I. Quantity of judgments
Universal
II. Quality
Affirmative
III. Relation
Categorical
IV. Modality
Problematical
TABLE OF THE CATEGORIES
I. Of Quantity
Unity
II. Of Quality
Reality
Of Inherence and Subsistence (substantia et accidens)
IV. Of Modality
Possibility-Impossibility
For the present we shall confine our attention to the Table of the Categories. It is obvious at once that three of Aristotle's ten categories appear as heads of three of Kant's four triads, and two or three others appear in modified forms within them. Hegel remarked that the four headings that Kant used for his triads were in fact categories of a more general nature. Kant himself had remarked that in each triad the third category arises from the combination of the second with the first. Peirce will later make a similar observation about Hegel's three stages of thought, which he will call Hegel's universal categories, as distinguished from the particular categories of the Encyclopedia. He will also say that his own three categories correspond both to Hegel's universal categories and to the three categories implicit in each of Kant's four triads.
Volume 2 will include the five papers in logic that Peirce presented to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1867. The third of them offered the following "New List of Categories:
BEING,
Quality
(Reference to a Ground),
Relation
(Reference to a Correlate),
Representation (Reference to an
Interpretant),
SUBSTANCE.
Peirce soon reduced the five to three by sloughing off Being and Substance. We note at once that two of Aristotle's categories reappear in Peirce’s triad as well as in the headings of two of Kant's triads. Only representation is new. But that is novelty enough. It is the first list of categories that opens the way to making the general theory of signs fundamental in logic, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Peirce’s paper "On a New List of Categories" was presented to the academy on 14 May 1867. In his private Logic Notebook, on 23 March, Peirce wrote:
"I cannot explain the deep emotion with which I open this book again. Here I write but never after read what I have written for what I write is done in the process of forming a conception. Yet I cannot forget that here are the germs of the theory of the categories which is (if anything is) the gift I make to the world. That is my child. In it I shall live when oblivion has me—my body."
And thirty-eight years later, in a draft of a letter to Mario Calderoni, he could still write that
"on May 14, 1867, after three years of almost insanely concentrated thought, hardly interrupted even by sleep, I produced my one contribution to philosophy in the "New List of Categories." My three categories are nothing but Hegel's three grades of thinking. I know very well that there are other categories, those which Hegel calls by that name. But I never succeeded in satisfying myself with any list of them."
Readers of the present volume will bring to it numerous questions the editors cannot hope to anticipate. It seems safe to assume, however, that readers wishing to understand Peirce on his own terms will be more numerous than those who approach him with the same particular question or group of questions of their own. On that assumption, our primary aim in volume 1 has been to include in their chronological places the writings in which the reader can trace the steps by which Peirce arrived at his new list of categories, and at the first published forms of his general theory of signs and his sign theory of cognition; and in subsequent volumes the steps by which he moved through successive modifications of all three toward his last great undertaking, "A System of Logic, considered as Semeiotic." But we include every paper of comparable originality, whether directly relevant or not to this primary aim. No range of his work will be left unrepresented.
We turn now to a few of the less obvious early episodes in the search for the categories within the period of the present volume.
Charles Russell Lowell (eldest brother of the poet James Russell Lowell) and his wife, Anna Cabot Jackson Lowell, were neighbors of the Peirces. Their home was a center of hospitality. It was there that Peirce met Chauncey Wright, the ablest philosopher with whom he was personally acquainted in his early years. Shortly before he entered college, Mrs. Lowell had lent Peirce a copy of John Weiss translation of The Aesthetic Letters of Friedrich Schiller. As a result of alphabetic seating in their college classes, he and Horatio Paine ("noble-hearted, sterling-charactered," "almost the only real companion I have ever had") became intimate friends. Schiller's book interested them more than anything they were required to read in college, and they "spent every afternoon for long months upon it, picking the matter to pieces as well as we boys knew how to do." From Schiller they proceeded to Kant's Critic of the Pure Reason (as Peirce later rendered the title), and Peirce continued the study of the Critic until he almost "knew it by heart in both editions."
One of the assigned "themes" in their sophomore year was on a sentence from Ruskin's Modern Painters: "It has been said by Schiller in his letters on aesthetic culture that the sense of beauty never farthered the performance of a single duty." Peirce was well prepared to defend Schiller against Ruskin's misunderstanding. He gives an account of the three impulses distinguished by Schiller—the Formtrieb, Stofftrieb, and Spieltrieb. In response to a comment on his theme by their professor, Francis J. Child, Peirce added at the end: "I should say that these were the I impulse and faculty, and the IT impulse and faculty; and also the THOU impulse and faculty which (it seems to me) is what Schiller regards as that of beauty."
Readers familiar with Martin Buber's I and Thou will be struck by the prominence of I, IT, and THOU in the early stages of Peirce’s search for the categories. If Kant's categories come in triads, and if the Hegelian dialectic moves in triads of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and if Schiller finds only three fundamental drives or faculties, we may well be moved to try the hypothesis that Aristotle's ten categories and Kant's twelve are reducible to three. If, further, we expect the categories to manifest themselves in language as well as in thought, it may strike us that in the language we speak there is nothing more prominent than the three persons of the verb and the corresponding pronouns. (Some readers will recall at this point that Peirce later held that nouns are substitutes for pronouns, not, as their names assume, pronouns for nouns.)
If we then try finding our categories in, or deriving them from, the personal pronouns, our first trials are likely to take them in the order I, THOU, IT; and that is what Peirce does in his earliest surviving table, as well as in a theme comparing Michelangelo and Raphael, both written in 1857. In the table, he is already connecting his pronominal categories with Kant's triads; for that purpose he changes the order of the second and third categories in two of Kant's triads, and we wonder why he does not do so in the third as well.
By January 1859, if not earlier, he has settled on the order I, IT, THOU. In that month he begins a book on "The Natural History of Words," in which the first page of text reads:
THE PERSONS
I
I me
The
first person, the ego, the I, the Me, subject, self
Not-I non-ego
Subjective, my, mine
to me
IT
He him she her it they them, third person
Being, Thing, to ov thing in itself,
noumenon
be is are were was been
THOU
Thou, thee, ye, you; 0!
Second person,
thine, yours, thy,
your.
It is assumed throughout that semeiotic, the general theory of signs, including words and other symbols, is a classificatory science, like chemistry and biology; and we are starting with words, and, among words, with those associated with the three persons of the Verb, and with the names I, THOU, and IT for those persons. It is made emphatic that the logical or categorical order of these names is different from the traditional grammatical order of the persons, but the reason for the difference is not stated.
On 1 June 1859 Peirce constructs an octagonal table of subcategories of the IT, including all of Kant's categories with some puzzling alterations. Kant's first triad appears as Infinite Qualities of Quantity, his second as Influxual Dependencies of Quality, his third as Necessary Modes of Dependence, and his fourth as Perfect Degrees of Modality. These are followed by four other triads, the last of which brings us back to Kant's first.
In the spring of 1861 Peirce begins a book entitled, "I, IT, and THOU." "I here, for the first time," he writes, "begin a developement of these conceptions. . . . THOU is an IT in which there is another I. I looks in, It looks out, Thou looks through, out and in again." For the first time, it becomes emphatic and clear that THOU presupposes IT, and IT presupposes I. That is the reason for the difference between the categorical and the grammatical order.
In the next year, 1862, William James writes in one of his notebooks:
"The thou idea, as
Pierce calls it, dominates an entire realm of mental phenomena,
embracing poetry, all direct intuition of nature, scientific
instincts, relations of man to man, morality &c.
"All analysis must be into a triad;
me & it require the complement of thou."
In his oration on "The Place of Our Age in the History of Civilization," delivered at a reunion of the Cambridge High School Association on 12 November 1863 and published in the Cambridge Chronicle, Peirce says: "First there was the egotistical stage when man arbitrarily imagined perfection, now is the idistical stage when he observes it. Hereafter must be the more glorious tuistical stage when he shall be in communion with her."
In 1891 Peirce defines tuism for the Century Dictionary as "The doctrine that all thought is addressed to a second person, or to one's future self as to a second person." The Oxford English Dictionary later quotes this definition in its own entry. There and in its illeism entry, it is recorded that Coleridge had used the terms egotism, illeism, and tuism, but not in any systematic or technical way.
Though by 1867 Peirce has abandoned I, IT, and THOU as names for his categories, it is only because he has found better technical terms for what he has meant by those more colloquial ones.
The main substance of the present volume is in the two series of lectures on the logic of science—the Harvard University Lectures in the spring of 1865 and the Lowell Institute Lectures in the fall of 1866. Though a few extracts from both series have been published, the present volume contains for the first time as near an approach to a complete letterpress edition of the two as the surviving manuscripts make possible. It also enables us to attend both series with the benefit of prior acquaintance with several years of the young lecturer's life and work, and thereby prepares us for the second and subsequent volumes .
We are tempted to say on the one hand that in these two courses Peirce has for the most part unfolded his thoughts before us with such fullness that any editorial introduction would be superfluous, and on the other hand that an adequate introduction will be possible only after several years of detailed examination by Peirce scholars and by historians of logic.
If some readers find his metaphysics more interesting than his logic, we invite their attention to the last of the Lowell Lectures, on the advantages of "adopting our logic as our metaphysics." If we learn our logic from Peirce, we shall thereby be led, for example, not only to the sign theory of cognition but also to the sign (more exactly the symbol) theory of man, and to a metaphysics akin to trinitarian theology. Near the end, the lecturer is saying:
"Here, therefore, we have a divine trinity of the object, interpretant, and ground. . . . In many respects, this trinity agrees with the Christian trinity; indeed I am not aware that there are any points of disagreement. The interpretant is evidently the Divine Logos or word; and if our former guess that a Reference to an interpretant is Paternity be right, this would be also the Son of God. The ground, being that partaking of which is requisite to any communication with the Symbol, corresponds in its function to the Holy Spirit."
This becomes intelligible only in the light of biographical details more intimate than those we have so far cited.
Peirce was brought up a Unitarian. The family attended services at the College Chapel. Frederic Dan Huntington's appointment as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Preacher to the College began with Peirce’s freshman year and continued a year beyond his graduation It was under Huntington that Peirce in his freshman year studied Richard Whately's Lessons on Morals and Christian Evidences. Huntington was a Unitarian, but he became an Episcopalian early in 1860 and therefore resigned his professorship. (He later became the first Episcopal bishop of Central New York, with diocesan headquarters at Syracuse.)
Among the Harvard classmates of Peirce’s father was Charles Fay, who became an Episcopalian clergyman, married a daughter of John Henry Hopkins, the first Episcopal bishop of Vermont, and since 1848 had been rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church at St. Albans, Vermont. The eldest daughter of the Fays, Harriet Melusina, usually called Zina, was a passionate feminist deeply concerned from adoescence about the role of women in society. In the summer of 1859 she arrived at an interpretation of the doctrine of the trinity according to which the Holy Spirit is the feminine element in the triune god-head: "a Divine Eternal Trinity of Father, Mother and Only Son—the 'Mother' being veiled throughout the Scriptures under the terms 'The Spirit,' 'Wisdom,' 'The Holy Ghost,' 'The Comforter,' and 'The Woman clothed with the sun and crowned with the stars and with the moon under her feet'."
After her mother's death in 1856, Zina had been in correspondence with Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it was on his advice that in the fall of 1859 she entered the Agassiz School for Young Ladies, in the Agassiz home just across Quincy Street from the Peirces. Perhaps it was there that Charles and Zina met, in the winter of 1860-61 if not earlier. He made his first formal call upon her in January 1861. Several of his metaphysical writings from 1861 onwards are marked "For Z. F.," and probably most if not all of them were written for her. In the summer of 1861 he made the first of several extended visits to Zina and her family in St. Albans. His "Views of Chemistry: sketched for Young Ladies," written for Zina and her younger sisters, were begun during that visit. When he defined his object in that year, it probably included marriage with her. By the spring of 1862 they were engaged. It seemed to his parents that for the first time he was taking religion seriously. In the evening of 24 July, in the chapel of the Vermont Episcopal Institute in Burlington, in the presence of Zina and several members of her family, Charles was confirmed by her grandfather, Bishop Hopkins. On 16 October Charles and Zina were married by her father at St. Luke's in St. Albans. (They had no children. After fourteen years together, she separated herself from him. He divorced her in 1883 and took a second wife. Zina did not remarry.)
Peirce’s conversion to Episcopalianism entailed of course a conversion from unitarianism to trinitarianism. Though not always an active communicant, he remained an Episcopalian and a trinitarian to the end of his life. And as late as 1907 we find a distant echo of Zina's feminist version of the trinity. In outlining a draft of what turned out to be his best account of pragmatism within the framework of his general theory of signs, he then wrote: "A Sign mediates between its Object and its Meaning. . . Object the father, sign the mother of meaning." That is, he might have added, of their son, the Interpretant.
Though Peirce’s categories are meant to be universally applicable, and he did so apply them, his most frequent single application of all three together is in the definition of a sign. In his many definifions, early and late, the nearest to a constant is that a sign is a first something so determined (limited, specialized) by a second something, called its object, as to determine a third something, called its interpretant, to determination by the same object. That is, sign action or semeiosis (as distinguished from dyadic mechanical action) involves an irreducibly triadic relation between (1) a sign, (2) its object, and (3) its interpretant.
His most frequent single occasion for defining a sign is that of a logician for whom logic is "the critic of arguments" and arguments are a kind of signs. After defining a sign, his most frequent next three moves, each a reapplication of his categories, are: (1) dividing signs into icons, indexes, and symbols; (2) dividing symbols into terms, propositions, and arguments; and (3) dividing arguments into retroductions, inductions, and deductions. He is then ready for the main business of logic, that of determining the relative validity or strength of each kind of arguments.
(In the present volume, he uses "representation" and "representamen" in approximately the senses in which he will later use "sign," and by "sign" he usually means what toward the end of the volume he begins calling "index." What in this volume he calls "likeness," "copy," "image," or "analogue," he will begin calling "icon" in 1885. "Abduction" and "retroduction" are his later and more technical terms for what he here calls "hypothesis" or "inference a' posteriori." For a short while he tries "subject" and "correspondent" for what, toward the end of the volume, he begins calling "interpretant.")
Logic is for Peirce a science, and its definition must therefore place it in relation to other sciences. That calls for a classification of the sciences. No logician—no philosopher—ever attached more importance, or devoted more attention, to classifications of the sciences than Peirce did. The most general and the most familiar classification was that which John Locke, in the last chapter of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), ascribed to the Greeks: [Greek] or natural science, [Greek] or moral science, and [Greek] or "the Doctrine of Signs, the most usual whereof being Words, it is aptly enough termed also [Greek], Logick." Peirce objects that, of the three kinds of signs, logic deals only with symbols, and with them only in relation to their objects, and only in respect of truth and falsity. Moreover, of the three kinds of symbols, it has little to say of terms and propositions except as they enter into arguments. So logic is at most but a third part of a third part—that is, a ninth part—of semeiotic. It might be defined as objective symbolistic.
By the mid-1880s, however, Peirce will have come to realize that logic cannot do business without icons and indexes and that it must take account of all three kinds of symbols both in themselves and in relation to their interpretants as well as in relation to their objects. In the 1890s he will distinguish a narrow sense in which logic is still concerned only with arguments and only in relation to their objects, and a broad sense in which it is coextensive with semeiotic in the sense of "the general theory of signs," leaving room for an indefinite number of more specialized semeiotic sciences. He is thus halfway back to Locke. By 1902, he will abandon the narrow sense altogether, or use Locke's term critic rather than logic as the name for it; and the semeiotic trivium will become the logical trivium of speculative grammar, critic, and speculative rhetoric or methodeutic; and by 1909 he is drafting "A System of Logic, considered as Semeiotic." It has taken him most of his productive lifetime to come all the way back to Locke. With this in mind, it should not surprise us that, over that lifetime, Peirce devoted more study than any other major logician has done to "the doctrine of signs."
Returning now to the classification of arguments, we remark that though the title of Peirce’s Harvard University Lectures of 1865 was simply "On the Logic of Science," that of his Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866 was "The Logic of Science; or, Induction and Hypothesis." The latter title would have been read at the time as if it had been written "The Logic of Science; or, Induction—and Hypothesis!" The common assumption was that the logic of mathematics was the logic of deduction, and the logic of science that of induction. Though it was obvious that the advancement of the empirical and experimental sciences depended on the forming and testing of hypotheses, hypothesis was not (and is not yet) understood as a distinct kind of inference or argument.
But Peirce’s three categories led him to expect to find three distinct kinds of arguments. (He later intimated that the chief single purpose of his work on the categories had been to have a guide to the classification of arguments.) The problem was to identify, distinguish, and name them. He began where Kant began in his major work, whose title Peirce proposed to translate "Critic of the Pure Reason"; namely, with the distinction between two kinds of "judgments": (1) analytic or explicative and (2) synthetic or ampliative. Peirce first adopted the second term of each pair. He then turned the distinction between explicative and ampliative judgments into the distinction between explicative and ampliative arguments or inferences. A possible way of coming out with three kinds instead of two was to divide one or the other into two. He would later distinguish two kinds of mathe-matical demonstration, corollarial and theorematic, but he had as yet no inkling of that. Even if he had already worked it out, the difference between them would not have seemed to him so radical as that between the two kinds of ampliative inference which he now readily found; the difference, that is, between induction more strictly speaking on the one hand, and on the other reasoning to a hypothesis that will both account for puzzling data already obtained and serve to predict results of experiments not yet tried or observations not yet made.
Peirce next connected explicative arguments with the first of the three Aristotelian figures of the syllogism, and more particularly with the mood Barbara. He then tried connecting hypothesis with the second figure, and particularly with the mood Baroco; and induction with the third figure, and particularly with the mood Bocardo. In the order of the validity or strength of the three kinds of arguments, from the weakest to the strongest, the connections thus became: (1) first category, hypothesis, second figure; (2) second category, induction, third figure; (3) third category, deduction, first figure.
But connecting the three kinds of inference with the three Aristotelian figures of the syllogism was open to two lines of attack. (1) What about the fourth figure? Having adopted as his "primary conceptions" those of rule, subsumption of case, and result, Peirce rejects the fourth figure and "all its moods not as being invalid but as being indirect, and unsyllogistic." (2) But since syllogisms in the second and third figures are reducible to syllogisms in the first, must we not concur with Kant in his early tract On the False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures? That question led Peirce to his first major discovery in logic; namely, that every such reduction takes the logical form of an argument in the figure from which the reduction is made. He thought enough of this discovery to have his essay on it privately printed in time for distribution at his Lowell Lectures in November 1866, under the title Memoranda Concerning the Aristotelean Syllogism; and he mailed copies to logicians at home and abroad. Augustus De Morgan in London received his copy on 29 December 1866. By the end of the period covered by the present volume, Peirce had thus joined the small international community of professional logicians.
MAX H. FISCH
The following five corrections to the first printing have been incorporated in the second printing; the original readings are given in brackets.
paper [papers]
of [or]
reasonableness [reasonbleness]
symbols [things]
blue [red]
Emendations for the last two, which represent Peirce’s own errors, have been added on pages 640 and 661.
The following nine corrections to the second printing have been incorporated in the third printing; the original readings are given in brackets.
familiar [familar]
forms manifested . . . symbols translated
[symbols translated . . . forms manifested]
denotation [information]
Chapter [Chaper]
rests is . . . conclusion,—this [rests—is . . . conclusion. This]
hypothesis [hyopthesis]
letzterer [letzerer]
A heavy dot has been inserted, centered under the short horizontal line at the top of that page
information, [information]
Emendations for 276.19–20, 277.11–12, and 484.11, which represent Peirce’s errors, have been added on pages 639 and 676; two emendations have been removed on page 668, for correction 435.27–29.
The following five corrections to the third printing have been incorporated in the fourth printing; the original readings are given in brackets.
and [is]
that what [that that what]
that which is not what a word denotes
[which what a word denotes is not]
mortals) [mortals]
écrits [ecrits]
Emendations for the first three errata, which represent Peirce’s errors, have been added on pages 658 and 671.
but three [but the]
three elements [both]
term [proposition]
terms [propositions]
other [first]
rule [case]
and [or]
everything [every thing]
But the extension of a general term [But the comprehension of a general term]
In short, the logical extension, [In short, the logical comprehension,]
a whole of extension. [a whole of comprehension.]
dark red colour has still less extension.
[dark red colour has still less comprehension.]
An Index term is one which has no adequate comprehension; [An Index term is one which has no adequate extension;]
The year in the running head on odd pages from 65 to 83 should read 1862 instead of 1861.
“Intellectual Symbolism” [Intellectual Symbolism]
only Images à posteriori recalled [only Images à priori recalled] Peirce’s error confirmed by 62.15–16
otherwise [other wise]
The interlineation b = 0 on line 19 should have been inserted just after the fifth word of line 20, to read:
either b is zero b = 0 or
for the plant [for plant]
MS 70 (920, 919, S66) [MS 70 (920, 919)]
MS 71 (1105, 921, 919, 741, 922) [MS 71 (1105, 921, 919, 741)]
MS 92 (1156a) 1864–1871 [MS 92 (1596) 1864–1869]
“I cannot explain the deep emotion with which I open this book again. . . . I cannot forget that here are the germs of the theory of the categories which is (if anything is) the gift I make to the world. That is my child. In it I shall live when oblivion has me—my body.”
Volume 2 (1867–1871) contains some of the major philosophical and logical writings of Peirce’s entire life. His epochal “New List of Categories” of 1867, his three “cognition” articles in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy of 1868–69, and his review of the works of Berkeley in the North American Review of 1871 are now recognized as constituting the modern founding of semiotics, the general theory of signs, while providing also a new fundamental platform for philosophy itself. If we add to these the 1867 review of Venn’s Logic of Chance, the 1867–68 critique of positivism, and the 1870 memoir, “Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives,” and read all eight in chronological order, we can trace the early stages of Peirce’s continued effort to redefine and clarify realism by disentangling it progressively from nominalism. His other papers in logic bring improvement to Boole’s calculus of logic; provide a natural classification of arguments that revisits the figures of syllogisms and tie them to induction, hypothesis, and analogy; work out a formal logic of mathematics; and make public Peirce’s research on logical comprehension and extension. Other essays and lectures testify to Peirce’s deep study of the works of British logicians.
When Peirce was appointed assistant in the United States Coast Survey in 1867, he began an ascent that carried him during the next decade to the select ranks of leadership in science in America and to renown in the international scientific community. The focus of Peirce’s scientific work during the period of the volume 2 was astronomy, and, by arrangement with the Coast Survey, his work was conducted principally at the Harvard Observatory. Peirce was an official observer of two total eclipses of the sun during these years, the first in Kentucky in 1869 and the second in Sicily in 1870. During the several months that Peirce spent in Europe in 1870–71, he became acquainted with many leading European astronomers. In 1871 he began his observations with Harvard’s Zöllner astrophotometer, which resulted in his only published monograph, Photometric Researches, parts of which are included in Volume 3.
“Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, . . . is the most fundamental practical question in regard to every public institution the constitution of which we have it in our power to influence.”
Volume 2 contains some of the major philosophical writings of Peirce’s entire life. His "New List of Categories" of 1867, his three "cognition" articles in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy of 1868-69, and his review of the works of Berkeley in the North American Review of 1871 are now recognized as constituting the modern founding of semiotics, the general theory of signs. If we add to these the 1867 review of Venn's Logic of Chance and the 1870 memoir on the "logic of relatives," and read all seven in chronological order, we can trace the early stages of Peirce’s progress from nominalism to realism. When Peirce was appointed assistant in the United States Coast Survey in 1867, he began an ascent that carried him during the next decade to the select ranks of leadership in science in America and to renown in the international scientific community.
The focus of Peirce’s scientific work during the period of the present volume was astronomy, and, by arrangement with the Coast Survey, his work was conducted principally at the Harvard Observatory. Peirce was an official observer of two total eclipses of the sun during these years, the first in Kentucky in 1869 and the second in Sicily in 1870. During the several months that Peirce spent in Europe in 1870-71, he became acquainted with many leading European astronomers. In 1871 he began his observations with Harvard's Zollner astrophotometer, which resulted in his only published monograph, Photometric Researches, parts of which are included in Volume 5.
Preface | xi |
Acknowledgments | xix |
Introduction |
xxi
|
The Decisive Year and Its Early Consequences Max H. Fisch | xxi |
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy Papers C. V. Delaney | xxxvi |
The 1870 Logic of Relatives Memoir Daniel D. Merrill | xlii |
1. [The Logic Notebook] | 1 |
[THE AMERICAN ACADEMY SERIES] |
|
2. On an Improvement in Boole's Calculus of Logic | 12 |
3. On the Natural Classification of Arguments | 23 |
4. On a New List of Categories | 49 |
5. Upon the Logic of Mathematics | 59 |
6. Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension | 70 |
7. Notes | 87 |
8. [Venn's The Logic of Chance] | 98 |
9. Chapter I. One, Two, and Three | 103 |
10. Specimen of a Dictionary of the Terms of Logic and allied Sciences: A to ABS | 105 |
11. [Critique of Positivism] | 122 |
[THE PEIRCE-HARRIS EXCHANGE ON HEGEL] |
|
12. Paul Janet and Hegel, by W. T. Harris | 132 |
13. Letter, Peirce to W. T. Harris (24 January 1868) | 143 |
14. Nominalism versus Realism | 144 |
15. Letter, Peirce to W. T. Harris (16 March 1868) | 154 |
16. What is Meant by "Determined" | 155 |
17. Letter, Peirce to W. T. Harris (9 April 1868) | 158 |
[THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY SERIES] |
|
18. Questions on Reality | 162 |
19. Potentia ex Impotentia | 187 |
20. Letter, Peirce to W. T. Harris (30 November 1868) | 192 |
21. Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man | 193 |
22. Some Consequences of Four Incapacities | 211 |
23. Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic | 242 |
24. Professor Porter's Human Intellect | 273 |
25. The Pairing of the Elements | 282 |
26. Roscoe's Spectrum Analysis | 285 |
27. [The Solar Eclipse of 7 August 1869] | 290 |
28. Preliminary Sketch of Logic | 294 |
29. [The Logic Notebook] | 298 |
30. The English Doctrine of Ideas | 302 |
[LECTURES ON BRITISH LOGICIANS] |
|
31. Lecture I. Early nominalism and realism | 310 |
32. Ockam. Lecture 3 | 317 |
33. Whewell | 337 |
[PRACTICAL LOGIC] |
|
34. Lessons in Practical Logic | 348 |
35. A Practical Treatise on Logic and Methodology | 350 |
36. Rules of Investigation | 351 |
37. Practical Logic | 353 |
38. Chapter 2 | 356 |
39. Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives | 359 |
40. A System of Logic | 430 |
41. [Henry James's The Secret of Swedenborg] | 433 |
42. Notes for Lectures on Logic to be given 1st term 1870-71 | 439 |
43. Bain's Logic | 441 |
44. Letter, Peirce to W. S. Jevons | 445 |
45. [Augustus De Morgan] | 448 |
46. Of the Copulas of Algebra | 451 |
47. [Charles Babbage] | 457 |
[THE BERKELEY REVIEW] |
|
48. [Fraser's The Works of George Berkeley] | 462 |
49. [Peirce’s Berkeley Review], by Chauncey Wright | 487 |
50. Mr. Peirce and the Realists | 490 |
APPENDIX |
|
51. Letter, J. E. Oliver to Peirce | 492 |
Editorial Notes | 499 |
Bibliography of Peirce’s References | 555 |
Chronological List, 1867-1871 | 564 |
TEXTUAL APPARATUS |
|
Essay on Editorial Method | 469 |
Explanation of Symbols | 582 |
Textual Notes | 584 |
Emendations | 586 |
Word Division | 629 |
Index | 632 |
MS 140:
March-December 1867 |
|
1867 March 23 |
I cannot explain the deep emotion with which I open this book again. Here I write but never after read what I have written for what I write is done in the process of forming a conception. Yet I cannot forget that here are the germs of the theory of the categories which is (if anything is) the gift I make to the world. That is my child. In it I shall live when oblivion has memy body. This matter of the logical principles of the different kinds of inference is a difficult matter. One way of putting it would be this. Every symbol denotes certain objects and
connotes certain characters. The symbol represents
each of those objects to have each of those
characters. The symbol may be a false one; it
may be that the objects it denotes do not have the
characters it connotes. But if S is
M in this sense
then S is P. Here the principle is that
That which is
M is what M is. Every one of the integrant parts of m
is an integrant part of each prime aliquot of
m and vice versa.
A purely contentless principle. As a logical
principle should be.
Now let us take up the synthetic arguments.
Whatever is a character of every thing denoted
by M is a character of M. Whatever
has every character of M is denoted by m.
Here are two principles. But they do not apply
to induction and hypothesis just as they stand.
Whatever is a common character of many things
denoted by M is likely to be a character
of m.
That does not quite hit the point. It does not
contain the idea that the things must have been
taken at random out of those denoted by M.
In what point of view shall we regard this
necessity for a random selection?
Suppose we look at the matter thus. Certain
things have a certain character in common. It
follows that there must be some genus of
these things which have the character. We cannot
take any genus lower than that which they
are selected as belonging to. To take a higher one
would involve a perfectly arbitrary proposition.
I am convinced that this is a very awkward way
of taking hold of the matter.
Suppose we take it up another way.
For any subject or predicate we can substitute
what?
Only that which this subject or predicate
represents Now a subject is a direct symbol of its
subject to its predicate and a predicate of its
predicate to its subject.
But a subject is also an imperfect
representation of that genus from which it has
been takenby which it is determined. It is not
a semeion sign of it as I have saidit
is an example of it.
A predicate is a representation of the thing of
which it is a random charactera copy of it.
This is horribly vague.
1867 March 25
Here is another point of view.
What is the function of a symbol as subject? To
stand for certain things. Then if a predicate be
true of all the things that it stands for as yet,
that is for all which we yet know it to stand for,
the symbol may stand as subject provisionally.
The difficulty with this is that it does not
represent the synthetic probability of the
inference.
It is however a good idea that a random
selection is equivalent to all knownthe genus
of those two would fit that.
We have
M is P in the sense that the
actual denotation or things taken under
M are P (contingent)
and 2nd in the sense that all possible things
taken under M would be P
(necessary). S is M in the senses
1st
that S has the qualities taken of
M (attributive) Still it may be doubted if Hypothesis proceeds
by random selection of qualities of the new
predicate.
Then the principle would be
the possible is like most of the actual.
1867 April 1
What is takenthe present The reason is that the parts compose the whole
and therefore what does not belong to the
majority of the whole does not belong to the
majority of the parts.
What does not belong to most of the parts does
not belong to the parts taken mostly, because the
parts to be taken are all the possible
parts.
April 12
The distinction must be observed between
Induction and Hypothesis as formal operations and
between them as leading to truth.
1867 September 24
Let me consider a little about the nature of
truth.
First. I notice that if we define an
image to be a representation completely determined
in content so that in it every attribute is
affirmed or denied there is probably no image. And
is not this what
is requisite to make an image?
What is an image? There is a good question for
dialectical research. As it
seems to me that the world has not yet exhausted
the instruction to be derived from Sophisms I
shall undertake some analysis of a collocation of
them which seems to me to lead at once to a
solution of the darkest questions of metaphysics.
In the first place what is meant by a
hypothetical proposition, when is it true? Take
this oneIf the carotid artery of a man is cut,
he will die. Or thisif the shadow of the moon
is cast on the earth, there is an eclipse of the
sun.
Truth may be defined as the concurrence of the
extension and comprehension of a representation
which has extension and comprehension independent
of one another.
Thus if a representation is a mere
likeness (as no human representations are) which
stands for nothing except what it happens fully to
agree w
ith in characters; it cannot be false of any thing
because it only stands for whatever it fully
agrees with. And therefore truth has no meaning in
reference to it.
So if a representation merely points out
certain things and implies nothing of them.
But if a representation at once indicates
certain objects and independently implies certain
characters, its truth or falsity depends on
whether those characters can be predicated of
those objects.
This definition is a bad oneit contains a
diallelebut it will answer as a preliminary
explanation and even sometimes as a test.
Now in a hypothetical proposition the function
of the protasis is to mark the sphere of
the representation, which it may do by means of it
s connotation or otherwise. The apodosis on the
other hand conveys the content of the
representation. And the question whether the
proposition is true is the same as whether that
content belongs in fact to that sphere.
Thus in the propositionIf the shadow of the
moon is cast on the earth, the sun is
eclipsedthe former clause indicates the
circumstances to which the statement made in the
latter clause is applicable.
Take now another case. If the motion of the
earth in its orbit were suddenly arrested and the
perturbative effects of other bodies pre-
vented, it
would fall in a direct line to the sun. Unless the
word truth be taken in a quite improper
sense, this proposition is true. Yet how? For in
this case there are no such circumstances as those
indicated,
they are even physically impossible, so that this
would seem to be a representation like a copy
which [ . . .]
1867 Sep. 26
Let
x be that of which I know absolutely
nothing
I know Greek. Greek is not present to my
reminiscence, but occasion will call it up. This
then is the essence of knowledge and what no
occasion will call up is not known or conceived. I
have therefore no conception of the absolutely
unknowable.
Now a proposition is true in all its
consequences for possible experience that either
constitutes the truth of the proposition
or it is false in reference to something which
cannot be known (in which case the unknowable
means something) or else it
is devoid of meaning.
A proposition is not devoid of meaning which
has true consequences.
1867 Sep. 27
Every quality which we know of is of course
either experienced or inferred from experience.
We admit that things may have qualities which we
do not know but that is because we may conceive of
a state of knowledge in which something more is
predicable of them. But do we mean anything if we
say that a thing has a quality which cannot be
predicated of it; that is which is unknowable and
inconceivable? What can we mean by such a
statement? We can imagine such a quality for as
Berkeley says were we to imagine it, it would not
be unimaginable. Can we have any general or
relative notion of it? To have a general notion
appears to be, having a habit according to which a
certain sort
of images will arise on occasion, that is having a
capacity of imaging the particulars and the sense
of this habit. But here such a thing is
impossible.
Let us say then that it means nothing to say
that a thing has an
inconceivable quality. An
inconceivable qualityone inconceivable by
every being and absolutelyis no
quality.
Sep. 28
To say that a word has meaning is to say that a
conception corresponds to it.
To say that we have a general conception of a
triangle for instance is to say that upon the
occasion of a triangle being presented to the
imagination or in experience a certain feeling
complicated in a certain way arises. We have no
conception therefore of that of
which no determination can be presented in the
imagination.
Consequently, though we may undoubtedly mean
something by the inconceivable we can mean nothing
by an absolutely and in itself inconceivable
predicate.
Hence such a predicate is no predicate. To say that we know what a word means is to say
not that we can always apply it rightly in fact
but that we can always apply it rightly to
imagined cases.
On Logical Extension and
Comprehension One term is more extensive than another, when
it is predicable of all that the latter is and of
more, besides. One term is more comprehensive than
another when all the characters predicable of the
latter are predicable of it and more beside.
From this it is plain, at once, that the
greater the extension the less the comprehension and vice versa.
We may distinguish real and verbal
Comprehension and extension; thus "Englishman"
is more extensive than "Surly Englishman" since
it includes also Englishmen not surly. But if
there is any doubt whether any of the latter
exist, it is only verbally more extensive.
So "magnanimous hero" is more comprehensive
than "hero" but if there is a doubt whether
anything is conveyed by the adjective not already
conveyed by the noun then the difference is merely
verbal.
A better instance is "man John" and "man."
Confining our attention to Real Comprehension
and Extension, we may observe that the predication
spoken of may be either
1st such as could be made with no information
except the meaning of the word. This I shall term the Essential
Extension and Comprehension.
2nd such as could logically be made in a
particular supposed state of information. This I
shall term the Inferred Extension and
Comprehension.
3rd such as could be made if our information
were complete. This I shall term the Natural
Extension and Comprehension.
Essential
Extension and Comprehension
One half of all terms are positive and one half
negative. Positive terms are defined, and
therefore have an essential Comprehension. But
they have no real essential extension. Negative
terms are not defined and therefore have no real
essential comprehension but they have a real
essential extension since it is known that no
determinate conception can embrace the whole
sphere of being.
Man is a rational
animal
Two terms cannot be equal in essential
extension or comprehension because if they were
they would have the same meaning. The relation of
two terms in essential comprehension or extension
may not be measurable on account of the want of
distinctness of one or both of those
terms.
Oct. 2
There ought to be a proposition relating to
universal and particular terms similar to that
relating to affirmatives and negatives. My
experience of logical symmetries assures me of it.
Perhaps this is it. A particular term will be
found generally to have some natural extension,
therefore all the extension implied, but
it will not have a comprehension adequate to limiting its
extension as it is limited. On the other hand a
universal term, will never have
an extension capable of limiting its comprehension
as it is limited since new propositions will be
discovered.
This is not yet very clear to me. But it would
seem that as there is an arbitrariness in the
extension of particulars so that we may exclude
this or that from its extension so as to be able
to predicate of it what we cannot predicate of
them, so there is an arbitrary element in the
comprehension of the universal so that this or
that may be omitted from it so that we can
predicate it of (imaginary things) of which we
could not predicate them.
I think this is it. In a particular there is no
concrete thing which must be included under it; in
a universal there is no concrete quality which
must be included in it.
If some S
is P
If S isP
Ah I think I have it now
SomeS has a complete concrete comprehension
This cannot be said of Any man
which is therefore without concrete
comprehension.
On the other hand Some man is
not completely defined in extension since it is
disjunctive alternative while any man
applies definitely to certain things.
Note the meaning of a particular in the
predicate. Some S means Either
S' S'' S''' &c. select which I please.
Some S is
P, that is let me take as my subject one
what one I Now this does not hold for M is some
P unless M is completely
determined in comprehension just as Any S
is P only holds if P has a very
wide extension.
We may therefore
say
Oct. 2 2. Of the Effect of a Change of
Information
Suppose it is learned that
Any S is
P
Then S receives an addition to its
comprehension.
P an addition to its
extension.
If we looking at an S find
it to be P
Some S is P
This adds to the extension of
Psupposing we know what
S.
Any S is not-P
This adds to the comprehension of
Ssupposing we know something of
not-P.
1867 Nov. 24
I wish to investigate the nature of a simple
concept. Such a concept first arises as predicated
of some object (occasion of
experience)
S is M
On the ground of some previous representation
of the object. (Not immediate)
1. entirely knowable. Intuitional. Capable of external
existence.
The predication of the concept is virtually
contained in this previous representation.
To say that a simple concept is the immediate
apprehension of a quality is but a mode of saying that its meaning is
given in the representation which gives rise to it inasmuch as it is as
much as to say that that quality is contained in that
representation.
1867 Dec. 7
When I conceive a thing as say 'three' or say
'necessary' I necessarily have some concrete
object in my imagination. I have some concrete
object'the necessary'. By saying that I have
the necessary in my mind, it is not meant that I
have all necessary things in mind. Nor that I have
simply the character of necessity. For
what I am thinking is not necessity but the
necessary. Then I must have something which I
recognize as a general sign of the necessary. But
why should that particular feeling which is a sign
of the necessary be a sign of that any more than
of anything else? Because such is my constitution. Very true.
When I conceive as say "necessary," I have
some singular object present to my imagination. I
have not all necessary things separately
imaged.
Doubted whether I ever have an absolutely
singular object
|
Copyright of the Peirce Edition Project 1998 |
P 32: Presented 14 May 1867
§1. This paper is based upon the theory already established, that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity, and that the validity of a conception consists in the impossibility of reducing the content of consciousness to unity without the introduction of it. §2. This theory gives rise to a conception of gradation among those conceptions which are universal. For one such conception may unite the manifold of sense and yet another may be required to unite the conception and the manifold to which it is applied; and so on. §3. That universal conception which is nearest to sense is that of the present, in general. This is a conception, because it is universal. But as the act of attention has no connotation at all, but is the pure denotative power of the mind, that is to say, the power which directs the mind to an object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any predicate of that object,--so the conception of what is present in general, which is nothing but the general recognition of what is contained in attention, has no connotation, and therefore no proper unity. This conception of the present in general, or IT in general, is rendered in philosophical language by the word "substance" in one of its meanings. Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of substance. §4. The unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is the unity of a proposition. This unity consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject; and, therefore, that which is implied in the copula, or the conception of being, is that which completes the work of conceptions of reducing the manifold to unity. The copula (or rather the verb which is copula in one of its senses) means either actually is or would be, as in the two propositions, "There is no griffin," and "A griffin is a winged quadruped." The conception of being contains only that junction of predicate to subject wherein these two verbs agree. The conception of being, therefore, plainly has no content. If we say "The stove is black," the stove is the substance, from which its blackness has not been differentiated, and the is, while it leaves the substance just as it was seen, explains its confusedness, by the application to it of blackness as a predicate. Though being does not affect the subject, it implies an indefinite determinability of the predicate. For if one could know the copula and predicate of any proposition, as " . . . is a tailed-man," he would know the predicate to be applicable to something supposable, at least. Accordingly, we have propositions whose subjects are entirely indefinite, as "There is a beautiful ellipse," where the subject is merely something actual or potential; but we have no propositions whose predicate is entirely indeterminate, for it would be quite senseless to say, "A has the common characters of all things," inasmuch as there are no such common characters. Thus substance and being are the beginning and end of all conception. Substance is inapplicable to a predicate, and being is equally so to a subject. §5. The terms "prescision" and "abstraction," which were formerly applied to every kind of separation, are now limited, not merely to mental separation, but to that which arises from attention to one element and neglect of the other. Exclusive attention consists in a definite conception or supposition of one part of an object, without any supposition of the other. Abstraction or prescision ought to be carefully distinguished from two other modes of mental separation, which may be termed discrimination and dissociation. Discrimination has to do merely with the essences of terms, and only draws a distinction in meaning. Dissociation is that separation which, in the absence of a constant association, is permitted by the law of association of images. It is the consciousness of one thing, without the necessary simultaneous consciousness of the other. Abstraction or prescision, therefore, supposes a greater separation than discrimination, but a less separation than dissociation. Thus I can discriminate red from blue, space from color, and color from space, but not red from color. I can prescind red from blue, and space from color (as is manifest from the fact that I actually believe there is an uncolored space between my face and the wall); but I cannot prescind color from space, nor red from color. I can dissociate red from blue, but not space from color, color from space, nor red from color. Prescision is not a reciprocal process. It is frequently the case, that, while A cannot be prescinded from B, B can be prescinded from A. This circumstance is accounted for as follows. Elementary conceptions only arise upon the occasion of experience; that is, they are produced for the first time according to a general law, the condition of which is the existence of certain impressions. Now if a conception does not reduce the impressions upon which it follows to unity, it is a mere arbitrary addition to these latter; and elementary conceptions do not arise thus arbitrarily. But if the impressions could be definitely comprehended without the conception, this latter would not reduce them to unity. Hence, the impressions (or more immediate conceptions) cannot be definitely conceived or attended to, to the neglect of an elementary conception which reduces them to unity. On the other hand, when such a conception has once been obtained, there is, in general, no reason why the premises which have occasioned it should not be neglected, and therefore the explaining conception may frequently be prescinded from the more immediate ones and from the impressions. §6. The facts now collected afford the basis for a systematic method of searching out whatever universal elementary conceptions there may be intermediate between the manifold of substance and the unity of being. It has been shown that the occasion of the introduction of a universal elementary conception is either the reduction of the manifold of substance to unity, or else the conjunction to substance of another conception. And it has further been shown that the elements conjoined cannot be supposed without the conception, whereas the conception can generally be supposed without these elements. Now, empirical psychology discovers the occasion of the introduction of a conception, and we have only to ascertain what conception already lies in the data which is united to that of substance by the first conception, but which cannot be supposed without this first conception, to have the next conception in order in passing from being to substance. It may be noticed that, throughout this process, introspection is not resorted to. Nothing is assumed respecting the subjective elements of consciousness which cannot be securely inferred from the objective elements. §7. The conception of being arises upon the formation of a proposition. A proposition always has, besides a term to express the substance, another to express the quality of that substance; and the function of the conception of being is to unite the quality to the substance. Quality, therefore, in its very widest sense, is the first conception in order in passing from being to substance. Quality seems at first sight to be given in the impression. Such results of introspection are untrustworthy. A proposition asserts the applicability of a mediate conception to a more immediate one. Since this is asserted, the more mediate conception is clearly regarded independently of this circumstance, for otherwise the two conceptions would not be distinguished, but one would be thought through the other, without this latter being an object of thought, at all. The mediate conception, then, in order to be asserted to be applicable to the other, must first be considered without regard to this circumstance, and taken immediately. But, taken immediately, it transcends what is given (the more immediate conception), and its applicability to the latter is hypothetical. Take, for example, the proposition, "This stove is black." Here the conception of this stove is the more immediate, that of black the more mediate, which latter, to be predicated of the former, must be discriminated from it and considered in itself, not as applied to an object, but simply as embodying a quality, blackness. Now this blackness is a pure species or abstraction, and its application to this stove is entirely hypothetical. The same thing is meant by "the stove is black," as by "there is blackness in the stove." Embodying blackness is the equivalent of black. 1 The proof is this. These conceptions are applied indifferently to precisely the same facts. If, therefore, they were different, the one which was first applied would fulfil every function of the other; so that one of them would be superfluous. Now a superfluous conception is an arbitrary fiction, whereas elementary conceptions arise only upon the requirement of experience; so that a superfluous elementary conception is impossible. Moreover, the conception of a pure abstraction is indispensable, because we cannot comprehend an agreement of two things, except as an agreement in some respect, and this respect is such a pure abstraction as blackness. Such a pure abstraction, reference to which constitutes a quality or general attribute, may be termed a ground. Reference to a ground cannot be prescinded from being, but being can be prescinded from it. §8. Empirical psychology has established the fact that we can know a quality only by means of its contrast with or similarity to another. By contrast and agreement a thing is referred to a correlate, if this term may be used in a wider sense than usual. The occasion of the introduction of the conception of reference to a ground is the reference to a correlate, and this is, therefore, the next conception in order. Reference to a correlate cannot be prescinded from reference to a ground; but reference to a ground may be prescinded from reference to a correlate. §9. The occasion of reference to a correlate is obviously by comparison. This act has not been suficiently studied by the psychologists, and it will, therefore, be necessary to adduce some examples to show in what it consists. Suppose we wish to compare the letters p and b. We may imagine one of them to be turned over on the line of writing as an axis, then laid upon the other, and finally to become transparent so that the other can be seen through it. In this way we shall form a new image which mediates between the images of the two letters, inasmuch as it represents one of them to be (when turned over) the likeness of the other. Again, suppose we think of a murderer as being in relation to a murdered person; in this case we conceive the act of the murder, and in this conception it is represented that corresponding to every murderer (as well as to every murder) there is a murdered person; and thus we resort again to a mediating representation which represents the relate as standing for a correlate with which the mediating representation is itself in relation. Again, suppose we look out the word homme in a French dictionary; we shall find opposite to it the word man, which, so placed, represents homme as representing the same two-legged creature which man itself represents. By a further accumulation of instances, it would be found that every comparison requires, besides the related thing, the ground, and the correlate, also a mediating representation which represents the relate to be a representation of the same correlate which this mediating representation itself represents. Such a mediating representation may be termed an interpretant, because it fulfils the office of an interpreter, who says that a foreigner says the same thing which he himself says. The term "representation" is here to be understood in a very extended sense, which can be explained by instances better than by a definition. In this sense, a word represents a thing to the conception in the mind of the hearer, a portrait represents the person for whom it is intended to the conception of recognition, a weathercock represents the direction of the wind to the conception of him who understands it, a barrister represents his client to the judge and jury whom he influences. Every reference to a correlate, then, conjoins to the substance the conception of a reference to an interpretant; and this is, therefore, the next conception in order in passing from being to substance. Reference to an interpretant cannot be prescinded from reference to a correlate; but the latter can be prescinded from the former. §10. Reference to an interpretant is rendered possible and justified by that which renders possible and justifies comparison. But that is clearly the diversity of impressions. If we had but one impression, it would not require to be reduced to unity, and would therefore not need to be thought of as referred to an interpretant, and the conception of reference to an interpretant would not arise. But since there is a manifold of impressions, we have a feeling of complication or confusion, which leads us to differentiate this impression from that, and then, having been differentiated, they require to be brought to unity. Now they are not brought to unity until we conceive them together as being ours, that is, until we refer them to a conception as their interpretant. Thus, the reference to an interpretant arises upon the holding together of diverse impressions, and therefore it does not join a conception to the substance, as the other two references do, but unites directly the manifold of the substance itself. It is, therefore, the last conception in order in passing from being to substance. §11. The five conceptions thus obtained, for reasons which will be sufficiently obvious, may be termed categories. That is, |
BEING, |
Quality (Reference to a Ground), Relation (Reference to a Correlate), Representation (Reference to an Interpretant), |
SUBSTANCE. |
What is. |
Quale--that which refers to a ground,
Relate--that which refers to ground and correlate,
Representamen--that which refers to ground, correlate, and interpretant. |
It. |
§14. A quality may have a special determination which prevents its being prescinded from reference to a correlate. Hence there are two kinds of relation. 1st. That of relates whose reference to a ground is a prescindible or internal quality. 2d. That of relates whose reference to a ground is an unprescindible or relative quality. In the former case, the relation is a mere concurrence of the correlates in one character, and the relate and correlate are not distinguished. In the latter case the correlate is set over against the relate, and there is in some sense an opposition. Relates of the first kind are brought into relation simply by their agreement. But mere disagreement (unrecognized) does not constitute relation, and therefore relates of the second kind are only brought into relation by correspondence in fact. A reference to a ground may also be such that it cannot be prescinded from a reference to an interpretant. In this case it may be termed an imputed quality. If the reference of a relate to its ground can be prescinded from reference to an interpretant, its relation to its correlate is a mere concurrence or community in the possession of a quality, and therefore the reference to a correlate can be prescinded from reference to an interpretant. It follows that there are three kinds of representations. 1st. Those whose relation to their objects is a mere community in some quality, and these representations may be termed Likenesses. 2d. Those whose relation to their objects consists in a correspondence in fact, and these may be termed Indices or Signs. 3d. Those the ground of whose relation to their objects is an imputed character, which are the same as general signs, and these may be termed Symbols. §15. I shall now show how the three conceptions of reference to a ground, reference to an object, and reference to an interpretant are the fundamental ones of at least one universal science, that of logic. Logic is said to treat of second intentions as applied to first. It would lead me too far away from the matter in hand to discuss the truth of this statement; I shall simply adopt it as one which seems to me to afford a good definition of the subject-genus of this science. Now, second intentions are the objects of the understanding considered as representations, and the first intentions to which they apply are the objects of those representations. The objects of the understanding, considered as representations, are symbols, that is, signs which are at least potentially general. But the rules of logic hold good of any symbols, of those which are written or spoken as well as of those which are thought. They have no immediate application to likenesses or indices, because no arguments can be constructed of these alone, but do apply to all symbols. All symbols, indeed, are in one sense relative to the understanding, but only in the sense in which also all things are relative to the understanding. On this account, therefore, the relation to the understanding need not be expressed in the definition of the sphere of logic, since it determines no limitation of that sphere. But a distinction can be made between concepts which are supposed to have no existence except so far as they are actually present to the understanding, and external symbols which still retain their character of symbols so long as they are only capable of being understood. And as the rules of logic apply to these latter as much as to the former (and though only through the former, yet this character, since it belongs to all things, is no limitation), it follows that logic has for its subject-genus all symbols and not merely concepts. 2 We come, therefore, to this, that logic treats of the reference of symbols in general to their objects. In this view it is one of a trivium of conceivable sciences. The first would treat of the formal conditions of symbols having meaning, that is of the reference of symbols in general to their grounds or imputed characters, and this might be called formal grammar; the second, logic, would treat of the formal conditions of the truth of symbols; and the third would treat of the formal conditions of the force of symbols, or their power of appealing to a mind, that is, of their reference in general to interpretants, and this might be called formal rhetoric. There would be a general division of symbols, common to all these sciences; namely, into, 1°: Symbols which directly determine only their grounds or imputed qualities, and are thus but sums of marks or terms; 2°: Symbols which also independently determine their objects by means of other term or terms, and thus, expressing their own objective validity, become capable of truth or falsehood, that is, are propositions; and, 3°: Symbols which also independently determine their interpretants, and thus the minds to which they appeal, by premising a proposition or propositions which such a mind is to admit. These are arguments. And it is remarkable that, among all the definitions of the proposition, for example, as the oratio indicativa, as the subsumption of an object under a concept, as the expression of the relation of two concepts, and as the indication of the mutable ground of appearance, there is, perhaps, not one in which the conception of reference to an object or correlate is not the important one. In the same way, the conception of reference to an interpretant or third, is always prominent in the definitions of argument. In a proposition, the term which separately indicates the object of the symbol is termed the subject, and that which indicates the ground is termed the predicate. The objects indicated by the subject (which are always potentially a plurality,--at least, of phases or appearances) are therefore stated by the proposition to be related to one another on the ground of the character indicated by the predicate. Now this relation may be either a concurrence or an opposition. Propositions of concurrence are those which are usually considered in logic; but I have shown in a paper upon the classification of arguments that it is also necessary to consider separately propositions of opposition, if we are to take account of such arguments as the following:-- Whatever is the half of anything is less than that of which it is the half; The subject of such a proposition is separated into two terms, a "subject nominative" and an "object accusative." In an argument, the premises form a representation of the conclusion, because they indicate the interpretant of the argument, or representation representing it to represent its object. The premises may afford a likeness, index, or symbol of the conclusion. In deductive argument, the conclusion is represented by the premises as by a general sign under which it is contained. In hypotheses, something like the conclusion is proved, that is, the premises form a likeness of the conclusion. Take, for example, the following argument:-- Here the first premise amounts to this, that "P', P'', P''', and Piv" is a likeness of M, and thus the premises are or represent a likeness of the conclusion. That it is different with induction another example will show. Hence the first premise amounts to saying that "S', S'', S''', and Siv" is an index of M. Hence the premises are an index of the conclusion. The other divisions of terms, propositions, and arguments arise from the distinction of extension and comprehension. I propose to treat this subject in a subsequent paper. But I will so far anticipate that, as to say that there is, first, the direct reference of a symbol to its objects, or its denotation; second, the reference of the symbol to its ground, through its object, that is, its reference to the common characters of its objects, or its connotation; and third, its reference to its interpretants through its object, that is, its reference to all the synthetical propositions in which its objects in common are subject or predicate, and this I term the information it embodies. And as every addition to what it denotes, or to what it connotes, is effected by means of a distinct proposition of this kind, it follows that the extension and comprehension of a term are in an inverse relation, as long as the information remains the same, and that every increase of information is accompanied by an increase of one or other of these two quantities. It may be observed that extension and comprehension are very often taken in other senses in which this last proposition is not true. This is an imperfect view of the application which the conceptions which, according to our analysis, are the most fundamental ones find in the sphere of logic. It is believed, however, that it is sufficient to show that at least something may be usefully suggested by considering this science in this light. 1. This agrees with the author of De Generibus et Speciebus, Ouvrages Inédits d'Abélard, p. 528. 2. Herbart says: "Unsre s^:ammtlichen Gedanken lassen sich von zwei Seiten betrachten; theils als Th^:atigkeiten unseres Geistes, theils in Hinsicht dessen, was durch sie gedacht wird. In letzterer Beziehung heissen sie Begriffe, welches Wort, indem es das Begriffene bezeichnet, zu abstrahiren gebietet von der Art und Weise, wie wir den Gedanken empfangen, produciren, oder reproduciren m^:ogen." But the whole difference between a concept and an external sign lies in these respects which logic ought, according to Herbart, to abstract from. |
P 34: Presented 13 November 1867 The historical account usually given of comprehension and extension is this, "that the distinction, though taken in general terms by Aristotle, and explicitly announced with scientific precision by one, at least, of his Greek commentators, had escaped the marvellous acuteness of the schoolmen, and remained totally overlooked and forgotten till the publication of the Port-Royal Logic." 1 I would offer the following considerations to show that this interpretation of history is not exactly true. In the first place, it is said that a distinction was taken between these attributes, as though they were previously confounded. Now there is not the least evidence of this. A German logician has, indeed, by a subtle misconception, considered extension as a species of comprehension, but, to a mind beginning to reflect, no notions seem more unlike. The mental achievement has been the bringing of them into relation to one another, and the conception of them as factors of the import of a term, and not the separation of them. In the second place it is correctly said that the doctrine taught by the Port Royalists is substantially contained in the work of a Greek commentator. That work is no other than Porphyry's Isagoge 2 ; and therefore it would be most surprising if the doctrine had been totally overlooked by the schoolmen, for whether their acuteness was as marvellous as Hamilton taught or not, they certainly studied the commentary in question as diligently as they did the Bible. It would seem, indeed, that the tree of Porphyry involves the whole doctrine of extension and comprehension except the names. Nor were the scholastics without names for these quantities. The partes subjectives and partes essentiales are frequently opposed; and several other synonymes are mentioned by the Conimbricenses. It is admitted that Porphyry fully enunciates the doctrine; it must also be admitted that the passage in question is fully dealt with and correctly explained by the mediæval commentators. The most that can be said, therefore, is that the doctrine of extension and comprehension was not a prominent one in the mediæval logic. 3 A like degree of historical error is commonly committed in reference to another point which will come to be treated of in this paper, allied, at least, as it is most intimately, with the subject of comprehension and extension, inasmuch as it also is founded on a conception of a term as a whole composed of parts,--I mean the distinction of clear and distinct. Hamilton tells us "we owe the discrimination to the acuteness of the great Leibniz. By the Cartesians the distinction had not been taken; though the authors of the Port-Royal Logic came so near that we may well marvel how they failed explicitly to enounce it." (Lectures on Logic; Lecture IX.) Now, in fact, all that the Port Royalists say about this matter 4 is copied from Descartes, 5 and their variations from his wording serve only to confuse what in him is tolerably distinct. As for Leibniz, he himself expressly avows that the distinction drawn by Descartes is the same as his own. 6 Nevertheless, it is very much more clear with Leibniz than with Descartes. A philosophical distinction emerges gradually into consciousness; there is no moment in history before which it is altogether unrecognized, and after which it is perfectly luminous. Before Descartes, the distinction of confused and distinct had been thoroughly developed, but the difference between distinctness and clearness is uniformly overlooked. Scotus distinguishes between conceiving confusedly and conceiving the confused, and since any obscure concept necessarily includes more than its proper object, there is always in what is obscurely conceived a conception of something confused; but the schoolmen came no nearer than this to the distinction of Descartes and Leibniz. Extension and comprehension are the terms employed by the Port Royalists. Owing to the influence of Hamilton, intension is now frequently used for comprehension; but it is liable to be confounded with intensity, and therefore is an objectionable word. It is derived from the use of cognate words by Cajetan and other early writers. External and internal quantity are the terms used by many early Kantians. Scope and force are proposed by De Morgan. Scope in ordinary language expresses extension, but force does not so much express comprehension as the power of creating a lively representation in the mind of the person to whom a word or speech is addressed. Mr. J. S. Mill has introduced the useful verbs denote and connote, which have become very familiar. It has been, indeed, the opinion of the best students of the logic of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, that connotation was in those ages used exclusively for the reference to a second significate, that is (nearly) for the reference of a relative term (such as father, brighter, &c.) to the correlate of the object which it primarily denotes, and was never taken in Mill's sense of the reference of a term to the essential characters implied in its definition. 7 Mr. Mill has, however, considered himself entitled to deny this upon his simple authority, without the citation of a single passage from any writer of that time. After explaining the sense in which he takes the term connote, he says: |
As scholasticism is usually said to come to an end with Occam, this conveys the idea that connote was commonly employed by earlier writers. But the celebrated Prantl considers it conclusive proof that a passage in Occam's Summa is spurious, that connotative is there spoken of as a term in frequent use; 8 and remarks upon a passage of Scotus in which connotatum is found, that this conception is here met with for the first time. 9 The term occurs, however, in Alexander of Hales, 10 who makes nomen connotans the equivalent of appellatio relativa, and takes the relation itself as the object of connotare, speaking of creator as connoting the relation of creator to creature. Occam's Summa 11 contains a chapter devoted to the distinction of absolute and connotative names. The whole deserves to be read, but I have only space to quote the following: |
Eckius, in his comment on Petrus Hispanus, has also some extended remarks on the signification of the term connote, which agree in the main with those just quoted. 12 Mr. Mill's historical statement cannot, therefore, be admitted. Sir William Hamilton has borrowed from certain late Greek writers the terms breadth and depth, for extension and comprehension respectively. 13 These terms have great merits. They are brief; they are suited to go together; and they are very familiar. Thus, "wide" learning is, in ordinary parlance, learning of many things; "deep" learning, much knowledge of some things. I shall, therefore, give the preference to these terms. Extension is also called sphere and circuit; and comprehension, matter and content. The terms extension and comprehension, and their synonymes, are taken in different senses by different writers. This is partly owing to the fact that while most writers speak only of the extension and comprehension of concepts, others apply these terms equally to concepts and judgments (Rösling), others to any mental representation (Überweg and many French writers), others to cognition generally (Baumgarten), others to "terms" (Fowler, Spalding), others to names (Shedden), others to words (McGregor), others to "meanings" (Jevons), while one writer speaks only of the extension of classes and the comprehension of attributes (De Morgan in his Syllabus). Comprehension is defined by the Port Royalists as "those attributes which an idea involves in itself, and which cannot be taken away from it without destroying it." It will be remembered that the marks of a term are divided by logicians first into the necessary and the accidental, and that then the necessary marks are subdivided into such as are strictly essential, that is, contained in the definition, and such as are called proper. Thus it is an essential mark of a triangle to have three sides; it is a proper mark to have its three angles equal to two right angles; and it is an accidental mark to be treated of by Euclid. The definition of the Port Royalists, therefore, makes comprehension include all necessary marks, whether essential or proper. The Port Royalists attribute comprehension immediately to any ideas. Very many logicians attribute it immediately only to concepts. Now a concept, as defined by them, is strictly only the essence of an idea; they ought therefore to include in the comprehension only the essential marks of a term. These logicians, however, abstract so entirely from the real world, that it is difficult to see why these essential marks are not at the same time all the marks of the object as they suppose it. There can, I think, be no doubt that such writers as Gerlach and Sigwart make comprehension include all marks, necessary or accidental, which are universally predicable of the object of the concept. Again, most German writers regard the comprehension as a sum either of concepts (Drobisch, Bachmann, etc.) or of elements of intuition (Trendelenburg). But many English writers regard it as the sum of real external attributes (Shedden, Spalding, Devey, De Morgan, Jevons, McGregor, Fowler). According to most writers, comprehension consists of the (necessary) attributes thought as common to the objects. Shedden defines it as consisting of all the attributes common to the things denoted. Again, most logicians consider as marks only such as are virtually 14 predicated; a few, perhaps, only such as are actually thought, and still fewer include those which are habitually thought. Here and there is found an author who makes comprehension include all true attributes, whether thought or not. There is also a difference in the mode of reckoning up the marks. Most writers count all distinguishable marks, while a few consider coextensive marks as the same. In the use of the term "extension" the want of a definite convention is still more marked. The Port Royalists define it as "those subjects to which the idea applies." It would appear, therefore, that it might include mere fictions. Others limit the term to real species, and at the same time extend it to single beings. This is the case with Watts, and also with Friedrich Fischer. Others are most emphatic in declaring that they mean by it things, and not species, real or imaginary. This is the case with Bachmann, Esser, and Schulze. Others make it include neither concepts nor things, but singular representations. This is the case with the strict Kantian. The following table exhibits this diversity:--
Again, logicians differ as to whether by extension they mean the concepts, species, things, or representations to which the term is habitually applied in the judgment, or all to which it is truly applicable. The latter position is held by Herbart, Kiesewetter, etc.; the former by Duncan, Spalding, Vorländer, Überweg, etc. Some logicians include only actual things, representations, etc., under extension (Bachmann, Fries, Herbart); others extend it to such as are merely possible (Esser, Ritter, Gerlach). Finally, some few logicians speak of the two quantities as numerical, while most writers regard them as mere aggregates of diverse objects or marks. Until lately the law of the inverse proportionality of extension and comprehension was universally admitted. It is now questioned on various grounds. Drobisch says that the comprehension varies arithmetically, while the extension varies geometrically. This is true, in one sense. Lotze, after remarking that the only conception of a universal which we can have is the power of imagining singulars under it, urges that the possibility of determining a concept in a way corresponding to each particular under it is a mark of that concept, and that therefore the narrower concepts have as many marks as the wider ones. But, I reply, these marks belong to the concept in its second intention, and are not common marks of those things to which it applies, and are therefore no part of the comprehension. They are, in fact, the very marks which constitute the extension. No one ever denied that extension is a mark of a concept; only it is a certain mark of second intention. Vorländer's objection is much more to the purpose. It is that if from any determinate notion, as that of Napoleon, we abstract all marks, all determination, what remains is merely the conception something, which has no more extension than Napoleon. "Something" has an uncertain sphere, meaning either this thing or that or the other, but has no general extension, since it means one thing only. Thus, before a race, we can say that some horse will win, meaning this one, that one, or that one; but by some horse we mean but one, and it therefore has no more extension than would a term definitely indicating which,--although this latter would be more determinate, that is, would have more comprehension. I am not aware that those who adhere to Kant's unmodified doctrine have succeeded in answering this objection. Überweg has the following remarks. 15 |
To the higher representation, since conformably to its definition it contains only the common elements of content of several lower representations, belongs in comparison to each of the lower a more limited content, but a wider circuit. The lower representation, on the contrary, has a richer content but narrower circuit. Yet by no means by every diminution or increase of a given content does the circuit increase or diminish, nor by every increase or diminution of a given circuit does the content diminish or increase. |
I am surprised that he does not explain himself further upon this point, which it is the principal object of this paper to develop. De Morgan says: 16 |
According to such statements as I have seen, "man residing in Europe, drawing breath north of the equator, seeing the sun rise before those in America," would be a more intensively quantified notion than "man residing in Europe"; but certainly not less extensive, for the third and fourth elements of the notion must belong to those men to whom the first and second belong. |
Mr. De Morgan adopts the definitions of extension and comprehension given by the Port Royalists. According to those definitions, if the third and fourth elements necessarily belong to the notion to which the first and second belong, they are parts of the comprehension of that second notion which is composed of the first and second elements, and therefore the two notions are equal in comprehension; but if this is not the case, then the second notion can be predicated of subjects of which the first cannot, for example, of "man residing in Europe drawing breath south of the Equator"; for that there is really no such man will not affect the truth of the proposition, and therefore the second notion is more extensive than the first. Two logicians, only, as far as I remember, Archbishop Thomson 17 and Dr. W. D. Wilson, 18 while apparently admitting Kant's law, wish to establish a third quantity of concepts. Neither gentleman has defined his third quantity, nor has stated what its relations to the other two are. Thomson calls his Denomination. It seems to be the same as Extension regarded in a particular way. Dr. Wilson terms his new quantity Protension; it has something to do with time, and appears to be generally independent of the other two. It is plain, indeed, that as long as Kant's law holds, and as long as logical quantities can only be compared as being more or less and not directly measured, and as long as the different kinds of quantity cannot be compared at all, a third quantity must be directly proportional to one or other of the known quantities, and therefore must measure the same thing, or else must be independent of the other two, and be quite unconnected with them. I shall adopt Hamilton's terms, breadth and depth, for extension and comprehension respectively, and shall employ them in different senses, which I shall distinguish by different adjectives. By the informed breadth of a term, I shall mean all the real things of which it is predicable, with logical truth on the whole in a supposed state of information. By the phrase "on the whole" I mean to indicate that all the information at hand must be taken into account, and that those things of which there is not on the whole reason to believe that a term is truly predicable are not to be reckoned as part of its breadth. If T be a term which is predicable only of S', S'', and S''', then the S''s, the S'''s, and the S''''s will constitute the informed breadth of T. If at the same time, S' and S'' are the subjects of which alone another term T' can be predicated, and if it is not known that all S''''s are either S' or S'', then T is said to have a greater informed breadth than T'. If the S''''s are known not to be all among the S''s and S'''s, this excess of breadth may be termed certain, and, if this is not known, it may be termed doubtful. If there are known to be S''''s, not known to be S''s or S'''s, T is said to have a greater actual breadth than T';but if no S''''s are known except such are known to be S''s, and S'''s (though there may be others), T is said to have a greater potential breadth than T'. If T and T' are conceptions in different minds, or in different states of the same mind, and it is known to the mind which conceives T that every S''' is either S'' or S', then T is said to be more extensively distinct than T' 19 . By the informed depth of a term, I mean all the real characters (in contradistinction to mere names) which can be predicated of it 20 (with logical truth, on the whole) in a supposed state of information; no character being counted twice over knowingly in the supposed state of information. The depth, like the breadth, may be certain or doubtful, actual or potential, and there is a comprehensive distinctness corresponding to extensive distinctness. The informed breadth and depth suppose a state of information which lies somewhere between two imaginary extremes. These are, first, the state in which no fact would be known, but only the meaning of terms; and, second, the state in which the information would amount to an absolute intuition of all there is, so that the things we should know would be the very substances themselves, and the qualities we should know would be the very concrete forms themselves. This suggests two other sorts of breadth and depth corresponding to these two states of information, and which I shall term respectively the essential and the substantial breadth and depth. By the essential depth of a term, then, I mean the really conceivable qualities predicated of it in its definition. The defined term will not perhaps be applicable to any real objects whatever. Let, for example, the definition of the term T be this, then this sums up its whole meaning; and, as it may not be known that there is any such thing as P', the meaning of T does not imply that it exists. On the other hand, we know that neither P', P'', nor P''' is coextensive with the whole sphere of being. For they are determinate qualities, and it is the very meaning of being that it is indeterminate, that is, is more extensive than any determinate term. In fact, P', for example, is a real notion which we never could have except by means of its contrast to something else. Hence we must know that Thus if we define the essential breadth of a term as those real things of which, according to its very meaning, a term is predicable, not-T has an essential breadth. We may therefore divide all terms into two classes, the essentially affirmative or positive and the essentially negative; of which the former have essential depth, but no essential breadth, and the latter essential breadth, but no essential depth. It must be noted, however, that this division is not the same as the similar one which language makes. For example, being, according to this, is an essentially negative term, inasmuch as it means that which can be predicated of whatever you please, and so has an essential breadth; while nothing is an essentially positive term, inasmuch as it means that of which you are at liberty to predicate what you please, and therefore has an essential depth. The essential subjects of being cannot be enumerated, nor the essential predicates of nothing. In essential breadth or depth, no two terms can be equal; for, were that the case, the two terms would have the same meaning, and therefore, for logical purposes, would be the same term. Two terms may have unknown relations in these quantities, on account of one or other of them not being distinctly conceived. Substantial breadth is the aggregate of real substances of which alone a term is predicable with absolute truth. Substantial depth is the real concrete form which belongs to everything of which a term is predicable with absolute truth. General terms denote several things. Each of these things has in itself no qualities, but only a certain concrete form which belongs to itself alone. This was one of the points brought out in the controversy in reference to the nature of universals. 21 As Sir William Hamilton says, not even the humanity of Leibniz belongs to Newton, but a different humanity. It is only by abstraction, by an oversight, that two things can be said to have common characters. Hence, a general term has no substantial depth. On the other hand, particular terms, while they have substantial depth, inasmuch as each of the things, one or other of which are predicated of them, has a concrete form, yet have no substantial breadth, inasmuch as there is no aggregate of things to which alone they are applicable. In order to place this matter in a clearer light, I must remark, that I, in common with most logicians, take the copula in the sense of a sign of attribution, and not, like Hamilton, in the sense of a sign of equality in extension or comprehension. He exposes the proposition, "man is an animal," thus:-- And thus he makes the predicate particular. Others interpret it thus:-- It is in this latter sense that the copula is considered in this paper. Now, a particular is, as has been said, an alternative subject. Thus, "Some S is M" means, if S', S'', and S''' are the singular S's, that "either S', or else S'', or else S''', has all the attributes belonging to M." A particular term, then, has a substantial depth, because it may have a predicate which is absolutely concrete, as in the proposition, "Some man is Napoleon." But if we put the particular into the predicate we have such a proposition as this: "M has all the attributes belonging to S', or else all those belonging to S'', or else all those belonging to S'''." And this can never be true unless M is a single individual. Now a single individual substance is, I will not say an atom, but the smallest part of an atom, that is, nothing at all. So that a particular can have no substantial breadth. Now take the universal term "S." We can say, "Any S is M," but not if M is a real concrete quality. We cannot say, for instance, "Any man is Napoleon." On the other hand, we can say "Any M is S," even if M is a real substance or aggregate of substances. Hence a universal term has no substantial depth, but has substantial breadth. We may therefore divide all terms into substantial universals and substantial particulars. Two terms may be equal in their substantial breadth and depth, and differ in their essential breadth and depth. But two terms cannot have relations of substantial breadth and depth which are unknown in the state of information supposed, because in that state of information everything is known. In informed breadth and depth, two terms may be equal, and may have unknown relations. Any term, affirmative or negative, universal or particular, may have informed breadth or depth. In a paper presented to the Academy last May, I endeavored to show that the three conceptions of reference to a ground, reference to a correlate, and references to an interpretant, are those of which logic must principally make use. I there also introduced the term "symbol," to include both concept and word. Logic treats of the reference of symbols in general to their objects. A symbol, in its reference to its object, has a triple reference:-- 1st, Its direct reference to its object, or the real things which it represents; 2d, Its reference to its ground through its object, or the common characters of those objects; 3d, Its reference to its interpretant through its object, or all the facts known about its object. What are thus referred to, so far as they are known, are:-- 1st, The informed breadth of the symbol; 2d, The informed depth of the symbol; 3d, The sum of synthetical propositions in which the symbol is subject or predicate, or the information concerning the symbol. By breadth and depth, without an adjective, I shall hereafter mean the informed breadth and depth. It is plain that the breadth and depth of a symbol, so far as they are not essential, measure the information concerning it, that is, the synthetical propositions of which it is subject or predicate. This follows directly from the definitions of breadth, depth, and information. Hence it follows:-- 1st, That, as long as the information remains constant, the greater the breadth, the less the depth; 2d, That every increase of information is accompanied by an increase in depth or breadth, independent of the other quantity; 3d, That, when there is no information, there is either no depth or no breadth, and conversely. These are the true and obvious relations of breadth and depth. They will be naturally suggested if we term the information the area, and write-- ![]() If we learn that S is P, then, as a general rule, the depth of S is increased without any decrease of breadth, and the breadth of P is increased without any decrease of depth. Either increase may be certain or doubtful. It may be the case that either or both of these increases does not take place. If P is a negative term, it may have no depth, and therefore adds nothing to the depth of S. If S is a particular term, it may have no breadth, and then adds nothing to the breadth of P. This latter case often occurs in metaphysics, and, on account of not-P as well as P being predicated of S, gives rise to an appearance of contradiction where there really is none; for, as a contradiction consists in giving to contradictory terms some breadth in common, it follows that, if the common subject of which they are predicated has no real breadth, there is only a verbal, and not a real contradiction. It is not really contradictory, for example, to say that a boundary is both within and without what it bounds. There is also another important case in which we may learn that "S is P," without thereby adding to the depth of S or the breadth of P. This is when, in the very same act by which we learn that S is P, we also learn that P was covertly contained in the previous depth of S, and that consequently S was a part of the previous breadth of P. In this case, P gains in extensive distinctness and S in comprehensive distinctness. We are now in condition to examine Vorländer's objection to the inverse proportionality of extension and comprehension. He requires us to think away from an object all its qualities, but not, of course, by thinking it to be without those qualities, that is, by denying those qualities of it in thought. How then? Only by supposing ourselves to be ignorant whether it has qualities or not, that is, by diminishing the supposed information; in which case, as we have seen, the depth can be diminished without increasing the breadth. In the same manner we can suppose ourselves to be ignorant whether any American but one exists, and so diminish the breadth without increasing the depth. It is only by confusing a movement which is accompanied with a change of information with one which is not so, that people can confound generalization, induction, and abstraction. Generalization is an increase of breadth and a decrease of depth, without change of information. Induction is a certain increase of breadth without a change of depth, by an increase of believed information. Abstraction is a decrease of depth without any change of breadth, by a decrease of conceived information. Specification is commonly used (I should say unfortunately) for an increase of depth without any change of breadth, by an increase of asserted information. Supposition is used for the same process when there is only a conceived increase of information. Determination, for any increase of depth. Restriction, for any decrease of breadth; but more particularly without change of depth, by a supposed decrease of information. Descent, for a decrease of breadth and increase of depth, without change of information. Let us next consider the effect of the different kinds of reasoning upon the breadth, depth, and area of the two terms of the conclusion. In the case of deductive reasoning it would be easy to show, were it necessary, that there is only an increase of the extensive distinctness of the major, and of the comprehensive distinctness of the minor, without any change in information. Of course, when the conclusion is negative or particular, even this may not be effected. Induction requires more attention. Let us take the following example:-- |
S', S'', S''', and Siv have been taken at random from among the M's; S', S'', S''', and Siv are P: |
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M is, for instance, P', P'', P''', and Piv; S is P', P'', P''', and Piv: |
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Here again there is an increase of information, if we suppose the premises to represent the state of information before the inferences. S receives an addition to its depth; but only a potential one, since there is nothing to show that the M's have any common characters besides P', P'', P''', and Piv. M, on the other hand, receives an actual increase of breadth in S, although, perhaps, only a doubtful one. There is, therefore, this important difference between induction and hypothesis, that the former potentially increases the breadth of one term, and actually increases the depth of another, while the latter potentially increases the depth of one term, and actually increases the breadth of another. Let us now consider reasoning from definition to definitum, and also the argument from enumeration. A defining proposition has a meaning. It is not, therefore, a merely identical proposition, but there is a difference between the definition and the definitum. According to the received doctrine, this difference consists wholly in the fact that the definition is distinct, while the definitum is confused. But I think that there is another difference. The definitum implies the character of being designated by a word, while the definition, previously to the formation of the word, does not. Thus, the definitum exceeds the definition in depth, although only verbally. In the same way, any unanalyzed notion carries with it a feeling,--a constitutional word,--which its analysis does not. If this be so, the definition is the predicate and the definitum the subject, of the defining proposition, and this last cannot be simply converted. In fact, the defining proposition affirms that whatever a certain name is applied to is supposed to have such and such characters; but it does not strictly follow from this, that whatever has such and such characters is actually called by that name, although it certainly might be so called. Hence, in reasoning from definition to definitum, there is a verbal increase of depth, and an actual increase of extensive distinctness (which is analogous to breadth). The increase of depth being merely verbal, there is no possibility of error in this procedure. Nevertheless, it seems to me proper, rather to consider this argument as a special modification of hypothesis than as a deduction, such as is reasoning from definitum to definition. A similar line of thought would show that, in the argument from enumeration, there is a verbal increase of breadth, and an actual increase of depth, or rather of comprehensive distinctness, and that therefore it is proper to consider this (as most logicians have done) as a kind of infallible induction. These species of hypothesis and induction are, in fact, merely hypotheses and inductions from the essential parts to the essential whole; this sort of reasoning from parts to whole being demonstrative. On the other hand, reasoning from the substantial parts to the substantial whole is not even a probable argument. No ultimate part of matter fills space, but it does not follow that no matter fills space. 1. This is quoted from Baynes (Port-Royal Logic, 2d ed., p. xxxiii), who says that he is indebted to Sir William Hamilton for the information. 2. Porphyry appears to refer to the doctrine as an ancient one. 3. The author of De Generibus et Speciebus opposes the integral and diffinitive wholes. John of Salisbury refers to the distinction of comprehension and extension, as something "quod fere in omnium ore celebre est aliud, scilicet esse quod appellativa significant, et aliud esse quod nominant. Nominantur singularia, sed universalia significantur." (Metalogicus, lib. 2, cap. 20. Ed. of 1610, p. 111.) Vincentius Bellovacensis (Speculum Doctrinale, Lib. III, cap. xi.) has the following: "Si vero quæritur utrum hoc universale "homo' sit in quolibet homine secundum se totum an secundem partem, dicendum est quod secundum se totum, id est secundum quamlibet sui partem diffinitivam. . . . Non autem secundum quamlibet partem subjectivam." William of Auvergne (Prantl's Geschichte, Vol. III, p. 77) speaks of "totalitatem istam, quæ est ex partibus rationis seu diffinitionis, et hae partes sunt genus et differentiæ; alio modo partes speciei individua sunt, quoniam ipsam speciem, cum de eis prædicatur, sibi invicem quodammodo partiuntur." If we were to go to later authors, the examples would be endless. See any commentary Physics, Lib. I. 4. Part I, chap. ix. 5. Principia, Part I, §45 et seq. 6. Eighth Letter to Burnet. 7. Cf. Morin, Dictionnaire, Tome I, p. 685; Chauvin, Lexicon, both editions; Eustachius, Summa, Part I, Tr. I, qu. 6. 8. Prantl, Geschichte, Vol. III, p. 364. 9. Ibid. p. 134. Scotus also uses the term. Quodlibeta, question 13, article 4. 10. Summa Theologica, Part I, question 53. 11. Part I, chap. X. (Ed. of 1488, fol. 6, c.) 12. Fol. 23. d. See also Tartaretus' Expositio in Summulas Petri Hispani towards the end. Ed. of 1509, fol. 91, b. 13. Logic, p. 100. In the Summa Logices attributed to Aquinas, we read: "Omnis forma sub se habens multa, idest quod universaliter sumitur, habet quandam latitudinem; nam invenitur in pluribus, et dicitur de pluribus." (Tr. 1, c. 3.) 14. I adopt the admirable distinction of Scotus between actual, habitual, and virtual cognition. 15. Logik, 2te Aufl., §54. 16. Formal Logic, p. 234. His doctrine is different in the Syllabus. 17. Laws of Thought, 4th ed., §§52, 80. 18. Logic, Part I, chap. ii, §5. 19. For the distinction of extensive and comprehensive distinctness, see Scotus, i, dist. 2, qu. 3. 20. That is, of whatever things it is applicable to. 21. See, for example, De Generibus et Speciebus, p. 548. |
P 21: North American Review |
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The Logic of Chance. An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with especial Reference to its Application to Moral and Social Science. By John Venn, M.A. London and Cambridge. 1866. 16mo. pp. 370. Here is a book which should be read by every thinking man. Great changes have taken place of late years in the philosophy of chances. Mr. Venn remarks, with great ingenuity and penetration, that this doctrine has had its realistic, conceptualistic, and nominalistic stages. The logic of the Middle Ages is almost coextensive with demonstrative logic; but our age of science opened with a discussion of probable argument (in the Novum Organum), and this part of the subject has given the chief interest to modern studies of logic. What is called the doctrine of chances is, to be sure, but a small part of this field of inquiry; but it is a part where the varie ties in the conceptions of probability have been most evident. When this doctrine was first studied, probability seems to have been regarded as something inhering in the singular events, so that it was possible for Bernouilli to enounce it as a theorem (and not merely as an identical proposition), that events happen with frequencies proportional to their probabilities. That was a realistic view. Afterwards it was said that probability does not exist in the singular events, but consists in the degree of credence which ought to be reposed in the occurrence of an event. This is conceptualistic. Finally, probability is regarded as the ratio of the number of events in a certain part of an aggregate of them to the number in the whole aggregate. This is the nominalistic view. This last is the position of Mr. Venn and of the most advanced writers on the subject. The theory was perhaps first put forth by Mr. Stuart Mill; but his head became involved in clouds, and he relapsed into the
conceptualistic opinion. Yet the arguments upon the modern side are
overwhelming. The question is by no means one of words; but if we were
to inquire into the manner in which the terms probable, likely,
and so forth, have been used, we should find that they always refer to a
determination of a genus of argument. See, for example, Locke on the
Understanding, Book IV, ch. 15, §1. There we find it stated
that a thing is probable when it is supported by reasons such as
lead to a true conclusion. These words such as plainly refer to a
genus of argument. Now, what constitutes the validity of a genus of
argument? The necessity of thinking the conclusion, say the
conceptualists. But a madman may be under a necessity of thinking
fallaciously, and (as Bacon suggests) all mankind may be mad after one
uniform fashion. Hence the nominalist answers the question thus: A genus
of argument is valid when from true premises it will yield a true
conclusion,
A is taken at random from among the B's;
Truth being, then, the agreement of a representation with its object,
and there being nothing in re answering to a degree of credence,
a modification of a judgment in that respect cannot make it
more true,
although it may indicate the proportion of such judgments which
are true in the long run. That is, indeed, the precise and only
use or significance of these fractions termed probabilities: they give
security in the long run. Now, in order that the degree of credence
should correspond to any truth in the long run, it must be the
representation of a general statistical fact, To say that the conceptualistic and
nominalistic theories are both true at once, is mere ignorance, because
their numerical results conflict. A conceptualist might hesitate,
perhaps, to say that the probability of a proposition of which he knows
absolutely nothing is 1/2, although this would be, in one sense,
justifiable for the nominalist, inasmuch as one half of all possible
propositions (be ing contradictions of the other half) are true; but he
does not hesitate to assume events to be equally probable when he does
not know anything about their probabilities, and this is for the
nominalist an utterly unwarrantable procedure. A probability is a
statistical fact, and cannot be assumed arbitrarily. Boole first did
away with this absurdity, and thereby brought the mathematical doctrine
of probabilities into harmony with the modern logical doctrine of
probable inference. But Boole (owing to the needs of his
calculus) admitted the assumption that simple events whose probabilities
are given are independent,an assumption of the same vicious
character. Mr. Venn strikes down this last remnant of conceptualism with
a very vigorous hand.
He has, however, fallen into some
conceptualistic errors of his own; and these are specially manifest in
his "applications to moral and social science." The most important of
these is contained in the chapter "On the Credibility of Extraordinary
Stories"; but it is defended with so much ingenuity as almost to give
it the value of a real contribution to science. It is maintained that
the credibility of an extraordinary story depends either entirely upon
the veracity of the witness, or, in more extraordinary cases, entirely
upon the a priori credibility of the story; but that these
considerations cannot, under any circumstances, be combined, unless
arbitrarily. In order to support this opinion, the author invents an
illustration. He supposes that
statistics were to have shown that nine
out of ten consumptives who go to the island of Madeira live through the
first year, and that nine out of ten Englishmen who go to the same
island die the first year; what, then, would be the just rate of
insurance for the first year of a consumptive Englishman who is about to
go to that island? There are no certain data for the least approximation
to the proportion of consumptive Englishmen who die in Madeira during
the first year. But it is certain that an insurance company which
insured only Englishmen in Madeira during the first year, or only
consumptives underthe same circumstances, would be warranted (a certain
moral fact being neglected) in taking the consumptive Englishman at its
ordinary rate. Hence, Mr. Venn thinks that an insurance company which
insured all sorts of men could with safety and fairness insure the
consumptive Englishman either as Englishman or as
consumptive. x = unknown ratio of consumptive English who do not die in the first
year. The amount paid out yearly by the company would be, in the long
run, and x is unknown. This objection to Venn's
theory may, however, be waived.
been
inferred, without indicating what genus of argument that is; and,
secondly, we may speak of the probability that any individual of a
certain class has a certain character, when we mean the ratio of the
number of those of that class that have that character to the total
number in the class. Now it is this latter phrase which we use when we
speak of the probability that a story of a certain sort, told by a
certain man, is true. And since there is no thing in the data to show
what this ratio is, the probability in question is unknown. But a
"degree of credence" or "credibility," to be logically determined,
must, as we have seen, be an expression of probability in the
nominalistic sense; and therefore this "degree of credence" (supposing
it to exist) is unknown. "We know not what to believe," is the
ordinary and logically correct expression in such cases of perplexity.
Credence and expectation cannot be represented by single
numbers. Probability is not always known; and then the probability of
each degree of probability must enter into the credence. Perhaps this
again is not known; then there will be a probability of each degree of
probability of each degree of probability; and so on. In the same way,
when a risk is run, the expectation is composed of the probabilities of
each possible issue, but is not a single number, as the Petersburg
problem shows. Suppose the capitalists of the world were to owe me a
hundred dollars, and were to offer to pay in either of the following
ways: 1st, a coin should be pitched up until it turned up heads (or else
a hundred times, if it did not come up heads sooner), and I should be
paid two dollars if the head came up the first time, four if the second
time, eight if the third time, &c.; or, 2d, a coin should be turned up a
hundred times, and I should receive two dollars for every head. Each of
these offers would be worth a hundred dollars, in the long run;
that is to say, if repeated often enough, I should receive on the
average a hundred dollars at each trial. But if the trial were to be
made but once, I should infinitely prefer the second alternative, on
account of its greater security. Mere certainty is worth a great deal.
We wish to know our fate. How much it is worth is a question of
political economy. It must go into the market, where its worth is what
it will fetch. And since security may be of many kinds (according to the
distribution of the probabilities of each sum of money and of each loss,
in prospect), the value of the various kinds will fluctuate among one
another with the ratio of demand and supply,the demand varying with
the moral and intellectual state of the community,and thus no single
and constant number can represent the value of any kind.
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MS 144: Summer-Fall 1867 |
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Logic must begin with analyzing the meanings of certain words, which we shall take up in due order. The first of these is the word "is", as when we say, Julius Caesar is dead, a griffin is a fabulous animal, a four-sided triangle is an absurdity, height is the distance from the ground, nothing is that which does not exist. These examples suffice to show that we apply this word to whatever we give a name, whether it really exists or not, or whether we consider it as existing or not. The word is is called by logicians the copula because it joins subject and predicate. That which is, in the sense of the copula, was termed ens (pl: entia) by the schoolmen, and the corresponding abstract noun used was entitas. In this as in many other cases, we have taken in English, the abstract noun in a concrete sense, and we can consequently speak of entities. At the same time we have forgotten the very general meaning attached to the word in the middle ages, as denoting whatever can be named, and employ it for what would then have been termed ens reale. Thus, we often hear the schoolmen reviled because they considered abstractions to be "entities," but in their sense of the term it admits of no dispute that an abstraction is ens. It is true that they frequently use the word ens simply when they mean ens reale, but only in cases in which there can be no doubt of their meaning; and it was universal to consider entia as embracing not only entia realia but also entia rationis. I propose to restore the term ens or entity to its original meaning of whatever can be named or talked about. I shall also endeavor as much as possible to reserve the word being and other derivatives of is, to express this same conception; but these words must be somewhat ambiguous. It may be observed that entity is so extremely general a name that it has no negative over against it. We may talk of a nonentity, but then as we have given it a name it is also an entity. In contrast with this general being which is conferred by our mere thought of an object, is the being of real things which is quite independent of what we think. We shall designate this by "reality", and its cognates; and shall employ "figment" and "fiction" to denote that which is non-existent without meaning to imply that the conception has been a deliberate invention. It is important to observe that the essential difference between a reality and a nonreality, is that the former has an existence entirely independent of what you or I or any number of men may think about it. What I dream, for example, only exists so far as my dreaming imagination creates it. But the fact that I have had such a dream, remains true whether I ever reflect upon that fact or not. The dream, therefore, as a mental phenomenon, is a reality; but the thing dreamed is a figment. If there ever really was such a man as Romulus, he would have existed just the same if history had never mentioned him; but if he is not a reality he exists only in the fables which have been told of the foundation of Rome. When Gray says, Full many a gem of purest ray serene he expresses with precision the essential character of reality. But when we say that the real is that which is independent of how you or I or any number of men think about it, we have still left the conception of independent being to be analyzed. Before making that analysis we must consider the conceptions of one, two, and three. We have seen that an ens is something to which the copula is can be applied. But is is a word whose meaning is not complete in itself. It means nothing to say that anything is (in the sense of the copula) unless I say what it is; for the only function of the copula is to join subject and predicate. Hence, whatever is, is somehow. This somehow of entity I propose to express by the term quality. A quality therefore in the very general sense in which I shall use it, denotes whatever can be expressed by all that comes after is in a complete assertion. Every ens, then, has some quality for to say that it is an ens is to say that it may be made the subject of an assertion and that assertion must have some predicate. There is no conception so vague that some thing cannot be asserted of the object of it, for it is the first condition of thought that some quality must be thought in the thought. |
MS 146: Winter 1867--1868 |
1. Statement of the doctrine by which Positivism is distinguished from all other Philosophies.
2. That this doctrine
has a favorable influence upon scientific
investigation, and that the Positivists have been
clever 3. That this doctrine is fatal to religion, and that the religious side of positivism is its weakness. 4. That it is possible and usual for scientific men to occupy another position equally advantageous in reference to scientific research and not so destructive of religious faith. 5. Of Positivism as held by unphilosophic and unscientific persons, not owing to severe thought but to the influence of the ""spirit of the age.'' 6. That the fundamental position of positivism is false.
7. The true doctrine and its
consequences. 7 1/2. Of some doctrines allied to positivism. 8. In what sense positivism has deeply influenced the age and in what sense it has not. 9. Conclusion. The first disciples of the positive philosophy (I do not speak now of its doctors) were men interested in carrying the research of what ordinary people call causes into realms which had hitherto been trodden only by the foot of the metaphysician or the classifier. Without allowing all its rules for this kind of investigation, we may admit that it has been of real service to those men and through them to the world. Its scientific side is its strength. But now that it has become the fashion, it has been taken up by persons who have neither the stern masculinity proper for positive philosophers nor any business with physical science. By these persons it is regarded in its practical and especially its religious aspect. This is decidedly its weak side. This was perhaps felt by the man who to put it to the test pushed it to its legitimate religious consequences in paradoxes respecting the grand ^etre, &c. These modern disciples, however, shrink from these doctrines which offend the Anglosaxon sense and prefer to discard all religious belief altogether. And, then, not being particularly philosophic in temperament they seek to reconcile themselves to the sceptical state by persuading themselves that theism could offer no rational consolation to its believers, even if it could be rationally accepted. Herein they show the secret influence upon them of the capital principle of theism namely that whatever is is best. Only by a covert faith in this could they commit the absurdity of maintaining that God, Freedom, and Immortality would be evils. Now the pleasantness or unpleasantness of consequences is no argument for or against a speculative opinion. But a man fights the battle of life better under the stimulus of hope; and we ought not to complain, therefore, that men lean toward the hopeful belief. At any rate it is a fact that they do so; and therefore if scepticism can show that the prospects it offers are more cheering than those of theism it is likely to sweep away the latter altogether except from the minds of a few sad thinkers who unfortunately shall be convinced that they are immortal beings under the government of a loving God. But that this never will happen and that scepticism is not so comfortable or inspiriting a state as theistic belief will be shown beyond further controversy in the present paper. In the first place, then, we are to give no weight to the testimony of an individual sceptic that he finds his scepticism delightful. For apart from the question of veracity (which in such a case is serious for everyone but himself) he may be self-deceived, or may understand by theism a particular determination of it, gloomy on account of what it adds to the fundamental doctrine, or may be of an abnormal constitution in his sentimental part. Nor shall we be convinced by an instance or two of a heroic sceptic, since heroism in these few cases can well be attributed to natural force of character, since for every such instance ten can be adduced of sneaking sceptics, and since on the other hand reli gion can show a history of whole communities becoming heroic in a way that can only be accounted for by supposing that it can make a hero of almost anybody. The argument might be urged the other way with perfect justness and with a force perfectly convincing to the clear-minded. But since a caviller might easily raise a cloud of dust in reference to such a matter, it will be more adviseable to pass it over. We prefer to begin with this undoubted fact: All men and all animals love life. This is not a passion produced by theism or any other superstition, but is of all impulses one of the most original, strongest, and ineradicable. If some man says he does not love life, other evidence rather bears down his testimony, and if he really does not he is only an unhappy exception, a miserable a bortion, which is not to set aside the result of all experience. This passion has for its object firstly and primarily ourselves, in a less strong degree our friends, then our blood, then our country, then our race, and finally it is still a deep and lively emotion even in its reference to intellect in general. It may be objected that the love of the life of our family, for example, is not the same passion as the love of our own life. But all I say is, that we have a desire for the continued life of all these objects, and that these desires have this in common that they are all love of life in some form, all are lively emotions, all seem to spring from our original nature and all are in the great body of mankind incapable of being rooted out without shattering the heart almost entirely. We may wonder why men should care for what is to happen after they are (according to their belief) annihilated; it may be that such a wish implies a lurking of the contrary belief, but it is a fact any man even the merest atheist does not limit his love of life to this side of the grave. He provides for the wellbeing of the world when he is to be no more. Nay, Hume was anxious for his own good reputation among succeeding generations. The love of life is more than a love of sensuous life: it is also a love of rational life. For it continues up to the point where our sensations become intolerable agony. Hence, our love of life is not confined within the walls of our own body; but since our reason lives wherever it is active, primarily in our own brains but also secondarily in the brains of those who take up our thoughts and sentiments, it is a part of the love of life, to love our influence upon and fame with succeeding generations. We, also, feel within us in addition to elements peculiar to ourselves, elements also which are common to ourselves and others, among which are personality and intellect. Personality has two senses, 1st being personal and 2nd the special idiosyncracy of a particular person. It is in the first sense that the sympathy we exhibit shows that we feel that it is the same, in others as in ourselves. Hence the love of the life of others is still a passion which centres in ourselves because we love them as having something in common with ourselves, that is, because a part of them is identical with a part of ourselves. Th is would be quite false if these elements were material but as they are general and purely formal objects, there is nothing in nominalism to refute such a sentiment. The more true culture we have, the more we approach that ideal of a man of which we all cherish a more or less vague idea; the more we love our rational life relatively to our sensuous life, and of all the elements of a rational life the more we value those which are fundamental and necessary results of the developement of reason in general relatively to those which are merely the mannerism and idiosyncracy peculiar to ourselves; and consequently the further we advance to what we ought to be, the stronger is our love of reason in general relatively to that of our race, that of our race relatively to that of our country, that o f our country relatively to that of our blood, and that of our blood relatively to that of our own persons. These passions then which I have summed up in one word as the love of life, are really intimately bound together and connected in our nature. These passions go by many different names in common language and some are not named at all, but it will readily be perceived that there is not a single impulse or sentiment of any consequence, which is not among the number, which is not in some sense a love of life. Now let us see what the two doctrines positivism and theism promise to this passion which is the sum of all longings.
Now some
positivists
cubantem in
toro, album vero eandem sed corruptam'';
Life upon the globe is a
phase, quite accidental, tending as far as we know
to no permanent end, of no sort of use, except in
producing a pleasant titillation now and then on
the nerves of this or that wayfarer on this weary
and purposeless journey Let us now turn to theism. The capital principle of this is, that nature is absolutely conformed to an end; or in other words, that there is reason in the nature of things. Now from what has been said before it follows that so far as we attain true culture so far will the sum of all our impulses come to the love of reason as it necessarily is, and therefore so far as we are as we ought to be so far are we perfectly gratified by what according to the nature of things, takes place; which is another way of saying that whatever is is best. Now this is not only a consolation; it is the very sum, quintessence and acme of all consolation. That happens which so far as our own nature is developed, so far as we truly know our own mind, is what delights us most. Whatever palliatives to the ills of life can be applied by the sceptic are also at the command of the theist and in addition the only true consolation. I know very well that a great many theists are nearer pessimists than optimists but they are unsound and inconsistent. To say, however, that whatever is is best is not to deny the existence of evil, but only to maintain that if any event is bad in one way it more than counterbalances for it by being good in another and higher way. Positivists are in the habit of considering positivism and metaphysics as opposed species of philosophy. Now to maintain that the conclusions of metaphysics are as yet very certain would be enthusiastic enough in view of the differences of opinion among metaphysicians. These differences have been growing less and less from one centur y to another, owing to a gradual clearing up of conceptions. But the whole effective result of metaphysical research hitherto may be described in saying that certain indistinct conceptions have been made distinct. Every great branch of science has once been in the state in which metaphysics is now, that is when its fundamental conceptions were vague and consequently its doctrines utterly unsettled; and there is no reason whatever to despair of metaphysics eventually becoming a real science like the rest; but at present that is not the case. Now the positivist may define metaphysics, as he pleases, but if he deals with conceptions which are indistinct in his mind, he is for all purposes of certainty in the same condition as the metaphysician. That is precisely what he does do in maintaining that we can have no knowledge of any reality except single impressions of sense and their sensible relations. The question what is reality has a great pertinency here. Suppose we say it is that which is independently of our belief and which could be properly inferred by the most thorough discussion of the sum of all impressions of sense whatever. If that is what the positivist means by reality (and since he does not tell us we must guess for ourselves), then he ought to be not a sceptic but an atheist, for that which we cannot possibly be in a state to infer, is not then a reality at all. And, indeed, I should be glad to know what the positivist does mean by an existence which cannot possibly be known. Such an existence must be utterly cut off from everything knowa ble, for if it was in any way manifested, if it anyhow effected anything knowable, that would be some slight reason for inferring it to be. I can attach no idea to such a reality and I have not been able to find a positivist or other person who could explain it and this confirms me in the opinion that the above definition really expresses what men mean by reality. If therefore I am asked as a theist what I have to reply to the arguments of the positivist against religion, I reply in the first place, that positivism is only a particular species of metaphysics open to all the uncertainty of metaphysics, and its conclusions are for that rea-
son of not enough
weight to disturb any practical belief. We awake
to reflection and find ourselves theists. Now
those beliefs which come before reflect
ion to all men alike are generally true, and the
reason is that the causes which produce
fallacies But even if I am asked as a metaphysician whether the objections of positivism to religion seem to me to be valid, I still answer not in the least. For I object to its logical doctrine that no theory is to be admitted except so far as it asserts or denies something with respect to possible impressions of sense or their sensible relations. This be it observed is a proposition of positivism which has nothing to do with natural science (the strong side of positivism) which anyway only deals with phenomena. Its principal effect is upon religion with reference to which positivism has rather its comical side. It is true positivists value this proposition as shutting out all metaphysical conclusions, but it appears to me it shuts them out for the wrong reason, that is on account of their object matter instead of on account of the unsatisfactory state of the science as yet. What is the end of a theory or what is a theory considered as an end? The passionate advocate of positivism will be ready with some hasty answer, but passion and haste are not the way to answer such questions. Were it doubted whether a theory can be considered tele ologically, it could be shown that end and theory are almost the same thing; but it is not doubted since positivism expressly defines itself a particular doctrine concerning the end of theory. I should define the end of a theory as to carry one thread of consciousness through different states of consciousness. But whether this be the end or not, whatever is necessary to accomplishing the end of a theory must be admitted into the theory. Now to admit as a theory is the same as to believe for though in the ordinary use of language we attach more of the notion of a provisional character to admitting as a theory, yet as all belief is provisional this is merely a difference of degree which cannot affect the general logical consideration of the matter. We must therefore believe whatev er is necessary for accomplishing the end of a theory whether that is capable of observation or not. The only question is whether anything not capable of direct observation is thus necessary.
Now as theories have this in common
they are inferences of the unobserved from the
observed The positivists endeavor to elude this reductio ad absurdum by saying that by possible observation they mean that which can be supposed to be made at any time whatever. But they are aware, I suppose, that they cannot force any arbitrary rule of reasoning they please upon the world. They are upon their trial, and if they say that this is their doctrine they must support it by reasons and must hold nothing which shall lead to that further determination of it which we have supposed them to hold and which has been proved absurd. Now they are continually harping upon this: that if a theory concludes more than possible observations, it cannot be verified by direct observation and therefore is wholly baseless and metaphysical. Verification is the watchword of positivism. But it is easy to see that a proposition is no more verifiable by direct observation for being such as we can suppose (by a recognized falsification) to be observed unless it is also such as really can be observed. Their maxim, therefore, must refer to really possible observations not such as are supposably possible, for the proof they give leads to that or to nothing. But the positivist has another reply to the objection here made to
his doctrine. He may
say: The logical rule, therefore, which is the whole basis of positivism appears to me to be entirely false. |
(a) The Beginning should presuppose nothing; |
"Such," continues our author, "is the deduction of M. Fischer. It seems to me very much inferior in clearness to that of Hegel." How he could say this is very mysterious when we find him denying all validity to Hegel's demonstration. Although Fischer's explanation is mixed--partly dialectical and partly psychological--yet, as an explanation, it is correct. But as psychology should not be dragged into Logic, which is the evolution of the forms of pure thinking, we must hold strictly to the dialectic if we would see the "Becoming." The psychological explanation gets no further than the relation of Being and nought as concepts. The Hegelian thought on this point is not widely different from that of Gorgias, as given us by Sextus Empiricus, nor from that of Plato in the Sophist. Let us attempt it here: Being is the pure simple; as such it is considered under the form of self-relation. But as it is wholly undetermined, and has no content, it is pure nought or absolute negation. As such it is the negation by itself or the negation of itself, and hence its own opposite or Being. Thus the simple falls through self-opposition into duality, and this again becomes simple if we attempt to hold it asunder, or give it any validity by itself. Thus if Being is posited as having validity in and by itself without determination (omnis determinatio est negatio), it becomes a pure void in nowise different from nought, for difference is determination, and neither Being nor nought possess it. What is the validity of the nought? A negative is a relative, and a negative by itself is a negative related to itself, which is a self-cancelling. Thus Being and nought, posited objectively as having validity, prove dissolving forms and pass over into each other. Being is a ceasing and nought is a beginning, and these are the two forms of Becoming. The Becoming, dialectically considered, proves itself inadequate likewise. IV. THE DIALECTIC.--To consider an object dialectically we have merely to give it universal validity; if it contradicts itself then, we are not in anywise concerned for the result; we will simply stand by and accept the result, without fear that the true will not appear in the end. The negative turned against itself makes short work of itself; it is only when the subjective reflection tries to save it by hypotheses and reservations that a merely negative result is obtained. (Page 369): "In Spinozism the development of Being is Geometric; in the System of Hegel it is organic." What could have tempted him to use these words, it is impossible to say, unless it was the deep-seated national proclivity for epigrammatic statements. This distinction means nothing less (in the mouth of its original author) than what we have already given as the true difference between Wolff's and Hegel's methods; but M. Janet has long since forgotten his earlier statements. (Page 369) He says, "Hegel's method is a faithful expression of the movement of nature," from which he thinks Hegel derived it empirically! On page 372 he asks: "Who proves to us that the dialectic stops at Spirit as its last term? Why can I not conceive a spirit absolutely superior to mine, in whom the identity between subject and object, the intelligible and intelligence would be more perfect than it is with this great Philosopher [Hegel]? * * * * * In fact, every philosopher is a man, and so far forth is full of obscurity and feebleness." Spirit is the last term in philosophy for the reason that it stands in complete self-relation, and hence contains its antithesis within itself; if it could stand in opposition to anything else, then it would contain a contradiction, and be capable of transition into a higher. M. Janet asks in effect: "Who proves that the dialectic stops at God as the highest, and why cannot I conceive a higher?" Judging from his attempt at understanding Hegel, however, he is not in a fair way to conceive "a spirit in whom the identity between subject and object" is more perfect than in Hegel. "What hinders" is his own culture, his own self; "Du gleichst dem Geist den du begreifst, nicht mir," said the World-spirit to Faust. He asks (p. 374): "When did the 'pure act' commence?" From Eternity; it always commences, and is always complete, says Hegel. "According to Hegel, God is made from nought, by means of the World." Instead of this, Hegel holds that God is self-created, and the world eternally created by him (the Eternally-begotten Son). "What need has God of Nature?" God is Spirit; hence conscious; hence he makes himself an object to himself; in this act he creates nature; hence Nature is His reflection. (P. 386): "The Absolute in Hegel is spirit only on condition that it thinks, and thinks itself; hence it is not essentially Spirit, but only accidentally." To "think itself" is to be conscious, and, without this, God would have no personality; and hence if Hegel were to hold any other doctrine than the one attributed to him, he would be a Pantheist. But these things are not mere dogmas with Hegel; they appear as the logical results of the most logical of systems. "But in Plato, God is a Reason in activity, a living thought." M. Janet mentions this to show Plato's superiority; he thinks that it is absurd for Hegel to attribute thinking to God, but thinks the same thing to be a great merit in Plato. (P. 392): "Behold the Platonic deduction [or dialectic]: being given a pure idea, he shows that this idea, if it were all alone [i.e. made universal, or placed in self-relation, or posited as valid for itself] would be contradictory of itself, and consequently could not be. Hence, if it exists, it is on condition that it mingles with another idea. Take, for example, the multiple: by itself, it loses itself in the indiscernible, for it would be impossible without unity." This would do very well for a description of the Dialectic in Hegel if he would lay more stress on the positive side of the result. Not merely does the "pure idea mingle with another"--i.e. pass over to its opposite--but it returns into itself by the continuation of its own movement, and thereby reaches a concrete stage. Plato sometimes uses this complete dialectical movement, and ends affirmatively; sometimes he uses only the partial movement and draws negative conclusions. How much better M. Janet's book might have been--we may be allowed to remark in conclusion--had he possessed the earnest spirit of such men as Vera and Hutchison Stirling! Stimulated by its title, we had hoped to find a book that would kindle a zeal for the study of the profoundest philosophical subject, as treated by the profoundest of thinkers. 1. Etudes sur la dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel, par Paul Janet, Membre de L'Institut, professeur à la Faculté des lettres de Paris.--Paris: Ladrange, 1860. |
Being has no determination; |
Ergo, It is nothing. |
Indetermination in respect to any character, is the negation |
of that character; |
Being is indeterminate in respect to every character; |
Ergo, Being is negative of every character. |
Difference is determination, Being has no determination; |
Ergo, Being has no difference from nothing; Ergo, Being is nothing. |
Difference in any respect is determination in that respect; Animality, in general, is not determined in respect to |
humanity; |
Ergo, Animality, in general, has no difference from humanity; Ergo, Animality, in general, is humanity. |
P 28: Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2(1868):190-91 [The following discussion, which is a continuation of the one in a former issue called "Nominalism and Realism," may serve a good purpose to clear up any confusion that may exist regarding some of the important technical expressions employed.--EDITOR.] To the Editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. SIR:--Your remarks upon my inquiries concerning Being and Nothing are very kind and courteous. Considered as replies, they are less satisfactory than they might have been had I succeeded better in making my difficulties understood. I suspect that there must be some misunderstanding between us of the meaning of the various terms cognate with "determined." Perhaps, therefore, I shall do well to state more fully than I did before, the manner in which I understand Hegel (in common with all other logicians) to use them. Possibly, the original signification of bestimmt was "settled by vote"; or it may have been "pitched to a key." Thus its origin was quite different from that of "determined"; yet I believe that as philosophical terms their equivalence is exact. In general, they mean "fixed to be this (or thus), in contradistinction to being this, that, or the other (or in some way or other)." 1 --When it is a concept or term, such as is expressed by a concrete noun or adjective which is said to be more determinate than another, the sense sometimes is that the logical extension of the former concept or term is a part and only a part of that of the latter; but more usually the sense is, that the logical comprehension of the latter is a part and only a part of that of the former. In my former letter (page 151) I sufficiently expressed my own understanding of "determined" as applied to a concept or term such as is expressed by an abstract noun. Determinate is also used either in express application or with implicit reference to a second intention or term of second denomination. In such an acceptation, we may speak either of a singular as indeterminate, or of a conception of Being, in general, as determinate. Every singular is in one sense perfectly determinate, since there is no pair of contradictory characters of which it does not possess one. Yet if the extension of the term be limited, not by additions to its comprehension, but by a reflection upon the term itself--namely, that it shall denote but one--it is called an indeterminate singular. In this sense, "some one horse" is an indeterminate individual, while "Dexter" is a determinate individual. In a somewhat similar way, every universal conception of Being is quite indeterminate in the sense of not signifying any particular character. Yet, if the reflection is explicitly made (gesetzt) that every thing to which it applies has its particular characters, it is called by Hegel, determinate being. Hegel teaches that the whole series of categories or universal conceptions can be evolved from one--that is, from Seyn--by a certain process, the effect of which is to make actually thought that which was virtually latent in the thought. So that this reflection which constitutes Daseyn lies implicitly even in Seyn, and it is by explicitly evolving it from Seyn that Daseyn is evolved from Seyn. (Hegel's Werke, Bd. 3, S. 107.) The term "What is" has reference to pure Seyn only; the term "What is somehow" has reference to Daseyn. This is my understanding of the term "determinate." It must differ from yours, or you would not say that animality, in general, is determined in respect to humanity: so when you say that were animality and humanity, in general, undetermined with respect to each other they would be identical, I take the example of "highness of pitch in general" and "loudness of sound in general," and I conclude again that we are taking the word "determine" in different senses. May I ask you to reperuse my 4th question? (p. 151.) You have apparently understood me as applying the term "abstract" to any concept the result of abstraction. But, as I intimated (p. 145), I adopt that acceptation in which "whiteness" is said to be abstract and "white" concrete. For this use of the terms, I refer to the following authorities: Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar, §26, 5; Scotus, Super Prædicamenta, qu. 8; Durandus à Sancto Porciano, In Sententias, lib. 1, dist. 34, qu. 1; Ockham, Summa Logices, pars 1, cap. 5; Chauvin, Lexicon Rationale, sub v. Abstractum; Mill, Logic, Bk. 1, cap. 2, §4; Trendelenburg, Elementa Logices Aristoteleae, 6th ed., p. 117, note; Überweg, Logik, §51 (where Wolff, also, is cited); Hoppe, Logik, §§256, 257. This misapprehension affects the relevancy of most of your remarks. I think that I have not, as you suppose, greatly mistaken the sense in which Hegelians use the term Pure Being. At least, my definition seems to be in accord with the explanations of almost all, if not all, the commentators and expositors of Hegel. I would submit respectfully, that your own remarks upon p. 117 of Vol. I of this Journal contradict, almost in terms, what you say (p. 146) in reply to me. 2 Once or twice you use such expressions as "We do not profess to speak for Hegelians," "Hegelians may understand this as they please," &c. Have I been wrong, then, in supposing that the passage to which my queries related was a professed defence of Hegelian doctrine? 3 I am sorry to learn that I have done you injustice in saying that you profess to be self-contradictory. Yet I do not see in what sense you object to the remark. To say that a man is self-contradictory is, of course, but a way of saying that what he believes is self-contradictory. You believe that "finite things contradict themselves"; that is, as I understand it, that contradictions exist. Therefore, what you believe in, appears to be self-contradictory. Nor can I see how a person "escapes self-contradiction by not attempting to set up non-contradiction as the first principle of things"; that is, by not professing to be otherwise than self-contradictory. 4 I do not see that you notice query 3. 5 1. Wherein is the force of this "in contradistinction to" which our correspondent employs here? Determination--as we understand the Hegelian use of the term--implies all difference, property, mark, quality, attribute, or, in short, any distinction whatever that is thought as belonging to a subject. This would include its "being this, that, or the other." Thus "highness of pitch" and "loudness of sound, in general," are through their determinateness distinct.--EDITOR. 2. The passage here referred to is in Chapter III of the "Introduction to Philosophy," wherein there is no reference whatever to the Hegelian use of the term. It is a psychological investigation of the significance of the first predicate which is a determinate somewhat, and "Being" is used in the popular sense of "something" (i.e. a being), and its origin traced to the substantive-making activity of the Ego, which in its first exercise seizes itself as the fundamental basis of all. Just as, according to Kant, Time and Space, the forms of the mind, are made the basis of what the mind sees; so, too, Being as a universal predicate is the pure activity objectified. But the making it substantive, at the same time, determines it.--EDITOR. 3. Of course, our correspondent would not consider "a defence of Hegel" as identical with a championship of the Hegelians. It is the latter, only, that we object to, for the reason mentioned in the article on Janet, viz., that the term is used so vaguely as to include those who differ essentially from Hegel.--EDITOR. 4. We hasten to assure our correspondent that we do not "believe in the self-contradictory." We are sorry we were so unhappy in our expressions as to convey such a meaning. The Abiding or the Total Process is not self-contradictory, neither is it an abstract identity, but is (as we described it on p. 54, 2d col. of this volume) "self-identical through self-distinction." The self-determining is what we believe in, and it alone exists, while the fleeting show whose reality rests on contradiction is (and this is not Hegelian merely, but older than Plato) a mingling of Being and non-Being. One who sets up the principle of contradiction ignores one side of the process, and thus involves himself in that which he tries to avoid.--ED. 5. If any point is involved in question 3d that is not answered in the discussion of the other queries, we fail to seize it.--EDITOR. |
Corollary. Every representation refers to an interpretant. |
Any S would be P and Any S would not be P |
one is false, must receive some modification, adjustment, or limitation. Some logicians wish to cut the Gordian Knot by saying that there are no propositions except such as imply the existence of their subjects, which is to cut us off from the subjunctive mood altogether. They propose to interpret the subjunctive mood. The proposition |
A dragon would breathe fire, |
they would expose thus
This answers well enough because the proposition which here serves as an example is explicatory or analytical. It deals with the implication of words and not with what is found in experience. But it is a great mistake to suppose that all propositions with a 'would be' speak only of the meanings of words. When I said, 'If I should drop this inkstand, the ink would not be spilt', I by no means meant to say as much as that 'to say that I drop this inkstand is itself to say or imply that the ink is not spilt'. But what I meant was that 'On whatever occasion my dropping the inkstand may appear in the world of phenomena (whether it ever actually appears or not) the ink's not being spilt may be found among phenomena', I am speaking of facts--although hypothetical ones,--and not of names, at all. When, therefore, Mill proposes to solve the sophism |
Every dragon is an animal, |
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by substituting 'the name of ------' for every term, although he avoids the difficulty in this particular case, well enough, he overlooks the circumstance that there are many other sophisms of precisely this form (i.e. Darapti and Felapton, where the middle term denotes what may not exist) where this method of solution will not apply. In place of saying that every proposition implies the existence of its subject, Leibnitz proposes to say that every particular proposition does so. One of two contradictories is particular, and hence if the 'some' means 'something capable of being given in perception', there is no contradiction between propositions whose subject may not exist and Darapti and Felapton must be omitted from the moods of the third figure, as I have seen fit to do for other reasons in my paper on the classification of arguments. The objections to this theory are; first, that according to it the particular is not implied in its universal, and thus disturbs the whole system of syllogistic, and, second, that particular propositions which do not imply the existence of their subject are quite possible, as 'Of men who should of their own free-will be left in a boat or boats in open sea without other food than each other's bodies, and should not be rescued, some would die in a month'. If we yield to the force of these objections, it will be necessary to divide all propositions, universal and particular, into two classes, those which imply that their subjects have spheres and those which do not imply this. And on account of the complete symmetry in all its parts which syllogistic presents, we shall also be led to divide propositions into such as imply that they have a content, and into such as do not. Those which imply that their subjects have spheres, speak of course only of the actual state of things and are contingent. Those, which do not imply this, speak of every possible state of things, and are necessary. These necessary propositions are always the result of an apodictic deductive inference. They come to speak of every possible state of things, simply by losing the implication that their subjects exist. Nevertheless, it is evident, that a contingent proposition says something that the corresponding necessary one does not, and that a necessary proposition says something that the corresponding contingent one does not. Thus they are opposed to one another, like affirmatives a[nd] negatives but result from different determinations of the subject like universals and particulars. On the other hand the proposition which does not imply that its predicate is not essentially contained in its subject--(which I shall term an attributive proposition) says nothing which is not said by the corresponding proposition which does imply this (which I shall call a subsumptive proposition). And thus these are related to one another as universals and particulars although they arise from determinations of the predicate like affirmatives and negatives. Thus instead of two respects in which propositions differ, there will be four; and instead of four forms of propositions, there will be sixteen. It is plain that contradictory propositions will differ in all four respects. Let us next see what modifications this theory requires in the doctrine of syllogism. In the first place then it is plain that in the third figure both premises cannot be necessary, and also that in the first figure the conclusion must agree with the case in being necessary or contingent. On the other hand both premises may be contingent in the third figure. Here is already a difficulty; for by the contraposition of the propositions of such a syllogism in the third figure we should get a syllogism in the first figure having a contingent case and necessary result. Take, for example, the syllogism |
S exists and every actual S is P, |
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The denial of the conclusion is Either M does not exist or no actual M is P The denial of the first premise is in the same way If S exists, some S is not P And the syllogism must be good, |
If M exists, any M is not P, |
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It must be therefore that the necessary proposition is implied in the corresponding contingent one. |
A is P |
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Thus the symmetry of syllogistic is broken up, unless some other distinction can be substituted for our present one between subsumptives and attributives. The rule in the first and second figures need only be necessary, and the conclusion of the third figure may always be contingent. |
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L 183: W. T. Harris Collection Cambridge 1868 Nov. 30 I send to you today two proof-sheets. I should have sent the first one on some days ago but was ill when it came. I suppose you saw that I struck out the paragraph referring to Hegelians. I intended no slur on them, or any appeal to the ignorant against them. What I meant was to protest respectfully but energetically to them against a certain tendency in their philosophy. In fact with all the disposition of this school to find every philosophical doctrine true for its time and stage of developement, yet if their categories should happen not to be true it is plain that to classify men according to them may be one of the most unfair things in the world. I have considered your remark that you do not see the drift of my making man entirely ignorant of his own states of mind. I suppose I have not written very clearly for one thing,--and that I have tried to correct in the proof. But the real difficulty is that the article is truncated. I had intended to wind up with a long discussion about the metaphysics--the ontology of the soul. I left this off on account of the length of the article. But now I find by your criticism that it is wanted, and I have endeavored to put it into the briefest and most meagre form and send it to you, in hopes you will be able to tack it on to the end of the article. I do not say that we are ignorant of our states of mind. What I say is that the mind is virtual, not in a series of moments, not capable of existing except in a space of time--nothing so far as it is at any one moment. |
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Some Consequences of Four IncapacitiesP 27: Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2(1868):140-57 Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, and the spirit of Cartesianism--that which principally distinguishes it from the scholasticism which it displaced--may be compendiously stated as follows: 1. It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal doubt; whereas scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals. 2. It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism had rested on the testimony of sages and of the Catholic Church. 3. The multiform argumentation of the middle ages is replaced by a single thread of inference depending often upon inconspicuous premises. 4. Scholasticism had its mysteries of faith, but undertook to explain all created things. But there are many facts which Cartesianism not only does not explain, but renders absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that "God makes them so" is to be regarded as an explanation. In some, or all of these respects, most modern philosophers have been, in effect, Cartesians. Now without wishing to return to scholasticism, it seems to me that modern science and modern logic require us to stand upon a very different platform from this. 1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial scepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. 2. The same formalism appears in the Cartesian criterion, which amounts to this: "Whatever I am clearly convinced of, is true." If I were really convinced, I should have done with reasoning, and should require no test of certainty. But thus to make single individuals absolute judges of truth is most pernicious. The result is that metaphysicians will all agree that metaphysics has reached a pitch of certainty far beyond that of the physical sciences;--only they can agree upon nothing else. In sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory has been broached, it is considered to be on probation until this agreement is reached. After it is reached, the question of certainty becomes an idle one, because there is no one left who doubts it. We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers. Hence, if disciplined and candid minds carefully examine a theory and refuse to accept it, this ought to create doubts in the mind of the author of the theory himself. 3. Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premises which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibres may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected. 4. Every unidealistic philosophy supposes some absolutely inexplicable, unanalyzable ultimate; in short, something resulting from mediation itself not susceptible of mediation. Now that anything is thus inexplicable can only be known by reasoning from signs. But the only justification of an inference from signs is that the conclusion explains the fact. To suppose the fact absolutely inexplicable, is not to explain it, and hence this supposition is never allowable. In the last number of this journal will be found a piece entitled "Questions concerning certain Faculties claimed for Man," which has been written in this spirit of opposition to Cartesianism. That criticism of certain faculties resulted in four denials, which for convenience may here be repeated: 1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts. 2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition is determined logically by previous cognitions. 3. We have no power of thinking without signs. 4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable. These propositions cannot be regarded as certain; and, in order to bring them to a further test, it is now proposed to trace them out to their consequences. We may first consider the first alone; then trace the consequences of the first and second; then see what else will result from assuming the third also; and, finally, add the fourth to our hypothetical premises. In accepting the first proposition, we must put aside all prejudices derived from a philosophy which bases our knowledge of the external world on our self-consciousness. We can admit no statement concerning what passes within us except as a hypothesis necessary to explain what takes place in what we commonly call the external world. Moreover when we have upon such grounds assumed one faculty or mode of action of the mind, we cannot, of course, adopt any other hypothesis for the purpose of explaining any fact which can be explained by our first supposition, but must carry the latter as far as it will go. In other words, we must, as far as we can do so without additional hypotheses, reduce all kinds of mental action to one general type. The class of modifications of consciousness with which we must commence our inquiry must be one whose existence is indubitable, and whose laws are best known, and, therefore (since this knowledge comes from the outside), which most closely follows external facts; that is, it must be some kind of cognition. Here we may hypothetically admit the second proposition of the former paper, according to which there is no absolutely first cognition of any object, but cognition arises by a continuous process. We must begin, then, with a process of cognition, and with that process whose laws are best understood and most closely follow external facts. This is no other than the process of valid inference, which proceeds from its premise, A , to its conclusion, B, only if, as a matter of fact, such a proposition as B is always or usually true when such a proposition as A is true. It is a consequence, then, of the first two principles whose results we are to trace out, that we must, as far as we can, without any other supposition than that the mind reasons, reduce all mental action to the formula of valid reasoning. But does the mind in fact go through the syllogistic process? It is certainly very doubtful whether a conclusion--as something existing in the mind independently, like an image--suddenly displaces two premises existing in the mind in a similar way. But it is a matter of constant experience, that if a man is made to believe in the premises, in the sense that he will act from them and will say that they are true, under favorable conditions he will also be ready to act from the conclusion and to say that that is true. Something, therefore, takes place within the organism which is equivalent to the syllogistic process. A valid inference is either complete or incomplete. An incomplete inference is one whose validity depends upon some matter of fact not contained in the premises. This implied fact might have been stated as a premise, and its relation to the conclusion is the same whether it is explicitly posited or not, since it is at least virtually taken for granted; so that every valid incomplete argument is virtually complete. Complete arguments are divided into simple and complex. A complex argument is one which from three or more premises concludes what might have been concluded by successive steps in reasonings each of which is simple. Thus, a complex inference comes to the same thing in the end as a succession of simple inferences. A complete, simple, and valid argument, or syllogism, is either apodictic or probable. An apodictic or deductive syllogism is one whose validity depends unconditionally upon the relation of the fact inferred to the facts posited in the premises. A syllogism whose validity should depend not merely upon its premises, but upon the existence of some other knowledge, would be impossible; for either this other knowledge would be posited, in which case it would be a part of the premises, or it would be implicitly assumed, in which case the inference would be incomplete. But a syllogism whose validity depends partly upon the non-existence of some other knowledge, is a probable syllogism. A few examples will render this plain. The two following arguments are apodictic or deductive: 1. No series of days of which the first and last are different days of the week exceeds by one a multiple of seven days; now the first and last days of any leap-year are different days of the week, and therefore no leap-year consists of a number of days one greater than a multiple of seven. 2. Among the vowels there are no double letters; but one of the double letters (w) is compounded of two vowels: hence, a letter compounded of two vowels is not necessarily itself a vowel. In both these cases, it is plain that as long as the premises are true, however other facts may be, the conclusions will be true. On the other hand, suppose that we reason as follows:--"A certain man had the Asiatic cholera. He was in a state of collapse, livid, quite cold, and without perceptible pulse. He was bled copiously. During the process he came out of collapse, and the next morning was well enough to be about. Therefore, bleeding tends to cure the cholera." This is a fair probable inference, provided that the premises represent our whole knowledge of the matter. But if we knew, for example, that recoveries from cholera were apt to be sudden, and that the physician who had reported this case had known of a hundred other trials of the remedy without communicating the result, then the inference would lose all its validity. The absence of knowledge which is essential to the validity of any probable argument relates to some question which is determined by the argument itself. This question, like every other, is whether certain objects have certain characters. Hence, the absence of knowledge is either whether besides the objects which, according to the premises, possess certain characters, any other objects possess them; or, whether besides the characters which, according to the premises, belong to certain objects, any other characters not necessarily involved in these belong to the same objects. In the former case, the reasoning proceeds as though all the objects which have certain characters were known, and this is induction; in the latter case, the inference proceeds as though all the characters requisite to the determination of a certain object or class were known, and this is hypothesis. This distinction, also, may be made more plain by examples. Suppose
we count the number of occurrences of the different letters in a certain
English book, which we may call A. Of course, every new letter
which we add to our count will alter the relative number of occurrences
of the different letters; but as we proceed with our counting, this
change will be less and less. Suppose that we find that as we increase
the number of letters counted, the relative number of e's approaches
nearly 11 Now this argument depends for its validity upon our not knowing the proportion of letters in any English writing besides A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. For if we know it in respect to H, and it is not nearly the same as in the others, our conclusion is destroyed at once; if it is the same, then the legitimate inference is from A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H, and not from the first seven alone. This, therefore, is an induction. Suppose,
next, that a piece of writing in cypher is presented to us, without
the key. Suppose we find that it contains something less than 26 characters,
one of which occurs about 11 per cent of all the times, another
8 The validity of this argument depends upon there being no other known characters of the writing in cipher which would have any weight in the matter; for if there are--if we know, for example, whether or not there is any other solution of it--this must be allowed its effect in supporting or weakening the conclusion. This, then, is hypothesis. All valid
reasoning is either deductive, inductive, or hypothetic; or else it
combines two or more of these characters. Deduction is pretty well
treated in most logical text-books; but it will be necessary to say
a few words about induction and hypothesis in order to render what
follows more intelligible.Induction may be defined as an argument
which proceeds upon the assumption that all the members of a class
or aggregate have all the characters which are common to all those
members of this class concerning which it is known, whether they have
these characters or not; or, in other words, which assumes that that
is true of a whole collection which is true of a number of instances
taken from it at random. This might be called statistical argument.
In the long run, it must generally afford pretty correct conclusions
from true premises. If we have a bag of beans partly black and partly
white, by counting the relative proportions of the two colors in several
different handfuls, we can approximate more or less to the relative
proportions in the whole bag, since a sufficient number of handfuls
would constitute all the beans in the bag. The central characteristic
and key to induction is, that by taking the conclusion so reached
as major premise of a syllogism, and the proposition stating that
such and such objects are taken from the class in question as the
minor premise, the other premise of the induction will follow from
them deductively. Thus, in the above example we concluded that all
books in English have about 11 Hypothesis may be defined as an argument which proceeds upon the assumption that a character which is known necessarily to involve a certain number of others, may be probably predicated of any object which has all the characters which this character is known to involve. Just as induction may be regarded as the inference of the major premise of a syllogism, so hypothesis may be regarded as the inference of the minor premise, from the other two propositions. Thus, the example taken above consists of two such inferences of the minor premises of the following syllogisms: 1. Every
English writing of some length in which such and such characters denote
e, t, a, and s, has about 11 The function of hypothesis is to substitute for a great series of predicates forming no unity in themselves, a single one (or small number) which involves them all, together (perhaps) with an indefinite number of others. It is, therefore, also a reduction of a manifold to unity.1Every deductive syllogism may be put into the form ![]() And as the minor premise in this form appears as antecedent or reason of a hypothetical proposition, hypothetic inference may be called reasoning from consequent to antecedent. The argument from analogy, which a popular writer upon logic calls reasoning from particulars to particulars, derives its validity from its combining the characters of induction and hypothesis, being analyzable either into a deduction or an induction, or a deduction and a hypothesis. But though inference is thus of three essentially different species, it also belongs to one genus. We have seen that no conclusion can be legitimately derived which could not have been reached by successions of arguments having two premises each, and implying no fact not asserted. Either of these premises is a proposition asserting that certain objects have certain characters. Every term of such a proposition stands either for certain objects or for certain characters. The conclusion may be regarded as a proposition substituted in place of either premise, the substitution being justified by the fact stated in the other premise. The conclusion is accordingly derived from either premise by substituting either a new subject for the subject of the premise, or a new predicate for the predicate of the premise, or by both substitutions. Now the substitution of one term for another can be justified only so far as the term substituted represents only what is represented in the term replaced. If, therefore, the conclusion be denoted by the formula, and this conclusion be derived, by a change of subject, from a premise which may on this account be expressed by the formula, then the other premise must assert that whatever thing is represented by S is represented by M, or that while, if the conclusion, S is P, is derived from either premise by a change of predicate, that premise may be written and the other premise must assert that whatever characters are implied in P are implied in M, or that In either case, therefore, the syllogism must be capable of expression in the form, ![]() Finally, if the conclusion differs from either of its premises, both in subject and predicate, the form of statement of conclusion and premise may be so altered that they shall have a common term. This can always be done, for if P is the premise and C the conclusion, they may be stated thus: In this case the other premise must in some form virtually assert that every state of things such as is represented by C is the state of things represented in P. All valid reasoning, therefore, is of one general form; and in seeking to reduce all mental action to the formulæ of valid inference, we seek to reduce it to one single type. An apparent obstacle to the reduction of all mental action to the type of valid inferences is the existence of fallacious reasoning. Every argument implies the truth of a general principle of inferential procedure (whether involving some matter of fact concerning the subject of argument, or merely a maxim relating to a system of signs), according to which it is a valid argument. If this principle is false, the argument is a fallacy; but neither a valid argument from false premises, nor an exceedingly weak, but not altogether illegitimate, induction or hypothesis, however its force may be over-estimated, however false its conclusion, is a fallacy. Now words, taken just as they stand, if in the form of an argument, thereby do imply whatever fact may be necessary to make the argument conclusive; so that to the formal logician, who has to do only with the meaning of the words according to the proper principles of interpretation, and not with the intention of the speaker as guessed at from other indications, the only fallacies should be such as are simply absurd and contradictory, either because their conclusions are absolutely inconsistent with their premises, or because they connect propositions by a species of illative conjunction, by which they cannot under any circumstances be validly connected. But to the psychologist an argument is valid only if the premises from which the mental conclusion is derived would be sufficient, if true, to justify it, either by themselves, or by the aid of other propositions which had previously been held for true. But it is easy to show that all inferences made by man, which are not valid in this sense, belong to four classes, viz.: 1. Those whose premises are false; 2. Those which have some little force, though only a little; 3. Those which result from confusion of one proposition with another; 4. Those which result from the indistinct apprehension, wrong application, or falsity, of a rule of inference. For, if a man were to commit a fallacy not of either of these classes, he would, from true premises conceived with perfect distinctness, without being led astray by any prejudice or other judgment serving as a rule of inference, draw a conclusion which had really not the least relevancy. If this could happen, calm consideration and care could be of little use in thinking, for caution only serves to insure our taking all the facts into account, and to make those which we do take account of, distinct; nor can coolness do anything more than to enable us to be cautious, and also to prevent our being affected by a passion in inferring that to be true which we wish were true, or which we fear may be true, or in following some other wrong rule of inference. But experience shows that the calm and careful consideration of the same distinctly conceived premises (including prejudices) will insure the pronouncement of the same judgment by all men. Now if a fallacy belongs to the first of these four classes and its premises are false, it is to be presumed that the procedure of the mind from these premises to the conclusion is either correct, or errs in one of the other three ways; for it cannot be supposed that the mere falsity of the premises should affect the procedure of reason when that falsity is not known to reason. If the fallacy belongs to the second class and has some force, however little, it is a legitimate probable argument, and belongs to the type of valid inference. If it is of the third class and results from the confusion of one proposition with another, this confusion must be owing to a resemblance between the two propositions; that is to say, the person reasoning, seeing that one proposition has some of the characters which belong to the other, concludes that it has all the essential characters of the other, and is equivalent to it. Now this is a hypothetic inference, which though it may be weak, and though its conclusion happens to be false, belongs to the type of valid inferences; and, therefore, as the nodus of the fallacy lies in this confusion, the procedure of the mind in these fallacies of the third class conforms to the formula of valid inference. If the fallacy belongs to the fourth class, it either results from wrongly applying or misapprehending a rule of inference, and so is a fallacy of confusion, or it results from adopting a wrong rule of inference. In this latter case, this rule is in fact taken as a premise, and therefore the false conclusion is owing merely to the falsity of a premise. In every fallacy, therefore, possible to the mind of man, the procedure of the mind conforms to the formula of valid inference. The third principle whose consequences we have to deduce is, that, whenever we think, we have present to the consciousness some feeling, image, conception, or other representation, which serves as a sign. But it follows from our own existence (which is proved by the occurrence of ignorance and error) that everything which is present to us is a phenomenal manifestation of ourselves. This does not prevent its being a phenomenon of something without us, just as a rainbow is at once a manifestation both of the sun and of the rain. When we think, then, we ourselves, as we are at that moment, appear as a sign. Now a sign has, as such, three references: 1st, it is a sign to some thought which interprets it; 2d, it is a sign for some object to which in that thought it is equivalent; 3d, it is a sign, in some respect or quality, which brings it into connection with its object. Let us ask what the three correlates are to which a thought-sign refers. 1. When we think, to what thought does that thought-sign which is ourself address itself? It may, through the medium of outward expression, which it reaches perhaps only after considerable internal development, come to address itself to thought of another person. But whether this happens or not, it is always interpreted by a subsequent thought of our own. If, after any thought, the current of ideas flows on freely, it follows the law of mental association. In that case, each former thought suggests something to the thought which follows it, i.e. is the sign of something to this latter. Our train of thought may, it is true, be interrupted. But we must remember that, in addition to the principal element of thought at any moment, there are a hundred things in our mind to which but a small fraction of attention or consciousness is conceded. It does not, therefore, follow, because a new constituent of thought gets the uppermost, that the train of thought which it displaces is broken off altogether. On the contrary, from our second principle, that there is no intuition or cognition not determined by previous cognitions, it follows that the striking in of a new experience is never an instantaneous affair, but is an event occupying time, and coming to pass by a continuous process. Its prominence in consciousness, therefore, must probably be the consummation of a growing process; and if so, there is no sufficient cause for the thought which had been the leading one just before, to cease abruptly and instantaneously. But if a train of thought ceases by gradually dying out, it freely follows its own law of association as long as it lasts, and there is no moment at which there is a thought belonging to this series, subsequently to which there is not a thought which interprets or repeats it. There is no exception, therefore, to the law that every thought-sign is translated or interpreted in a subsequent one, unless it be that all thought comes to an abrupt and final end in death. 2. The next question is: For what does the thought-sign stand--what does it name--what is its suppositum? The outward thing, undoubtedly, when a real outward thing is thought of. But still, as the thought is determined by a previous thought of the same object, it only refers to the thing through denoting this previous thought. Let us suppose, for example, that Toussaint is thought of, and first thought of as a Negro, but not distinctly as a man. If this distinctness is afterwards added, it is through the thought that a Negro is a man; that is to say, the subsequent thought, man, refers to the outward thing by being predicated of that previous thought, Negro, which has been had of that thing. If we afterwards think of Toussaint as a general, then we think that this Negro, this man, was a general. And so in every case the subsequent thought denotes what was thought in the previous thought. 3. The thought-sign stands for its object in the respect which is thought; that is to say, this respect is the immediate object of consciousness in the thought, or, in other words, it is the thought itself, or at least what the thought is thought to be in the subsequent thought to which it is a sign. We must now consider two other properties of signs which are of great importance in the theory of cognition. Since a sign is not identical with the thing signified, but differs from the latter in some respects, it must plainly have some characters which belong to it in itself, and have nothing to do with its representative function. These I call the material qualities of the sign. As examples of such qualities, take in the word "man" its consisting of three letters--in a picture, its being flat and without relief. In the second place, a sign must be capable of being connected (not in the reason but really) with another sign of the same object, or with the object itself. Thus, words would be of no value at all unless they could be connected into sentences by means of a real copula which joins signs of the same thing. The usefulness of some signs--as a weathercock, a tally, &c.--consists wholly in their being really connected with the very things they signify. In the case of a picture such a connection is not evident, but it exists in the power of association which connects the picture with the brain-sign which labels it. This real, physical connection of a sign with its object, either immediately or by its connection with another sign, I call the pure demonstrative application of the sign. Now the representative function of a sign lies neither in its material quality nor in its pure demonstrative application; because it is something which the sign is, not in itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought, while both of the characters just defined belong to the sign independently of its addressing any thought. And yet if I take all the things which have certain qualities and physically connect them with another series of things, each to each, they become fit to be signs. If they are not regarded as such they are not actually signs, but they are so in the same sense, for example, in which an unseen flower can be said to be red, this being also a term relative to a mental affection. Consider a state of mind which is a conception. It is a conception by virtue of having a meaning, a logical comprehension; and if it is applicable to any object, it is because that object has the characters contained in the comprehension of this conception. Now the logical comprehension of a thought is usually said to consist of the thoughts contained in it; but thoughts are events, acts of the mind. Two thoughts are two events separated in time, and one cannot literally be contained in the other. It may be said that all thoughts exactly similar are regarded as one; and that to say that one thought contains another, means that it contains one exactly similar to that other. But how can two thoughts be similar? Two objects can only be regarded as similar if they are compared and brought together in the mind. Thoughts have no existence except in the mind; only as they are regarded do they exist. Hence, two thoughts cannot be similar unless they are brought together in the mind. But, as to their existence, two thoughts are separated by an interval of time. We are too apt to imagine that we can frame a thought similar to a past thought, by matching it with the latter, as though this past thought were still present to us. But it is plain that the knowledge that one thought is similar to or in any way truly representative of another, cannot be derived from immediate perception, but must be an hypothesis (unquestionably fully justifiable by facts), and that therefore the formation of such a representing thought must be dependent upon a real effective force behind consciousness, and not merely upon a mental comparison. What we must mean, therefore, by saying that one concept is contained in another, is that we normally represent one to be in the other; that is, that we form a particular kind of judgment,2of which the subject signifies one concept and the predicate the other. No thought in itself, then, no feeling in itself, contains any others, but is absolutely simple and unanalyzable; and to say that it is composed of other thoughts and feelings, is like saying that a movement upon a straight line is composed of the two movements of which it is the resultant; that is to say, it is a metaphor, or fiction, parallel to the truth. Every thought, however artificial and complex, is, so far as it is immediately present, a mere sensation without parts, and therefore, in itself, without similarity to any other, but incomparable with any other and absolutely sui generis.3Whatever is wholly incomparable with anything else is wholly inexplicable, because explanation consists in bringing things under general laws or under natural classes. Hence every thought, in so far as it is a feeling of a peculiar sort, is simply an ultimate, inexplicable fact. Yet this does not conflict with my postulate that that fact should be allowed to stand as inexplicable; for, on the one hand, we never can think, "This is present to me," since, before we have time to make the reflection, the sensation is past, and, on the other hand, when once past, we can never bring back the quality of the feeling as it was in and for itself, or know what it was like in itself, or even discover the existence of this quality except by a corollary from our general theory of ourselves, and then not in its idiosyncrasy, but only as something present. But, as something present, feelings are all alike and require no explanation, since they contain only what is universal. So that nothing which we can truly predicate of feelings is left inexplicable, but only something which we cannot reflectively know. So that we do not fall into the contradiction of making the Mediate immediable. Finally, no present actual thought (which is a mere feeling) has any meaning, any intellectual value; for this lies not in what is actually thought, but in what this thought may be connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts; so that the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual. It may be objected, that if no thought has any meaning, all thought is without meaning. But this is a fallacy similar to saying, that, if in no one of the successive spaces which a body fills there is room for motion, there is no room for motion throughout the whole. At no one instant in my state of mind is there cognition or representation, but in the relation of my states of mind at different instants there is.4In short, the Immediate (and therefore in itself unsusceptible of mediation--the Unanalyzable, the Inexplicable, the Unintellectual) runs in a continuous stream through our lives; it is the sum total of consciousness, whose mediation, which is the continuity of it, is brought about by a real effective force behind consciousness. Thus, we have in thought three elements: 1st, the representative function which makes it a representation 2d, the pure denotative application, or real connection, which brings one thought into relation with another; and 3d, the material quality, or how it feels, which gives thought its quality.5 That a sensation is not necessarily an intuition, or first impression of sense, is very evident in the case of the sense of beauty; and has been shown, upon page 197, in the case of sound. When the sensation beautiful is determined by previous cognitions, it always arises as a predicate; that is, we think that something is beautiful. Whenever a sensation thus arises in consequence of others, induction shows that those others are more or less complicated. Thus, the sensation of a particular kind of sound arises in consequence of impressions upon the various nerves of the ear being combined in a particular way, and following one another with a certain rapidity. A sensation of color depends upon impressions upon the eye following one another in a regular manner, and with a certain rapidity. The sensation of beauty arises upon a manifold of other impressions. And this will be found to hold good in all cases. Secondly, all these sensations are in themselves simple, or more so than the sensations which give rise to them. Accordingly, a sensation is a simple predicate taken in place of a complex predicate; in other words, it fulfils the function of an hypothesis. But the general principle that every thing to which such and such a sensation belongs, has such and such a complicated series of predicates, is not one determined by reason (as we have seen), but is of an arbitrary nature. Hence, the class of hypothetic inferences which the arising of a sensation resembles, is that of reasoning from definition to definitum, in which the major premise is of an arbitrary nature. Only in this mode of reasoning, this premise is determined by the conventions of language, and expresses the occasion upon which a word is to be used; and in the formation of a sensation, it is determined by the constitution of our nature, and expresses the occasions upon which sensation, or a natural mental sign, arises. Thus, the sensation, so far as it represents something, is determined, according to a logical law, by previous cognitions; that is to say, these cognitions determine that there shall be a sensation. But so far as the sensation is a mere feeling of a particular sort, it is determined only by an inexplicable, occult power; and so far, it is not a representation, but only the material quality of a representation. For just as in reasoning from definition to definitum, it is indifferent to the logician how the defined word shall sound, or how many letters it shall contain, so in the case of this constitutional word, it is not determined by an inward law how it shall feel in itself. A feeling, therefore, as a feeling, is merely the material quality of a mental sign. But there is no feeling which is not also a representation, a predicate of something determined logically by the feelings which precede it. For if there are any such feelings not predicates, they are the emotions. Now every emotion has a subject. If a man is angry, he is saying to himself that this or that is vile and outrageous. If he is in joy, he is saying "this is delicious." If he is wondering, he is saying "this is strange." In short, whenever a man feels, he is thinking of something. Even those passions which have no definite object--as melancholy--only come to consciousness through tinging the objects of thought. That which makes us look upon the emotions more as affections of self than other cognitions, is that we have found them more dependent upon our accidental situation at the moment than other cognitions; but that is only to say that they are cognitions too narrow to be useful. The emotions, as a little observation will show, arise when our attention is strongly drawn to complex and inconceivable circumstances. Fear arises when we cannot predict our fate; joy, in the case of certain indescribable and peculiarly complex sensations. If there are some indications that something greatly for my interest, and which I have anticipated would happen, may not happen; and if, after weighing probabilities, and inventing safeguards, and straining for further information, I find myself unable to come to any fixed conclusion in reference to the future, in the place of that intellectual hypothetic inference which I seek, the feeling of anxiety arises. When something happens for which I cannot account, I wonder. When I endeavor to realize to myself what I never can do, a pleasure in the future, I hope. "I do not understand you," is the phrase of an angry man. The indescribable, the ineffable, the incomprehensible, commonly excite emotion; but nothing is so chilling as a scientific explanation. Thus an emotion is always a simple predicate substituted by an operation of the mind for a highly complicated predicate. Now if we consider that a very complex predicate demands explanation by means of an hypothesis, that that hypothesis must be a simpler predicate substituted for that complex one; and that when we have an emotion, an hypothesis, strictly speaking, is hardly possible--the analogy of the parts played by emotion and hypothesis is very striking. There is, it is true, this difference between an emotion and an intellectual hypothesis, that we have reason to say in the case of the latter, that to whatever the simple hypothetic predicate can be applied, of that the complex predicate is true; whereas, in the case of an emotion this is a proposition for which no reason can be given, but which is determined merely by our emotional constitution. But this corresponds precisely to the difference between hypothesis and reasoning from definition to definitum, and thus it would appear that emotion is nothing but sensation. There appears to be a difference, however, between emotion and sensation, and I would state it as follows: There is some reason to think that, corresponding to every feeling within us, some motion takes place in our bodies. This property of the thought-sign, since it has no rational dependence upon the meaning of the sign, may be compared with what I have called the material quality of the sign; but it differs from the latter inasmuch as it is not essentially necessary that it should be felt in order that there should be any thought-sign. In the case of a sensation, the manifold of impressions which precede and determine it are not of a kind, the bodily motion corresponding to which comes from any large ganglion or from the brain, and probably for this reason the sensation produces no great commotion in the bodily organism; and the sensation itself is not a thought which has a very strong influence upon the current of thought except by virtue of the information it may serve to afford. An emotion, on the other hand, comes much later in the development of thought--I mean, further from the first beginning of the cognition of its object--and the thoughts which determine it already have motions corresponding to them in the brain, or the chief ganglion; consequently, it produces large movements in the body, and independently of its representative value, strongly affects the current of thought. The animal motions to which I allude, are, in the first place and obviously, blushing, blenching, staring, smiling, scowling, pouting, laughing, weeping, sobbing, wriggling, flinching, trembling, being petrified, sighing, sniffing, shrugging, groaning, heartsinking, trepidation, swelling of the heart, etc., etc. To these may, perhaps, be added, in the second place, other more complicated actions, which nevertheless spring from a direct impulse and not from deliberation. That which distinguishes both sensations proper and emotions from the feeling of a thought, is that in the case of the two former the material quality is made prominent, because the thought has no relation of reason to the thoughts which determine it, which exists in the last case and detracts from the attention given to the mere feeling. By there being no relation of reason to the determining thoughts, I mean that there is nothing in the content of the thought which explains why it should arise only on occasion of these determining thoughts. If there is such a relation of reason, if the thought is essentially limited in its application to these objects, then the thought comprehends a thought other than itself; in other words, it is then a complex thought. An incomplex thought can, therefore, be nothing but a sensation or emotion, having no rational character. This is very different from the ordinary doctrine, according to which the very highest and most metaphysical conceptions are absolutely simple. I shall be asked how such a conception of a [it]being is to be analyzed, or whether I can ever define one, two, and three, without a diallele. Now I shall admit at once that neither of these conceptions can be separated into two others higher than itself; and in that sense, therefore, I fully admit that certain very metaphysical and eminently intellectual notions are absolutely simple. But though these concepts cannot be defined by genus and difference, there is another way in which they can be defined. All determination is by negation; we can first recognize any character only by putting an object which possesses it into comparison with an object which possesses it not. A conception, therefore, which was quite universal in every respect would be unrecognizable and impossible. We do not obtain the conception of Being, in the sense implied in the copula, by observing that all the things which we can think of have something in common, for there is no such thing to be observed. We get it by reflecting upon signs--words or thoughts;--we observe that different predicates may be attached to the same subject, and that each makes some conception applicable to the subject; then we imagine that a subject has something true of it merely because a predicate (no matter what) is attached to it,--and that we call Being. The conception of being is, therefore, a conception about a sign--a thought, or word;--and since it is not applicable to every sign, it is not primarily universal, although it is so in its mediate application to things. Being, therefore, may be defined; it may be defined, for example, as that which is common to the objects included in any class, and to the objects not included in the same class. But it is nothing new to say that metaphysical conceptions are primarily and at bottom thoughts about words, or thoughts about thoughts; it is the doctrine both of Aristotle (whose categories are parts of speech) and of Kant (whose categories are the characters of different kinds of propositions). Sensation and the power of abstraction or attention may be regarded as, in one sense, the sole constituents of all thought. Having considered the former, let us now attempt some analysis of the latter. By the force of attention, an emphasis is put upon one of the objective elements of consciousness. This emphasis is, therefore, not itself an object of immediate consciousness; and in this respect it differs entirely from a feeling. Therefore, since the emphasis, nevertheless, consists in some effect upon consciousness, and so can exist only so far as it affects our knowledge; and since an act cannot be supposed to determine that which precedes it in time, this act can consist only in the capacity which the cognition emphasized has for producing an effect upon memory, or otherwise influencing subsequent thought. This is confirmed by the fact that attention is a matter of continuous quantity; for continuous quantity, so far as we know it, reduces itself in the last analysis to time. Accordingly, we find that attention does, in fact, produce a very great effect upon subsequent thought. In the first place, it strongly affects memory, a thought being remembered for a longer time the greater the attention originally paid to it. In the second place, the greater the attention, the closer the connection and the more accurate the logical sequence of thought. In the third place, by attention a thought may be recovered which has been forgotten. From these facts, we gather that attention is the power by which thought at one time is connected with and made to relate to thought at another time; or, to apply the conception of thought as a sign, that it is the pure demonstrative application of a thought-sign. Attention is roused when the same phenomenon presents itself repeatedly on different occasions, or the same predicate in different subjects. We see that A has a certain character, that B has the same, C has the same; and this excites our attention, so that we say, "These have this character." Thus attention is an act of induction; but it is an induction which does not increase our knowledge, because our "these" covers nothing but the instances experienced. It is, in short, an argument from enumeration. Attention produces effects upon the nervous system. These effects are habits, or nervous associations. A habit arises, when, having had the sensation of performing a certain act, m, on several occasions a, b, c, we come to do it upon every occurrence of the general event, l, of which a, b, and c are special cases. That is to say, by the cognition that is determined the cognition that Thus the formation of a habit is an induction, and is therefore necessarily connected with attention or abstraction. Voluntary actions result from the sensations produced by habits, as instinctive actions result from our original nature. We have thus seen that every sort of modification of consciousness--Attention, Sensation, and Understanding--is an inference. But the objection may be made that inference deals only with general terms, and that an image, or absolutely singular representation, cannot therefore be inferred. "Singular" and "individual" are equivocal terms. A singular may mean that which can be but in one place at one time. In this sense it is not opposed to general. The sun is a singular in this sense, but, as is explained in every good treatise on logic, it is a general term. I may have a very general conception of Hermolaus Barbarus, but still I conceive him only as able to be in one place at one time. When an image is said to be singular, it is meant that it is absolutely determinate in all respects. Every possible character, or the negative thereof, must be true of such an image. In the words of the most eminent expounder of the doctrine, the image of a man "must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny; a straight, or a crooked; a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man." It must be of a man with his mouth open or his mouth shut, whose hair is precisely of such and such a shade, and whose figure has precisely such and such proportions. No statement of Locke has been so scouted by all friends of images as his denial that the "idea" of a triangle must be either of an obtuse-angled, right-angled, or acute-angled triangle. In fact, the image of a triangle must be of one, each of whose angles is of a certain number of degrees, minutes, and seconds. This being so, it is apparent that no man has a true image of the road to his office, or of any other real thing. Indeed he has no image of it at all unless he can not only recognize it, but imagines it (truly or falsely) in all its infinite details. This being the case, it becomes very doubtful whether we ever have any such thing as an image in our imagination. Please, reader, to look at a bright red book, or other brightly colored object, and then to shut your eyes and say whether you see that color, whether brightly or faintly--whether, indeed, there is anything like sight there. Hume and the other followers of Berkeley maintain that there is no difference between the sight and the memory of the red book except in "their different degrees of force and vivacity." "The colors which the memory employs," says Hume, "are faint and dull compared with those in which our original perceptions are clothed." If this were a correct statement of the difference, we should remember the book as being less red than it is; whereas, in fact, we remember the color with very great precision for a few moments [please to test this point, reader], although we do not see any thing like it. We carry away absolutely nothing of the color except the consciousness that we could recognize it. As a further proof of this, I will request the reader to try a little experiment. Let him call up, if he can, the image of a horse--not of one which he has ever seen, but of an imaginary one,--and before reading further let him by contemplation6fix the image in his memory . . . . .Has the reader done as requested? for I protest that it is not fair play to read further without doing so.--Now, the reader can say in general of what color that horse was, whether grey, bay, or black. But he probably cannot say precisely of what shade it was. He cannot state this as exactly as he could just after having seen such a horse. But why, if he had an image in his mind which no more had the general color than it had the particular shade, has the latter vanished so instantaneously from his memory while the former still remains? It may be replied, that we always forget the details before we do the more general characters; but that this answer is insufficient is, I think, shown by the extreme disproportion between the length of time that the exact shade of something looked at is remembered as compared with that instantaneous oblivion to the exact shade of the thing imagined, and the but slightly superior vividness of the memory of the thing seen as compared with the memory of the thing imagined. The nominalists, I suspect, confound together thinking a triangle without thinking that it is either equilateral, isosceles, or scalene, and thinking a triangle without thinking whether it is equilateral, isosceles, or scalene. It is important to remember that we have no intuitive power of distinguishing between one subjective mode of cognition and another; and hence often think that something is presented to us as a picture, while it is really constructed from slight data by the understanding. This is the case with dreams, as is shown by the frequent impossibility of giving an intelligible account of one without adding something which we feel was not in the dream itself. Many dreams, of which the waking memory makes elaborate and consistent stories, must probably have been in fact mere jumbles of these feelings of the ability to recognize this and that which I have just alluded to. I will now go so far as to say that we have no images even in actual perception. It will be sufficient to prove this in the case of vision; for if no picture is seen when we look at an object, it will not be claimed that hearing, touch, and the other senses, are superior to sight in this respect. That the picture is not painted on the nerves of the retina is absolutely certain, if, as physiologists inform us, these nerves are needle-points pointing to the light and at distances considerably greater than the minimum visibile. The same thing is shown by our not being able to perceive that there is a large blind spot near the middle of the retina. If, then, we have a picture before us when we see, it is one constructed by the mind at the suggestion of previous sensations. Supposing these sensations to be signs, the understanding by reasoning from them could attain all the knowledge of outward things which we derive from sight, while the sensations are quite inadequate to forming an image or representation absolutely determinate. If we have such an image or picture, we must have in our minds a representation of a surface which is only a part of every surface we see, and we must see that each part, however small, has such and such a color. If we look from some distance at a speckled surface, it seems as if we did not see whether it were speckled or not; but if we have an image before us, it must appear to us either as speckled, or as not speckled. Again, the eye by education comes to distinguish minute differences of color; but if we see only absolutely determinate images, we must, no less before our eyes are trained than afterwards, see each color as particularly such and such a shade. Thus to suppose that we have an image before us when we see, is not only a hypothesis which explains nothing whatever, but is one which actually creates difficulties which require new hypotheses in order to explain them away. One of these difficulties arises from the fact that the details are less easily distinguished than, and forgotten before, the general circumstances. Upon this theory, the general features exist in the details: the details are, in fact, the whole picture. It seems, then, very strange that that which exists only secondarily in the picture should make more impression than the picture itself. It is true that in an old painting the details are not easily made out; but this is because we know that the blackness is the result of time, and is no part of the picture itself. There is no difficulty in making out the details of the picture as it looks at present; the only difficulty is in guessing what it used to be. But if we have a picture on the retina, the minutest details are there as much as, nay, more than, the general outline and significancy of it. Yet that which must actually be seen, it is extremely difficult to recognize; while that which is only abstracted from what is seen is very obvious. But the conclusive argument against our having any images, or absolutely determinate representations in perception, is that in that case we have the materials in each such representation for an infinite amount of conscious cognition, which we yet never become aware of. Now there is no meaning in saying that we have something in our minds which never has the least effect on what we are conscious of knowing. The most that can be said is, that when we see we are put in a condition in which we are able to get a very large and perhaps indefinitely great amount of knowledge of the visible qualities of objects. Moreover, that perceptions are not absolutely determinate and singular is obvious from the fact that each sense is an abstracting mechanism. Sight by itself informs us only of colors and forms. No one can pretend that the images of sight are determinate in reference to taste. They are, therefore, so far general that they are neither sweet nor non-sweet, bitter nor non-bitter, having savor or insipid. The next question is whether we have any general conceptions except in judgments. In perception, where we know a thing as existing, it is plain that there is a judgment that the thing exists, since a mere general concept of a thing is in no case a cognition of it as existing. It has usually been said, however, that we can call up any concept without making any judgment; but it seems that in this case we only arbitrarily suppose ourselves to have an experience. In order to conceive the number 7, I suppose, that is, I arbitrarily make the hypothesis or judgment, that there are certain points before my eyes, and I judge that these are seven. This seems to be the most simple and rational view of the matter, and I may add that it is the one which has been adopted by the best logicians. If this be the case, what goes by the name of the association of images is in reality an association of judgments. The association of ideas is said to proceed according to three principles--those of resemblance, of contiguity, and of causality. But it would be equally true to say that signs denote what they do on the three principles of resemblance, contiguity, and causality. There can be no question that anything is a sign of whatever is associated with it by resemblance, by contiguity, or by causality: nor can there be any doubt that any sign recalls the thing signified. So, then, the association of ideas consists in this, that a judgment occasions another judgment, of which it is the sign. Now this is nothing less nor more than inference. Everything in which we take the least interest creates in us its own particular emotion, however slight this may be. This emotion is a sign and a predicate of the thing. Now, when a thing resembling this thing is presented to us, a similar emotion arises; hence, we immediately infer that the latter is like the former. A formal logician of the old school may say, that in logic no term can enter into the conclusion which had not been contained in the premises, and that therefore the suggestion of something new must be essentially different from inference. But I reply that that rule of logic applies only to those arguments which are technically called completed. We can and do reason-- ![]() And this argument is just as valid as the full syllogism, although it is so only because the major premise of the latter happens to be true. If to pass from the judgment "Elias was a man" to the judgment "Elias was mortal," without actually saying to one's self that "All men are mortal," is not inference, then the term "inference" is used in so restricted a sense that inferences hardly occur outside of a logic-book. What is here said of association by resemblance is true of all association. All association is by signs. Everything has its subjective or emotional qualities, which are attributed either absolutely or relatively, or by conventional imputation to anything which is a sign of it. And so we reason, ![]() This conclusion receiving, however, a modification, owing to other considerations, so as to become-- We come now to the consideration of the last of the four principles whose consequences we were to trace; namely, that the absolutely incognizable is absolutely inconceivable. That upon Cartesian principles the very realities of things can never be known in the least, most competent persons must long ago have been convinced. Hence the breaking forth of idealism, which is essentially anti-Cartesian, in every direction, whether among empiricists (Berkeley, Hume), or among noologists (Hegel, Fichte). The principle now brought under discussion is directly idealistic; for, since the meaning of a word is the conception it conveys, the absolutely incognizable has no meaning because no conception attaches to it. It is, therefore, a meaningless word; and, consequently, whatever is meant by any term as "the real" is cognizable in some degree, and so is of the nature of a cognition, in the objective sense of that term. At any moment we are in possession of certain information, that is, of cognitions which have been logically derived by induction and hypothesis from previous cognitions which are less general, less distinct, and of which we have a less lively consciousness. These in their turn have been derived from others still less general, less distinct, and less vivid; and so on back to the ideal7first, which is quite singular, and quite out of consciousness. This ideal first is the particular thing-in-itself. It does not exist as such. That is, there is no thing which is in-itself in the sense of not being relative to the mind, though things which are relative to the mind doubtless are, apart from that relation. The cognitions which thus reach us by this infinite series of inductions and hypotheses (which though infinite a parte ante logice, is yet as one continuous process not without a beginning in time) are of two kinds, the true and the untrue, or cognitions whose objects are real and those whose objects are unreal. And what do we mean by the real? It is a conception which we must first have had when we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is, when we first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact logically called, was between an ens relative to private inward determinations, to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an ens such as would stand in the long run. The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of an indefinite increase of knowledge. And so those two series of cognitions--the real and the unreal--consist of those which, at a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to reaffirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever after be denied. Now, a proposition whose falsity can never be discovered, and the error of which therefore is absolutely incognizable, contains, upon our principle, absolutely no error. Consequently, that which is thought in these cognitions is the real, as it really is. There is nothing, then, to prevent our knowing outward things as they really are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them in numberless cases, although we can never be absolutely certain of doing so in any special case. But it follows that since no cognition of ours is absolutely determinate, generals must have a real existence. Now this scholastic realism is usually set down as a belief in metaphysical fictions. But, in fact, a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true representation. Since, therefore, the word "man" is true of something, that which "man" means is real. The nominalist must admit that man is truly applicable to something; but he believes that there is beneath this a thing in itself, an incognizable reality. His is the metaphysical figment. Modern nominalists are mostly superficial men, who do not know, as the more thorough Roscellinus and Occam did, that a reality which has no representation is one which has no relation and no quality. The great argument for nominalism is that there is no man unless there is some particular man. That, however, does not affect the realism of Scotus; for although there is no man of whom all further determination can be denied, yet there is a man, abstraction being made of all further determination. There is a real difference between man irrespective of what the other determinations may be, and man with this or that particular series of determinations, although undoubtedly this difference is only relative to the mind and not in re. Such is the position of Scotus.8Occam's great objection is, there can be no real distinction which is not in re, in the thing-in-itself; but this begs the question, for it is itself based only on the notion that reality is something independent of representative relation.9 Such being the nature of reality in general, in what does the reality of the mind consist? We have seen that the content of consciousness, the entire phenomenal manifestation of mind, is a sign resulting from inference. Upon our principle, therefore, that the absolutely incognizable does not exist, so that the phenomenal manifestation of a substance is the substance, we must conclude that the mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference. What distinguishes a man from a word? There is a distinction doubtless. The material qualities, the forces which constitute the pure denotative application, and the meaning of the human sign, are all exceedingly complicated in comparison with those of the word. But these differences are only relative. What other is there? It may be said that man is conscious, while a word is not. But consciousness is a very vague term. It may mean that emotion which accompanies the reflection that we have animal life. This is a consciousness which is dimmed when animal life is at its ebb in old age, or sleep, but which is not dimmed when the spiritual life is at its ebb; which is the more lively the better animal a man is, but which is not so, the better man he is. We do not attribute this sensation to words, because we have reason to believe that it is dependent upon the possession of an animal body. But this consciousness, being a mere sensation, is only a part of the material quality of the man-sign. Again, consciousness is sometimes used to signify the I think, or unity in thought; but this unity is nothing but consistency, or the recognition of it. Consistency belongs to every sign, so far as it is a sign; and therefore every sign, since it signifies primarily that it is a sign, signifies its own consistency. The man-sign acquires information, and comes to mean more than he did before. But so do words. Does not electricity mean more now than it did in the days of Franklin? Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn round and say: "You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought." In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other; each increase of a man's information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase of a word's information. Without fatiguing the reader by stretching this parallelism too far, it is sufficient to say that there is no element whatever of man's consciousness which has not something corresponding to it in the word; and the reason is obvious. It is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. That is to say, the man and the external sign are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the thought. It is hard for man to understand this, because he persists in identifying himself with his will, his power over the animal organism, with brute force. Now the organism is only an instrument of thought. But the identity of a man consists in the consistency of what he does and thinks, and consistency is the intellectual character of a thing; that is, is its expressing something. Finally, as what anything really is, is what it may finally come to be known to be in the ideal state of complete information, so that reality depends on the ultimate decision of the community; so thought is what it is, only by virtue of its addressing a future thought which is in its value as thought identical with it, though more developed. In this way, the existence of thought now, depends on what is to be hereafter; so that it has only a potential existence, dependent on the future thought of the community. The individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by ignorance and error, so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only a negation. This is man,
1. Several
persons versed in logic have objected that I have here quite misapplied
the term hypothesis, and that what I so designate is an argument
from analogy. It is a sufficient reply to say that the example
of the cipher has been given as an apt illustration of hypothesis
by Descartes (Rule 10, uvres choisies: Paris, 1865, page
334), by Leibniz (Nouveaux Essais, lib. 4, ch. 12, §
13, Ed. Erdmann, p. 383 b), and (as I learn from D. Stewart;
Works, vol. 3, pp. 305 et seqq.) by Gravesande, Boscovich,
Hartley, and G. L. Le Sage. The term Hypothesis has been
used in the following senses:--1. For the theme or proposition forming
the subject of discourse. 2. For an assumption. Aristotle divides
theses or propositions adopted without any reason into definitions
and hypotheses. The latter are propositions stating the existence
of something. Thus the geometer says, "Let there be a triangle."
3. For a condition in a general sense. We are said to seek other
things than happiness I give a few authorities to support the seventh use: Chauvin.--Lexicon Rationale, 1st Ed.--"Hypothesis est propositio, quæ assumitur ad probandam aliam veritatem incognitam. Requirunt multi, ut hæc hypothesis vera esse cognoscatur, etiam antequam appareat, an alia ex eâ deduci possint. Verum aiunt alii, hoc unum desiderari, ut hypothesis pro vera admittatur, quod nempe ex hac talia deducitur, quæ respondent phænomenis, et satisfaciunt omnibus difficultatibus, quæ hac parte in re, et in iis quæ de ea apparent, occurrebant." Newton.--"Hactenus phnomena coelorum et maris nostri per vim gravitatis exposui, sed causam gravitatis nondum assignavi. . . . Rationem vero harum gravitatis proprietatum ex phænomenis nondum potui deducere, et hypotheses non fingo. Quicquid enim ex phænomenis non deducitur, hypothesis vocanda est. . . . In hâc Philosophiâ Propositiones deducuntur ex phænomenis, et redduntur generales per inductionem." Principia. Ad fin. Sir Wm. Hamilton.--"Hypotheses, that is, propositions which are assumed with probability, in order to explain or prove something else which cannot otherwise be explained or proved."--Lectures on Logic (Am. Ed.), p. 188. "The name of hypothesis is more emphatically given to provisory suppositions, which serve to explain the phenomena in so far as observed, but which are only asserted to be true, if ultimately confirmed by a complete induction."--Ibid., p. 364. "When a phenomenon is presented which can be explained by no principle afforded through experience, we feel discontented and uneasy; and there arises an effort to discover some cause which may, at least provisionally, account for the outstanding phenomenon; and this cause is finally recognized as valid and true, if, through it, the given phenomenon is found to obtain a full and perfect explanation. The judgment in which a phenomenon is referred to such a problematic cause, is called a Hypothesis."--Ibid., pp. 449, 450. See also Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 117. J. S. Mill.-- "An hypothesis is any supposition which we make (either without actual evidence, or on evidence avowedly insufficient), in order to endeavor to deduce from it conclusions in accordance with facts which are known to be real; under the idea that if the conclusions to which the hypothesis leads are known truths, the hypothesis itself either must be, or at least is likely to be true."--Logic (6th Ed.), vol. 2, p. 8. Kant.--"If all the consequents of a cognition are true, the cognition itself is true. . . . It is allowable, therefore, to conclude from consequent to a reason, but without being able to determine this reason. From the complexus of all consequents alone can we conclude the truth of a determinate reason. . . . The difficulty with this positive and direct mode of inference (modus ponens) is that the totality of the consequents cannot be apodeictically recognized, and that we are therefore led by this mode of inference only to a probable and hypothetically true cognition (Hypotheses)."--Logik by Jäsche, Werke, ed. Rosenkranz and Schubert, vol. 3, p. 221. "A hypothesis is the judgment of the truth of a reason on account of the sufficiency of the consequents."--Ibid., p. 262. Herbart. "We can make hypotheses, thence deduce consequents, and afterwards see whether the latter accord with experience. Such suppositions are termed hypotheses."--Einleitung; Werke, vol. 1, p. 53. Beneke.--"Affirmative inferences from consequent to antecedent, or hypotheses."--System der Logik, vol. 2, p. 103. There would be no difficulty in greatly multiplying these citations. 2. A judgment concerning a minimum of information, for the theory of which see my paper on Comprehension and Extension, in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 7, p. 426. 3. Observe that I say in itself. I am not so wild as to deny that my sensation of red to-day is like my sensation of red yesterday. I only say that the similarity can consist only in the physiological force behind consciousness,--which leads me to say, I recognize this feeling the same as the former one, and so does not consist in a community of sensation. 4. Accordingly, just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body we ought to say that we are in thought, and not that thoughts are in us. 5. On quality, relation, and representation, see Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 7, p. 293. 6. No person whose native tongue is English will need to be informed that contemplation is essentially (1) protracted (2) voluntary, and (3) an action, and that it is never used for that which is set forth to the mind in this act. A foreigner can convince himself of this by the proper study of English writers. Thus, Locke (Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book II, chap. 19, §1) says, "If it [an idea] be held there [in view] long under attentive consideration, 'tis Contemplation"; and again (Ibid., Book II, chap. 10, §1), "Keeping the Idea, which is brought into it [the mind] for some time actually in view, which is called Contemplation." This term is therefore unfitted to translate Anschauung; for this latter does not imply an act which is necessarily protracted or voluntary, and denotes most usually a mental presentation, sometimes a faculty, less often the reception of an impression in the mind, and seldom, if ever, an action. To the translation of Anschauung by intuition, there is, at least, no such insuperable objection. Etymologically the two words precisely correspond. The original philosophical meaning of intuition was a cognition of the present manifold in that character; and it is now commonly used, as a modern writer says, "to include all the products of the perceptive (external or internal) and imaginative faculties; every act of consciousness, in short, of which the immediate object is an individual, thing, act, or state of mind, presented under the condition of distinct existence in space and time." Finally, we have the authority of Kant's own example for translating his Anschauung by Intuitus; and, indeed, this is the common usage of Germans writing Latin. Moreover, intuitiv frequently replaces anschauend or anschaulich. If this constitutes a misunderstanding of Kant, it is one which is shared by himself and nearly all his countrymen. 7. By an ideal, I mean the limit which the possible cannot attain. 8. "Eadem natura est, quæ in existentia per gradum singularitatis est determinata, et in intellectu, hoc est ut habet relationem ad intellectum ut cognitum ad cognoscens, est indeterminata."--Quæstiones Subtillissimæ, lib. 7, qu. 18. 9. See his argument Summa logices, part 1, cap. 16. |
P 41: Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2(1869):193-208 If, as I maintained in an article in the last number of this Journal, every judgment results from inference, to doubt every inference is to doubt everything. It has often been argued that absolute scepticism is self-contradictory; but this is a mistake: and even if it were not so, it would be no argument against the absolute sceptic, inasmuch as he does not admit that no contradictory propositions are true. Indeed, it would be impossible to move such a man, for his scepticism consists in considering every argument and never deciding upon its validity; he would, therefore, act in this way in reference to the arguments brought against him. But then there are no such beings as absolute sceptics. Every exercise of the mind consists in inference, and so, though there are inanimate objects without beliefs, there are no intelligent beings in that condition. Yet it is quite possible that a person should doubt every principle of inference. He may not have studied logic, and though a logical formula may sound very obviously true to him, he may feel a little uncertain whether some subtile deception may not lurk in it. Indeed, I certainly shall have, among the most cultivated and respected of my readers, those who deny that those laws of logic which men generally admit have universal validity. But I address myself, also, to those who have no such doubts, for even to them it may be interesting to consider how it is that these principles come to be true. Finally, having put forth in former numbers of this Journal some rather heretical principles of philosophical research, one of which is that nothing can be admitted to be absolutely inexplicable, it behooves me to take up a challenge which has been given me to show how upon my principles the validity of the laws of logic can be other than inexplicable. I shall be arrested, at the outset, by a sweeping objection to my whole undertaking. It will be said that my deduction of logical principles, being itself an argument, depends for its whole virtue upon the truth of the very principles in question; so that whatever my proof may be, it must take for granted the very things to be proved. But to this I reply, that I am neither addressing absolute sceptics, nor men in any state of fictitious doubt whatever. I require the reader to be candid; and if he becomes convinced of a conclusion, to admit it. There is nothing to prevent a man's perceiving the force of certain special arguments, although he does not yet know that a certain general law of arguments holds good; for the general rule may hold good in some cases and not in others. A man may reason well without understanding the principles of reasoning, just as he may play billiards well without understanding analytical mechanics. If you, the reader, actually find that my arguments have a convincing force with you, it is a mere pretence to call them illogical. That if one sign denotes generally everything denoted by a second, and this second denotes generally everything denoted by a third, then the first denotes generally everything denoted by the third, is not doubted by anybody who distinctly apprehends the meaning of these words. The deduction of the general form of syllogism, therefore, will consist only of an explanation of the suppositio communis. 1 Now, what the formal logician means by an expression of the form, "Every M is P," is that anything of which M is predicable is P; thus, if S is M, that S is P. The premise that "Every M is P" may, therefore, be denied; but to admit it, unambiguously, in the sense intended, is to admit that the inference is good that S is P if S is M. He, therefore, who does not deny that S is P--M, S, P, being any terms such that S is M and every M is P--denies nothing that the formal logician maintains in reference to this matter; and he who does deny this, simply is deceived by an ambiguity of language. How we come to make any judgments in the sense of the above "Every M is P," may be understood from the theory of reality put forth in the article in the last number. It was there shown that real things are of a cognitive and therefore significative nature, so that the real is that which signifies something real. Consequently, to predicate anything of anything real is to predicate it of that of which that subject [the real] is itself predicated; for to predicate one thing of another is to state that the former is a sign of the latter. These considerations show the reason of the validity of the formula, S is M; M is P: ![]()
They hold good whatever S and P may be, provided that they be such that any middle term
between them can be found. That P should be a negative term, therefore, or that S should be a
particular term, would not interfere at all with the validity of this formula. Hence, the following
formulæ are also valid: S is M; M is not P: ![]() Some S is M; M is P: ![]() Some S is M; M is not P: ![]()
Moreover, as all that class of inferences which depend upon the introduction of relative terms can be
reduced to the general form, they also are shown to be valid. Thus, it is proved to be correct to reason
thus ; |
Every relation of a subject to its predicate is |
|
a relation of the relative "not X'd,
except by the X of some," to its correlate, where X is any relative I please. |
|
Every relation of
"man" to "animal" is a | |
relation of a subject to its predicate. | |
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of the relative "not X'd, except by the X
of some," to its correlate, where X is any relative I please. | |
Every relation of the relative
"not X'd, except | |
by the X of some," to its correlate, where
X is any relative I please, is a relation of the relative "not headed, except by the head of some," to its correlate. | |
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of the relative "not headed, except by the head of some," to its correlate. 2 |
At the same time, as will be seen from this example, the proof of the validity of these inferences depends upon the assumption of the truth of certain general statements concerning relatives. These formulæ can all be deduced from the principle, that in a system of signs in which no sign is taken in two different senses, two signs which differ only in their manner of representing their object, but which are equivalent in meaning, can always be substituted for one another. Any case of the falsification of this principle would be a case of the dependence of the mode of existence of the thing represented upon the mode of this or that representation of it, which, as has been shown in the article in the last number, is contrary to the nature of reality. The next formula of syllogism to be considered is
the following: ![]()
The meaning of "not" or "other than" seems to have greatly perplexed the German
logicians, and it may be, therefore, that it is used in different senses. If so, I propose to defend the
validity of the above formula only when other than is used in a particular sense. By saying that one thing
or class is other than a second, I mean that any third whatever is identical with the class which is
composed of that third and of whatever is, at once, the first and second. For example, if I say that rats
are not mice, I mean that any third class as dogs is identical with dogs and rats-which-are-mice; that is
to say, the addition of rats-which-are-mice, to anything, leaves the latter just what it was before. This
being all that I mean by S is other than P, I mean absolutely the same thing when I say that
S is other than P, that I do when I say that P is other than S; and the same
when I say that S is other than M, that I do when I say that M is other than S.
Hence the above formula is only another way of writing the following: ![]()
A very similar formula to the above is the following: ![]() By saying that some of a class is of any character, I mean simply that no statement which implies that none of that class is of that character is true. But to say that none of that class is of that character, is, as I take the word "not," to say that nothing of that character is of that class. Consequently, to say that some of A is B, is, as I understand words and in the only sense in which I defend this formula, to say that some B is A. In this way the formula is reduced to the following, which has already been shown to be valid: ![]() The only demonstrative syllogisms which are not included among the above forms are the Theophrastean moods, which are all easily reduced by means of simple conversions. Let us now consider what can be said against all this, and let us take up the objections which have actually been made to the syllogistic formulæ, beginning with those which are of a general nature and then examining those sophisms which have been pronounced irresolvable by the rules of ordinary logic. It is a very ancient notion that no proof can be of any value, because it rests on premises which themselves equally require proof, which again must rest on other premises, and so back to infinity. This really does show that nothing can be proved beyond the possibility of a doubt; that no argument could be legitimately used against an absolute sceptic; and that inference is only a transition from one cognition to another, and not the creation of a cognition. But the objection is intended to go much further than this, and to show (as it certainly seems to do) that inference not only cannot produce infallible cognition, but that it cannot produce cognition at all. It is true, that since some judgment precedes every judgment inferred, either the first premises were not inferred, or there have been no first premises. But it does not follow that because there has been no first in a series, therefore that series has had no beginning in time; for the series may be continuous, and may have begun gradually, as was shown in an article in No. 3 of this volume, where this difficulty has already been resolved. A
somewhat similar objection has been made by Locke and others, to the effect that the ordinary demonstrative
syllogism is a petitio principii, inasmuch as the conclusion is already implicitly stated in the major
premise. Take, for example, the syllogism, ![]() This attempt to prove that Socrates is mortal begs the question, it is said, since if the conclusion is denied by any one, he thereby denies that all men are mortal. But what such considerations really prove is that the syllogism is demonstrative. To call it a petitio principii is a mere confusion of language. It is strange that philosophers, who are so suspicious of the words virtual and potential, should have allowed this "implicit" to pass unchallenged. A petitio principii consists in reasoning from the unknown to the unknown. Hence, a logician who is simply engaged in stating what general forms of argument are valid, can, at most, have nothing more to do with the consideration of this fallacy than to note those cases in which from logical principles a premise of a certain form cannot be better known than a conclusion of the corresponding form. But it is plainly beyond the province of the logician, who has only proposed to state what forms of facts involve what others, to inquire whether man can have a knowledge of universal propositions without a knowledge of every particular contained under them, by means of natural insight, divine revelation, induction, or testimony. The only petitio principii, therefore, which he can notice is the assumption of the conclusion itself in the premise; and this, no doubt, those who call the syllogism a petitio principii believe is done in that formula. But the proposition "All men are mortal" does not in itself involve the statement that Socrates is mortal, but only that "whatever has man truly predicated of it is mortal." In other words, the conclusion is not involved in the meaning of the premise, but only the validity of the syllogism. So that this objection merely amounts to arguing that the syllogism is not valid, because it is demonstrative. 3 A much more interesting objection is that a syllogism is a purely mechanical process. It proceeds according to a bare rule or formula; and a machine might be constructed which would so transpose the terms of premises. This being so (and it is so), it is argued that this cannot be thought; that there is no life in it. Swift has ridiculed the syllogism in the "Voyage to Laputa," by describing a machine for making science: |
By this contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with little bodily labor, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. |
The idea involved in this objection seems to be that it requires mind to apply any formula or use any machine. If, then, this mind is itself only another formula, it requires another mind behind it to set it into operation, and so on ad infinitum. This objection fails in much the same way that the first one which we considered failed. It is as though a man should address a land surveyor as follows:--"You do not make a true representation of the land; you only measure lengths from point to point--that is to say, lines. If you observe angles, it is only to solve triangles and obtain the lengths of their sides. And when you come to make your map, you use a pencil which can only make lines, again. So, you have to do solely with lines. But the land is a surface; and no number of lines, however great, will make any surface, however small. You, therefore, fail entirely to represent the land." The surveyor, I think, would reply, "Sir, you have proved that my lines cannot make up the land, and that, therefore, my map is not the land. I never pretended that it was. But that does not prevent it from truly representing the land, as far as it goes. It cannot, indeed, represent every blade of grass; but it does not represent that there is not a blade of grass where there is. To abstract from a circumstance is not to deny it." Suppose the objector were, at this point, to say, "To abstract from a circumstance is to deny it. Wherever your map does not represent a blade of grass, it represents there is no blade of grass. Let us take things on their own valuation." Would not the surveyor reply: "This map is my description of the country. Its own valuation can be nothing but what I say, and all the world understands, that I mean by it. Is it very unreasonable that I should demand to be taken as I mean, especially when I succeed in making myself understood?" What the objector's reply to this question would be, I leave it to any one to say who thinks his position well taken. Now this line of objection is parallel to that which is made against the syllogism. It is shown that no number of syllogisms can constitute the sum total of any mental action, however restricted. This may be freely granted, and yet it will not follow that the syllogism does not truly represent the mental action, as far as it purports to represent it at all. There is reason to believe that the action of the mind is, as it were, a continuous movement. Now the doctrine embodied in syllogistic formulæ (so far as it applies to the mind at all) is, that if two successive positions, occupied by the mind in this movement, be taken, they will be found to have certain relations. It is true that no number of successions of positions can make up a continuous movement; and this, I suppose, is what is meant by saying that a syllogism is a dead formula, while thinking is a living process. But the reply is that the syllogism is not intended to represent the mind, as to its life or deadness, but only as to the relation of its different judgments concerning the same thing. And it should be added that the relation between syllogism and thought does not spring from considerations of formal logic, but from those of psychology. All that the formal logician has to say is, that if facts capable of expression in such and such forms of words are true, another fact whose expression is related in a certain way to the expression of these others is also true. Hegel taught that ordinary reasoning is "one-sided." A part of what he meant was that by such inference a part only of all that is true of an object can be learned, owing to the generality or abstractedness of the predicates inferred. This objection is, therefore, somewhat similar to the last; for the point of it is that no number of syllogisms would give a complete knowledge of the object. This, however, presents a difficulty which the other did not; namely, that if nothing incognizable exists, and all knowledge is by mental action, by mental action everything is cognizable. So that if by syllogism everything is not cognizable, syllogism does not exhaust the modes of mental action. But grant the validity of this argument and it proves too much; for it makes, not the syllogism particularly, but all finite knowledge to be worthless. However much we know, more may come to be found out. Hence, all can never be known. This seems to contradict the fact that nothing is absolutely incognizable; and it would really do so if our knowledge were something absolutely limited. For, to say that all can never be known, means that information may increase beyond any assignable point; that is, that an absolute termination of all increase of knowledge is absolutely incognizable, and therefore does not exist. In other words, the proposition merely means that the sum of all that will be known up to any time, however advanced, into the future, has a ratio less than any assignable ratio to all that may be known at a time still more advanced. This does not contradict the fact that everything is cognizable; it only contradicts a proposition, which no one can maintain, that everything will be known at some time some number of years into the future. It may, however, very justly be said that the difficulty still remains, how at every future time, however late, there can be something yet to happen. It is no longer a contradiction, but it is a difficulty; that is to say, lengths of time are shown not to afford an adequate conception of futurity in general; and the question arises, in what other way we are to conceive of it. I might indeed, perhaps, fairly drop the question here, and say that the difficulty had become so entirely removed from the syllogism in particular, that the formal logician need not feel himself specially called on to consider it. The solution, however, is very simple. It is that we conceive of the future, as a whole, by considering that this word, like any other general term, as "inhabitant of St. Louis," may be taken distributively or collectively. We conceive of the infinite, therefore, not directly or on the side of its infinity, but by means of a consideration concerning words or a second intention. Another objection to the syllogism is that its "therefore" is merely subjective; that, because a certain conclusion syllogistically follows from a premise, it does not follow that the fact denoted by the conclusion really depends upon the fact denoted by the premise, so that the syllogism does not represent things as they really are. But it has been fully shown that if the facts are as the premises represent, they are also as the conclusion represents. Now this is a purely objective statement: therefore, there is a real connection between the facts stated as premises and those stated as conclusion. It is true that there is often an appearance of reasoning deductively from effects to causes. Thus we may reason as follows:--"There is smoke; there is never smoke without fire: hence, there has been fire." Yet smoke is not the cause of fire, but the effect of it. Indeed, it is evident, that in many cases an event is a demonstrative sign of a certain previous event having occurred. Hence, we can reason deductively from relatively future to relatively past, whereas causation really determines events in the direct order of time. Nevertheless, if we can thus reason against the stream of time, it is because there really are such facts as that "If there is smoke, there has been fire," in which the following event is the antecedent. Indeed, if we consider the manner in which such a proposition became known to us, we shall find that what it really means is that "If we find smoke, we shall find evidence on the whole that there has been fire"; and this, if reality consists in the agreement that the whole community would eventually come to, is the very same thing as to say that there really has been fire. In short, the whole present difficulty is resolved instantly by this theory of reality, because it makes all reality something which is constituted by an event indefinitely future. Another objection, for which I am quite willing to allow a great German philosopher the whole credit, is that sometimes the conclusion is false, although both the premises and the syllogistic form are correct. 4 Of this he gives the following examples. From the middle term that a wall has been painted blue, it may correctly be concluded that it is blue; but notwithstanding this syllogism it may be green if it has also received a coat of yellow, from which last circumstance by itself it would follow that it is yellow. If from the middle term of the sensuous faculty it be concluded that man is neither good nor bad, since neither can be predicated of the sensuous, the syllogism is correct; but the conclusion is false, since of man in the concrete, spirituality is equally true, and may serve as middle term in an opposite syllogism. From the middle term of the gravitation of the planets, satellites, and comets, towards the sun, it follows correctly that these bodies fall into the sun; but they do not fall into it, because (!) they equally gravitate to their own centres, or, in other words (!!), they are supported by centrifugal force. Now, does Hegel mean to say that these syllogisms satisfy the rules for syllogism given by those who defend syllogism? or does he mean to grant that they do not satisfy those rules, but to set up some rules of his own for syllogism which shall insure its yielding false conclusions from true premises? If the latter, he ignores the real issue, which is whether the syllogism as defined by the rules of formal logic is correct, and not whether the syllogism as represented by Hegel is correct. But if he means that the above examples satisfy the usual definition of a true syllogism, he is mistaken. The first, stated in form, is as follows: |
Whatever has been painted blue is blue; This wall has been painted blue: |
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Now "painted blue" may mean painted with blue paint, or painted so as to be blue. If, in the example, the former were meant, the major premise would be false. As he has stated that it is true, the latter meaning of "painted blue" must be the one intended. Again, "blue" may mean blue at some time, or blue at this time. If the latter be meant, the major premise is plainly false; therefore, the former is meant. But the conclusion is said to contradict the statement that the wall is yellow. If blue were here taken in the more general sense, there would be no such contradiction. Hence, he means in the conclusion that this wall is now blue; that is to say, he reasons thus: |
Whatever has been made blue has been blue; This has been made blue: |
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Now substituting letters for the subjects and predicates, we get the form, |
M is P; S is M: |
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This is not a syllogism in the ordinary sense of that term, or in any sense in which anybody maintains that the syllogism is valid. The second example given by Hegel, when written out in full, is as follows: |
Sensuality is neither good nor bad; Man has (not is) sensuality: |
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Or, the same argument may be stated as follows: |
The sensuous, as such, is neither good nor bad; Man is sensuous: |
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When letters are substituted for subject and predicate in either of these arguments, it takes the form, |
M is P; S is N: |
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This, again, bears but a very slight resemblance to a syllogism. The third example, when stated at full length, is as follows: |
Whatever tends towards the sun, on the whole, falls into the sun; The planets tend toward the sun: |
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This is a fallacy similar to the last. I wonder that this eminent logician did not add to his list of examples of correct syllogism the
following: |
It either rains, or it does not rain; It does not rain: |
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This is fully as deserving of serious consideration as any of those which he has brought forward. The rainy day and the pleasant day are both, in the first place, day. Secondly, each is the negation of a day. It is indifferent which be regarded as the positive. The pleasant is Other to the rainy, and the rainy is in like manner Other to the pleasant. Thus, both are equally Others. Both are Others of each other, or each is Other for itself. So this day being other than rainy, that to which it is Other is itself. But it is Other than itself. Hence, it is itself Rainy. Some sophisms have, however, been adduced, mostly by the Eleatics and Sophists, which really are extremely difficult to resolve by syllogistic rules; and according to some modern authors this is actually impossible. These sophisms fall into three classes: 1st, those which relate to continuity; 2d, those which relate to consequences of supposing things to be other than they are; 3d, those which relate to propositions which imply their own falsity. Of the first class, the most celebrated are Zeno's arguments concerning motion. One of these is, that if Achilles overtakes a tortoise in any finite time, and the tortoise has the start of him by a distance which may be called a, then Achilles has to pass over the sum of distances represented by the polynomial ![]() up to infinity. Every term of this polynomial is finite, and it has an infinite number of terms; consequently, Achilles must in a finite time pass over a distance equal to the sum of an infinite number of finite distances. Now this distance must be infinite, because no finite distance, however small, can be multiplied by an infinite number without giving an infinite distance. So that even if none of these finite distances were larger than the smallest (which is finite since all are finite), the sum of the whole would be infinite. But Achilles cannot pass over an infinite distance in a finite time; therefore, he cannot overtake the tortoise in any time, however great. The solution of this fallacy is as follows: The conclusion is dependent on the fact that Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise without passing over an infinite number of terms of that series of finite distances. That is, no case of his overtaking the tortoise would be a case of his not passing over a non-finite number of terms; that is (by simple conversion), no case of his not passing over a non-finite number of terms would be a case of his overtaking the tortoise. But if he does not pass over a non-finite number of terms, he either passes over a finite number, or he passes over none; and conversely. Consequently, nothing more has been said than that every case of his passing over only a finite number of terms, or of his not passing over any, is a case of his not overtaking the tortoise. Consequently, nothing more can be concluded than that he passes over a distance greater than the sum of any finite number of the above series of terms. But because a quantity is greater than any quantity of a certain series, it does not follow that it is greater than any quantity. In fact, the reasoning in this sophism may be
exhibited as follows: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Then, the implied argument is |
Any number of this series is less than a; But any number you please is less than the number of terms of this series: Hence, any number you please is less than a. |
This involves an obvious confusion between the number of terms and the value of the greatest
term. |
No body in a place no larger than itself is moving; But every body is a body in a place no larger than itself: |
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The error of this consists in the fact that the minor premise is only true in the sense that during a time sufficiently short the space occupied by a body is as little larger than itself as you please. All that can be inferred from this is, that during no time a body will move no distance. All the arguments of Zeno depend on supposing that a continuum has ultimate parts. But a continuum is precisely that, every part of which has parts, in the same sense. Hence, he makes out his contradictions only by making a self-contradictory supposition. In ordinary and mathematical language, we allow ourselves to speak of such parts--points--and whenever we are led into contradiction thereby, we have simply to express ourselves more accurately to resolve the difficulty. Suppose a piece of glass to be laid on a sheet of paper so as to cover half of it. Then, every part of the paper is covered, or not covered; for "not" means merely outside of, or other than. But is the line under the edge of the glass covered or not? It is no more on one side of the edge than it is on the other. Therefore, it is either on both sides, or neither side. It is not on neither side; for if it were it would be not on either side, therefore not on the covered side, therefore not covered, therefore on the uncovered side. It is not partly on one side and partly on the other, because it has no width. Hence, it is wholly on both sides, or both covered and not covered. The solution of this is, that we have supposed a part too narrow to be partly uncovered and partly covered; that is to say, a part which has no parts in a continuous surface, which by definition has no such parts. The reasoning, therefore, simply serves to reduce this supposition to an absurdity. It may be said that there really is such a thing as a line. If a shadow falls on a surface, there really is a division between the light and the darkness. That is true. But it does not follow that because we attach a definite meaning to the part of a surface being covered, therefore we know what we mean when we say that a line is covered. We may define a covered line as one which separates two surfaces both of which are covered, or as one which separates two surfaces either of which is covered. In the former case, the line under the edge is uncovered; in the latter case, it is covered. In the sophisms thus far considered, the appearance of contradiction depends mostly upon an ambiguity; in those which we are now to consider, two true propositions really do in form conflict with one another. We are apt to think that formal logic forbids this, whereas a familiar argument, the reductio ad absurdum, depends on showing that contrary predicates are true of a subject, and that therefore that subject does not exist. Many logicians, it is true, make affirmative propositions assert the existence of their subjects. 5 The objection to this is that it cannot be extended to hypotheticals. The proposition may conveniently be regarded as equivalent to But this cannot be done if the latter proposition asserts the existence of its subject; that is, asserts that A really happens. If, however, a categorical affirmative be regarded as asserting the existence of its subject, the principle of the reductio ad absurdum is that two propositions of the forms, may both be true at once; and that if they are so, A is not true. It will be well, perhaps, to illustrate this point. No man of common sense would deliberately upset his inkstand if there were ink in it; that is, if any ink would run out. Hence, by simple conversion, But suppose there is ink in it. Then, it is also true, that These propositions are both true, and the law of contradiction is not violated which asserts only that nothing has contradictory predicates: only, it follows from these propositions that the man will not deliberately overturn his inkstand. There are two ways in which deceptive sophisms may result from this circumstance. In the first place, contradictory propositions are never both true. Now, as a universal proposition may be true when the subject does not exist, it follows that the contradictory of a universal--that is, a particular--cannot be taken in such a sense as to be true when the subject does not exist. But a particular simply asserts a part of what is asserted in the universal over it; therefore, the universal over it asserts the subject to exist. Consequently, there are two kinds of universals, those which do not assert the subject to exist, and these have no particular propositions under them, and those which do assert that the subject exists, and these strictly speaking have no contradictories. For example, there is no use of such a form of proposition as "Some griffins would be dreadful animals, as particular under the useful form "The griffin would be a dreadful animal"; and the apparent contradictories "All of John Smith's family are ill," and "Some of John Smith's family are not ill," are both false at once if John Smith has no family. Here, though an inference from a universal to the particular under it is always valid, yet a procedure which greatly resembles this would be sophistical if the universal were one of those propositions which does not assert the existence of its subject. The following sophism depends upon this; I call it the True Gorgias: Gorgias. What say you, Socrates, of black? Is any black, white? Gor. Do you say, then, that no black is white? Soc. None at all. Gor. But is everything either black or non-black? Soc. Of course. Gor. And everything either white or non-white? Soc. Yes. Gor. And everything either rough or smooth? Soc. Yes. Gor. And everything either real or unreal? Soc. Oh, bother! yes. Gor. Do you say, then, that all black is either rough black or smooth black? Soc. Yes. Gor. And that all white is either real white or unreal white? Soc. Yes. Gor. And yet is no black, white? Soc. None at all. Gor. Nor no white, black? Soc. By no means. Gor. What? Is no smooth black, white? Soc. No; you cannot prove that, Gorgias. Gor. Nor no rough black, white? Soc. Neither. Gor. Nor no real white, black? Soc. No. Gor. Nor no unreal white, black? Soc. No, I say. No white at all is black. Gor. What if black is smooth, is it not white? Soc. Not in the least. Gor. And if the last is false, is the first false? Soc. It follows. Gor. If, then, black is white, does it follow, that black is not smooth? Soc. It does. Gor. Black-white is not smooth? Soc. What do you mean? Gor. Can any dead man speak? Soc. No, indeed. Gor. And is any speaking man dead? Soc. I say, no. Gor. And is any good king tyrannical? Soc. No. Gor. And is any tyrannical king good? Soc. I just said no. Gor. And you said, too, that no rough black is white, did you not? Soc. Yes. Gor. Then, is any black-white, rough? Soc. No. Gor. And is any unreal black, white? Soc. No. Gor. Then, is any black-white unreal? Soc. No. Gor. No black-white is rough? Soc. None. Gor. All black-white, then, is non-rough? Soc. Yes. Gor. And all black-white, non-unreal? Soc. Yes. Gor. All black-white is then smooth? Soc. Yes. Gor. Some smooth, then, is black-white? Soc. Of course. Gor. And some real is black-white? Soc. So it seems. Gor. Some black-white smooth is black-white? Soc. Yes. Gor. Some black smooth is black-white? Soc. Yes. Gor. Some black smooth is white. Soc. Yes. Gor. Some black real is black-white? Soc. Yes. Gor. Some black real is white? Soc. Yes. Gor. Some real black is white? Soc. Yes. Gor. And some smooth black is white? Soc. Yes. Gor. Then, some black is white? Soc. I think so myself. The principle of the reductio ad absurdum also occasions deceptions in another way, owing to the fact that we have many words, such as can, may, must, &c., which imply more or less vaguely an otherwise unexpressed condition, so that these propositions are in fact hypotheticals. Accordingly, if the unexpressed condition is some state of things which does not actually come to pass, the two propositions may appear to be contrary to one another. Thus, the moralist says, "You ought to do this, and you can do it." This "You can do it" is principally hortatory in its force: so far as it is a statement of fact, it means merely, "If you try, you will do it." Now, if the act is an outward one and the act is not performed, the scientific man, in view of the fact that every event in the physical world depends exclusively on physical antecedents, says that in this case the laws of nature prevented the thing from being done, and that therefore, "Even if you had tried, you would not have done it." Yet the reproachful conscience still says you might have done it; that is, that "If you had tried, you would have done it." This is called the paradox of freedom and fate; and it is usually supposed that one of these propositions must be true and the other false. But since, in fact, you have not tried, there is no reason why the supposition that you have tried should not be reduced to an absurdity. In the same way, if you had tried and had performed the action, the conscience might say, "If you had not tried, you would not have done it"; while the understanding would say, "Even if you had not tried, you would have done it." These propositions are perfectly consistent, and only serve to reduce the supposition that you did not try to an absurdity. 6 The third class of sophisms consists of the so-called Insolubilia. Here is an example of one of them with its resolution:
Since the conclusion is false, the reasoning is bad, or the premises are not all true. But the reasoning is a dilemma; either, then, the disjunctive principle that it is either true or not is false, or the reasoning under one or the other branch is bad, or the reasoning is altogether valid. If the principle that it is either true or not is false, it is other than true and other than not true; that is, not true and not not true; that is, not true and true. But this is absurd. Hence, the disjunctive principle is valid. There are two arguments under each horn of the dilemma; both the arguments under one or the other branch must be false. But, in each case, the second argument involves all the premises and forms of inference involved in the first; hence, if the first is false, the second necessarily is so. We may, therefore, confine our attention to the first arguments in the two branches. The forms of argument contained in these are two: first, the simple syllogism in Barbara, and, second, the consequence from the truth of a proposition to the proposition itself. These are both correct. Hence, the whole form of reasoning is correct, and nothing remains to be false but a premise. But since the repetition of an alternative supposition is not a premise, there is, properly speaking, but one premise in the whole. This is that the proposition is the same as that that proposition is not true. This, then, must be false. Hence the proposition signifies either less or more than this. If it does not signify as much as this, it signifies nothing, and hence it is not true, and hence another proposition which says of it what it says of itself is true. But if the proposition in question signifies something more than that it is itself not true, then the premise that is not true. And as a proposition is true only if whatever is said in it is true, but is false if anything said in it is false, the first argument on the second side of the dilemma contains a false premise, and the second an undistributed middle. But the first argument on the first side remains good. Hence, if the proposition means more than that it is not true, it is not true, and another proposition which repeats this of it is true. Hence, whether the proposition does or does not mean that it is not true, it is not true, and a proposition which repeats this of it is true. Since this repeating proposition is true, it has a meaning. Now, a proposition has a meaning if any part of it has a meaning. Hence the original proposition (a part of which repeated has a meaning) has itself a meaning. Hence, it must imply something besides that which it explicitly states. But it has no particular determination to any further implication. Hence, what more it signifies it must signify by virtue of being a proposition at all. That is to say, every proposition must imply something analogous to what this implies. Now, the repetition of this proposition does not contain this implication, for otherwise it could not be true; hence, what every proposition implies must be something concerning itself. What every proposition implies concerning itself must be something which is false of the proposition now under discussion, for the whole falsity of this proposition lies therein, since all that it explicitly lays down is true. It must be something which would not be false if the proposition were true, for in that case some true proposition would be false. Hence, it must be that it is itself true. That is, every proposition asserts its own truth. The proposition in question, therefore, is true in all other respects but its implication of its own truth. 7 The difficulty of showing how the law of deductive reasoning is true depends upon our inability to conceive of its not being true. In the case of probable reasoning the difficulty is of quite another kind; here, where we see precisely what the procedure is, we wonder how such a process can have any validity at all. How magical it is that by examining a part of a class we can know what is true of the whole of the class, and by study of the past can know the future; in short, that we can know what we have not experienced! Is not this an intellectual intuition! Is it not that besides ordinary experience which is dependent on there being a certain physical connection between our organs and the thing experienced, there is a second avenue of truth dependent only on there being a certain intellectual connection between our previous knowledge and what we learn in that way? Yes, this is true. Man has this faculty, just as opium has a somnific virtue; but some further questions may be asked, nevertheless. How is the existence of this faculty accounted for? In one sense, no doubt, by natural selection. Since it is absolutely essential to the preservation of so delicate an organism as man's, no race which had it not has been able to sustain itself. This accounts for the prevalence of this faculty, provided it was only a possible one. But how can it be possible? What could enable the mind to know physical things which do not physically influence it and which it does not influence? The question cannot be answered by any statement concerning the human mind, for it is equivalent to asking what makes the facts usually to be, as inductive and hypothetic conclusions from true premises represent them to be? Facts of a certain kind are usually true when facts having certain relations to them are true; what is the cause of this? That is the question. The usual reply is that nature is everywhere regular; as things have been, so they will be; as one part of nature is, so is every other. But this explanation will not do. Nature is not regular. No disorder would be less orderly than the existing arrangement. It is true that the special laws and regularities are innumerable; but nobody thinks of the irregularities, which are infinitely more frequent. Every fact true of any one thing in the universe is related to every fact true of every other. But the immense majority of these relations are fortuitous and irregular. A man in China bought a cow three days and five minutes after a Greenlander had sneezed. Is that abstract circumstance connected with any regularity whatever? And are not such relations infinitely more frequent than those which are regular? But if a very large number of qualities were to be distributed among a very large number of things in almost any way, there would chance to be some few regularities. If, for example, upon a checker-board of an enormous number of squares, painted all sorts of colors, myriads of dice were to be thrown, it could hardly fail to happen, that upon some color, or shade of color, out of so many, some one of the six numbers should not be uppermost on any die. This would be a regularity; for, the universal proposition would be true that upon that color that number is never turned up. But suppose this regularity abolished, then a far more remarkable regularity would be created, namely, that on every color every number is turned up. Either way, therefore, a regularity must occur. Indeed, a little reflection will show that although we have here only variations of color and of the numbers of the dice, many regularities must occur. And the greater the number of objects, the more respects in which they vary, and the greater the number of varieties in each respect, the greater will be the number of regularities. Now, in the universe, all these numbers are infinite. Therefore, however disorderly the chaos, the number of regularities must be infinite. The orderliness of the universe, therefore, if it exists, must consist in the large proportion of relations which present a regularity to those which are quite irregular. But this proportion in the actual universe is, as we have seen, as small as it can be; and, therefore, the orderliness of the universe is as little as that of any arrangement whatever. But even if there were such an orderliness in things, it never could be discovered. For it would belong to things either collectively or distributively. If it belonged to things collectively, that is to say, if things formed a system the difficulty would be that a system can only be known by seeing some considerable proportion of the whole. Now we never can know how great a part of the whole of nature we have discovered. If the order were distributive, that is, belonged to all things only by belonging to each thing, the difficulty would be that a character can only be known by comparing something which has with it something which has it not. Being, quality, relation, and other universals are not known except as characters of words or other signs, attributed by a figure of speech to things. Thus, in neither case could the order of things be known. But the order of things would not help the validity of our reasoning--that is, would not help us to reason correctly--unless we knew what the order of things required the relation between the known reasoned from to the unknown reasoned to, to be. But even if this order both existed and were known, the knowledge would be of no use except as a general principle, from which things could be deduced. It would not explain how knowledge could be increased (in contradistinction to being rendered more distinct), and so it would not explain how it could itself have been acquired. Finally, if the validity of induction and hypothesis were dependent on a particular constitution of the universe, we could imagine a universe in which these modes of inference should not be valid, just as we can imagine a universe in which there would be no attraction, but things should merely drift about. Accordingly, J. S. Mill, who explains the validity of induction by the uniformity of nature, 8 maintains that he can imagine a universe without any regularity, so that no probable inference would be valid in it. 9 In the universe as it is, probable arguments sometimes fail, nor can any definite proportion of cases be stated in which they hold good; all that can be said is that in the long run they prove approximately correct. Can a universe be imagined in which this would not be the case? It must be a universe where probable argument can have some application, in order that it may fail half the time. It must, therefore, be a universe experienced. Of the finite number of propositions true of a finite amount of experience of such a universe, no one would be universal in form, unless the subject of it were an individual. For if there were a plural universal proposition, inferences by analogy from one particular to another would hold good invariably in reference to that subject. So that these arguments might be no better than guesses in reference to other parts of the universe, but they would invariably hold good in a finite proportion of it, and so would on the whole be somewhat better than guesses. There could, also, be no individuals in that universe, for there must be some general class--that is, there must be some things more or less alike--or probable argument would find no premises there; therefore, there must be two mutually exclusive classes, since every class has a residue outside of it; hence, if there were any individual, that individual would be wholly excluded from one or other of these classes. Hence, the universal plural proposition would be true, that no one of a certain class was that individual. Hence, no universal proposition would be true. Accordingly, every combination of characters would occur in such a universe. But this would not be disorder, but the simplest order; it would not be unintelligible, but, on the contrary, everything conceivable would be found in it with equal frequency. The notion, therefore, of a universe in which probable arguments should fail as often as hold true, is absurd. We can suppose it in general terms, but we cannot specify how it should be other than self-contradictory. 10 Since we cannot conceive of probable inferences as not generally holding good, and since no special supposition will serve to explain their validity, many logicians have sought to base this validity on that of deduction, and that in a variety of ways. The only attempt of this sort, however, which deserves to be noticed is that which seeks to determine the probability of a future event by the theory of probabilities, from the fact that a certain number of similar events have been observed. Whether this can be done or not depends on the meaning assigned to the word probability. But if this word is to be taken in such a sense that a form of conclusion which is probable is valid; since the validity of an inference (or its correspondence with facts) consists solely in this, that when such premises are true, such a conclusion is generally true, then probability can mean nothing but the ratio of the frequency of occurrence of a specific event to a general one over it. In this sense of the term, it is plain that the probability of an inductive conclusion cannot be deduced from the premises; for from the inductive premises nothing follows deductively, except that any M, which is S', or S'', or S'''is P; or, less explicitly, that some M is P. Thus, we seem to be driven to this point. On the one hand, no determination of things, no fact, can result in the validity of probable argument; nor, on the other hand, is such argument reducible to that form which holds good, however the facts may be. This seems very much like a reduction to absurdity of the validity of such reasoning; and a paradox of the greatest difficulty is presented for solution. There can be no doubt of the importance of this problem. According to Kant, the central question of philosophy is "How are synthetical judgments a priori possible?" But antecedently to this comes the question how synthetical judgments in general, and still more generally, how synthetical reasoning is possible at all. When the answer to the general problem has been obtained, the particular one will be comparatively simple. This is the lock upon the door of philosophy. All probable inference, whether induction or hypothesis, is inference from the parts to the whole. It is essentially the same, therefore, as statistical inference. Out of a bag of black and white beans I take a few handfuls, and from this sample I can judge approximately the proportions of black and white in the whole. This is identical with induction. Now we know upon what the validity of this inference depends. It depends upon the fact that in the long run, any one bean would be taken out as often as any other. For were this not so, the mean of a large number of results of such testings of the contents of the bag would not be precisely the ratio of the numbers of the two colors of beans in the bag. Now we may divide the question of the validity of induction into two parts: 1st, why of all inductions, premises for which occur, the generality should hold good, and 2d, why men are not fated always to light upon the small proportion of worthless inductions. Then, the first of these two questions is readily answered. For since all the members of any class are the same as all that are to be known; and since from any part of those which are to be known an induction is competent to the rest, in the long run any one member of a class will occur as the subject of a premise of a possible induction as often as any other, and, therefore, the validity of induction depends simply upon the fact that the parts make up and constitute the whole. This in its turn depends simply upon there being such a state of things that any general terms are possible. But it has been shown, p. 239, that being at all is being in general. And thus this part of the validity of induction depends merely on there being any reality. From this it appears that we cannot say that the generality of inductions are true, but only that in the long run they approximate to the truth. This is the truth of the statement, that the universality of an inference from induction is only the analogue of true universality. Hence, also, it cannot be said that we know an inductive conclusion to be true, however loosely we state it; we only know that by accepting inductive conclusions, in the long run our errors balance one another. In fact, insurance companies proceed upon induction;--they do not know what will happen to this or that policy-holder; they only know that they are secure in the long run. The other question relative to the validity of induction, is why men are not fated always to light upon those inductions which are highly deceptive. The explanation of the former branch of the problem we have seen to be that there is something real. Now, since if there is anything real, then (on account of this reality consisting in the ultimate agreement of all men, and on account of the fact that reasoning from parts to whole, is the only kind of synthetic reasoning which men possess) it follows necessarily that a sufficiently long succession of inferences from parts to whole will lead men to a knowledge of it, so that in that case they cannot be fated on the whole to be thoroughly unlucky in their inductions. This second branch of the problem is in fact equivalent to asking why there is anything real, and thus its solution will carry the solution of the former branch one step further. The answer to this question may be put into a general and abstract, or a special detailed form. If men were not to be able to learn from induction, it must be because as a general rule, when they had made an induction, the order of things (as they appear in experience), would then undergo a revolution. Just herein would the unreality of such a universe consist; namely, that the order of the universe should depend on how much men should know of it. But this general rule would be capable of being itself discovered by induction; and so it must be a law of such a universe, that when this was discovered it would cease to operate. But this second law would itself be capable of discovery. And so in such a universe there would be nothing which would not sooner or later be known; and it would have an order capable of discovery by a sufficiently long course of reasoning. But this is contrary to the hypothesis, and therefore that hypothesis is absurd. This is the particular answer. But we may also say, in general, that if nothing real exists, then, since every question supposes that something exists--for it maintains its own urgency--it supposes only illusions to exist. But the existence even of an illusion is a reality; for an illusion affects all men, or it does not. In the former case, it is a reality according to our theory of reality; in the latter case, it is independent of the state of mind of any individuals except those whom it happens to affect. So that the answer to the question, Why is anything real? is this: That question means, "supposing anything to exist, why is something real?" The answer is, that that very existence is reality by definition. All that has here been said, particularly of induction, applies to all inference from parts to whole, and therefore to hypothesis, and so to all probable inference. Thus, I claim to have shown, in the first place, that it is possible to hold a consistent theory of the validity of the laws of ordinary logic. But now let us suppose the idealistic theory of reality, which I have in this paper taken for granted to be false. In that case, inductions would not be true unless the world were so constituted that every object should be presented in experience as often as any other; and further, unless we were so constituted that we had no more tendency to make bad inductions than good ones. These facts might be explained by the benevolence of the Creator; but, as has already been argued, they could not explain, but are absolutely refuted by the fact that no state of things can be conceived in which probable arguments should not lead to the truth. This affords a most important argument in favor of that theory of reality, and thus of those denials of certain faculties from which it was deduced, as well as of the general style of philosophizing by which those denials were reached. Upon our theory of reality and of logic, it can be shown that no inference of any individual can be thoroughly logical without certain determinations of his mind which do not concern any one inference immediately; for we have seen that that mode of inference which alone can teach us anything, or carry us at all beyond what was implied in our premises--in fact, does not give us to know any more than we knew before; only, we know that, by faithfully adhering to that mode of inference, we shall, on the whole, approximate to the truth. Each of us is an insurance company, in short. But, now, suppose that an insurance company, among its risks, should take one exceeding in amount the sum of all the others. Plainly, it would then have no security whatever. Now, has not every single man such a risk? What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If a man has a transcendent personal interest infinitely outweighing all others, then, upon the theory of validity of inference just developed, he is devoid of all security, and can make no valid inference whatever. What follows? That logic rigidly requires, before all else, that no determinate fact, nothing which can happen to a man's self, should be of more consequence to him than everything else. He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is illogical in all his inferences, collectively. So the social principle is rooted intrinsically in logic. That being the case, it becomes interesting to inquire how it is with men as a matter of fact. There is a psychological theory that man cannot act without a view to his own pleasure. This theory is based on a falsely assumed subjectivism. Upon our principles of the objectivity of knowledge, it could not be based, and if they are correct it is reduced to an absurdity. It seems to me that the usual opinion of the selfishness of man is based in large measure upon this false theory. I do not think that the facts bear out the usual opinion. The immense self-sacrifices which the most wilful men often make, show that wilfulness is a very different thing from selfishness. The care that men have for what is to happen after they are dead, cannot be selfish. And finally and chiefly, the constant use of the word "we"--as when we speak of our possessions on the Pacific--our destiny as a republic--in cases in which no personal interests at all are involved, show conclusively that men do not make their personal interests their only ones, and therefore may, at least, subordinate them to the interests of the community. But just the revelation of the possibility of this complete self-sacrifice in man, and the belief in its saving power, will serve to redeem the logicality of all men. For he who recognizes the logical necessity of complete self-identification of one's own interests with those of the community, and its potential existence in man, even if he has it not himself, will perceive that only the inferences of that man who has it are logical, and so views his own inferences as being valid only so far as they would be accepted by that man. But so far as he has this belief, he becomes identified with that man. And that ideal perfection of knowledge by which we have seen that reality is constituted must thus belong to a community in which this identification is complete. This would serve as a complete establishment of private logicality, were it not that the assumption that man or the community (which may be wider than man) shall ever arrive at a state of information greater than some definite finite information, is entirely unsupported by reasons. There cannot be a scintilla of evidence to show that at some time all living beings shall not be annihilated at once, and that forever after there shall be throughout the universe any intelligence whatever. Indeed, this very assumption involves itself a transcendent and supreme interest, and therefore from its very nature is unsusceptible of any support from reasons. This infinite hope which we all have (for even the atheist will constantly betray his calm expectation that what is Best will come about) is something so august and momentous, that all reasoning in reference to it is a trifling impertinence. We do not want to know what are the weights of reasons pro and con--that is, how much odds we should wish to receive on such a venture in the long run--because there is no long run in the case; the question is single and supreme, and ALL is at stake upon it. We are in the condition of a man in a life and death struggle; if he have not sufficient strength, it is wholly indifferent to him how he acts, so that the only assumption upon which he can act rationally is the hope of success. So this sentiment is rigidly demanded by logic. If its object were any determinate fact, any private interest, it might conflict with the results of knowledge and so with itself; but when its object is of a nature as wide as the community can turn out to be, it is always a hypothesis uncontradicted by facts and justified by its indispensibleness for making any action rational. 1. The word suppositio is one of the useful technical terms of the middle ages which was condemned by the purists of the renaissance as incorrect. The early logicians made a distinction between significatio and suppositio. Significatio is defined as "rei per vocem secundum placitum representatio." It is a mere affair of lexicography, and depends on a special convention (secundum placitum), and not on a general principle. Suppositio belongs, not directly to the vox, but to the vox as having this or that significatio. "Unde significatio prior est suppositione et differunt in hoc, quia significatio est vocis, suppositio vero est termini jam compositi ex voce et significatione." The various suppositiones which may belong to one word with one significatio are the different senses in which the word may be taken, according to the general principles of the language or of logic. Thus, the word table has different significationes in the expressions "table of logarithms" and "writing-table"; but the word man has one and the same significatio, and only different suppositiones, in the following sentences: "A man is an animal," "a butcher is a man," "man cooks his food," "man appeared upon the earth at such a date," &c. Some later writers have endeavored to make "acceptio" do service for "suppositio"; but it seems to me better, now that scientific terminology is no longer forbidden, to revive supposition. I should add that as the principles of logic and language for the different uses of the different parts of speech are different, supposition must be restricted to the acceptation of a substantive. The term copulatio was used for the acceptation of an adjective or verb. 2. "If any one will by ordinary syllogism prove that because every man is an animal, therefore every head of a man is a head of an animal, I shall be ready to--set him another question."--De Morgan: "On the Syllogism No. IV, and on the Logic of Relations." 3. Mr. Mill thinks the syllogism is merely a formula for recalling forgotten facts. Whether he means to deny, what all logicians since Kant have held, that the syllogism serves to render confused thoughts distinct, or whether he does not know that this is the usual doctrine, does not appear. 4. "So zeight sich jener Schlussatz dadurch als falsch, obgleich für sich dessen Prämissen und ebenso dessen Consequenz ganz richtig sind."--Hegel's Werke, vol. v, p. 124. 5. The usage of ordinary language has no relevancy in the matter. 6. This seems to me to be the main difficulty of freedom and fate. But the question is overlaid with many others. The Necessitarians seem now to maintain less that every physical event is completely determined by physical causes (which seems to me irrefragable), than that every act of will is determined by the strongest motive. This has never been proved. Its advocates seem to think that it follows from universal causation, but why need the cause of an act lie within the consciousness at all? If I act from a reason at all, I act voluntarily; but which of two reasons shall appear strongest to me on a particular occasion may be owing to what I have eaten for dinner. Unless there is a perfect regularity as to what is the strongest motive with me, to say that I act from the strongest motive is mere tautology. If there is no calculating how a man will act except by taking into account external facts, the character of his motives does not determine how he acts. Mill and others have, therefore, not shown that a man always acts from the strongest motive. Hobbes maintained that a man always acts from a reflection upon what will please him most. This is a very crude opinion. Men are not always thinking of themselves. Self-control seems to be the capacity for rising to an extended view of a practical subject instead of seeing only temporary urgency. This is the only freedom of which man has any reason to be proud; and it is because love of what is good for all on the whole, which is the widest possible consideration, is the essence of Christianity, that it is said that the service of Christ is perfect freedom. 7. This is the principle which was most usually made the basis of the resolution of the Insolubilia. See, for example, Pauli Veneti Sophismata Aurea. Sophisma 50. The authority of Aristotle is claimed for this mode of solution. Sophistici Elenchi, cap. 25. The principal objection which was made to this mode of solution, viz., that the principle that every proposition implies its own truth, cannot be proved, I believe that I have removed. The only arguments against the truth of this principle were based on the imperfect doctrines of modales and obligationes. Other methods of solution suppose that a part of a proposition cannot denote the whole proposition, or that no intellection is a formal cognition of itself. A solution of this sort will be found in Occam's Summa Totius Logices, 3d part of 3d part, cap. 38. Such modern authors as think the solution "very easy" do not understand its difficulties. See Mansel's Aldrich, p. 145. 8. Logic, Book 3, chap. 3, sec. 1. 9. Ibid. Book 3, chap. 21, sec. 1. "I am convinced that any one accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his imagination has once learnt to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random, without any fixed law; nor can anything in our experience or mental nature constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case. "Were we to suppose (what it is perfectly possible to imagine) that the present order of the universe were brought to an end, and that a chaos succeeded, in which there was no fixed succession of events, and the past gave no assurance of the future," &c. 10. Boole (Laws of Thought, p. 370) has shown, in a very simple and elegant manner, that an infinite number of balls may have characters distributed in such a way, that from the characters of the balls already drawn, we could infer nothing in regard to that of the characters of the next one. The same is true of some arrangements of a finite number of balls, provided the inference takes place after a fixed number of drawings. But this does not invalidate the reasoning above, although it is an important fact without doubt. |
Professor Porter'sHuman Intellect1
P 43:Nation 8(18 March 1869):211-13 |
The Rev. Dr. Porter, of Yale College, has published an important work upon that branch of psychology which relates to the faculties of cognition. Whatever be the judgment pronounced upon this treatise, no man can withhold his respect for the self-denying labor, both in the way of study and of composition, which has been devoted to its production. The size of the book is something stupendous. It is a large octavo of nearly seven hundred pages (printed, we regret to say, upon that harsh, cottony paper in which New York publishers seem to delight), in three sizes of print, of which the largest would not be unusual for a duodecimo while the smallest is painful to read. The work is designed primarily for a text-book, and the part in the largest type "is somewhat technically phrased and formally propounded in order that it may be learned more readily for the examinations of the class-room." But as the philosophical world was also to be addressed and the discussion must accordingly be carried in many places beyond the depth of learners, and inasmuch also as the author wisely thought it well to put more information into the hands of his scholars than they were to be positively required to master, the book has been more than doubled by the addition of matter in two sizes of small print, that in the middle-sized type being suitable for general students, and that in the smallest consisting chiefly of historical and critical notices. General readers in metaphysics will hardly find the book to their taste. The appearance of it is not inviting; the type is too small, the volume too large, and the paper disagreeable. A style studiously technical and formal, even if it were not stiff and awkward and of a magisterial tone, would not attract them. Nor is a compendium of 699 numbered sections, with scarcely any unity of conception developing through them all, precisely what such readers desire. But it is admirably fitted for a college text-book. The formal and bald manner in which the arguments on either side are laid down is eminently adapted to nourish the logical power of the student. Great pains have been taken to give a full and rigidly precise account of the meaning of the principal terms employed, thus inculcating one of the most essential requisites for accurate thinking upon abstract subjects. The author's talent for explaining words is well illustrated in the chapter upon consciousness. He shows somewhat more favor to modern German terminology than we should approve. For example, "sense-perception," instead of external perception, seems to us to have little to recommend it. The scholastic terminology forms a system at once precise and elastic. New terms can be constructed in accordance with the principles of it which may be understood by any one who is acquainted with these principles. This system, together with the accretions which it received in the seventeenth century, has the character of a somewhat obsolete but yet universal language; it is not confined to the philosophers of any particular nation, but is equally the possession of all. It is the basis of the actual English terminology, and has even passed in great degree into ordinary English speech. The modern German terminology, on the other hand, is unsettled and unsystematic; most of its single words correspond precisely to no single English words, and its method of compounding them is foreign to our conceptions of grammar. For these reasons, we think that the basis of English terminology should be allowed to remain as it actually is, scholastic; and certainly no one who favors a movement in the direction of Aristotelianism, as Dr. Porter partly does, should oppose this position. But once admit that such should be the basis of our terminology, and no doubt we should adhere to it consistently, except in cases in which it altogether fails us. In the present case it has not failed us. The phrase "external perception" would be quite intelligible to any educated person, even if it were a newly invented term. But in point of fact it is quite familiar both in English and in German. If it be objected that some persons believe in an external perception not through the senses, still Dr. Porter is not one of these; but even if it were judged proper to take account of that mystical and fictitious faculty, the term "external sensuous perception" might be adopted. Dr. Porter's using "representation" for imagination and memory appears to be another case of borrowing from the German. Representation is wanted in a general unpsychological sense, and as a psychological term it has already been used in two other senses besides that in which Dr. Porter takes it. Either "the representative faculty" or the "imagination" might have been employed advantageously in the last sense, as they were, in fact, by Hamilton. In using words cognate with "activity" we are inclined to suspect that Dr. Porter has been somewhat influenced by German usage, although we do not find that he anywhere defines any of these words, the ambiguity of which has often led writers into fallacies. Another character of the work which makes it suitable for purposes of instruction is the impartiality with which the whole ground is gone over, no one or more faculties or phenomena being dwelt upon at such inordinate length as to encroach upon the space due to the others. The student will consequently receive the best armor against plausible theories which answer well for the facts that concern one mental process, but which may conflict with those that concern another. Another merit is that in the smaller type the student will generally find some notice of doctrines not contained in the text he is required to learn, and some references to the books in which those doctrines are maintained. Accordingly, when he has once become thoroughly familiar with this treatise by a year's study of it, it will always serve him as an invaluable index of reference in any further psychological studies which he may choose to pursue. We must not omit to say that the doctrines which it teaches are entirely conformable to orthodox theology, and quite free from any materialistic leanings. A young mind thoroughly imbued with Dr. Porter's teachings will be likely to get its philosophy so bound up with its religion that it cannot part with either unless it parts with the other. The historical notices are full and valuable. They do not cover every important question, and in some places, as where psychology trends upon logic, are comparatively meagre; but some account is given of most of the more prominent discussions. These notices, considered as criticisms, will be thought by some to carry but little weight and to present no very noticeable characteristics. Considered as statements of fact, they are learned. The accounts of ancient opinions have evidently not been written without a study of the latest commentaries. In what relates to the history of the Scotch and English schools, even professed students of philosophy will find much that is fresh and instructive. The great defect of this part of the book is that, as a general rule, no account whatever is given of recent works, these being cited only by title. This omission detracts very seriously in some cases from the value of the book. Twenty-five pages of the finest print are devoted to an account of the various theories of perception without the least mention, except by title, of the writings of Fechner, Wundt, Trendelenburg, George, Lotze, and others, whose investigations may truly be said to be of more value than all the others put together. Mediæval doctrines, which are seldom intelligibly treated, are not treated intelligibly here. The reader is for the most part expected to gather the opinions of the masters and doctors from single quoted sentences, which are often utterly meaningless or even misleading to those who have not given special attention to scholastic philosophy. Take for example the account of nominalism and realism on pages 405-407. What is a person not already acquainted with the subject to make of the statement that a certain master taught that a universal is "indifferenter" in all the singulars under it? How correct a notion is he likely to form of Abelard's doctrine from being told that he "sermones intuetur et ad illos detorquet quicquid alicubi de universalibus meminit scriptum"? Will he understand, as he should, that the sermo means a word actually in application by the mind as a predicate? Considering the historical importance of Roscellin, and considering the fact that, though an extreme nominalist, his doctrines were associated with those of Scotus Erigena, who was a sort of Platonistic idealist, is it quite sufficiently explaining his views to quote that sentence of Anselm's in which he is said to have thought that universal substances are the breath of the voice, that the wisdom of man is the soul, and that color is the colored body? It would have been easy to explain, first, that the vox was regarded by grammarians of that age as something incorporeal, because it is produced by the percussion of the palate and the air, but is not either, and because a natural motion cannot produce a new body, and also because the vox is in several ears at once, whereas a body can only be in one place at one time; that we have positive reason to think that Roscellin believed this; that, in the second place, reasoning (as we may suppose) like others in that age from such facts as that the same line which, when measured by one measure (a foot) is equal to two, when measured by another (an inch) is equal to twenty-four, and that the wall of a house is on the one hand a whole in itself and on the other a part of a house, he came to believe (as we are positively informed) that all mathematical relations--that is, all relations of parts and whole--exist not in the body itself, but only in the incorporeal words which may be applied to it; and that, thirdly, he thence inferred that those universal essences of things, genera and species, since they essentially have parts and are parts, themselves are not things, but incorporeal voces. Of any interruption in the course of the controversy between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries our author tells us nothing, although the discovery of all the works of Aristotle except the two short treatises already known, and of the writings of the Arabian commentators, had in the interval between Abelard and Albertus so changed the whole face of scholasticism that it is rarely indeed that any writer of the twelfth century except Peter Lombard and Gilbertus Porretanus is quoted at all in the thirteenth. The facts that Albertus had properly no opinion of his own and that that of St. Thomas was very vacillating (as was notorious in the fourteenth century) are not mentioned. Scotus's realism is said to be identical with that of these writers except as to the hæcceity; but the difference is more important. The Thomistic view was that of the two elements of the individual thing--that is to say, the matter and the form, or that which makes it to be, and that which makes it, if it is to be, to be as as it is--the form is always universal, the matter, or at least signate matter (this or that matter), is always singular. Their union is an individual, but it is a union in which the form is as such actually universal in itself. Scotus admitted that in the singular thing there is nothing actually universal; all generality results from a relation of reason. Nevertheless, when a general predicate is attached by the mind to a thing, the proposition so formed may be true, and since the same predicate may also be truly asserted of other things, it is true that there is something in the thing which, though actually contracted to the grade of singularity, is in its own nature not repugnant to being predicated of many. There is, then, a distinction between a predicate predicated of many and the singular forms in the several things by virtue of which the same general predicate is true. Yet since this general predicate is true, it really is in the several things, although it is there in the grade of singularity and identified with these singular forms. Thus there is a really, but only potentially, general form in the singular thing which yet in that thing in itself does not differ from the singular thing. This is the famous doctrine of formal distinctions, which is the central idea of the whole Scotistic philosophy. This formed also the very point of Occam's attack, for his whole notion of a reality was that of a thing which is in itself whatever it really is. This he was able to see must be something devoid of all quality and all relations. All qualities and relations, according to him, are terms, subjects and predicates of written, spoken, or thought propositions; and the qualities and relations of things can consist in nothing except that the mind naturally applies to them such and such terms. Prof. Porter says the controversy came to a close early in the fourteenth century, but Occam did not die until 1347, and it certainly raged with the greatest fury after his death. The Scotch school of philosophy, to which this work belongs, is too old a tree to bear good fruit. Its method consists in an appeal to consciousness--that is to say, to what all men know and know that they know (p. 113)--supported by some familiar facts and occasional anecdotes. Such a procedure is not wholly useless. The common sense of mankind has so little impulse to seek explanations of facts that it is hardly tempted to twist them, and he who busies himself with reproducing ordinary beliefs is free from so deep an absorption in laborious experiments and observations as to overlook what lies upon the surface. The great mistake of writers of this sort has been that they have had an ambition to be more than accurate describers of common beliefs and unanalyzed facts. That natural self-consciousness, when heightened by direct effort, becomes a scientific knowledge of the soul, is not the doctrine of modern psychology. This opinion is disappearing, and with it will probably disappear some of that morbid tendency to introspection, the prevalence of which justified the advice given by the editor of a magazine to a contributor, "Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet." The efforts which Dr. Porter recommends, "to hope and fear again and again, simply that we may know more exactly how it seems or what it is to perform [sic] or experience these states," to say nothing of their double futility (for we cannot so hope and fear, and if we could it would teach us little of the essence of these emotions), are very unwholesome. Within the Scottish school we should suppose that this book must take a very high rank. Indeed, as long as Mr. Mansel (even if he properly belongs to that school) produces nothing more, we do not see what living writer, unless it be Dr. McCosh, is to dispute with Dr. Porter the honor of the very first place. In the character of his genius and learning more like Dugald Stewart than any of the other coryphæi of that philosophy, Dr. Porter's relation to Scotch psychology is somewhat similar to that of Hamilton, inasmuch as he modifies the pure Scotch opinions by an admixture of the prevalent German views. As Hamilton treated high metaphysics upon modified Kantian principles, so Porter imports into the same branch of philosophy considerations which have been derived in large measure from the study of Trendelenburg. His metaphysic starts, as it ought, with a theory of inductive reasoning. He holds that the reason why an innumerable number of instances will not justify the inference that all swans are white, while a single instance would suffice to show that all men's heads are placed upon their shoulders, is because a failure of the latter induction, unlike a failure of the former, would be "entirely incompatible with the ideal of beauty and convenience to which we assume that nature would certainly conform." Since then the validity of induction rests upon certain assumptions of this sort, these assumptions are not themselves demonstrable either by induction or otherwise, but are original and self-evident truths. These intuitions are as follows: 1st, that an object is either substance or attribute; 2d, that objects originate by a causative energy; 3d, that objects are in space and time; 4th, that properties and laws which are known indicate and signify other properties and laws; 5th, that nature adapts objects and powers to certain ends; and 6th, that the rational methods of the divine and human minds are similar. These ultimate facts and relations are not learned by the ordinary processes of thought, imagination, and perception. They are "not apprehended by, but involved in, these processes," and must, therefore, be referred to a separate faculty. They are first apprehended in a concrete, not in an abstract, form. We do not set out with the universal belief that every event has a cause, but as we apprehend each separate object by perception or consciousness we apprehend it as caused. Such apprehension is a proposition, and from such propositions are derived the various concepts, substance and attribute, cause and effect, means and end, etc. These concepts being apprehended abstractly and compared with the processes of cognition are found to be essentially involved in them all. Finally, it is perceived that over against all objects of experience, as having these various relations of dependence, there must be some independent correlates upon which they depend. Thus all things being extended, there must be a space; in correlation with all things as being caused there must be a First Cause, etc. The whole argument upon this subject, which occupies some two hundred pages, is followed out with great ability. It will be perceived that this theory of intuition has a general resemblance to that of Dr. McCosh. It is easy to see upon what side such a theory may expect attack. Its essence is that the process by which we attain our first knowledge of these fundamental ideas is essentially different from the other processes of the mind. Now, if it were shown that all the other mental processes, whether of cognition, emotion, or action, were essentially one, it would be hard to prevent men from believing that this process alone did not conform to their common formula. Accordingly, it is not surprising that we find throughout Dr. Porter's work a tendency to exaggerate the distinctions between the faculties and to overrate the importance of these distinctions, and to explain facts by the general supposition of a peculiar faculty even when such a supposition requires it to be as complex as the facts themselves, in order to explain them in detail. But though the reader of this book would scarcely suspect it, there is a movement which is steadily coming to a head towards identifying all the faculties. It is the motive of all sensualism, it is the latest mood of psycho-physical inquirers, and it is beginning to be consciously felt even in this country. If that doctrine should once be established, it would not avail Dr. Porter's theory that he had correctly answered the question why the inference that all men carry their heads upon their shoulders is so strong, because it would appear that the principle of design which effects this inference is only a derivative one, and that the only assumption which can enter into every induction is no assumption about the things reasoned upon at all. Dr. Porter's opinion is, that the assumptions involved in induction are the only basis of religion; but the only assumption which can be essentially involved in scientific inference is the assumption of the validity of scientific inference. But to make the validity of scientific inference the only possible basis of religion approaches very near to pure rationalism--a doctrine that is not in the interest of religion, because it subordinates religion to science. We are inclined to suspect that the metaphysician, whether spiritualist or materialist, is in this dilemma; either he must look upon his problems with the cold eye of science, and have no other feeling for the eternal interests of man than the curiosity with which he would examine a trilobite; and then, being in a state of mind essentially irreligious, he can arrive at no result that would really help religion, for at most he can only say to mortal man that it is most likely that there is a God, which is no assurance; or he must bring the feelings of a religious man into the inquiry, and then he is as incompetent to treat the problem as a physician is to judge of his own case. Can it possibly be, that the directest and most uncritical faith in the object which commands one's adoration--the faith of a little child--is the only actual motive to religion which there ever has been or ever will be, and that all reasonings pro or con upon the fundamental proposition of religion must be entirely irrelevant and unsatisfactory? 1. The Human Intellect; with an Introduction upon Psychology and the Soul. By Noah Porter, D.D., Clarke Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics in Yale College. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1868. 8vo, pp. 673. |
MS 158: November-December 1869 The president requested me to deliver nine lectures upon the history of logic. I have limited the subject to British Logicians, but even with this limitation I have a subject which would require for an adequate treatment not less than ten times the number of lectures I have to give. I am under the necessity therefore of treating it in an altogether fragmentary manner and you must not be surprized that I leave quite out of account some of the most famous names. Let it be understood in the first place that I do not come here to air my own opinions or even to talk about logic at all but purely and solely about a branch of history,--the history of logical thought in the British Islands. In such imperfect manner as the time will allow I shall endeavor to show you how this subject appeared to the chief thinkers in England and reproduce their state of mind. But whether they were right or wrong will be for you and me a question altogether to be neglected, for that is a question of philosophy and not of history. This history of logic is not altogether without an interest as a branch of history. For so far as the logic of an age adequately represents the methods of thought of that age, its history is a history of the human mind in its most essential relation,--that is to say with reference to its power of investigating truth. But the chief value of the study of historical philosophy is that it disciplines the mind to regard philosophy in a cold and scientific eye and not with passion as though philosophers were contestants. British Logic is a
subject of some particular interest inasmuch as some peculiar lines
of thought have always been predominant in those islands, giving their
logicians a certain family resemblance, which already begins to appear
in very early times. The most striking characteristic of British thinkers
is their nominalistic tendency. This has always been and is now very
marked. So much so that in England and in England alone are there
many thinkers more distinguished at this day as being nominalistic
than as holding any other doctrines. William Ockham or Oakum, an Englishman,
is beyond question the greatest nominalist that ever lived; while
Duns Scotus, another British name, it is equally certain is the subtilest
advocate of the opposite opinion. These two men Duns Scotus and William
Ockham are decidedly the greatest speculative minds of the middle
ages, as well as two of the profoundest metaphysicians that ever lived.
Another circumstance which makes Logic of the British Islands interesting
is that there more than elsewhere have the studies of the logic of
the natural sciences been made. Already we find some evidence of English
thought running in that direction, when we meet with that singular
phenomenon Roger Bacon,--a man who was scientific before science began.
At the first dawn of the age of science, Francis Bacon wrote that
professedly and really logical treatise the Novum Organum,
a work the celebrity of which perhaps exceeds its real merits. In
our own day, the writings of Whewell, Mill, and Herschel afford some
of the finest accounts of the method of thought in science. Another
direction in which logical thought has gone farther in England than
elsewhere is in mathematico-formal logic,--the chief writers on which
are Boole, De Morgan, and the Scotch Sir Wm. Hamilton,--for although
Hamilton was so bitter against mathematics, that his own doctrine
of the quantified predicate is essentially mathematical is beyond
intelligent dispute. This fondness for the formal part of logic already
appeared in the middle ages, when the nominalistic school of Ockham--the
most extremely scholastic of the scholastics--and next to them the
school of Scotus--carried to the utmost the doctrines of the Parva
Logicalia which were the contribution of those ages to this branch
of the science. And those Parva Logicalia may themselves have
had an English origin for the earliest known writer upon the subject--unless
the Synopsis You perceive therefore how intimately modern and medieval thought are connected in England--more so than in Germany or France; and therefore how indispensible it is that we should begin our history at a very early date. But here comes a stupendous difficulty. If I were to devote the whole of my nine lectures to medieval philosophy I could not enable you to read a page of Scotus or of Ockham understandingly nor even give you a good general idea of their historical position. I shall content myself therefore with some remarks upon their nominalism and realism with special reference to their relations to modern doctrines concerning generals. And as preliminary to those remarks I will in this lecture give a very slight sketch of the great strife between the nominalists and realists which took place in the 12th century. All real acquaintance with Scholasticism died out in the 17th century, and it was not till late in our own that the study of it was taken up again. Even now the later ages are little understood but the great logical controversies of the 12th century have been pretty well studied. Cousin began the investigation, by publishing some logical works of Abaelard, together with other works which he wrongly attributed to the author, and by writing an introduction to them in which he gave his conception of the dispute. These contributions of Cousin are contained in his Ouvrages Inédits d'Abélard, which forms one of the volumes of the Documents relatives à l'Histoire de France and in the second edition of his Fragments Philosophiques: Philosophie Scholastique. Hauréau in his Histoire de la philosophie scholastique, de Rémusat in his Abélard, Jourdain in his Recherches critiques sur la connaissance d'Aristote dans le moyen age, and Barach in his Nominalismus vor Roscellinus have brought to light other important documents relative to this subject. The works of Anselm, John of Salisbury, and Alanus of Lille, the Liber sex principiorum of Gilbertus, the same author's commentary on the three books De Trinitate falsely attributed to Boethius, and Abaelard's letters to Heloise and his Introductio in Theologiam--works having an important bearing upon this part of logical history--were already in our possession. The best account of the dispute is contained in Prantl's great Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, chapter 14. The most striking characteristic of medieval thought is the importance attributed to authority. It was held that authority and reason were two coördinate methods of arriving at truth, and far from holding that authority was secondary to reason, the scholastics were much more apt to place it quite above reason. When Berengarius in his dispute with Lanfranc remarked that the whole of an affirmation does not stand after a part is subverted, his adversary replied: "The sacred authorities being relinquished you take refuge in dialectic, and when I am to hear and to answer concerning the ministry of the Faith, I prefer to hear and to answer the sacred authorities which are supposed to relate to the subject than dialectical reasons." To this Berengarius replied that St. Augustine in his book De doctrina christiana says that what he said concerning an affirmation is bound up indissolubly with that very eternity of truth which is God. But added "Maximi plane cordis est, per omnia ad dialecticam confugere, quia confugere ad eam ad rationem est confugere, quo qui non confugit, cum secundum rationem sit factus ad imaginem Dei, suum honorem reliquit, nec potest renovari de die in diem ad imaginem Dei." Next to sacred authorities--the Bible, the church, and the fathers,--that of Aristotle of course ranked the highest. It could be denied, but the presumption was immense against his being wrong on any particular point. Such a weight being attached to authority,--a weight which would be excessive were not the human mind at that time in so uneducated a state that it could not do better than follow masters since it was totally incompetent to solve metaphysical problems for itself,--it follows naturally that originality of thought was not greatly admired but that on the contrary the admirable mind was his who succeeded in interpreting consistently the dicta of Aristotle, Porphyry, and Boethius. Vanity, therefore, the vanity of cleverness was a vice from which the schoolmen were remarkably free. They were minute and thorough in their knowledge of such authorities as they had, and they were equally minute and thorough in their treatment of every question which came up. All these characters remind us less of the philosophers of our day than of the men of science. I do not hesitate to say that scientific men now think much more of authority than do metaphysicians; for in science a question is not regarded as settled or its solution as certain until all intelligent and informed doubt has ceased and all competent persons have come to a catholic agreement, whereas 50 metaphysicians each holding opinions that no one of the other 49 can admit, will nevertheless severally regard their 50 opposite opinions as more certain than that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is to have what seems an absurd disregard for others' opinions; the man of science attaches a positive value to the opinion of every man as competent as himself so that he cannot but have a doubt of a conclusion which he would adopt were it not that a competent man opposes it; but on the other hand, he will regard a sufficient divergence from the convictions of the great body of scientific men as tending of itself to argue incompetence and he will generally attach little weight to the opinions of men who have long been dead and were ignorant of much that has been since discovered which bears upon the question in hand. The schoolmen however attached the greatest authority to men long since dead and there they were right for in the dark ages it was not true that the later state of human knowledge was the most perfect but on the contrary. I think it may be said then that the schoolmen did not attach too much weight to authority although they attached much more to it than we ought to do or than ought or could be attached to it in any age in which science is pursuing a successful and onward course--and of course infinitely more than is attached to it by those intellectual nomads the modern metaphysicians, including the positivists. In the slight importance they attached to a brilliant theory, the schoolmen also resembled modern scientific men, who cannot be comprehended in this respect at all by men not scientific. The followers of Herbert Spencer, for example, cannot comprehend why scientific men place Darwin so infinitely above Spencer, since the theories of the latter are so much grander and more comprehensive. They cannot understand that it is not the sublimity of Darwin's theories which makes him admired by men of science, but that it is rather his minute, systematic, extensive, and strict scientific researches which have given his theories a more favorable reception--theories which in themselves would barely command scientific respect. And this misunderstanding belongs to all those metaphysicians who fancy themselves men of science on account of their metaphysics. This same scientific spirit has been equally misunderstood as it is found in the schoolmen. They have been above all things found fault with because they do not write a literary style and do not "study in a literary spirit." The men who make this objection can not possibly comprehend the real merits of modern science. If the words quidditas, entitas, and haecceitas, are to excite our disgust, what shall we say of the Latin of the botanists, and the style of any technically scientific work. As for that phrase "studying in a literary spirit" it is impossible to express how nauseating it is to any scientific man, yes even to the scientific linguist. But above all things it is the searching thoroughness of the schoolmen which affiliates them with men of science and separates them, world-wide, from modern so-called philosophers. The thoroughness I allude to consists in this that in adopting any theory, they go about everywhere, they devote their whole energies and lives, in putting it to tests bona fide--not such as shall merely add a new spangle to the glitter of their proofs but such as shall really go towards satisfying their restless insatiable impulse to put their opinions to the test. Having a theory they must apply it to every subject and to every branch of every subject to see whether it produces a result in accordance with the only criteria they were able to apply--the truth of the catholic faith and the teaching of the Prince of Philosophers. Mr. George Henry Lewes in his work on Aristotle seems to me to have come pretty near to stating the true cause of the success of modern science when he has said that it was Verification. I should express it in this way: modern students of science have been successful, because they have spent their lives not in their libraries and museums but in their laboratories and in the field--and while in their laboratories and in the field they have been not gazing on nature with a vacant eye, that is in passive perception unassisted by thought--but have been observing--that is perceiving by the aid of analysis,--and testing suggestions of theories. The cause of their success has been that the motive which has carried them to the laboratory and the field has been a craving to know how things really were and an interest in finding out whether or not general propositions actually held good--which has overbalanced all prejudice, all vanity, and all passion. Now it is plainly not an essential part of this method in general, that the tests were made by the observation of natural objects. For the immense progress which modern mathematics has made is also to be explained by the same intense interest in testing general propositions and particular cases--only the tests were applied by means of particular demonstrations. This is observation, still, for as the great mathematician Gauss has declared--Algebra is a science of the eye,--only it is observation of artificial objects and of a highly recondite character. Now this same unwearied interest in testing general propositions is what produced those long rows of folios of the schoolmen,--and if the test which they employed is of only limited validity so that they could not unhampered go on indefinitely to further discoveries, yet the spirit, which is the most essential thing--the motive, was nearly the same. And how different this spirit is from that of the major part, though not all, of modern philosophers--even of those who have called themselves empirical, no man who is actuated by it can fail to perceive. One consequence of the dependence of logical thought in the middle ages upon Aristotle is that the state of development of logic at any time may be measured by the amount of Aristotle's writings which were known to the Western world. At the time of the great discussion between the nominalists and realists in the 12th century the only works of Aristotle which were thoroughly known were the Categories and Peri Hermeneias, two small treatises forming less than a sixtieth of his works as we now know them and of course a much smaller proportion of them as they originally existed. There was also some knowledge of the Prior Analytics but not much. Porphyry's introduction to the categories was well known and the authority of it was nearly equal to that of Aristotle. This treatise concerns the logical nature of genus, species, difference, property, and accident; and is a work of great value and interest. A sentence of this book is said by Cousin to have created scholastic philosophy, which is as true as such eminently French statements usually are. It is however correct that it was in great measure the study of this book which resulted in course of time in the discussion concerning nominalism and realism; but to mistake this discussion for all scholastic philosophy argues great ignorance of the subject,--an ignorance excusable when Cousin wrote but not now. Before we come to this dispute it will be well to give a glance at the state of opinions upon the subject before the dispute began and as these opinions were much influenced by Scotus Erigena, I will say a word or two about this man. Scotus Erigena was an Irishman who lived in the ninth century,--when Ireland was very far beyond the rest of Western Europe in intellectual culture,--when in fact Ireland alone had any learning,--and was sending missionaries to France, England, and Germany who first roused these countries from utter barbarism. He has excited great interest in our own day and many books have been written about him. Various editions of his different works have been published of which the most important is his De Divisione Naturae. Hauréau has in the 21st volume of the Notices of manuscripts of the French academy published some extracts from a gloss supposed to be by him upon Porphyry. Works upon his Life and Writings of Scotus have been published by Hjort, Staudenmaier, Taillandier, Möller, Christlieb, and Huber. Although he is not chiefly a logician his writings are of great interest for this history of logic and I should gladly devote several lectures to the consideration of them. This pleasure I must deny myself and shall speak of Scotus Erigena not to explain his position but only to throw a light on those who followed after him and were influenced by him. He is usually and rightly reckoned as an extreme realist and yet the extremest nominalists such as Roscellin were regarded as his followers. How could this be? For one thing we perceive that Erigena attaches a vast importance to words. In consequence of this he seems to suppose that non-existences are as real as existences. He begins his work De divisione naturae by dividing all things into those which are and those which are not. In another place he declares that no philosopher rightly denies that possibles and impossibles are to be reckoned among the number of things. And such expressions are in fact constantly met with in his works. He does not seem to see that as the ancient philosopher said "Being only is and nothing is altogether not." Thus he says that the name Nothing signifies the ineffable, incomprehensible, and inaccessible brightness of the Divine nature which is unknown to every understanding of man or of Angel, which "dum per se ipsam cogitatur" neither is nor was nor will be. And he describes creation as the production out of the negations of things which are and which are not, the affirmations of all things which are and which are not. Again he says "Darkness is not nothing but something; otherwise the Scripture would not say 'and God called the light day and the darkness he called night'." Thus you perceive he has the idea that the immediate immaterial object of a name is something. |
MS 160: November-December 1869 As Scotus was the chief of the formalists who were the most consistent realists; so William of Ockam was the head of the terminists who were the most consistent of nominalists. The chief peculiarity of Scotus was the importance he attached to formalitates or modes of conception; that of Ockam was the importance he attached to terms, in the logical sense. I shall begin what I have to say about Ockam by reading with you the first few pages of his textual logic. He has departed here from the usual method, that of writing commentaries, because he wished to present his thoughts in an order chosen by himself and therefore the order which he adopts becomes of more than usual consequence. This logic is divided in 3 parts and each part into chapters. I propose to run over the first 17 chapters, giving you the substance of each. "Omnes logice tractatores intendunt astruere per argumenta quod sillogismi ex propositionibus et propositiones ex terminis componuntur. Unde terminus aliud non est quam pars propinqua propositionis." All systematical writers on logic conceive that they discover by means of arguments that syllogisms of propositions, propositions of terms are composed. So a term is nothing but one of the parts into which a proposition may be directly resolved. In order however that we may have a perfectly distinct conception of this important subject, he draws a distinction in reference to terms which plays a large part in nominalism. Terms are written, spoken, or conceived. "Triplex est terminus, scriptus, prolatus, et conceptus." |
The written term is a part of a proposition which has been inscribed on something material and is capable of being seen by the bodily eye. The spoken term is a part of a proposition which has been uttered aloud and is capable of being heard with the bodily ear. The conceptual term is an intention or impression of the soul which signifies or consignifies something naturally and is capable of being a part of mental proposition and of suppositing in such a proposition for the thing it signifies. Thus, these conceptual terms and the propositions composed of them are the mental words which, according to St. Augustine in chapter 15 of De Trinitate, belong to no language. They reside in the intellect alone and are incapable of being uttered aloud, although the spoken words which are subordinated to them as signs are uttered aloud. I say that spoken words are signs subordinated to concepts or intentions of the soul not because in the strict sense of 'signify' they always signify the concepts of the soul primarily and properly. The point is rather that spoken words are used to signify the very things that are signified by concepts of the mind, so that a concept primarily and naturally signifies something and a spoken word signifies the same thing secondarily. Thus, suppose a spoken word is used to signify something signified by a particular concept of the mind. If that concept were to change its signification, by that fact alone it would happen that the spoken word would change its signification, even in the absence of any new linguistic convention. This is all that Aristotle means when he says that spoken words are signs of the impressions of the soul and Boethius means the same thing when he says that spoken words signify concepts. In general, whenever writers say that all spoken words signify or serve as signs of impressions, they only mean that spoken words secondarily signify the things impressions of the soul primarily signify. Nonetheless, it is true that some spoken words primarily designate impressions of the soul or concepts, but these words secondarily designate other intentions of the soul as will be shown later. The same sort of relation I have claimed to hold between spoken words and impressions or intentions or concepts holds between written words and spoken words. Now, there are certain differences among these three kinds of terms. For one thing the concept or impression of the soul signifies naturally; whereas the spoken or written term signifies only conventionally. This difference gives rise to a further difference. We can decide to alter the signification of a spoken or written term, but no decision or agreement on the part of anyone can have the effect of altering the signification of a conceptual term. Nevertheless, to silence hairsplitters it should be pointed out that the word 'sign' has two different senses. In one sense a sign is anything which when apprehended brings something else to mind. Here, a sign need not, as has been shown elsewhere, enable us to grasp the thing signified for the first time, but only after we have some sort of habitual knowledge of the thing. In this sense of 'sign' the spoken word is a natural sign of a thing, the effect is a sign of its cause, and the barrel-hoop is a sign of wine in the tavern. However, I have not been using the term 'sign' in this wide sense. In another sense a sign is anything which (1) brings something to mind and can supposit for that thing; (2) can be added to a sign of this sort in a proposition (e.g., syncategorematic expressions, verbs, and other parts of speech lacking a determinate signification); or (3) can be composed of things that are signs of either sort (e.g., propositions). Taking the term 'sign' in this sense the spoken word is not the natural sign of anything. |
This is of little importance. He observes that a term may be taken in three senses. 1st For all that can be copula or extreme of a categorical proposition. In which sense a proposition is a term since it may be the subject of a proposition. 2nd It may be taken so as to exclude propositions. 3rd Precisely and more strictly for that which significatively taken can be the subject or predicate of a proposition. In this sense when we say of is a preposition--of is not a term because it is not significatively taken, significative sumptum but only simpliciter or materialit[er] in scholastic phraseology. On Chapter 3. He remarks that not only are terms divided into written, spoken, and conceived, but also that these are up to a certain point subdivided together. For example not only are written and vocal terms divided into Nouns and Verbs--but Mental terms are also divided in Mental nouns and verbs. There are therefore some grammatical distinctions which belong at once to written, vocal, and mental terms. But there are others which belong only to written and vocal terms and not to mental terms. For instance there may be a doubt whether the distinction between verbs and participles exists in mental terms since a participle with est expresses sufficiently the same meaning as the verb: is running is the same as runs. This being the case there does not seem to be any great necessity of supposing such a plurality in the mental propositions and terms as there is in the vocal propositions and terms. And he lays down the principle that those distinctions of words which have been invented not on account of a need of signifying but for ornament are not to be supposed to exist in mental terms. He then runs rapidly through the various grammatical accidents and states what ones he conceives to be mental and what ones merely vocal. This chapter has a significance which one who did not thoroughly understand the distinction between nominalism and realism would hardly suspect. And I will ask you to consider it a moment. Ockam endeavors to say what is and what is not a mental distinction. And his only means of determining it is by ascertaining what distinction is required by the necessity of signification. But this test can only determine whether a distinction must be mental or whether it need not be. And this he himself recognizes apparently, for he says "Utrum autem participiis vocalibus et scriptis correspondeant in mente quedam intentiones a verbis distincte potest esse dubium eo quod non videtur magna necessitas talem pluralitatem ponere in propositionibus mentalibus sine terminis." It may be that the mental grammatical accidents are precisely those which belong to the Latin language or it may be that they are more various than and altogether different from those of any known language. And therefore it may be that the list of mental grammatical accidents which Ockam by his method obtains bears but a slight resemblance to the true list. Yet if this be so it remains certain that the list which he ought to obtain by his method comprises the only ones which need be considered in logic, those omitted being mere accidental variations of our mental language and not springing from the necessity of signification. There is then a peculiar importance in those distinctions which arise from the needs of signifying, over and above such importance as they may derive from their being mental distinctions. Yet these distinctions are not such as there are between different things. You cannot divide things into those that are signified by nouns and those that are signified by verbs--yet the distinction between noun and verb arises from the needs of signifying. So does most certainly that between a noun and a pronoun but you cannot divide things into those pointed out by nouns and those pointed out by pronouns. So does that between singular and plural but you cannot separate men into singular men and plural men. Thus it appears that there is a distinction greater than a distinction merely in mentalibus and yet less than a distinction between different things or a distinctio realis. In other words there is such a distinction as the Scotistic distinctio formalis. You will understand that I say this not because I believe it to be true or wish you to do so,--for throughout this course I care nothing whatever for the truth of logical doctrines--but only because I want to point out how differently a Scotist would regard this matter from what Ockam does. In point of fact this chapter of Ockam's is distinctly anti-Scotistical and if he refutes the realistic position on the basis of the conclusions of this chapter, a Scotist might say that his reasoning was vitiated here. Scotus's earliest work probably was his Grammatica Speculativa which is I suppose the earliest attempt at a Philosophy of Grammar. In this work he has discussed the same question here treated by Ockam. Of this work I will read the first six chapters. |
1 The rationale of the method. In all science, understanding and knowledge derive from a recognition of its principles, as stated in I Physicorum, Text Comment 1; we therefore, wishing to know the science of grammar, insist that it is necessary first of all to know its principles which are the modes of signifying. But before we enquire into their particular features, we must first set forth some of their general features without which it is not possible to obtain the fullest understanding of them. Of these, the first and most important is, in what way is a mode of signifying divided and described? The second is, what does the mode of signifying basically originate from? Thirdly, what is the mode of signifying directly derived from? Fourthly, in what way are the mode of signifying, the mode of understanding, and the mode of being differentiated? The fifth is, in what way is the mode of signifying subjectively arrived at? The sixth is, what order obtains for the following terms in relation to one another, ie sign, word, part of speech, and terminus? How the mode of signifying is to be divided and described. 2 The mode of signifying introduces two factors. The active and passive modes of signifying. Concerning the first, it must be said that the mode of signifying introduces equal factors which are called the active and passive modes of signifying. The active mode of signifying is the mode or property of the expression vouchsafed by the intellect to itself by means of which the expression signifies the property of the thing. The passive mode of signifying is the mode or property of the thing as signified by the expression. And because 'signifying and consignifying' imply being active and 'being signified' and 'being consignified' imply being acted upon, hence we can say that the mode or property of the expression by means of which the expression actively signifies the property of the thing is called the active mode of signifying; but the mode or property of the thing, in as much as it is signified passively by expressions, is called the passive mode of signifying. 3 The intellect attributes a double faculty to the expression. In addition, it must be noted that, since the intellect uses the expression for signifying and consignifying, it attributes to it a double faculty, [a] the faculty of signifying, which can be called signification by means of which a sign or significant is effected, and so it is formally a word; and [b] the faculty of consignifying which is called the active mode of signifying by means of which the signifying expression creates the cosign or consignificant, and so it is formally a part of speech. Therefore, a part of speech is such accordingly by means of this faculty of consignifying or active mode of signifying according to an instance of the formal principle; however, it is a part of speech in relation to other parts of speech by virtue of this same active faculty of consignifying according to the intrinsic efficient principle. From which, it is clear that the active faculties of consignifying or active modes of signifying in and of themselves refer primarily to grammar, inasmuch that they are principles relevant to grammar. But the passive faculties of consignifying or passive modes of signifying are not relevant, except accidentally, to grammar, because they are neither a formal nor an efficient principle of a part of a speech, since they may be properties of things; they may be relevant only insofar as their formal aspect is concerned, since in this way they do not differ greatly from the active modes of signifying, as we shall see. From what does the mode of signifying basically originate. 4 Every active mode of signifying comes from some property of the thing. It should be noted immediately that since faculties of this kind or active modes of signifying are not fictions, it follows necessarily that every active mode of signifying must originate basically from some property of the thing. It is clear therefore, that since the intellect classifies the expression for the purpose of signifying under some active mode of signifying, it is referring to the property itself of the thing from which it originally derives the active mode of signifying; it is also clear that the understanding, since it may be a passive capacity undefined by itself, does not apply to the prescribed act unless it is determined from another source. Hence since it classifies the expression for the purpose of signifying by means of a prescribed active mode of signifying, it is necessarily occasioned by a prescribed property of the thing. Therefore some property or mode of being of the thing corresponds to some active mode of signifying or other. 5 But if the objection to this is made that, since a significative expression such as deitas has feminine gender which is a passive mode of signifying, nevertheless the property is not mutually correspondent in the thing signified, because it is a property of being acted upon, and feminine gender arises from this. Similarly, negations and fictions fall under no properties whatsoever since they are not entities, and yet the significative expressions of negations and fictions have active modes of signifying, eg: caecitas (blindness), chimaera (chimera), etc. It must be said that it does not follow that the active mode of signifying of a word is always drawn from the property of the thing of that word of which it is a mode of signifying, but it can be derived from a property of the thing of another word and attributed to the thing of that word, and it suffices that these should not be incompatible. And because we do not understand separate substances unless perceived by the senses, therefore we give names to them by means of the properties of the senses and assign active modes of signifying to their names. Hence, there is, in reality, no passive property in God, yet we imagine Him, as it were, being acted upon by our prayers. Similarly we understand negations from their features, therefore we classify their names under the properties of their features and assign active modes of signifying to their names. Similarly in relation to the names of figments, the active modes of signifying are taken from the properties of the parts from which, for example, we imagine Chimaera to be composed, in that we imagine it to be composed of the head of a lion and the tail of a dragon; and so on. 6 And if it is insisted, that if the active modes of signifying in relation to the names of negations are taken from the modes of being of their features, then they designate the names of the actual existing feature and not of the negations. From such a standpoint, the names of the negations by means of their own active modes of signifying will be false from the point of view of consignification. It must be said that it is not true, that the names of the negations, certainly do not by means of their active modes of signifying, designate with reference to the negations the modes of understanding of the negations which are their modes of being. In consequence of which it can be stated that although negations may not be positive entities outside the mind, they are however positive entities in the mind, as is shown in IV Met. Text 9, and are entities according to the mind. And because their conceptualisation constitutes their existence, therefore their modes of understanding will be their modes of being. Hence the names of negations will not be wrongly consignified by means of their active modes of signifying, because since the modes of understanding of negations can be reduced to the modes of understanding of the feature (since a negation is not known except by its feature), therefore the modes of being of the negations can after all be reduced to the modes of being of the feature. From what is the mode of signifying directly derived. 7 The modes of signifying and understanding are bipartite. The third fact to be noted is that the active modes of signifying are directly derived from the passive modes of understanding. As a consequence it must be stated that, just as the mode of signifying is bipartite, ie active and passive, so too is the mode of understanding, ie active and passive. The active mode of understanding is the faculty of conceptualising by means of which the intellect signifies, conceives or comprehends the properties of the thing. But the passive mode of understanding is the property of the thing as comprehended by the mind. From which properties are the active modes of signifying derived. It can therefore be said that the active modes of signifying are derived directly from the passive modes of understanding, because the active modes of signifying are not derived from the modes of being unless these modes of being have been comprehended by the mind. But the modes of being, as they are understood by the mind, are called the passive modes of understanding, therefore the active modes of signifying are derived from the modes of being by means of the passive modes of understanding, and therefore the active modes of signifying are derived directly from the passive modes of understanding. How the mode of signifying is distinguished from the mode of understanding and the mode of being. 8 What are the modes of being, understanding, and signifying. The fourth point to be noted is that the modes of being, the passive modes of understanding, and the passive modes of signifying are the same materially and in reality but differ formally, because the mode of being is the property of the thing as such, the passive mode of understanding is also that property of the thing as apprehended by the mind, and the passive mode of signifying is the property of the same thing inasmuch as it is consignified by the expression. They are the same materially and in reality, because whatever the mode of being expresses absolutely, the passive mode of understanding expresses inasmuch as is relevant to the intellect, and whatever the passive mode of understanding expresses, so does the passive mode of signifying inasmuch as it is relevant to the expression. Therefore they are the same materially. However, they differ formally, which can be shown thus: whatever implies the mode of being expresses the property of the thing absolutely or under the rubric of existing, but whatever implies the passive mode of understanding expresses the same property of the thing as something material, and the faculty of understanding or conceptualising, as something formal; whatever specifies the passive mode of signifying expresses the same property of the thing as something material and the faculty of consignifying as something formal. And since there may be one faculty of being, another of understanding, and another of signifying, they differ in terms of their formal faculties. But they agree in terms of reality, for the mode of being expresses the property of the thing absolutely, the passive mode of understanding expresses the property of the thing by means of the mode of understanding, and the passive mode of signifying states the property of the thing by means of the faculty of consignifying. But it is the same property of the thing as perceived absolutely together with the mode of understanding and the mode of consignifying. In what way do the mode of being, the active mode of understanding, and the active mode of signifying differ. Similarly it should be realised that the mode of being, the active mode of understanding, and the active mode of signifying differ formally and materially, because the mode of being expresses the property of the thing in absolute terms or by means of the faculty of existing, as was stated earlier, but the active mode of understanding expresses the property of the mind which is the faculty of understanding or conceptualising, and the active mode of signifying states the property of the expression which is the faculty of consignifying. But, one is the property of the thing extraneous to the mind, another the property of the intellect, and yet another a property of the expression, and therefore, one is the faculty of being, the others the faculties of understanding, and of consignifying; therefore the mode of being, the active mode of understanding, and the active mode of signifying differ both ways. In what way do the active and passive modes of understanding differ and agree. Similarly it should be appreciated that the active mode of understanding and the passive mode of understanding differ materially and agree formally, for the passive mode of understanding expresses the property of the thing by means of the passive faculty of understanding, but the active mode of understanding expresses the property of the intellect which is the active faculty of understanding. It is the same faculty of understanding by means of which the intellect understands the property of the thing actively and by means of which the property of the thing is understood passively. Therefore the properties are different but the faculty is the same, and therefore they differ materially and are the same formally. In what way do the active and passive modes of signifying differ and agree. Similarly it should be known that the active and passive modes of signifying differ materially and are the same formally, because the passive mode of signifying expresses the property of the thing by means of the passive faculty of consignifying but the active mode of signifying states the property of the expression which is the active faculty of consignifying. But the potentiality is the same as that by means of which the expression is capable of signifying in an active manner and by means of which the property of the thing is signified in a passive manner; materially they are different, but formally the same. In what way is the mode of signifying empirically discovered. 9 In what way is the passive mode of signifying ascertained. Fifthly, it should be noted that the passive mode of signifying is materially real as it is empirically valable because from the material point of view it is the property of the thing; moreover, the property of the thing exists in that of which it is the property even as it is empirically valable. However, from a formal point of view it is empirically valable in the same way as is the active mode of signifying, because formally it does not differ from the active mode of signifying. 10 In what way is the active mode of signifying ascertained. The active mode of signifying, since it may be a property of the significative expression, is materially existent within the significative expression even as it is empirically valable; moreover, it is materially existent in the property of the thing even as some effect is materially existent in the original and abstract cause which effects it in the first place; and it is materially existent in the intellect even as an effect is materially existent in the most immediate cause that effects it; and it is materially existent in the construction, even as a cause capable of being effective is materially existent in its own particular effect. What is the mutual order of the following designations: sign, word, part of speech, and terminus. 11 Sign, word, part of speech, terminus. With reference to these, it must be noted that sign, word, part of speech, and terminus agree and differ. For they can show agreement from the point of view of Proposition and Counter-proposition because they can be found in the same Proposition, as for example sign and designate. They differ, however, in terms of their functions, because a sign is specified by means of the faculty of designating or representing something in absolute terms; but a word is specified formally by means of the faculty of designating superimposed on the expression, since a word is a significative expression. A part of speech exists formally by means of the active mode of signifying superimposed upon the word, because a part of speech is a word inasmuch as it possesses an active mode of signifying. But a terminus specifies the faculty of terminating the resolutions of the syllogism, because the dialectician resolves the syllogism into propositions, and propositions into subject and predicate which are said to be termini in logic. 12 Expression. Furthermore it should be known that expression, in so far as it is expression, is not considered by the grammarian, but in so far as it is a sign, it is, since grammar deals with the signs of things, and because the expression is the most suitable sign among other signs, therefore expression, in so far as it is a sign, is considered by the grammarian before other signs of things. But because being a sign is a property of the expression, therefore the grammarian, in considering expression, does so accidentally. |
You see here how differently Scotus and Ockam regard the same question, how much more simple and lucid Ockam's view is, and how much more certain Scotus's complex theory is to take into account all the facts than Ockam's simple one. I wish to lean a little towards the side of Scotus in what I say because I fear that you will lean very much the other way. To understand the historical position, you ought not to lean either way. |
Both spoken and mental terms are subject to yet another division, for some terms are categorematic while others are syncategorematic. Categorematic terms have a definite and determinate signification. Thus, the term 'man' signifies all men; the term 'animal', all animals; and the term 'whiteness', all whitenesses. Examples of syncategorematic terms are 'every', 'no', 'some', 'all', 'except', 'so much', and 'insofar as'. None of these expressions has a definite and determinate signification, nor does any of them signify anything distinct from what is signified by categorematic terms. The number system provides a parallel here. 'Zero', taken by itself, does not signify anything, but when combined with some other numeral it makes that numeral signify something new. |
Chapter 5. Has somewhat more interest. It treats of the distinction between concrete terms such as man, horse, white, and abstract terms such as humanity, horseness, whiteness. The distinction was first made a matter of some prominence in logic by Scotus, as I think. You may find his treatment of it in his 8th question on the predicaments. He defines a concrete term as one which signifies an essence in so far as it informs a subject and an abstract term as one which signifies an essence as such. Ockam by way of definition says that a concrete term and its corresponding abstract term are two nouns which have the same beginning and different terminations and that the one which usually has the most syllables and is a substantive is called the abstract and the one which usually has the fewer syllables and is an adjective is called the concrete. Those definitions put the realist and the nominalist in unusually strong contrast. [Read Nominum autem &c. down to pro distinctis rebus supponunt. Explaining that he wishes to avoid saying that a concrete signifies a thing on account of Scotus's arguments.] |
Concrete and abstract names can function in many ways. Sometimes the concrete name signifies, connotes, designates, or expresses and also supposits for something, which the abstract name in no way signifies and, consequently never supposits for. Examples are 'just'--'justice', 'white'--'whiteness', etc. 'Just' supposits for men in the proposition 'The just are virtuous'; it would be incorrect to say that it supposits for justice; for although justice is a virtue, it is not virtuous. On the other hand, 'justice' supposits for the quality of a man, not the man himself. It is because of this that it is impossible to predicate this sort of concrete name of its abstract counterpart: the two terms supposit for different things. |
This has to do with the distinction of logical Extension and Comprehension which Professor Bowen teaches was discovered by the Port Royalists although it was pretty well known in the middle ages. Enough so for John of Salisbury to refer to it as "quod fere in omnium ore celebre est, aliud scilicet esse quod appellativa significant, et aliud esse quod nominant. Nominantur singularia, sed universalia significantur." By appellativa here he means as I take it adjectives and such like. Ockam devotes several chapters to the consideration of abstracts and concretes. You remember that Scotus holds that humanity or the general essence of man in the various men is not really distinct from the individual man but is formally distinct and therefore it becomes important for Ockam to show that he can explain the relation of concrete and abstract terms without making use of this conception of a formal distinction, for he is going to deny that there is any such distinction. He treats the subject at considerable length in the 5th to the 9th chapters inclusive. I do not think we shall find it advantageous to follow him through this, in which he has to speak with extreme caution and to introduce considerable complications into his theory in order to avoid a heresy concerning the incarnation of Christ. It is sufficient to say that his theory is or evidently would be if it were not for his fear of this heresy that humanity means the same as man with some syncategorematic term added, he does not say what; probably no one would constantly serve, but frequently as such would do, so that humanity means man as such. Other abstracts are to be explained in the same way. This therefore is Ockam's substitute for Scotus's formal distinction. Between man and man as such there is such a distinction that one cannot be predicated of the other for you cannot say and yet they both denote the same things namely all men. We have therefore in Ockam a doctrine of implied syncategorematics in terms, which fulfills in large measure the same function as Scotus's formal distinctions in things. And as Scotus's doctrine of formalitates is what gives to all Scotism its peculiar character of subtilety, so it is Ockam's doctrine of terms with their implied syncategorematics which gives to Ockamistic logic its peculiar character, which is an immense development of an extremely technical doctrine of the properties of terms and a continual reference to it. For it is plain that if terms are very apt to have these hidden syncategorematics in them, syllogisms will constantly be vitiated by that circumstance. For instance, the syllogism |
A rational animal is a man as such No man as such is blue-eyed Therefore no rational animal is blue-eyed |
is apparently perfect in form but is entirely vitiated by the as such. And if many terms contain latent syncategorematics it must be necessary to have a large addition to the science of logic to inform us of this matter in order that we may avoid fallacies similar in principle to this one. Passing over Ockam's discussion of abstract and concrete names we come to chapter 10. This treats of the distinction between an absolute and a connotative name. Omitting a part of his explanation, it is as follows. A connotative name is one which signifies one thing primarily and another secondarily so that in its definition there will generally be one noun in the nominative and another in an oblique case. An absolute name is one which is not connotative. He gives a good many examples of connotative names among which are white which is defined as that which is informed by whiteness--Just or that which is informed by justice. Words of office as king and the like. The word cause or something able to produce something. All relative words also as like or that which has a quality such as something else has, are connotative names in the widest sense. Understanding is also a connotative name, for it is defined as a soul able to understand. So is intelligible which is defined as something apprehensible by thought. Chapter 11. The foregoing divisions of terms belong says Ockam as well to terms naturally signifying (that is mental terms) as to those made by an arbitrary convention (vocal and written terms). We now come to some divisions which belong only to terms ad placitum institutis--made by arbitrary convention. In the first place then there are names of first imposition and names of second imposition. Names of second imposition are those which signify arbitrary signs and their properties as signs. The term name of second imposition may be used, however, in two ways. First in a wide sense, for everything which signifies an arbitrary sign but only when it is an arbitrary sign and whether it implies a distinction which belongs also to conceptions of mind which are natural signs or not. Such are the terms noun, pronoun, conjunction, verb, case, number, mood, time, etc. These are what the grammarians call names of names. Strictly speaking however a name of second imposition signifies nothing but arbitrary signs. In this sense conjugation and declension are names of second imposition. Names of first imposition include properly only categorematic terms. Names of first imposition are divided again into names of first intention and names of second intention. Intention here I will remark means conception. I will also say that there is nothing peculiarly nominalistic about all this. It is old material. |
But the common term 'name of second intention' has both a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense an expression is called a name of second intention if it signifies intentions of the soul, natural signs, whether or not it also signifies conventional signs in their capacity as signs. In this sense names of second intention can be either names of first or second imposition. |
Chap. 12. [Read the whole. Explaining Ockam's position concerning the subjective existence of conception.] |
In the previous chapter I indicated that certain expressions are names of first intention and others, names of second intention. Ignorance of the meanings of these terms is a source of error for many; therefore, we ought to see what names of first and second intention are and how they are distinguished. First, it should be noted that an intention of the soul is something in the soul capable of signifying something else. Earlier we indicated how the signs of writing are secondary with respect to spoken signs. Among conventional signs spoken words are primary. In the same way spoken signs are subordinated to the intentions of the soul. Whereas the former are secondary, the latter are primary. It is only for this reason that Aristotle says that spoken words are signs of the impressions of the soul. Now, that thing existing in the soul which is the sign of a thing and an element out of which a mental proposition is composed (in the same way as a spoken proposition is composed of spoken words) is called by different names. Sometimes it is called an intention of the soul; sometimes an impression of the soul; and sometimes the similitude of the thing. Boethius, in his commentary on the De Interpretatione, calls it an intellect. He does not, of course, mean that a mental proposition is composed of intellects in the sense of intellectual souls. He only means that a mental proposition is composed of those intellective things which are signs in the soul signifying other things. Thus, whenever anyone utters a spoken proposition, he forms beforehand a mental proposition. This proposition is internal and it belongs to no particular spoken language. But it also happens that people frequently form internal propositions which, because of the defect of their language, they do not know how to express externally. The parts of such mental propositions are called concepts, intentions, likenesses, and "intellects." But with what items in the soul are we to identify such signs? There are a variety of opinions here. Some say a concept is something made or fashioned by the soul. Others say it is a certain quality distinct from the act of the understanding which exists in the soul as in a subject. Others say that it is simply the act of understanding. This last view gains support from the principle that one ought not postulate many items when he can get by with fewer. Moreover, all the theoretical advantages that derive from postulating entities distinct from acts of understanding can be had without making such a distinction, for an act of understanding can signify something and can supposit for something just as well as any sign. Therefore, there is no point in postulating anything over and above the act of understanding. But I shall have more to say about these different views later on. For the moment, we shall simply say that an intention is something in the soul which is either a sign naturally signifying something else (for which it can supposit) or a potential element in a mental proposition. But there are two kinds of intentions. One kind is called a first intention. This is an intention which signifies something that is not itself an intention of the soul, although it may signify an intention along with this. One example is the intention of the soul predicable of all men; another is the intention that is predicable of all whitenesses, blacknesses, etc. But the expression 'first intention' can be understood in two senses. In the broad sense an intentional sign in the soul is a first intention if it does not signify only intentions or signs. In this broad sense first intentions include not only intentions which so signify that they can supposit in a proposition for their significata, but also intentions which, like syncategorematic intentions, are only signs in an extended sense. In this sense mental verbs, mental syncategorematic expressions, mental conjunctions, and similar terms are first intentions. In the narrow sense only those mental names that are capable of suppositing for their significata are called first intentions. A second intention, on the other hand, is an intention of the soul which is a sign of first intentions. Examples are genus, species, and the like. One intention common to all men is predicated of all men when we say, "This man is a man; that man is a man; . . ." (and so on for all individual men). In the same way, we predicate an intention common to intentions signifying things when we say, "This species is a species; that species is a species; . . ." (and so on). Again, when we say "Stone is a genus," "Animal is a genus," and "Color is a genus," we predicate one intention of another just as we predicate one name of different names when we say that 'man' is a name, 'donkey' is a name, and 'whiteness' is a name. Now, just as names of second imposition conventionally signify names of first imposition, a second intention naturally signifies a first intention. And just as a name of first imposition signifies something other than names, first intentions signify things that are not themselves intentions. Still, one could claim that in a strict sense, a second intention is an intention which signifies exclusively first intentions; whereas, in a broad sense a second intention can also be an intention signifying both intentions and conventional signs (if, indeed, there are any such intentions). |
A word is equivocal if, in signifying different things, it is a sign subordinated to several rather than one concept or intention of the soul. This is what Aristotle means when he says that one and the same name applies, but that the account of substance corresponding to the name is different. By "account of substance," he means a concept or intention of the soul including the mental description and definition as well as the simple concept. He wants to say that while these differ, there is just one name. A clear example of equivocality is found in the case of a word belonging to different languages, for in one language the expression is used to signify things signified by one concept; whereas, in the other it is used to signify things signified by some other concept. Thus, the expression is subordinated in signification to several different concepts or impressions of the soul. . . . Every expression that is subordinated to just one concept is called univocal, whether the term signifies several different things or not. But properly speaking a term is not called univocal unless it signifies or could signify indifferently each of several different things. The term is univocal because all of the several things it signifies are also signified by one concept. Thus, a univocal term is a sign subordinated in signification to one natural sign which is an intention or concept of the soul. |
But though Ockam held that only singular things existed, it is not to be supposed that he denied that form and matter were two really distinct and real things. He held that all forms or characters were really individual but he held that they were real things really different from the matter. |
Whence it is not to be imagined that the difference is anything intrinsic to the species by which one species differs from another for then the difference would not be universal but would be matter or form or a whole compounded of matter and form but a difference is something predicable alone of one species and not agreeing with another and it is called an essential difference not because it is of the essence of the thing but because it expresses a part of the essence of the thing and not extrinsic to the thing. Whence the difference of which we are now speaking always expresses a part of the thing and one difference expresses a material part and another a formal part. |
So under the head of subject he says that subject sometimes means something which really supports another thing inhering in it--and so we may speak of a thing as subject of its accidents or of matter as subject in respect to its substantial forms. |
In one sense substance is said to be anything that is distinct from other things. Writers use the word 'substance' in this sense when they speak of the substance of whiteness, the substance of color, etc. In a stricter sense substance is anything which is not an accident inhering in something else. In this sense both matter and form as well as the whole composed of these are called substances. In the strictest sense substance is that which is neither an accident inhering in another thing nor an essential part of something else, although it can combine with an accident. It is in this sense that substance is said to be a summum genus, and according to Aristotle it is divided into first and second substance. |
It seems that according to the principles of Aristotle's philosophy, one should say that the category of quality is a concept or sign containing under it all such terms as do not express a substantial part of a substance and can be used to answer the question posed about substance 'How is it qualified?' For the present, I shall not consider whether concrete or abstract terms more properly belong in the category of quality. In the genus of quality there are certain terms which designate things that are distinct from substances, things that are not themselves substances. Examples are 'whiteness', 'blackness', 'color', 'knowledge', and 'light'. |
Thus you perceive that Ockam while he denies that there is any distinction except between things really and numerically different, yet does allow that there is a real difference between things which are really inseparable. But as to all relation he most emphatically and clearly denies that it exists as something different from the things related. And under relation in this connection he expressly says that he means to include relations of agreement as well as relations of opposition. |
Whether similarity or dissimilarity is some little thing distinct from the absolute things. Affirmative: Because it is impossible for anything to pass from contradictory to contradictory except by a change. But Sortes, from being non-whitelike at first, becomes whitelike. Therefore Sortes is changed; not absolutely, we presume; therefore relatively. Negative: Those things which cannot by any power be separated from each other are not really distinct. But similarity cannot by any power be separated from two whitenesses, because it is a contradiction that two white things should be equally white and yet not be similar. Therefore, etc. To this question I answer that neither similarity nor dissimilarity is some little thing distinct from the absolute things. |
Therefore while he admits the real existence of qualities he expressly denies that these are the respects in which things agree and differ. For they agree and differ he says in themselves and in nothing else. Yet while he denies that there is really any similarity in things except the things which are similar and while he denies that there is any real respect in which things do agree, yet it is a mistake to assert that he denies that things apart from the action of the mind are similar. For he says |
Sortes and Plato are one in species. That is Sortes and Plato are contained under one species to wit under man or Sortes and Plato are such that one common species can be abstracted from them. And if it is said then they would not be really one, the reply is that they are one really, meaning by one what has been said of them that Sortes and Plato are really such that one species can be abstracted from them and so it is to be conceded that there is a real unity less than a numerical unity so that those individuals are really one in that sense and nothing imaginable distinct from the individual or individuals is one in that sense. |
A Scotist would probably reply to this mode of supposing a real specific unity that nothing which is only in potentia really exists and that nothing whose existence depends on the mind really exists. The combination of these unrealities does not make a reality and therefore that whose existence depends on the mere possibility of an act of the mind does not really exist, and therefore a unity which consists only in the mind's being able to abstract from the singulars one conception is not properly called a real unity. I would call your attention however to the fact that as Ockam here makes the essential resemblance, for that is certainly the same as an essential unity, depend upon and in fact consist in the possibility of the imposition of a common mental sign so he must consider every resemblance. The resemblance therefore consists solely in the property of the mind by which it naturally imposes the same mental sign upon the different things. And I have a strong impression that Ockam somewhere says this explicitly but I haven't been able to find the place and I rather doubt it because he seems to think that things do resemble one another apart from the action of the mind although out of the mind there is no general quality or respect in which they agree, but they simply agree of themselves. This then is a general sketch of Ockam's nominalism so far as it can be understood apart from his psychological doctrines. I have thought that as a matter of historical interest, an historical curiosity if you please, the Question of Nominalism and Realism would be one to which you would be willing to devote 3 hours, in view of the frequency of references to it--and the intimate connection between Ockamism and the modern English philosophy of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, Brown, the two Mills, and Bain. You may perhaps think that I have been taking up your time with things dead and gone--and utterly trivial. But in reality the difference between Nominalism and Realism has a relation not remote from that between the Idealism of Berkeley and Mill and the Idealisms of Kant and Hegel. If by calling the Question of Nominalism and Realism trivial it is meant that it has no conceivable application to practical affairs it is nothing but the old objection which ignorance has always brought against all purely scientific studies. And one which for an educated man to recognize is to reject. But it is not true that it is of no practical moment whether we believe in Nominalism or Realism, whether we believe that eternal verities are confined entirely to the other world (for a Nominalist may certainly be a Spiritualist or even a Platonist) or that they are matters of everyday consequence, whether we believe that the Genus homo has no existence except as a collection of individuals and that therefore individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life is alone of account or that men really have something in common--and that their very essence--so that the Community is to be regarded as something of more consequence and of more dignity than any single men. But perhaps by calling the Controversy of Nominalism and Realism trivial it is meant that any reasonable being can decide it in a jiffy. If you think then that all men who disagree with you on this question are foolish, I can only remark that whichever way your opinion lies there are certainly many men quite as competent in mental power, training, and information, who think that you have not fully probed the question. However though it doesn't seem to me so, yet to others whom I must respect, it does seem easy to decide the question. Let it be so then and let us all come to a unanimous decision upon it, only let our decision rest on a historical basis, the only sound basis for any human institution--philosophy, natural science, government, church, or system of education. |
MS 162: November-December 1869 There is nothing perhaps which in a university town we feel more strongly than the contrast not to say contradiction between the modes of thought of the scientific and literary men. This divergency has existed throughout modern times and we already have evidence of its existence in the thirteenth century from the poem by Henry d'Andeli called the "Battle of the Seven Liberal Arts." You will find it in the Library. As I am not in the least degree literary it would be impossible, I suppose, for me to state correctly the position of literary men but this position appears to me to be that we cannot regard things as they ought to be regarded unless we look at them broadly and from the entirety of human nature; while the scientific man thinks that things cannot be understood unless they are scrutinized closely and narrowly and with the entire exclusion of the passions and emotional sensibilities. A literary man thinks a specialist is a piddling pedant--and speaks of "Science peddling with the names of things." A scientific man thinks that in specialty lies the only intellectual salvation. Which of these views is right 'twould be foolish for me to try to say. But this much I think must be conceded, that be the necessity of breadth of view and of general culture as great as you please, yet to understand science well, its proceeding and its logic, one must have recourse besides to an interior view of science and therefore to a scientific specialist. This I feel sure is the opinion of scientific men, for I have heard the opinion expressed many times by them and the contrary one never. In this respect Dr. Whewell's qualifications for treating of science could hardly have been better than they were, for he was not only a scientific specialist but an eminent scientific investigator, his works upon the tides containing a research of no ordinary importance. Indeed they will never be forgotten. But while he was a specialist positivè he was not so negativè for he made original researches also into dynamics, conic sections, engineering, meteorology, optics, chemistry, and mineralogy of which last science he was professor for many years at Oxford. Nor was his knowledge confined to Natural Science for he wrote several works upon Ethics and the history of Ethical doctrines, a number of papers on Metaphysics in which he was well versed, two books on Natural Theology, two on University Education, one of them in 3 volumes, a book of Sermons, a book on the Plurality of Worlds, a work on the architecture of German churches, articles in Encyclopaedias on other subjects, besides many other things. He was a man who made enemies and it was said of him by one of them that "Knowledge was his forte, but omniscience was his foible," and you can imagine how the man must really have been respected, whose extremely arrogant manners brought down no bitterer satire than this. But Whewell was not the man to write upon the Logic of Science solely on the basis of general qualifications. He prepared himself for his task by an exhaustive study of the history of all Natural Science, and the Results of that study he has embodied in two works. One, The History of the Inductive Sciences, is a work which I have never heard spoken of without admiration by anybody acquainted with the subject; the other, The History of Scientific Ideas, is also executed with great ability, and I do not think these two books can be rivalled by anything upon the same subjects in any language. He also made a study of all previous attempts to erect a philosophy of the sciences and embodied his strictures upon them in a third work called The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. And then and then only did he begin the construction of his own Theory. But when I have stated all these qualifications of Whewell for what he undertook, I have left one condition unmentioned the importance of which relatively is as that one which our Saviour mentioned to the young man who had kept all the commandments from his youth up. For the question comes now to be asked did Dr. Whewell with all his knowledge of the history of science really derive his theory from that, or did he only use his knowledge to give a colour of verisimilitude to a theory which had come down to him as a metaphysical tradition or which he had drawn from Kant or some other metaphysical writer? I have not time to answer this question as it should be answered. You will detect some of the grounds upon which I have formed my opinion, but to state them fully would not be possible at present. I can only give it then as my conviction, which I can truly say is impartial, and which you can take for what it is worth, that when I consider what are the characters which are found associated with real Scientific Induction and exert my best power of distinguishing true scientific work I must say that Whewell's Novum Organon Renovatum seems to me to possess every mark of such work. And I think that in running over in my mind such of his works as I have read that I should say that a genuine impartiality--a rare trait--was one of his. Indeed I am so forcibly impressed with his work's having all the characters of a Scientific Induction from the History of Science that superior as I think that he is to other English and French writers upon the philosophy of science in point of learning and specially in scientific training, I think that his preëminent superiority lies in the perfect singlemindedness with which he has derived his theories from his facts. A theory of science which is thus founded on the history of science in a truly scientific spirit and by a genuine inductive method and which does not merely make use of facts of scientific history to support a theory which has really been derived not from these but from a general philosophical doctrine of a metaphysical origin, must be true to the grand features of scientific progress, to all those characters of scientific investigation which leave their mark upon its history, although there is doubtless something else which concerns the individual investigator and which does not appear in his publications which such a theory would be apt to overlook. But scientific progress is to a large extent public and belongs to the community of scientific men of the same department, its conclusions are unanimous, its interpretations of nature are no private interpretations, and so much must always be published to the world as will suffice to enable the world to adopt the individual investigator's conclusions. For this reason, I am inclined to think that a historical theory of science like that of Whewell is likely to contain the most representative conditions of the success of scientific thought. And I think that Whewell's theory in fact does so. There is one defect which I think belongs to Whewell's system and which I should think would be apt to belong to any systematic exposition of the proceedure of science. Such an exposition must of course divide scientific investigation into different parts, it must separate it into different kinds, and it must also distinguish between the different steps taken. I should think that it was a fault to be expected in any such system and one which is found in Whewell's, that the necessity of making these divisions would lead to drawing the line between them too sharply and to representing them as existing in a degree of isolation in which they neither are nor ought to be found. Whewell's chief strength was in the physical sciences as distinguished from Natural History--and in the former observation and reasoning are much more separated than in the latter--and his chief work was done in that part of the physical sciences in which they are separated the most. I think that his books show this distinctly. His exposition of astronomy, optics, etc., is most admirable but I should imagine that his treatment of the classificatory sciences was less satisfactory. It seems to me, at least, that he has not represented the importance in all such sciences as chemistry, geology, zoology, &c. of observing and thinking together nor the fusion which there is and ought to be in those fields between observation and analysis. Whewell's general conception of a science is that a scientific conclusion is composed of facts on the one hand and ideas on the other. This sentence really contains the essence or rather the germ of his theory of science, although it cannot at the outset convey any adequate notion to you. A scientific conclusion is composed of facts and of ideas. To reach it, the facts must be brought together--colligated--and the conceptions must be rendered distinct--explicated. Then the colligation of facts and the explication of conceptions are the two parts of scientific investigation. I have stated this as though it were a conclusion à priori. I have so set it forth because it admits of such a presentation and because in such a mode of statement the unity of the theory is clearly brought out. But that is not the way in which Whewell enforces it, for he has shown with great elaboration that in every science two processes have taken place. One, the observation and grouping of facts. The other, controversies which resulted in the establishment of clear conceptions. This I have said is the central point of Whewell's theory; and it has been urged that it has been drawn from the Kantian philosophy. The distinction in Kantism between the matter and form of cognition. This to be seen in Whewell, but yet common experience in scientific reasoning shows it to hold good. Example of a cipher. Facts easily enough obtained. First difficulty is in getting the appropriate idea. History of science also shows it. If then it does happen to be in accord with the results of the profound analysis of cognition by Kant--a result which must be allowed by all who would avoid the extremes of sensualism and absolute idealism--I say if Whewell's theory accords with this--as well as with the History of Science--that ought to be regarded rather as a powerful support of the theory rather than as a disproof of it. Professor Bowen, for example, has declared that Whewell's Philosophy of Science is "mere Kantism." So far as this means that it receives no support from the experience of scientific men, the question must be decided by those who have such experience. But so far as it is intended that Whewell's theory will not hold true if Kantism is false, I reply that Whewell's theory does not involve the whole of Kantism, but only the general proposition that cognition consists of two elements one of which is idealistic and the other empirical, a proposition which seems to be virtually admitted by Hamiltonians when they hold that all knowledge reposes in part ultimately on "Faith." I admit that besides this general agreement with Kant, Whewell also has the same conception of Space and Time in its most general outlines, but not by any means to such an extent as is peculiar to Kantism,--he goes no further than Cudworth did before Kant or than Sir Wm. Hamilton has since. I do not see therefore what Kantian propositions Whewell holds which Hamilton denies. The process of explication of conceptions has according to Whewell been effected by means of controversies. And there can be no doubt that to take the controversies concerning the single science of mechanics as an example, men's thoughts were confused and hazy before the controversies about Galileo's time concerning the definition of uniform force, the question concerning the measure of the force of Percussion,--the war of the vis viva--the controversy of the centre of oscillation--of the principle of heart Action--&c. &c.--and that at the end of these debates their minds were so much clearer as to make a vast difference in the progress of science. This calls our attention again to Whewell's theory being drawn from the public history of science. It is I have no doubt true that scientific conceptions have always first become clear in debates. And this is an important truth. But what was the mental process, what was the change and what the law of the change in the individual mind by which an obscure idea became clear? This Whewell tells us nothing of and indeed seems to have no conception of the question. A metaphysician's mind would have been wholly engrossed in this question to the entire exclusion of that one about the public process of controversy. The final result of the clearing up of a conception, as it takes place in science along with observation and induction is that the conception is seen to be necessary. This identification of inductive conclusions with à priori truths has been eagerly seized by J. S. Mill who makes his sensualistic theory of knowledge rest in large measure on this result of Whewell's. Others have ignorantly characterized it as mere Kantism to which in truth it bears no analogy. This is decidedly the most theoretical and the weakest part of Whewell's theory but it is one which no man who moves in metaphysics with scientific caution can peremptorily deny. It should be regarded as an open question still and one to the solution of which we are not very near. A consideration of Whewell's arguments in the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions to show that all matter is heavy leads me to the belief that the more convincing ones only go to show that we may be sure that we can adopt the formula "All matter is heavy" as long as we leave other formulae to be determined as may be necessary in order to be consistent with this one. And this naturally brings us to Whewell's next remark which is that a clear conception resulting from a discussion is often formulated in a definition, but that in that case some proposition expressed or implied has always gone along with the definition. Thus along with the definition of the uniform force goes the proposition that gravity is a uniform force and along with the definition of the Vis Viva and in the whole discussion concerning it it is assumed that in the mutual action of bodies the whole effect of the force is unchanged. This remark is excellent but somewhat inadequate to the subject. You often hear this and that called a question of words, but there are not nearly as many mere questions of words discussed as smatterers in logic are apt to imagine. As important a practical lesson as any other which I could indicate as derivable from the study of logic is how to distinguish a question of words from a question truly scientific and how to treat that class of questions which are apt to be mistaken for questions of words. In this department of logic, Whewell gives us but little assistance. He remarks however with perfect truth that in default of a definition Axioms may be made to fulfill the same function. But clearness is not the only condition which a conception must satisfy in order that it may contribute to the progress of science. Besides being clear it must be appropriate. It seems to me that a good illustration of this is afforded us in chemistry. Chemistry presents the phenomenon of the perpetual recurrence of integral numbers. A few examples of these are the following: When two substances combine with one another in different proportions by weight, those proportions are to one another as two small integral numbers. Equivalent proportions of different vapours are either equal or bear to one another a ratio as between two small integral numbers. The specific heats of different substances divided by their chemical equivalents are in the ratio of two small integral numbers. The differences in the boiling points of adjacent members of two different series of organic compounds are in the ratio of two small integral numbers. The ratio of the equivalents of two elements usually approximates nearly to the ratio of two integral numbers. It is a great and unsolved problem to find a theory which shall explain these things. In searching for such a theory we must look out for an idea which is appropriate to the subject. Now the spectroscope has shown us that different chemical substances are distinguished by the greater or less refrangibility of the heat with which they vibrate. This greater or less refrangibility means a greater or less rapidity of vibration. And this again means that the elasticity or force which tends to draw a portion back to its original position when it has been disturbed is greater or less. Different chemical substances are therefore bodies of different elasticity and susceptible of different rates of vibration. Now there is no part of the pure mathematical theory of force in which integral numbers come in to any great extent except that of vibrations. And then they come in constantly in the whole doctrine of nodes interferens etc. Here then we have an idea appropriate to the subject. Not a clear conception as yet I admit--not a definite theory. But we have indicated to us the direction in which a theory should be sought. What for example is the combining weight of a body? It is the weight of that body which contains a unit of chemical force. And what is the specific gravity of a gas? It is the weight of the gas which contains a unit of elastic force. But it is a fact of chemistry that these two are equal. Then the elastic force of a gas is equal to its chemical force. But in certain vapours the specific gravity is only half the combining weight. So that the elasticity seems to be doubled just as if there were a sort of node in the vibration. I have given this illustration of what appears to me to be an idea appropriate to this subject, in order that you might plainly see that the appropriate idea must contain the notion of elastic force. At least it must contain the idea of force. But how have chemists endeavored to explain these things? By suppositions regarding the size, shape, and arrangement of the particles of bodies. Now these are mere geometrical ideas, which have no relation to the facts to be explained. And the consequence is that the atomic theory will not explain a single fact as it appears to me without the aid of subsidiary hypotheses, which subsidiary hypotheses taken by themselves, or else others equally probable, will suffice of themselves to account for all the facts which can be accounted for by the additional supposition of atoms. We pass now, with Whewell, from the consideration of Ideas to the consideration of Facts, their observation and colligations. And here our author begins with the very fundamental proposition that all Facts involve Ideas. This may remind the metaphysician of a metaphysical proposition, but nobody can understand Whewell who cannot look at these things from a practically scientific point of view. All facts involve Ideas. This is the first lesson a man has to learn in studying science. What, is there not such a thing as pure observation? There is probably no one maxim of logic the ignorance of which by ordinary people produces such deplorable results as this that all Facts involve ideas. People detail to you some foolish story about Ghosts or Planchettes and seem to think that you must believe it or doubt their veracity. Now I certainly have no great confidence in the veracity of most people on speculative subjects; because a love of truth is very rarely strong without a really sound mental discipline; and nothing but the amiable desire of men to respect one another prevents this from being more generally perceived. But veracity apart, do these people suppose that they can make any pure observation unaffected by fancy passion or accidental moods or states of the nerves? The most trained scientific observers cannot do that; and as for those who are undisciplined and who are unaware of this weakness of human nature, especially when they are dealing with a subject so momentous as the other world, they are incapable of any approximation to it. A physician won't prescribe for himself. And if he has too much interest in the matter to keep his observations cold, ought not any ordinary person to be regarded as incompetent to keep cool when an immortal destiny is in question? But the influence of the mind upon observations is not necessarily evil. It may almost be said that we can only see what we look for. And I only give this as a single instance of a proposition perfectly familiar among observers of all kinds. Hence observation as distinct from mere gazing consists in perception in the light of a question. [Enlarge a little on this--Whewell has not remarked this. Why.] |
P 60: North American Review The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne: including many of his Writings hitherto unpublished. With Prefaces, Annotations, his Life and Letters, and an Account of his Philosophy. By Alexander Campbell Fraser, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. In Four Volumes. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 8vo. 1871. This new edition of Berkeley's works is much superior to any of the former ones. It contains some writings not in any of the other editions, and the rest are given with a more carefully edited text. The editor has done his work well. The introductions to the several pieces contain analyses of their contents which will be found of the greatest service to the reader. On the other hand, the explanatory notes which disfigure every page seem to us altogether unnecessary and useless. Berkeley's
metaphysical theories have at first sight an air of paradox and levity
very unbecoming to a bishop. He denies the existence of matter, our
ability to see distance, and the possibility of forming the simplest
general conception; while he admits the existence of Platonic ideas;
and argues the whole with a cleverness which every reader admits, but
which few are convinced by. His disciples seem to think the present
moment a favorable one for obtaining for their philosophy a more patient
hearing than it has yet got. It is true that we of this day are sceptical
and not given to metaphysics, but so, say they, was the generation which
Berkeley addressed, and for which his style was chosen; while it is
hoped that the spirit of calm and thorough inquiry which is now, for
once, almost the fashion, will save the theory from the perverse misrepresentations
which formerly assailed it, and lead to a fair examination of the arguments
which, in the minds of his sectators, put the truth of it beyond all
doubt. But above all it is anticipated that the Berkeleyan treatment
of that question of the validity of human knowledge and of the inductive
process of science, which is now so much studied, is such as to command
the attention of scientific men to the idealistic system. To us these
hopes seem vain. The truth is that the minds from whom the spirit of
the age emanates have now no interest in the only problems that metaphysics
ever pretended to solve. The abstract acknowledgment of God, Freedom,
and Immortality, apart from those other religious beliefs (which cannot
possibly rest on metaphysical grounds) which alone may animate this,
is now seen to have no practical consequence whatever. The world is
getting to think of these creatures of metaphysics, as Aristotle of
the Platonic ideas: As a matter of history, however, philosophy must always be interesting. It is the best representative of the mental development of each age. It is so even of ours, if we think what really is our philosophy. Metaphysical history is one of the chief branches of history, and ought to be expounded side by side with the history of society, of government, and of war; for in its relations with these we trace the significance of events for the human mind. The history of philosophy in the British Isles is a subject possessing more unity and entirety within itself than has usually been recognized in it. The influence of Descartes was never so great in England as that of traditional conceptions, and we can trace a continuity between modern and mediæval thought there, which is wanting in the history of France, and still more, if possible, in that of Germany. From very early times, it has been the chief intellectual characteristic of the English to wish to effect everything by the plainest and directest means, without unnecessary contrivance. In war, for example, they rely more than any other people in Europe upon sheer hardihood, and rather despise military science. The main peculiarities of their system of law arise from the fact that every evil has been rectified as it became intolerable, without any thoroughgoing measure. The bill for legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister is yearly pressed because it supplies a remedy for an inconvenience actually felt; but nobody has proposed a bill to legalize marriage with a deceased husband's brother. In philosophy, this national tendency appears as a strong preference for the simplest theories, and a resistance to any complication of the theory as long as there is the least possibility that the facts can be explained in the simpler way. And, accordingly, British philosophers have always desired to weed out of philosophy all conceptions which could not be made perfectly definite and easily intelligible, and have shown strong nominalistic tendencies since the time of Edward I, or even earlier. Berkeley is an admirable illustration of this national character, as well as of that strange union of nominalism with Platonism, which has repeatedly appeared in history, and has been such a stumbling-block to the historians of philosophy. The mediæval metaphysic is so entirely forgotten, and has so close a historic connection with modern English philosophy, and so much bearing upon the truth of Berkeley's doctrine, that we may perhaps be pardoned a few pages on the nature of the celebrated controversy concerning universals. And first let us set down a few dates. It was at the very end of the eleventh century that the dispute concerning nominalism and realism, which had existed in a vague way before, began to attain extraordinary proportions. During the twelfth century it was the matter of most interest to logicians, when William of Champeaux, Abélard, John of Salisbury, Gilbert de la Porrée, and many others, defended as many different opinions. But there was no historic connection between this controversy and those of scholasticism proper, the scholasticism of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockam. For about the end of the twelfth century a great revolution of thought took place in Europe. What the influences were which produced it requires new historical researches to say. No doubt, it was partly due to the Crusades. But a great awakening of intelligence did take place at that time. It requires, it is true, some examination to distinguish this particular movement from a general awakening which had begun a century earlier, and had been growing stronger ever since. But now there was an accelerated impulse. Commerce was attaining new importance, and was inventing some of her chief conveniences and safeguards. Law, which had hitherto been utterly barbaric, began to be a profession. The civil law was adopted in Europe, the canon law was digested; the common law took some form. The Church, under Innocent III, was assuming the sublime functions of a moderator over kings. And those orders of mendicant friars were established, two of which did so much for the development of the scholastic philosophy. Art felt the spirit of a new age, and there could hardly be a greater change than from the highly ornate round-arched architecture of the twelfth century to the comparatively simple Gothic of the thirteenth. Indeed, if any one wishes to know what a scholastic commentary is like, and what the tone of thought in it is, he has only to contemplate a Gothic cathedral. The first quality of either is a religious devotion, truly heroic. One feels that the men who did these works did really believe in religion as we believe in nothing. We cannot easily understand how Thomas Aquinas can speculate so much on the nature of angels, and whether ten thousand of them could dance on a needle's point. But it was simply because he held them for real. If they are real, why are they not more interesting than the bewildering varieties of insects which naturalists study; or why should the orbits of double stars attract more attention than spiritual intelligences? It will be said that we have no means of knowing anything about them. But that is on a par with censuring the schoolmen for referring questions to the authority of the Bible and of the Church. If they really believed in their religion, as they did, what better could they do? And if they found in these authorities testimony concerning angels, how could they avoid admitting it. Indeed, objections of this sort only make it appear still more clearly how much those were the ages of faith. And if the spirit was not altogether admirable, it is only because faith itself has its faults as a foundation for the intellectual character. The men of that time did fully believe and did think that, for the sake of giving themselves up absolutely to their great task of building or of writing, it was well worth while to resign all the joys of life. Think of the spirit in which Duns Scotus must have worked, who wrote his thirteen volumes in folio, in a style as condensed as the most condensed parts of Aristotle, before the age of thirty-four. Nothing is more striking in either of the great intellectual products of that age, than the complete absence of self-conceit on the part of the artist or philosopher. That anything of value can be added to his sacred and catholic work by its having the smack of individuality about it, is what he has never conceived. His work is not designed to embody his ideas, but the universal truth; there will not be one thing in it however minute, for which you will not find that he has his authority; and whatever originality emerges is of that inborn kind which so saturates a man that he cannot himself perceive it. The individual feels his own worthlessness in comparison with his task, and does not dare to introduce his vanity into the doing of it. Then there is no machine-work, no unthinking repetition about the thing. Every part is worked out for itself as a separate problem, no matter how analogous it may be in general to another part. And no matter how small and hidden a detail may be, it has been conscientiously studied, as though it were intended for the eye of God. Allied to this character is a detestation of antithesis or the studied balancing of one thing against another, and of a too geometrical grouping,--a hatred of posing which is as much a moral trait as the others. Finally, there is nothing in which the scholastic philosophy and the Gothic architecture resemble one another more than in the gradually increasing sense of immensity which impresses the mind of the student as he learns to appreciate the real dimensions and cost of each. It is very unfortunate that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries should, under the name of Middle Ages, be confounded with others, which they are in every respect as unlike as the Renaissance is from modern times. In the history of logic, the break between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is so great that only one author of the former age is ever quoted in the latter. If this is to be attributed to the fuller acquaintance with the works of Aristotle, to what, we would ask, is this profounder study itself to be attributed, since it is now known that the knowledge of those works was not imported from the Arabs? The thirteenth century was realistic, but the question concerning universals was not as much agitated as several others. Until about the end of the century, scholasticism was somewhat vague, immature, and unconscious of its own power. Its greatest glory was in the first half of the fourteenth century. Then Duns Scotus, 1 a Briton (for whether Scotch, Irish, or English is disputed), first stated the realistic position consistently, and developed it with great fulness and applied it to all the different questions which depend upon it. His theory of "formalities" was the subtlest, except perhaps Hegel's logic, ever broached, and he was separated from nominalism only by the division of a hair. It is not therefore surprising that the nominalistic position was soon adopted by several writers, especially by the celebrated William of Ockam, who took the lead of this party by the thoroughgoing and masterly way in which he treated the theory and combined it with a then rather recent but now forgotten addition to the doctrine of logical terms. With Ockam, who died in 1347, scholasticism may be said to have culminated. After him the scholastic philosophy showed a tendency to separate itself from the religious element which alone could dignify it, and sunk first into extreme formalism and fancifulness, and then into the merited contempt of all men; just as the Gothic architecture had a very similar fate, at about the same time, and for much the same reasons. The current explanations of the realist-nominalist controversy are equally false and unintelligible. They are said to be derived ultimately from Bayle's Dictionary; at any rate, they are not based on a study of the authors. "Few, very few, for a hundred years past," says Hallam, with truth, "have broken the repose of the immense works of the schoolmen." Yet it is perfectly possible so to state the matter that no one shall fail to comprehend what the question was, and how there might be two opinions about it. Are universals real? We have only to stop and consider a moment what was meant by the word real, when the whole issue soon becomes apparent. Objects are divided into figments, dreams, etc., on the one hand, and realities on the other. The former are those which exist only inasmuch as you or I or some man imagines them; the latter are those which have an existence independent of your mind or mine or that of any number of persons. The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it. The question, therefore, is whether man, horse, and other names of natural classes, correspond with anything which all men, or all horses, really have in common, independent of our thought, or whether these classes are constituted simply by a likeness in the way in which our minds are affected by individual objects which have in themselves no resemblance or relationship whatsoever. Now that this is a real question which different minds will naturally answer in opposite ways, becomes clear when we think that there are two widely separated points of view, from which reality, as just defined, may be regarded. Where is the real, the thing independent of how we think it, to be found? There must be such a thing, for we find our opinions constrained; there is something, therefore, which influences our thoughts, and is not created by them. We have, it is true, nothing immediately present to us but thoughts. Those thoughts, however, have been caused by sensations, and those sensations are constrained by something out of the mind. This thing out of the mind, which directly influences sensation, and through sensation thought, because it is out of the mind, is independent of how we think it, and is, in short, the real. Here is one view of reality, a very familiar one. And from this point of view it is clear that the nominalistic answer must be given to the question concerning universals. For, while from this standpoint it may be admitted to be true as a rough statement that one man is like another, the exact sense being that the realities external to the mind produce sensations which may be embraced under one conception, yet it can by no means be admitted that the two real men have really anything in common, for to say that they are both men is only to say that the one mental term or thought-sign "man" stands indifferently for either of the sensible objects caused by the two external realities; so that not even the two sensations have in themselves anything in common, and far less is it to be inferred that the external realities have. This conception of reality is so familiar, that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it; but the other, or realist conception, if less familiar, is even more natural and obvious. All human thought and opinion contains an arbitrary, accidental element, dependent on the limitations in circumstances, power, and bent of the individual; an element of error, in short. But human opinion universally tends in the long run to a definite form, which is the truth. Let any human being have enough information and exert enough thought upon any question, and the result will be that he will arrive at a certain definite conclusion, which is the same that any other mind will reach under sufficiently favorable circumstances. Suppose two men, one deaf, the other blind. One hears a man declare he means to kill another, hears the report of the pistol, and hears the victim cry; the other sees the murder done. Their sensations are affected in the highest degree with their individual peculiarities. The first information that their sensations will give them, their first inferences, will be more nearly alike, but still different; the one having, for example, the idea of a man shouting, the other of a man with a threatening aspect; but their final conclusions, the thought the remotest from sense, will be identical and free from the one-sidedness of their idiosyncrasies. There is, then, to every question a true answer, a final conclusion, to which the opinion of every man is constantly gravitating. He may for a time recede from it, but give him more experience and time for consideration, and he will finally approach it. The individual may not live to reach the truth; there is a residuum of error in every individual's opinions. No matter; it remains that there is a definite opinion to which the mind of man is, on the whole and in the long run, tending. On many questions the final agreement is already reached, on all it will be reached if time enough is given. The arbitrary will or other individual peculiarities of a sufficiently large number of minds may postpone the general agreement in that opinion indefinitely; but it cannot affect what the character of that opinion shall be when it is reached. This final opinion, then, is independent, not indeed of thought in general, but of all that is arbitrary and individual in thought; is quite independent of how you, or I, or any number of men think. Everything, therefore, which will be thought to exist in the final opinion is real, and nothing else. What is the POWER of external things, to affect the senses? To say that people sleep after taking opium because it has a soporific power, is that to say anything in the world but that people sleep after taking opium because they sleep after taking opium? To assert the existence of a power or potency, is it to assert the existence of anything actual? Or to say that a thing has a potential existence, is it to say that it has an actual existence? In other words, is the present existence of a power anything in the world but a regularity in future events relating to a certain thing regarded as an element which is to be taken account of beforehand, in the conception of that thing? If not, to assert that there are external things which can be known only as exerting a power on our sense, is nothing different from asserting that there is a general drift in the history of human thought which will lead it to one general agreement, one catholic consent. And any truth more perfect than this destined conclusion, any reality more absolute than what is thought in it, is a fiction of metaphysics. It is obvious how this way of thinking harmonizes with a belief in an infallible Church, and how much more natural it would be in the Middle Ages than in Protestant or positivist times. This theory of reality is instantly fatal to the idea of a thing in itself,--a thing existing independent of all relation to the mind's conception of it. Yet it would by no means forbid, but rather encourage us, to regard the appearances of sense as only signs of the realities. Only, the realities which they represent would not be the unknowable cause of sensation, but noumena, or intelligible conceptions which are the last products of the mental action which is set in motion by sensation. The matter of sensation is altogether accidental; precisely the same information, practically, being capable of communication through different senses. And the catholic consent which constitutes the truth is by no means to be limited to men in this earthly life or to the human race, but extends to the whole communion of minds to which we belong, including some probably whose senses are very different from ours, so that in that consent no predication of a sensible quality can enter, except as an admission that so certain sorts of senses are affected. This theory is also highly favorable to a belief in external realities. It will, to be sure, deny that there is any reality which is absolutely incognizable in itself, so that it cannot be taken into the mind. But observing that "the external" means simply that which is independent of what phenomenon is immediately present, that is of how we may think or feel; just as "the real" means that which is independent of how we may think or feel about it; it must be granted that there are many objects of true science which are external, because there are many objects of thought which, if they are independent of that thinking whereby they are thought (that is, if they are real), are indisputably independent of all other thoughts and feelings. It is plain that this view of reality is inevitably realistic; because general conceptions enter into all judgments, and therefore into true opinions. Consequently a thing in the general is as real as in the concrete. It is perfectly true that all white things have whiteness in them, for that is only saying, in another form of words, that all white things are white; but since it is true that real things possess whiteness, whiteness is real. It is a real which only exists by virtue of an act of thought knowing it, but that thought is not an arbitrary or accidental one dependent on any idiosyncrasies, but one which will hold in the final opinion. This theory involves a phenomenalism. But it is the phenomenalism of Kant, and not that of Hume. Indeed, what Kant called his Copernican step was precisely the passage from the nominalistic to the realistic view of reality. It was the essence of his philosophy to regard the real object as determined by the mind. That was nothing else than to consider every conception and intuition which enters necessarily into the experience of an object, and which is not transitory and accidental, as having objective validity. In short, it was to regard the reality as the normal product of mental action, and not as the incognizable cause of it. This realistic theory is thus a highly practical and common-sense position. Wherever universal agreement prevails, the realist will not be the one to disturb the general belief by idle and fictitious doubts. For according to him it is a consensus or common confession which constitutes reality. What he wants, therefore, is to see questions put to rest. And if a general belief, which is perfectly stable and immovable, can in any way be produced, though it be by the fagot and the rack, to talk of any error in such belief is utterly absurd. The realist will hold that the very same objects which are immediately present in our minds in experience really exist just as they are experienced out of the mind; that is, he will maintain a doctrine of immediate perception. He will not, therefore, sunder existence out of the mind and being in the mind as two wholly improportionable modes. When a thing is in such relation to the individual mind that that mind cognizes it, it is in the mind; and its being so in the mind will not in the least diminish its external existence. For he does not think of the mind as a receptacle, which if a thing is in, it ceases to be out of. To make a distinction between the true conception of a thing and the thing itself is, he will say, only to regard one and the same thing from two different points of view; for the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is the reality. The realist will, therefore, believe in the objectivity of all necessary conceptions, space, time, relation, cause, and the like. No realist or nominalist ever expressed so definitely, perhaps, as is here done, his conception of reality. It is difficult to give a clear notion of an opinion of a past age, without exaggerating its distinctness. But careful examination of the works of the schoolmen will show that the distinction between these two views of the real--one as the fountain of the current of human thought, the other as the unmoving form to which it is flowing--is what really occasions their disagreement on the question concerning universals. The gist of all the nominalist's arguments will be found to relate to a res extra animam, while the realist defends his position only by assuming that the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is real. The notion that the controversy between realism and nominalism had anything to do with Platonic ideas is a mere product of the imagination, which the slightest examination of the books would suffice to disprove. But to prove that the statement here given of the essence of these positions is historically true and not a fancy sketch, it will be well to add a brief analysis of the opinions of Scotus and Ockam. Scotus sees several questions confounded together under the usual utrum universale est aliquid in rebus. In the first place, there is the question concerning the Platonic forms. But putting Platonism aside as at least incapable of proof, and as a self-contradictory opinion if the archetypes are supposed to be strictly universal, there is the celebrated dispute among Aristotelians as to whether the universal is really in things or only derives its existence from the mind. Universality is a relation of a predicate to the subjects of which it is predicated. That can exist only in the mind, wherein alone the coupling of subject and predicate takes place. But the word universal is also used to denote what are named by such terms as a man or a horse; these are called universals, because a man is not necessarily this man, nor a horse this horse. In such a sense it is plain universals are real; there really is a man and there really is a horse. The whole difficulty is with the actually indeterminate universal, that which not only is not necessarily this, but which, being one single object of thought, is predicable of many things. In regard to this it may be asked, first, is it necessary to its existence that it should be in the mind; and, second, does it exist in re? There are two ways in which a thing may be in the mind,--habitualiter and actualiter. A notion is in the mind actualiter when it is actually conceived; it is in the mind habitualiter when it can directly produce a conception. It is by virtue of mental association (we moderns should say), that things are in the mind habitualiter. In the Aristotelian philosophy, the intellect is regarded as being to the soul what the eye is to the body. The mind perceives likenesses and other relations in the objects of sense, and thus just as sense affords sensible images of things, so the intellect affords intelligible images of them. It is as such a species intelligibilis that Scotus supposes that a conception exists which is in the mind habitualiter, not actualiter. This species is in the mind, in the sense of being the immediate object of knowledge, but its existence in the mind is independent of consciousness. Now that the actual cognition of the universal is necessary to its existence, Scotus denies. The subject of science is universal; and if the existence of universal were dependent upon what we happened to be thinking, science would not relate to anything real. On the other hand, he admits that the universal must be in the mind habitualiter, so that if a thing be considered as it is independent of its being cognized, there is no universality in it. For there is in re extra no one intelligible object attributed to different things. He holds, therefore, that such natures (i.e. sorts of things) as a man and a horse, which are real, and are not of themselves necessarily this man or this horse, though they cannot exist in re without being some particular man or horse, are in the species intelligibilis always represented positively indeterminate, it being the nature of the mind so to represent things. Accordingly any such nature is to be regarded as something which is of itself neither universal nor singular, but is universal in the mind, singular in things out of the mind. If there were nothing in the different men or horses which was not of itself singular, there would be no real unity except the numerical unity of the singulars; which would involve such absurd consequences as that the only real difference would be a numerical difference, and that there would be no real likenesses among things. If, therefore, it is asked whether the universal is in things, the answer is, that the nature which in the mind is universal, and is not in itself singular, exists in things. It is the very same nature which in the mind is universal and in re is singular; for if it were not, in knowing anything of a universal we should be knowing nothing of things, but only of our own thoughts, and our opinion would not be converted from true to false by a change in things. This nature is actually indeterminate only so far as it is in the mind. But to say that an object is in the mind is only a metaphorical way of saying that it stands to the intellect in the relation of known to knower. The truth is, therefore, that that real nature which exists in re, apart from all action of the intellect, though in itself, apart from its relations, it be singular, yet is actually universal as it exists in relation to the mind. But this universal only differs from the singular in the manner of its being conceived (formaliter), but not in the manner of its existence (realiter). Though this is the slightest possible sketch of the realism of Scotus, and leaves a number of important points unnoticed, yet it is sufficient to show the general manner of his thought and how subtle and difficult his doctrine is. That about one and the same nature being in the grade of singularity in existence, and in the grade of universality in the mind, gave rise to an extensive doctrine concerning the various kinds of identity and difference, called the doctrine of the formalitates; and this is the point against which Ockam directed his attack. Ockam's nominalism may be said to be the next stage in English opinion. As Scotus's mind is always running on forms, so Ockam's is on logical terms; and all the subtle distinctions which Scotus effects by his formalitates, Ockam explains by implied syncategorematics (or adverbial expressions, such as per se, etc.) in terms. Ockam always thinks of a mental conception as a logical term, which, instead of existing on paper, or in the voice, is in the mind, but is of the same general nature, namely, a sign. The conception and the word differ in two respects: first, a word is arbitrarily imposed, while a conception is a natural sign; second, a word signifies whatever it signifies only indirectly, through the conception which signifies the same thing directly. Ockam enunciates his nominalism as follows: |
It should be known that singular may be taken in two senses. In one sense, it signifies that which is one and not many; and in this sense those who hold that the universal is a quality of mind predicable of many, standing however in this predication, not for itself, but for those many (i.e. the nominalists), have to say that every universal is truly and really singular; because as every word, however general we may agree to consider it, is truly and really singular and one in number, because it is one and not many, so every universal is singular. In another sense, the name singular is used to denote whatever is one and not many, is a sign of something which is singular in the first sense, and is not fit to be the sign of many. Whence, using the word universal for that which is not one in number,--an acceptation many attribute to it,--I say that there is no universal; unless perchance you abuse the word and say that people is not one in number and is universal. But that would be puerile. It is to be maintained, therefore, that every universal is one singular thing, and therefore there is no universal except by signification, that is, by its being the sign of many. |
The arguments by which he supports this position present nothing of interest. 2 Against Scotus's doctrine that universals are without the mind in individuals, but are not really distinct from the individuals, but only formally so, he objects that it is impossible there should be any distinction existing out of the mind except between things really distinct. Yet he does not think of denying that an individual consists of matter and form, for these, though inseparable, are really distinct things; though a modern nominalist might ask in what sense things could be said to be distinct independently of any action of the mind, which are so inseparable as matter and form. But as to relation, he most emphatically and clearly denies that it exists as anything different from the things related; and this denial he expressly extends to relations of agreement and likeness as well as to those of opposition. While, therefore, he admits the real existence of qualities, he denies that these real qualities are respects in which things agree or differ; but things which agree or differ agree or differ in themselves and in no respect extra animam. He allows that things without the mind are similar, but this similarity consists merely in the fact that the mind can abstract one notion from the contemplation of them. A resemblance, therefore, consists solely in the property of the mind by which it naturally imposes one mental sign upon the resembling things. Yet he allows there is something in the things to which this mental sign corresponds. This is the nominalism of Ockam so far as it can be sketched in a single paragraph, and without entering into the complexities of the Aristotelian psychology nor of the parva logicalia. He is not so thoroughgoing as he might be, yet compared with Durandus and other contemporary nominalists he seems very radical and profound. He is truly the venerabilis inceptor of a new way of philosophizing which has now broadened, perhaps deepened also, into English empiricism. England never forgot these teachings. During that Renaissance period when men could think that human knowledge was to be advanced by the use of Cicero's Commonplaces, we naturally see little effect from them; but one of the earliest prominent figures in modern philosophy is a man who carried the nominalistic spirit into everything,--religion, ethics, psychology, and physics, the plusquam nominalis, Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. His razor cuts off, not merely substantial forms, but every incorporeal substance. As for universals, he not only denies their real existence, but even that there are any universal conceptions except so far as we conceive names. In every part of his logic, names and speech play an extraordinarily important part. Truth and falsity, he says, have no place but among such creatures as use speech, for a true proposition is simply one whose predicate is the name of everything of which the subject is the name. "From hence, also, this may be deduced, that the first truths were arbitrarily made by those that first of all imposed names upon things, or received them from the imposition of others. For it is true (for example), that man is a living creature, but it is for this reason that it pleased men to impose both those names on the same thing." The difference between true religion and superstition is simply that the state recognizes the former and not the latter. The nominalistic love of simple theories is seen also in his opinion, that every event is a movement, and that the sensible qualities exist only in sensible beings, and in his doctrine that man is at bottom purely selfish in his actions. His views concerning matter are worthy of notice, because Berkeley is known to have been a student of Hobbes, as Hobbes confesses himself to have been of Ockam. The following paragraph gives his opinion:-- |
And as for that matter which is common to all things, and which philosophers, following Aristotle, usually call materia prima, that is, first matter, it is not a body distinct from all other bodies, nor is it one of them. What then is it? A mere name; yet a name which is not of vain use; for it signifies a conception of body without the consideration of any form or other accident except only magnitude or extension, and aptness to receive form and other accident. So that whensoever we have use of the name body in general, if we use that of materia prima, we do well. For when a man, not knowing which was first, water or ice, would find out which of the two were the matter of both, he would be fain to suppose some third matter which were neither of these two; so he that would find out what is the matter of all things ought to suppose such as is not the matter of anything that exists. Wherefore materia prima is nothing; and therefore they do not attribute to it form or any other accident, besides quantity; whereas all singular things have their forms and accidents certain. Materia prima therefore is body in general, that is, body considered universally, not as having neither form nor any accident, but in which no form nor any other accident but quantity are at all considered, that is, they are not drawn into argumentation. (p. 118) |
The next great name in English philosophy is Locke's. His philosophy is nominalistic, but does not regard things from a logical point of view at all. Nominalism, however, appears in psychology as sensationalism; for nominalism arises from taking that view of reality which regards whatever is in thought as caused by something in sense, and whatever is in sense as caused by something without the mind. But everybody knows that this is the character of Locke's philosophy. He believed that every idea springs from sensation and from his (vaguely explained) reflection. Berkeley is undoubtedly more the offspring of Locke than of any other philosopher. Yet the influence of Hobbes with him is very evident and great; and Malebranche doubtless contributed to his thought. But he was by nature a radical and a nominalist. His whole philosophy rests upon an extreme nominalism of a sensationalistic type. He sets out with the proposition (supposed to have been already proved by Locke), that all the ideas in our minds are simply reproductions of sensations, external and internal. He maintains, moreover, that sensations can only be thus reproduced in such combinations as might have been given in immediate perception. We can conceive a man without a head, because there is nothing in the nature of sense to prevent our seeing such a thing; but we cannot conceive a sound without any pitch, because the two things are necessarily united in perception. On this principle he denies that we can have any abstract general ideas, that is, that universals can exist in the mind; if I think of a man it must be either of a short or a long or a middle-sized man, because if I see a man he must be one or the other of these. In the first draft of the Introduction of the Principles of Human Knowledge, which is now for the first time printed, he even goes so far as to censure Ockam for admitting that we can have general terms in our mind; Ockam's opinion being that we have in our minds conceptions, which are singular themselves, but are signs of many things. 3 But Berkeley probably knew only of Ockam from hearsay, and perhaps thought he occupied a position like that of Locke. Locke had a very singular opinion on the subject of general conceptions. He says:-- |
If we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions, and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult); for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once? In effect, is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together. |
Much is here said of the difficulty that abstract ideas carry with them, and the pains and skill requisite in forming them. And it is on all hands agreed that there is need of great toil and labor of the mind to emancipate our thoughts from particular objects, and raise them to those sublime speculations that are conversant about abstract ideas. From all which the natural consequence should seem to be, that so difficult a thing as the forming of abstract ideas was not necessary to communication, which is so easy and familiar to all sort of men. But we are told, if they seem obvious and easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. Now, I would fain know at what time it is men are employed in surmounting that difficulty. It cannot be when they are grown up, for then it seems they are not conscious of such painstaking; it remains, therefore, to be the business of their childhood. And surely the great and multiplied labor of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task at that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles, and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies, and so formed in their minds abstract general ideas, and annexed them to every common name they make use of? |
In his private note-book Berkeley has the following:--"Mem. To bring the killing blow at the last, e.g. in the matter of abstraction to bring Locke's general triangle in the last." There was certainly an opportunity for a splendid blow here, and he gave it. From this nominalism he deduces his idealistic doctrine. And he puts it beyond any doubt that, if this principle be admitted, the existence of matter must be denied. Nothing that we can know or even think can exist without the mind, for we can only think reproductions of sensations, and the esse of these is percipi. To put it another way, we cannot think of a thing as existing unperceived, for we cannot separate in thought what cannot be separated in perception. It is true, I can think of a tree in a park without anybody by to see it; but I cannot think of it without anybody to imagine it; for I am aware that I am imagining it all the time. Syllogistically: trees, mountains, rivers, and all sensible things are perceived; and anything which is perceived is a sensation; now for a sensation to exist without being perceived is impossible; therefore, for any sensible thing to exist out of perception is impossible. Nor can there be anything out of the mind which resembles a sensible object, for the conception of likeness cannot be separated from likeness between ideas, because that is the only likeness which can be given in perception. An idea can be nothing but an idea, and it is absurd to say that anything inaudible can resemble a sound, or that anything invisible can resemble a color. But what exists without the mind can neither be heard nor seen; for we perceive only sensations within the mind. It is said that Matter exists without the mind. But what is meant by matter? It is acknowledged to be known only as supporting the accidents of bodies; and this word 'supporting' in this connection is a word without meaning. Nor is there any necessity for the hypothesis of external bodies. What we observe is that we have ideas. Were there any use in supposing external things it would be to account for this fact. But grant that bodies exist, and no one can say how they can possibly affect the mind; so that instead of removing a difficulty, the hypothesis only makes a new one. But though Berkeley thinks we know nothing out of the mind, he by no means holds that all our experience is of a merely phantasmagoric character. It is not all a dream; for there are two things which distinguish experience from imagination: one is the superior vividness of experience; the other and most important is its connected character. Its parts hang together in the most intimate and intricate conjunction, in consequence of which we can infer the future from the past. "These two things it is," says Berkeley, in effect, "which constitute reality. I do not, therefore, deny the reality of common experience, although I deny its externality." Here we seem to have a third new conception of reality, different from either of those which we have insisted are characteristic of the nominalist and realist respectively, or if this is to be identified with either of those, it is with the realist view. Is not this something quite unexpected from so extreme a nominalist? To us, at least, it seems that this conception is indeed required to give an air of common sense to Berkeley's theory, but that it is of a totally different complexion from the rest. It seems to be something imported into his philosophy from without. We shall glance at this point again presently. He goes on to say that ideas are perfectly inert and passive. One idea does not make another and there is no power or agency in it. Hence, as there must be some cause of the succession of ideas, it must be Spirit. There is no idea of a spirit. But I have a consciousness of the operations of my spirit, what he calls a notion of my activity in calling up ideas at pleasure, and so have a relative knowledge of myself as an active being. But there is a succession of ideas not dependent on my will, the ideas of perception. Real things do not depend on my thought, but have an existence distinct from being perceived by me; but the esse of everything is percipi; therefore, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. "As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure do there an infinite omnipotent Spirit who contains and supports it." This puts the keystone into the arch of Berkeleyan idealism, and gives a theory of the relation of the mind to external nature which, compared with the Cartesian Divine Assistance, is very satisfactory. It has been well remarked that, if the Cartesian dualism be admitted, no divine assistance can enable things to affect the mind or the mind things, but divine power must do the whole work. Berkeley's philosophy, like so many others, has partly originated in an attempt to escape the inconveniences of the Cartesian dualism. God, who has created our spirits, has the power immediately to raise ideas in them; and out of his wisdom and benevolence, he does this with such regularity that these ideas may serve as signs of one another. Hence, the laws of nature. Berkeley does not explain how our wills act on our bodies, but perhaps he would say that to a certain limited extent we can produce ideas in the mind of God as he does in ours. But a material thing being only an idea, exists only so long as it is in some mind. Should every mind cease to think it for a while, for so long it ceases to exist. Its permanent existence is kept up by its being an idea in the mind of God. Here we see how superficially the just-mentioned theory of reality is laid over the body of his thought. If the reality of a thing consists in its harmony with the body of realities, it is a quite needless extravagance to say that it ceases to exist as soon as it is no longer thought of. For the coherence of an idea with experience in general does not depend at all upon its being actually present to the mind all the time. But it is clear that when Berkeley says that reality consists in the connection of experience, he is simply using the word reality in a sense of his own. That an object's independence of our thought about it is constituted by its connection with experience in general, he has never conceived. On the contrary, that, according to him, is effected by its being in the mind of God. In the usual sense of the word reality, therefore, Berkeley's doctrine is that the reality of sensible things resides only in their archetypes in the divine mind. This is Platonistic, but it is not realistic. On the contrary, since it places reality wholly out of the mind in the cause of sensations, and since it denies reality (in the true sense of the word) to sensible things in so far as they are sensible, it is distinctly nominalistic. Historically there have been prominent examples of an alliance between nominalism and Platonism. Abélard and John of Salisbury, the only two defenders of nominalism of the time of the great controversy whose works remain to us, are both Platonists; and Roscellin, the famous author of the sententia de flatu vocis, the first man in the Middle Ages who carried attention to nominalism, is said and believed (all his writings are lost) to have been a follower of Scotus Erigena, the great Platonist of the ninth century. The reason of this odd conjunction of doctrines may perhaps be guessed at. The nominalist, by isolating his reality so entirely from mental influence as he has done, has made it something which the mind cannot conceive; he has created the so often talked of "improportion between the mind and the thing in itself." And it is to overcome the various difficulties to which this gives rise, that he supposes this noumenon, which, being totally unknown, the imagination can play about as it pleases, to be the emanation of archetypal ideas. The reality thus receives an intelligible nature again, and the peculiar inconveniences of nominalism are to some degree avoided. It does not seem to us strange that Berkeley's idealistic writings have not been received with much favor. They contain a great deal of argumentation of doubtful soundness, the dazzling character of which puts us more on our guard against it. They appear to be the productions of a most brilliant, original, powerful, but not thoroughly disciplined mind. He is apt to set out with wildly radical propositions, which he qualifies when they lead him to consequences he is not prepared to accept, without seeing how great the importance of his admissions is. He plainly begins his principles of human knowledge with the assumption that we have nothing in our minds but sensations, external and internal, and reproductions of them in the imagination. This goes far beyond Locke; it can be maintained only by the help of that "mental chemistry" started by Hartley. But soon we find him admitting various notions which are not ideas, or reproductions of sensations, the most striking of which is the notion of a cause, which he leaves himself no way of accounting for experientially. Again, he lays down the principle that we can have no ideas in which the sensations are reproduced in an order or combination different from what could have occurred in experience; and that therefore we have no abstract conceptions. But he very soon grants that we can consider a triangle, without attending to whether it is equilateral, isosceles, or scalene; and does not reflect that such exclusive attention constitutes a species of abstraction. His want of profound study is also shown in his so wholly mistaking, as he does, the function of the hypothesis of matter. He thinks its only purpose is to account for the production of ideas in our minds, so occupied is he with the Cartesian problem. But the real part that material substance has to play is to account for (or formulate) the constant connection between the accidents. In his theory, this office is performed by the wisdom and benevolence of God in exciting ideas with such regularity that we can know what to expect. This makes the unity of accidents a rational unity, the material theory makes it a unity not of a directly intellectual origin. The question is, then, which does experience, which does science decide for? Does it appear that in nature all regularities are directly rational, all causes final causes; or does it appear that regularities extend beyond the requirement of a rational purpose, and are brought about by mechanical causes? Now science, as we all know, is generally hostile to the final causes, the operation of which it would restrict within certain spheres, and it finds decidedly an other than directly intellectual regularity in the universe. Accordingly the claim which Mr. Collyns Simon, Professor Fraser, and Mr. Archer Butler make for Berkeleyanism, that it is especially fit to harmonize with scientific thought, is as far as possible from the truth. The sort of science that his idealism would foster would be one which should consist in saying what each natural production was made for. Berkeley's own remarks about natural philosophy show how little he sympathized with physicists. They should all be read; we have only room to quote a detached sentence or two:-- |
To endeavor to explain the production of colors or sound by figure, motion, magnitude, and the like, must needs be labor in vain. . . . In the business of gravitation or mutual attraction, because it appears in many instances, some are straightway for pronouncing it universal; and that to attract and be attracted by every body is an essential quality inherent in all bodies whatever. . . . There is nothing necessary or essential in the case, but it depends entirely on the will of the Governing Spirit, who causes certain bodies to cleave together or tend towards each other according to various laws, whilst he keeps others at a fixed distance; and to some he gives a quite contrary tendency, to fly asunder just as he sees convenient. . . . First, it is plain philosophers amuse themselves in vain, when they inquire for any natural efficient cause, distinct from mind or spirit. Secondly, considering the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise and good Agent, it should seem to become philosophers to employ their thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about the final causes of things; and I must confess I see no reason why pointing out the various ends to which natural things are adapted, and for which they were originally with unspeakable wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good way of accounting for them, and altogether worthy of a philosopher. (Vol. I, p. 466) |
After this how can his disciples say "that the true logic of physics is the first conclusion from his system!" As for that argument which is so much used by Berkeley and others, that such and such a thing cannot exist because we cannot so much as frame the idea of such a thing,--that matter, for example, is impossible because it is an abstract idea, and we have no abstract ideas,--it appears to us to be a mode of reasoning which is to be used with extreme caution. Are the facts such, that if we could have an idea of the thing in question, we should infer its existence, or are they not? If not, no argument is necessary against its existence, until something is found out to make us suspect it exists. But if we ought to infer that it exists, if we only could frame the idea of it, why should we allow our mental incapacity to prevent us from adopting the proposition which logic requires? If such arguments had prevailed in mathematics (and Berkeley was equally strenuous in advocating them there), and if everything about negative quantities, the square root of minus, and infinitesimals, had been excluded from the subject on the ground that we can form no idea of such things, the science would have been simplified no doubt, simplified by never advancing to the more difficult matters. A better rule for avoiding the deceits of language is this: Do things fulfil the same function practically? Then let them be signified by the same word. Do they not? Then let them be distinguished. If I have learned a formula in gibberish which in any way jogs my memory so as to enable me in each single case to act as though I had a general idea, what possible utility is there in distinguishing between such a gibberish and formula and an idea? Why use the term a general idea in such a sense as to separate things which, for all experiential purposes, are the same? The great inconsistency of the Berkeleyan theory, which prevents his nominalistic principles from appearing in their true colors, is that he has not treated mind and matter in the same way. All that he has said against the existence of matter might be said against the existence of mind; and the only thing which prevented his seeing that, was the vagueness of the Lockian reflection, or faculty of internal perception. It was not until after he had published his systematic exposition of his doctrine, that this objection ever occurred to him. He alludes to it in one of his dialogues, but his answer to it is very lame. Hume seized upon this point, and, developing it, equally denied the existence of mind and matter, maintaining that only appearances exist. Hume's philosophy is nothing but Berkeley's, with this change made in it, and written by a mind of a more sceptical tendency. The innocent bishop generated Hume; and as no one disputes that Hume gave rise to all modern philosophy of every kind, Berkeley ought to have a far more important place in the history of philosophy than has usually been assigned to him. His doctrine was the half-way station, or necessary resting-place between Locke's and Hume's. Hume's greatness consists in the fact that he was the man who had the courage to carry out his principles to their utmost consequences, without regard to the character of the conclusions he reached. But neither he nor any other one has set forth nominalism in an absolutely thoroughgoing manner; and it is safe to say that no one ever will, unless it be to reduce it to absurdity. We ought to say one word about Berkeley's theory of vision. It was undoubtedly an extraordinary piece of reasoning, and might have served for the basis of the modern science. Historically it has not had that fortune, because the modern science has been chiefly created in Germany, where Berkeley is little known and greatly misunderstood. We may fairly say that Berkeley taught the English some of the most essential principles of that hypothesis of sight which is now getting to prevail, more than a century before they were known to the rest of the world. This is much; but what is claimed by some of his advocates is astounding. One writer says that Berkeley's theory has been accepted by the leaders of all schools of thought! Professor Fraser admits that it has attracted no attention in Germany, but thinks the German mind too a priori to like Berkeley's reasoning. But Helmholtz, who has done more than any other man to bring the empiricist theory into favor, says: "Our knowledge of the phenomena of vision is not so complete as to allow only one theory and exclude every other. It seems to me that the choice which different savans make between different theories of vision has thus far been governed more by their metaphysical inclinations than by any constraining power which the facts have had." The best authorities, however, prefer the empiricist hypothesis; the fundamental proposition of which, as it is of Berkeley's, is that the sensations which we have in seeing are signs of the relations of things whose interpretation has to be discovered inductively. In the enumeration of the signs and of their uses, Berkeley shows considerable power in that sort of investigation, though there is naturally no very close resemblance between his and the modern accounts of the matter. There is no modern physiologist who would not think that Berkeley had greatly exaggerated the part that the muscular sense plays in vision. Berkeley's theory of vision was an important step in the development of the associationalist psychology. He thought all our conceptions of body and of space were simply reproductions in the imagination of sensations of touch (including the muscular sense). This, if it were true, would be a most surprising case of mental chemistry, that is of a sensation being felt and yet so mixed with others that we cannot by an act of simple attention recognize it. Doubtless this theory had its influence in the production of Hartley's system. Hume's phenomenalism and Hartley's associationalism were put forth almost contemporaneously about 1750. They contain the fundamental positions of the current English "positivism." From 1750 down to 1830--eighty years--nothing of particular importance was added to the nominalistic doctrine. At the beginning of this period Hume's was toning down his earlier radicalism, and Smith's theory of Moral Sentiments appeared. Later came Priestley's materialism, but there was nothing new in that; and just at the end of the period, Brown's Lectures on the Human Mind. The great body of the philosophy of those eighty years is of the Scotch common-sense school. It is a weak sort of realistic reaction, for which there is no adequate explanation within the sphere of the history of philosophy. It would be curious to inquire whether anything in the history of society could account for it. In 1829 appeared James Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, a really great nominalistic book again. This was followed by Stuart Mill's Logic in 1843. Since then, the school has produced nothing of the first importance; and it will very likely lose its distinctive character now for a time, by being merged in an empiricism of a less metaphysical and more working kind. Already in Stuart Mill the nominalism is less salient than in the classical writers; though it is quite unmistakable. Thus we see how large a part of the metaphysical ideas of to-day have come to us by inheritance from very early times, Berkeley being one of the intellectual ancestors whose labors did as much as any one's to enhance the value of the bequest. The realistic philosophy of the last century has now lost all its popularity, except with the most conservative minds. And science as well as philosophy is nominalistic. The doctrine of the correlation of forces, the discoveries of Helmholtz, and the hypotheses of Liebig and of Darwin, have all that character of explaining familiar phenomena apparently of a peculiar kind by extending the operation of simple mechanical principles, which belongs to nominalism. Or if the nominalistic character of these doctrines themselves cannot be detected, it will at least be admitted that they are observed to carry along with them those daughters of nominalism,--sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism. That physical science is necessarily connected with doctrines of a debasing moral tendency will be believed by few. But if we hold that such an effect will not be produced by these doctrines on a mind which really understands them, we are accepting this belief, not on experience, which is rather against it, but on the strength of our general faith that what is really true it is good to believe and evil to reject. On the other hand, it is allowable to suppose that science has no essential affinity with the philosophical views with which it seems to be every year more associated. History cannot be held to exclude this supposition; and science as it exists is certainly much less nominalistic than the nominalists think it should be. Whewell represents it quite as well as Mill. Yet a man who enters into the scientific thought of the day and has not materialistic tendencies, is getting to be an impossibility. So long as there is a dispute between nominalism and realism, so long as the position we hold on the question is not determined by any proof indisputable, but is more or less a matter of inclination, a man as he gradually comes to feel the profound hostility of the two tendencies will, if he is not less than man, become engaged with one or other and can no more obey both than he can serve God and Mammon. If the two impulses are neutralized within him, the result simply is that he is left without any great intellectual motive. There is, indeed, no reason to suppose the logical question is in its own nature unsusceptible of solution. But that path out of the difficulty lies through the thorniest mazes of a science as dry as mathematics. Now there is a demand for mathematics; it helps to build bridges and drive engines, and therefore it becomes somebody's business to study it severely. But to have a philosophy is a matter of luxury; the only use of that is to make us feel comfortable and easy. It is a study for leisure hours; and we want it supplied in an elegant, an agreeable, an interesting form. The law of natural selection, which is the precise analogue in another realm of the law of supply and demand, has the most immediate effect in fostering the other faculties of the understanding, for the men of mental power succeed in the struggle for life; but the faculty of philosophizing, except in the literary way, is not called for; and therefore a difficult question cannot be expected to reach solution until it takes some practical form. If anybody should have the good luck to find out the solution, nobody else would take the trouble to understand it. But though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic, its branches reach about our life. The question whether the genus homo has any existence except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life. Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental practical question in regard to every public institution the constitution of which we have it in our power to influence. 1. Died 1308. 2. The entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem is the argument of Durand de St. Pourçain. But any given piece of popular information about scholasticism may be safely assumed to be wrong. 3. The sole difference between Ockam and Hobbes is that the former admits the universal signs in the mind to be natural, while the latter thinks they only follow instituted language. The consequence of this difference is that, while Ockam regards all truth as depending on the mind's naturally imposing the same sign on two things, Hobbes will have it that the first truths were established by convention. But both would doubtless allow that there is something in re to which such truths corresponded. But the sense of Berkeley's implication would be that there are no universal thought-signs at all. Whence it would follow that there is no truth and no judgments but propositions spoken or on paper. |
O 58: Nation 13(30 November 1871):355-56 Mr. Charles S. Peirce, in his review of Berkeley in the last North American, to which we promised to return, takes the occasion to trace out in the history of philosophical thought in Great Britain the sources of Berkeley's doctrines and of later developments in English philosophy. These he traces back to the famous disputes of the later schoolmen on the question of realism and nominalism--that question on which each new-fledged masculine intellect likes to try its powers of disputation. But the motive of the schoolmen who started this question or gave it prominence, was not in any sense egotistical, however pugilistic it may have been, but was profoundly religious--more religious, in fact, than anything modern, and, perhaps, more fitly to be compared to the devotion that produced the Gothic architecture than to anything else. The most remarkable thing in the essay is Mr. Peirce’s interpretation of the actual question so earnestly agitated. This, it should seem, is not at all what has become the universally accepted account of this voluminous dispute--an account derived, it appears, from Bayle's Dictionary. The realistic schoolmen were not such dolts as to contend for an incognizable reality beyond any powers we have for apprehending it, nor for the existence of universals as the objects of general conceptions existing outside of the mind. They only contended (against the sceptical or nominalistic tendency) that reality, or the truth of things, depends on something besides the actual courses of experience in individual minds, or is independent of differences and accidents in these; and that truth is not determined by the conventions of language, or by what men choose to mean by their words. So far from being the reality commonly supposed--that is to say, the vivid, actual, present contact with things--the reality of the realists was the final upshot of experience, the general agreement in all experience, as far removed as possible from any particular body's sight, or hearing, or touch, or from the accidents which are inseparable from these. Yet it is essentially intelligible, and, in fact, is the very most intelligible, and is quite independent of conventions in language. The faith of the realists (for theirs was a philosophy of faith) was that this result of all men's experience would contain agreements not dependent on the laws and usages of language, but on truths which determine these laws and usages. Modern science affords ample evidence of the justness of this position. That this truly was the position of the realistic schoolmen, Mr. Peirce contends; and he bases his opinion and belief on an original examination of their works, such as has not, we venture to say, been undertaken, outside of Germany, for a very long time. In spite of the confirmation of this position which modern science gives, the course of the development of modern science has, nevertheless, as Mr. Peirce points out, been closely associated with the opposite doctrine--nominalism, the representative of the sceptical spirit. This appears in Berkeley's philosophy, who is a nominalist, notwithstanding his penchant for Platonic ideas or spiritual archetypes. Hume, a complete representative of the nominalistic and sceptical spirit, is an historical product of Berkeley's nominalism; and, though commonly regarded as the author of modern philosophical movements, was not, historically considered, so different from Berkeley but that Mr. Peirce regards the latter as entitled to "a far more important place in the history of philosophy than has usually been assigned to him." So far as Berkeley was a link in the chain, this is undoubtedly true. So far as Hume (in common with all independent thinkers of the sceptical type) was not such a link, he was, we think, a starting-point in the movement of thought which has resulted in English empiricism, or the so-called "Positivism" of modern science, which Mr. Peirce seems inclined to attribute to a regular development of philosophical thought. Scepticism, though perhaps never original, as we are taught by orthodoxy, and only a revival of old and the oft-exploded errors, is, nevertheless, by its criticism, the source of most of the impulses which the spirit of enquiry has received in the history of philosophy. The results of modern science, the establishment of a great body of undisputed truths, the questions settled beyond debate, may be testimony in favor of the realistic schoolmen; but this settlement was the work, so far as it depended on the impulse of philosophy, of the nominalistic or sceptical tendencies of modern thought, which has put itself in opposition, not to the faith of the realists, as Mr. Peirce understands them, but to their conservatism and dogmatism, to their desire to agree with authority--that admirable devotion of theirs. It is curious that these things, the most certain of all on which the actual arts of life are now dependent, should be the results equally of the faith of the realists and the sceptical enquiries of the nominalists. But this is enough to account for the gratitude and the indifference which we owe to both of them, especially as the confirmation which science has afforded is not of the sort which the realists anticipated. It is the empirical conjectures of the visionary, not the inspired teachings of the wise, that have established realities for themselves and for truth in general. There are many other curious points of history and criticism in this article which will engage the scrutiny of the student of metaphysics, and doubtless afford him great delight. We are afraid to recommend it to other readers, as Mr. Peirce’s style reflects the difficulties of the subject, and is better adapted for persons who have mastered these than for such as would rather avoid them. |
P 59: Nation 13(14 December 1871):386 Sir: In your far too flattering notice of my remarks upon mediæval realism and nominalism, you have attributed to me a degree of originality which is not my due. The common view that realism is a modified Platonism has already been condemned by the most thorough students, such as Prantl and Morin. The realists certainly held (as I have said) that universals really exist in external things. The only feature of the controversy which has appeared to me to need more emphasis than has hitherto been put upon it is that each party had its own peculiar ideas of what it is that is real, the realists assuming that reality belongs to what is present to us in true knowledge of any sort, the nominalists assuming that the absolutely external causes of perception are the only realities. This point of disagreement was never argued out, for the reason that the mental horizon of each party was too limited for it to comprehend what the conception of the other side was. It is a similar narrowness of thought which makes it so hard for many persons to understand one side or the other, at this day. |
P 44: Nation 9(22 July 1869):73-74 The sudden impulse which spectroscopic researchers received in 1860, and which has resulted in several brilliant discoveries in chemistry and astronomy, affords a singular problem in the history of scientific progress. There was nothing absolutely new in the method of Kirchhoff and Bunsen. It consisted essentially in observing the spectra of the colorations imparted by different substances to the non-luminous gas-flame generally used in laboratories. Colored flames had been used since an early period in the history of chemistry for distinguishing the different alkalies and alkaline earths; and J. F. W. Herschel in 1822, W. H. F. Talbot in 1826, and W. A. Miller in 1845, had made some study of the spectra of these flames with reference to chemical analysis. The black lines of the spectra of some of the stars had been examined by Fraunhofer, and found to differ from those of the spectrum common to the sun, moon, and planets. The absorption-lines produced by some gases had been studied by Brewster; and Stokes had pointed out the use of absorption-bands in detecting certain metals in solution. The coincidence of the bright line of incandescent sodium vapor with the D line of the solar spectrum had been noticed by Fraunhofer; and Stokes and William Thomson thence inferred that sodium was contained in the atmosphere of the sun, because a substance can only emit what it is capable of absorbing. These investigations appertain to all parts of spectral analysis. Why, then, did they remain comparatively unfruitful while the very first memoir of Kirchhoff and Bunsen created a sensation such as the scientific world had not felt since the discovery of Neptune? Kirchhoff himself seems to think that it was because he and Bunsen first clearly showed that the positions of the spectral lines depend solely upon the chemical constituents of the glowing gases. No doubt, the effect upon the imagination of so broad a proposition upon a new matter of science is great, yet the habitual reliance by chemists upon the flame reaction of sodium seems to show that this law had been implicitly assumed upon all hands to be true in practice. Perhaps the chief causes of the profound impression produced by Kirchhoff and Bunsen's papers were these three: 1st, The flame of the Bunsen burner, which was employed by them, was capable from its intense heat and small lighting power of giving much more satisfactory results than the alcohol flames used by the early experimenters; 2d, The new investigations were conducted with a tact and thoroughness which commanded admiration; and 3d, Bunsen had the good fortune and the skill to detect by the new method two metals--rubidium and cæsium--before unknown, in some mineral water he was analyzing, the mixed chlorides of these metals being contained in the proportion of about a drachm in twenty tons of the water. Bunsen not only discovered these elements, but studied them so well (working partly in company with Kirchhoff) that they are now among those whose chemical relations are the best understood. They have been found to be somewhat widely distributed through the mineral kingdom in very small quantities. An Italian mineral, which had formerly been analyzed by the celebrated mineralogist Plattner, has been found to contain 34 per cent of the oxide of cæsium, which had been mistaken for potassa. Plattner's analysis did not add up 100 per cent at all correctly, owing to the great difference in the combining numbers of potassa and cæsium. Many a chemist would have been ashamed to own such an analysis; Plattner was willing to publish a work which there was no other reason for condemning than one which was perfectly patent, and the result is that time has shown that his experiments were correctly performed. In 1861, an English chemist, Crookes, hardly known before, discovered by means of the spectroscope another metal (thallium) of very singular chemical characters; and this is a discovery which may lead to others, for with thallium a glass has been made which is reported as wonderfully adapted for prisms. In 1863, a fourth metal--indium--resembling zinc was discovered by means of the spectroscope in the zincblende of Freiberg. The study of the celestial spectra has afforded important information concerning the sun, the stars, the nebulas, some comets, and the aurora borealis. We have learned that many chemical elements which are found upon the earth exist in the atmosphere of the sun, including nearly all of those which form a large proportion of the earth's crust. We have also ascertained, what might have been known à priori, that the most elastic of the gases (hydrogen) extends higher from the sun's centre than any of the other substances. The solar spots are getting examined; and if some observations lately reported are confirmed, we shall have some of the theories upon this subject brought to a test. In the stars have been recognized a number of the chemical elements which we know; yet in many of them some of the commonest substances here, and those most essential to life as we know it, are altogether wanting. A displacement of one of the hydrogen lines in the spectrum of Sirius is held to prove that that star is moving rapidly towards our system. The nebulas have been found to be of two entirely different kinds; for the spectra of some of them have been found to consist of isolated bright lines, showing that these nebulas are gaseous, while by far the larger proportion show the continuous spectrum which is seldom produced by an incandescent gas. This difference between the spectra corresponds strictly to a difference between the ordinary telescopic appearances of the nebulas. This is the more interesting, as the first proposition upon which Sir William Herschel founded his nebula hypothesis was that there was no natural classification among nebulas. None of the nebulas have been proved to contain any substance otherwise known to us. Several minute comets have been subjected to spectroscopic examination, and two of them have been shown to contain carbon in some gaseous state. The spectrum of the aurora, as usually seen, consists of a single yellowish-green line, which belongs to no substance with which we are acquainted. As the aurora is held to be above the ordinary atmosphere (and this is confirmed by its showing no nitrogen lines), it follows that there is some unknown gas reaching above the other constituents of the atmosphere. According to the laws of gravity and of diffusion of gases, this substance must extend down to the surface of the earth. Why, then, have not chemists discovered it? It must be a very light elastic gas to reach so high. Now, the atomic weights of elementary gases are proportional to their density. It must, then, have a very small atomic weight. It may be as much lighter than hydrogen as hydrogen is than air. In that case, its atomic weight would be so small that, supposing it to have an oxide on the type of water, this oxide would contain less than one per cent of it, and in general it would enter into its compounds in such small proportions as almost infallibly to escape detection. In addition to the green line usually seen in the aurora, six others were discovered and measured at the Harvard College Observatory during the brilliant display of last spring, and four of these lines were seen again on another occasion. On the 29th of June last, a single narrow band of auroral light extended from east to west, clear over the heavens, at Cambridge, moving from north to south. This was found to have a continuous spectrum; while the fainter auroral light in the north showed the usual green line. 2 Professor Roscoe's book contains an interesting and very thorough account of spectrum analysis. The paper, ink, type, and plates are beautiful. In his style, Mr. Roscoe neither aims at sensational effect, nor so strains after simplicity as to verge upon baby-talk. And these are the two commonest faults of popular science. The only exaggeration which we have noticed is in the chromo-lithograph of the spectrum of a nebula. If the book be taken into a nearly dark room, so that at first glance nothing is seen but the dark oblong shapes of the whole spectra of that plate, the figure in question will "serve to give some idea of the peculiar beauty of the phenomenon in question." The lines in the spectrum of Sirius, on the same plate, are made much too distinct, both absolutely and relatively to the other stars. The practical spectroscopists will find here an exceedingly convenient repertory of facts. Kirchhoff's chart of the solar spectrum, with the extension of Angström and Thalèn, is very beautifully reproduced in miniature. Huggins's maps of the metal lines are given in a form far more convenient for use at the spectroscope than the two folding sheets in a huge quarto in which alone they have hitherto been published. The numerical tables in full accompany both sets of maps. It is much to be regretted that Dr. Gibbs's important tables for the comparison of Kirchhoff's, Huggins's, and the Normal scales have not been given. We should also have been glad to have Thalèn's metallic spectra. At the end of the book there is a "List of Memoirs, etc., upon Spectrum Analysis." This is certainly valuable, and appears to be full. We observe, however, the omission of Stokes's paper upon the absorption-bands as a reagent, and also of Secchi's catalogue of the spectra of the stars. As the work contains little about the spectra of particular celestial objects, the last-named paper might well have been translated and inserted in full, with notes. Professor Roscoe's book may truly be said to be popular and scientific at the same time. And we call it scientific, not only because it is a thorough account of the facts, but also because it contains long extracts from the original memoirs of the serious workers in this branch of science. There is, doubtless, a vast difference between that knowledge of scientific research which comes of actual practice and that which recommends this book to general readers. No one need be scared by a fear that it is mathematical, for everything which borders upon that subject is omitted. There is nothing about the angles of prisms, the theory of exchanges, or the theory of the displacement of lines owing to the motion of the source of light. 1. Spectrum Analysis. Six Lectures delivered in 1868, before the Society of Apothecaries of London. By Henry E. Roscoe, B.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Owens College, Manchester. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869. 2. We have received permission from Prof. Winlock to state this singular fact, which has not been published before. |
P 70: Coast Survey Report 1869, 126-27 SIR: In accordance with your instructions I transmit to you the following account of the observations made by me on the solar eclipse of August 7. The station which you selected for me was Bardstown, Kentucky, a little southwest of the central line of the eclipse. I was furnished with an elegant equatorial telescope of four inches clear aperture, and five feet focal length. Upon opposite sides of the tube of this telescope, and parallel to it, were attached two brass rods at the eye-end of the tube, and reaching about a foot beyond it. Upon these rods was fixed the spectroscope, and in such a manner that the slit was plainly visible. I found this arrangement of yours all that could be desired. With it I had little need of a finder. Pieces of white paper were pasted upon the brass-work of the slit to receive the image of the sun, which, during totality, could not well have been seen upon the polished brass. There was some danger of detaching this paper in opening and closing the slit, and I therefore wished to change the width of the slit as few times as possible during totality. The spectroscope attached to my telescope contained a single flint-glass prism and a three-prism direct-vision spectroscope screwed in in place of its telescope. There were no means of measuring the positions of the lines. In order to bring different parts of the spectrum into view it was necessary to unscrew a binding-screw, which then left the somewhat heavy arm which carried the direct-vision spectroscope entirely loose, and then to move this arm with the hand and tighten up the screw. When this was done the arm would fall a little, and it was only by looking at the spectrum, and estimating how much the arm would fall that it was possible to set upon any part of the spectrum. During totality there might be no light in the field if the observer were to move away from a protuberance, and, therefore, no means of knowing to what part of the spectrum, if any, the arm was set. If the slit was opened to give full light, the paper pasted on it might become detached and render it impossible to set the slit on a protuberance. There was no clock-work on the telescope, and the observers were in continual apprehension of some disturbance in the crowd of mostly ignorant spectators, and therefore an attempt to move this arm was a thing to be dreaded. On the other hand, it could be so set as to afford a view of the spectrum from its red extremity up to half-way between F and G. Under the circumstances I would not venture to move it. If I had been alone, and consequently at my ease, I should have done so. My telescope was pointed for me by Mr. N. S. Shaler, the geologist, who generously relinquished his opportunity of witnessing the sublime phenomenon undisturbed, and offered his assistance in the astronomical observations. My telescope was, therefore, managed for me with perfect skill and coolness. Upon the morning of the 6th I set up my instrument and searched for protuberances. I found only one, which was upon the following side of the sun, and was very yellow, that is to say, the yellow line near D was relatively very bright in it. Indeed, I could not see the F line at all. On the morning of the 7th I examined the sun with greater care, and noted several protuberances (which were afterward plainly seen at totality), but none of these were as brilliant as the one which had been seen the day before continued to be; and this was now less high, extended over a larger arc on the disk of the sun, and was still more yellow than it had previously appeared. At the instant of totality my telescope was pointed on this protuberance and my slit was rather narrow. At that instant the continuous spectrum vanished, and five lines, brilliantly colored, became visible. These were F, b, another dimmer and broader line, say one-fourth of the distance from b to D, the well-known yellow line near D and C. After observing the spectrum of this protuberance at different positions, I looked at the sun, and was pleased to find my conceptions of the shape and color of this protuberance entirely confirmed. The same glance showed me upon the southwestern limb of the sun (where my business chiefly lay) a well-marked rose-colored protuberance. I first observed the spectrum of another red protuberance on the southern edge, and then that of the one just mentioned. I found the spectra of the red protuberances to be alike; they differed from that of the yellow one only in the relative greater brilliancy of the red, yellow, and blue lines in the former, the fainter green being especially much fainter. I have no doubt, from my previous observations, that the yellow line was also less bright in the red protuberances, but it appeared so bright that I could not perceive that it was less bright than in the yellow protuberance. Mr. Shaler then pointed for me on the corona, and I was just opening the slit to get more light when the sun burst forth and put an end to my observations. Two seconds more, or a little more privacy, would have enabled me to get it. During the eclipse the following miscellaneous observations were made by Mr. Shaler and me: The protuberances were of two distinct kinds: one sort was low, long, and yellow; the other high, short, and red. Mr. Shaler saw the disk of the sun break into beads at the moment of totality. The appearance lasted only an instant, and seemed as if it were the effect of irregularities of the limb of the moon. About a month before, Mr. Shaler had observed on the limb of the moon a serrated appearance occasioned by a range of mountains. Mr. Shaler observed that the corona formed a quadrangle, with concave sides vertical and horizontal, the latter being the longest. He estimated its mean breadth at one and a half the diameter of the sun. He found that it did not fade gradually away, but had a sharply defined edge. I noticed the following points in reference to colors. While the eclipse was coming on there was no change in the colors of the landscape or of people's faces, but the light had a singular theatrical effect, owing to the sharpness of the shadows. During totality, the light on the landscape was like the gray of twilight. The moon, at this time, was not black, but of a deep, dull, and somewhat purplish blue, darker than the sky. Mr. Shaler confirmed this. The sky was of a dark purplish blue. It was not lighter near the corona. The corona was quite white and not bluish. The yellow protuberances were greenish like the aurora, and intensely brilliant. The red ones had much the color of the light from hydrogen in a Geissler tube. Upon the south, and also (as Mr. Shaler says) on the north, was a salmon-colored light upon the horizon, reaching up some five degrees or more. Venus and Mercury looked as white as Vega ever looks. Mr. Shaler says: "Little effect was visible on animated nature until the last five minutes before totality, except that the cocks all began to crow, at several points, with the sleepy crow of early morning and not the exultation of full day. The birds began to make their nesting-cries as the light rapidly waned. Cattle were evidently much alarmed, and ran, with tails up and heads erect, across the fields almost in stampede. At the close of the eclipse a hen was found, with her chickens under her wings. Four months' old chickens were seen, within ten minutes of the total eclipse, quietly feeding. They then disappeared. The crowd was placed, at the request of the observer, beyond a fence, distant about thirty feet from the telescope. At the moment of totality a hollow sound, half of fear, half of admiration, called attention to their faces, with dropped jaws and look of horror, which were turned toward the wreck of the sun. There is no doubt that exceeding fear took possession of the whole people. The many who were present slipped away quietly; the few who staid after totality seemed singularly quiet, evidently recovering from a considerable nervous shock." |
The science required for any testing is one which merely divides its object into its natural kinds and describes the characters of each kind. Thus a "Bank-Note Detector" affords the knowledge requisite to testing bank-notes and it describes each kind of bank-note merely, without entering into an account of its manufacture. Such a knowledge will be termed a classificatory in opposition to a causal or demonstrative science. §2. An argument is a statement supposed to appeal to some person. Appealing is having such a relation to a person that he will regard the statement as if he would admit that every set of facts, taken as those stated have been taken, determines by certain relations another possible statement, and that this would be more apt to be true in the long run when the facts stated are true, than a random assertion would be. 1 That which is laid down is termed the premiss or premises; the determinate proposition to which the premise or premises are related is termed the conclusion; and the implication that such a conclusion is usually true if the premises are is termed the leading principle. §3. A valid argument (opposed to a fallacious argument or fallacy) is one whose leading principle is true. A demonstrative (opposed to a merely probable) argument is one whose leading principle would make every such conclusion true and not merely the greater number of them. §4. An argument determines its conclusion to be true, only if both leading principle and premisses are true. Whatever is required besides the premises to determine the truth of the conclusion is ipso facto implied in the leading principle. Hence whatever fact (not superfluous) is dropped from the premises is added to the leading principle; and no fact can be eliminated from the leading principle without having been added to the premises. All that is in the premisses cannot however be thrown into the leading principle, since there is no argument which states nothing. Nor is there an argument without a leading principle, for if nothing is implied the conclusion is already stated in the premisses. But a mere statement is not an argument. §5. That there is a certain minimum leading principle, that cannot be got rid of may be illustrated as follows. Let a certain argument be A and its conclusion, B. Then we may say that the leading principle is that "If A is true B is true." Take this as an additional premiss and the argument becomes-- |
If A, B But A Ergo B. |
The leading principle of this plainly is that if two facts are related as reason and consequent and the reason be true the consequent is true. Make another premise of this and the argument becomes-- If one statement be related to another so that if the former is true the latter is and if the former is true, the latter is.
A is so related to B and is true Now the leading principle of this is plainly the same as that of the last previous form of the argument. Here, therefore, is a leading principle which is not dispensed with by being thrown into the premiss. And as it is absurd to say that anything can be eliminated from the leading principle by taking away anything from the premises, it is plain this principle must have lurked in the leading principle even of the first form of the argument. An argument in which everything has been eliminated from the leading principle which can be so eliminated is termed a complete in opposition to an incomplete or rhetorical argument or enthymeme. 2 Logic is, of course, not the encyclopaedia. Those things which can possibly be required to be stated have as such no truth in common and are in detail the object of the various sciences. Hence logic does not take account of the truth of premisses, or of anything which would appear as a premiss if the argument were put into the complete form. On the other hand whatever cannot be eliminated from the leading principle is taken for granted by every other science and not laid down; hence logic does take account of these things. Logic might, indeed, be defined as the science of the leading principles of complete arguments; and such leading principles are properly termed logical principles. The example of a logical principle given above illustrates an important character of all such principles; namely, that they not only cannot be stated in arguments without superfluity but that in one sense they cannot be stated at all. The statement which contains only a logical principle contains no fact. In order to infer so as to conform to logical principles we must infer a determinate conclusion, but in order to state what shall imply a logical principle we are not obliged to make any definite statement at all. §6. A proposition is a collocation of significant terms so put as to state something. To state is to purport to represent an object--or in other words, to represent that whatever a certain significant term represents is represented by another significant term. The manner in which the significant terms are put together--or the sign that they are so put together--is termed the copula. This is essentially the same for all propositions. The term whose object is said to be represented by another may be called the true subject; that which is said to represent the object of the other may be called the true predicate. §7. A significant term is something which stands for an object, by means of its relation to a certain symbol or symbols. A symbol is something to which a certain character is imputed, that is which stands for whatever object may have that character. §8. Mere iteration is not argument, for it could not appeal to any mind that did not admit the fact asserted, and one that already admitted it it would not affect. In short, it does not fall strictly under the definition of argument nor is it analogous to it. Every conclusion therefore states something different from any one of its premisses. But the copula is the same for all propositions. Hence the conclusion must be obtained from any premiss by the substitution of a significant term or terms. That another significant term or terms may be substituted for a term or terms of a premise, requires to be put into another premise in a complete argument, unless the substitution is wholly determined by a principle implied by every such argumentative substitution. But in this case the principle would be implied in the very premiss itself and therefore the conclusion would merely repeat a part of what is implied in the premise, which we have just seen is impossible. In all cases, therefore, a second premiss is required to express the condition which makes it possible to substitute the conclusion for the first premise. If more premisses than one are required to express the fact that the conclusion can be substituted for any given premise, either these other premisses by themselves yield one conclusion which expresses this fact or successive substitutions can be made by single propositions. Hence every argument of more than two premisses can be broken up into arguments of two premisses. Such arguments are called simple arguments in opposition to complex ones. §9. The substitution of conclusion for a premiss is as we have seen the substitution of one term for another. Now, it is evident that the only such substitution which necessarily yields a true conclusion from true premises is the substitution for a subject or predicate of another term which has as subject or predicate no function or value beyond that of the term for which it is substituted. |
S has no force as subject beyond M P has no force as predicate beyond M |
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or in other language |
S is denoted by M M connotes P |
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This principle is that of deduction. §10. Passing over for the present the divisions of mood and figure, also over the question whether there is any other form of predication except that in which the predicate is said to denote and to be connoted by the subject, we come to another principle of inference. 1. This sufficiently sets forth the essential elements of an argument; but does not define it, since in introducing the conception of truth it commits a diallele. 2. Aristotle makes the rhetorical argument the same as the probable one. This is an error. |
P 45: Nation 9(25 November 1869):461-62 James Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind has long been known as one of the most original and characteristic productions of English thought. It now appears in a second edition, enlarged by many long notes by the author's disciples, who are to-day the most eminent representatives of the English school. These notes are chiefly of interest as forming the clearest exposition of the present state of opinion in that school, and of the changes which it has undergone since 1829. It is a timely publication, because the peculiarities of the English mind are so sharply cut in James Mill that it will help to awaken that numerous class of general readers who have become impregnated with the ideas of Stuart Mill's logic into self-consciousness in reference to the intellectual habit which they have contracted. A philosophy or method of thinking which is held in control--the mind rising above it, and understanding its limitations--is a valuable instrument; but a method in which one is simply immersed, without seeing how things can be otherwise rationally regarded, is a sheer restriction of the mental powers. In this point of view, it is a fact of interest to the adherent of the English school that it is not a particularly learned body, and that its more modern leaders at least have not generally been remarkable for an interior understanding of opposing systems, nor even for a wide acquaintance with results the most analogous to their own which have been obtained in other countries. It is a familiar logical maxim that nothing can be comprehended without comparing it with other things; and this is so true in regard to philosophies that a great German metaphysician has said that whoever has reached a thorough comprehension of a philosophical system has outgrown it. Accordingly, we think that we discern in English philosophers an unconsciousness of their own peculiarities, and a tendency to describe them in language much too wide; in consequence of which the student has to gather the essential characters of their thought by a comparison with different systems, and cannot derive any real understanding of them from anything which lies wholly within their horizon alone. This somewhat insular group of thinkers are now often called Positivists. If this means that they are the philosophers of exact experience, it is too much to say of them; if it means that they are followers of M. Comte, it is too little. They seem to us to be what remains of that sacra schola invictissimorum nominalium, of which the English Ockham was the "venerable beginner." Many pages of this Analysis might, if somewhat changed in language, easily be mistaken for Ockham's. The chief methodical characteristic of their thought is "analysis." And what is analysis? The application of Ockham's razor--that is to say, the principle of reducing the expression of the nature of things and of the mind to its simplest terms by lopping off everything which looks like a metaphysical superfluity. By mental analysis the English mean the separation of a compound idea or sensation into its constituent ideas or sensations. Thus, they would say that the sensation of white had no distinct existence; it is merely the concurrence of the three sensations of blue, red, and yellow. So, James Mill says that virtue is the habit of associating with the actions from which men derive advantage the pleasures which result from them. It is plain that such analysis reduces the number of distinct constituents of human nature. The same thinkers reason in a manner entirely analogous when they are not dealing with the mind at all; and in general their method may be described as simplifying existing hypotheses and then endeavoring to show that known facts may be accounted for by these simplified hypotheses. In this way, a highly elegant and instructive system has been created; but it is not pre-eminently scientific. It might be scientific if these philosophers occupied themselves with subjecting their modified theories to the test of exact experience in every possible way, and spent their time in a systematic course of observations and measurements, as some German psychologists have done. But that is not their business; they are writers. Their energies are occupied in adjusting their theories to the facts, and not in ascertaining the certainty of their theories. This cannot be said to hold good fully in the case of Mr. Bain; his books are largely occupied with correcting and limiting theories; but so far he appears quite different from the English school generally, to which, however, he certainly belongs. Desultory experience is what they all build on, and on that basis no true science can be reared. James Mill's psychological theory is this: All that is in the mind is sensations, and copies of sensations; and whatever order there is in these copies is merely a reproduction of the order which there was in their originals. To have a feeling (a sensation, or the copy of one), and to know that we have it, and what its characters are; or to have two feelings, and to know their mutual relations and agreements, are not two things, but one and the same thing. These principles are held to be sufficient to explain all the phenomena of mind. The beauty of this theory appears when we consider that it is as much as to say simply that ideas in consciousness are concrete images of things in existence. For a thing to exist, and for it to have all its characters; or for two things to exist, and for them to have all their relations of existence to each other, are not two facts, but one. A book which thoroughly follows out such a hypothesis is a great contribution to human knowledge, even if the hypothesis does not satisfy the facts. For it clears up our conceptions greatly to understand precisely how far a simple, single supposition like this will go, and where it will fail. The theory is of the most markedly English character. Though it is a single supposition which cannot logically be broken, yet we may say that its chief points are these three: 1. Every idea is the mere copy of a sensation. 2. Whatever is in the mind is known. 3. The order of ideas is a mere reproduction of the order of sensations. That every idea is the copy of a sensation has always been recognized as the chief point of English psychology. Hume expresses it in the clearest language, saying that the difference between an idea and a sensation is, that the former is faint and the latter lively. This involves the opinion that all our ideas are singular, or devoid of generality; that is, that just as every existing thing either has or has not each conceivable quality, so every idea is an idea of the presence or absence of every quality. As Berkeley says, my idea of a man "must be either of a white or a black or a tawny, a straight or a crooked, a tall or a low or a middle-sized man." Accordingly, it is obvious that one of the difficulties in the way of these philosophers is to explain our seeming to attach a general meaning to words; for if we have nothing in our minds but sensations and ideas, both of which are singular, we cannot really take a word in a general sense. So, if I compare a red book and a red cushion, there is, according to them, no general sensation red which enters into both these images, nor is there any idea of a general respect, color, in which they agree; and their similarity can consist in nothing whatsoever, except that they have the same general name attached to them; and there is no possible reason for their being associated together under one name (which these philosophers can consistently give) than one at which James Mill hints, and which follows from his principles--namely, that the corresponding sensations have been frequently associated together in experience. This was perfectly appreciated in the days when nominalism was actively discussed, but now the nominalists do not seem to look it in the face. We will, therefore, put some passages from the present work in juxtaposition, to show that James Mill did feel, obscurely perhaps, this difficulty. "Every color is an individual color, every size an individual size, every shape an individual shape. But things have no individual color in common, no individual shape in common, no individual size in common; that is to say, they have neither shape, color, nor size in common" (vol. i, p. 249). He here speaks of things; but as things are only sensations or ideas with him, all this holds good of ideas. "It is easy to see, among the principles of association, what particular principle it is which is mainly concerned in classification. . . . That principle is resemblance." "Having the sensation. . . . what happens in recognizing that it is similar to a former sensation? Besides the sensation, in this case, there is an idea. The idea of the former sensation is called up by, that is, is associated with, the new sensation. As having a sensation, and a sensation, and knowing them, that is, distinguishing them, are the same thing; and having an idea, and an idea, is knowing them; so, having an idea and a sensation, and distinguishing the one from the other, are the same thing. But to know that I have the idea and the sensation, in this case, is not all. I observe that the sensation is like the idea. What is this observation of likeness? Is it anything but that distinguishing of one feeling from another which we have recognized to be the same thing as having two feelings? As change of sensation is sensation; as change from a sensation to an idea differs from change to a sensation in nothing but this, that the second feeling in the latter change is an idea, not a sensation; and as the passing from one feeling to another is distinguishing, the whole difficulty seems to be resolved, for undoubtedly the distinguishing differences and similarities is the same thing--a similarity being nothing but a slight difference" (vol. ii, p. 15). Evidently, if a similarity is a difference, the line of demarcation between the two is to be drawn where our language happens to draw it. But to ascertain why two similar sensations are associated under one name, we must recur to his general law of association, which is given in these words: "Our ideas spring up or exist in the order in which the sensations existed, of which they are the copies. This is the general law of the `Association of Ideas'" (vol. i, p. 78). "Resemblance only remains as an alleged principle of association, and it is necessary to enquire whether it is included in the laws which have been above expounded. I believe it will be found that we are accustomed to see like things together. When we see a tree, we generally see more trees than one; when we see an ox, we generally see more oxen than one; a sheep, more sheep than one; a man, more men than one. From this observation, I think we may refer resemblance to the law of frequency, of which it seems to form only a particular case" (vol. i, p. 111). This is what he says upon the subject of similarity. As an attempt at analyzing that idea, it is a complete failure, and with it the whole system falls. Stuart Mill is gravely mistaken in supposing that his father's rejection of resemblance as a guiding principle of association was an unimportant part of his theory. Association by resemblance stood in the way of his doctrine that the order of ideas is nothing but the order of sensations, and to grant the mind a power of giving an inwardly determined order to its ideas would be to grant that there is something in the mind besides sensations and their copies. Moreover, upon nominalistic principles similarity can consist in nothing but the association of two ideas with one name, and therefore James Mill must say, with Ockham, that such association is without any reason or cause, or must explain it as he attempts to do. The doctrine that an idea is the copy of a sensation has obviously not been derived from exact observation. It has been adopted because it has been thought that it must be so; in fact, because it was a corollary from the notion (which its authors could not free themselves from) that ideas were in consciousness just as things are in existence. It thus forms a striking illustration of Wundt's remark that the chief difference between modern attempts to put psychology upon a basis like that of the physical sciences and earlier speculative systems, is that speculations are now put forth as results of scientific research, while formerly facts of observation were frequently represented as deductions of pure thought. The same thing may be said of the doctrine that to feel and to be aware of the feeling are the same thing. James Mill plainly cannot conceive of the opposite supposition. With him, therefore, it is a mere result of defective reading. It is not only not supported by exact observation, but it is directly refuted in that way. The English school are accustomed to claim the doctrine of the association of ideas as their own discovery, but Hamilton has proved that it is not only given by Aristotle, but that, as to its main features, the knowledge of it by the English was derived from him. This, therefore, does not constitute a valid claim to the scientific character; yet it is the only claim they have. At present, the doctrine has received a transformation at the hands of Wundt of the most fundamental description. He has solved the perplexing questions concerning the principles of association by showing that every train of thought is essentially inferential in its character, and is, therefore, regulated by the principles of inference. 2 But this conception is also found in Aristotle. The Analysis is written in an unusually forcible, perspicuous, and agreeable style--a character which belongs to most of the English philosophers more or less, but to none in a higher degree than to James Mill. One wishes that such a master of language had a doctrine to enunciate which would test his powers more than this simple English psychology. The fewer elements a hypothesis involves, the less complication and consequent obscurity will appear in its development. 1. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind. By James Mill. A new edition, with notes, illustrative and critical, by Alexander Bain, Andrew Findlater, and George Grote; edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Longmans, 1869. 2. This idea is fully explained in his very important and agreeably written Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele. |
The object of this course is to teach something of the art of investigating the truth. It is really a question of little consequence whether this is a proper definition of logic or not. That is a mere question of words; but men who have not thoroughly studied logic are so apt to confound questions of words and questions of fact--both considering verbal discussions as real discussions and real discussions as merely verbal,--that I shall do well to say a few words in defence of the name that I have given to this course of lessons. And besides, I am perhaps bound to show that the subject to which the instruction is really to relate is the same as that advertized. Now if you examine Hamilton's logic or any of those logics which are the immediate product of pure Kantianism as his was (--not his peculiar system but his lectures in which his system does not appear as it was worked up later) you will find logic defined as the Science of Thought as Thought--or something of that sort. This is an extremely different conception of the subject from that with which I set out. Take for example Mr. Mansel's admirable <it>Prolegomena Logica<ro> where the Kantian conception of logic is developed in the most consistent and beautiful manner. ![]()
A consequence is the statement that one fact follows from another. Note. The investigation of consequences constitutes Logic. All questions of psychology are therefore irrelevant to the science of logic generally, though they may, no doubt, be of importance with reference to particular kinds of consequences when a psychological fact is explicitly or implicitly involved in the antecedent. Consequences may be divided in the first place into material and formal. If the fact expressed in the consequent is the same as that expressed in the antecedent or is a part of it, then the consequence is an empty and meaningless expression unless the forms of expression of the antecedent and consequent differ in which case the consequence is the statement of a fact concerning the relation of these forms of expression. Such a consequence is called formal; but one which expresses a fact concerning the matters in question and not merely concerning the expression of them is termed material. this is empty. It is a particular sort of nonsense. It involves no absurdity, it is not meaningless in its grammatical construction or its terms but it fails to say anything. This is a formal consequence. The meaning of the consequent is involved in the meaning of the antecedent. |
Socrates dies bravely; ergo Socrates is mortal Socrates dies before Plato; ergo Socrates is mortal Socrates dies and Plato lives; ergo Socrates is mortal Socrates dies and Plato is a man; ergo Socrates is mortal Some man dies and another lives; ergo, Some man dies Some man dies and so does every other; ergo, Some man dies |
These are all formal consequences.
The following is a material consequence for if a man were to discover the Elixir of Life he would not thereby cease to be a man. This distinction of formal and material consequences is one of the most practically important in the whole range of Logic. |
Logic or dialectic (for these two terms have often been employed synonymously) has been defined in many different ways. Indeed, the definition which a logician gives of his science will usually indicate to what school he belongs. Some of these variations arise from the different ways in which the sciences have been classified without importing any difference either in the subject-matter of logic or the method of treating it; for since a definition usually refers the word or thing defined to a class, disagreement concerning classification will result in disagreement concerning definitions. Other variations have arisen from different opinions in regard to the method in which Logic ought to be investigated. But there is also a great diversity of opinion as to what ought and what ought not to be treated of in a book upon logic. It is a historical fact that logic originated in an attempt to discover a method of investigating truth. Moreover, the doctrines of logic, as they exist, centre about the forms of inference. Sebastianus Contus has acutely observed that although Scotus and his school profess to regard logic as a purely speculative science yet in their whole method of treatment of it, they show that they really consider it in a practical point of view; and the same may be said of most of the other writers who term it a purely speculative science. On the whole, therefore, we cannot utterly contemn that definition with which Petrus Hispanus opens his celebrated Summulae, the classical work upon logic of the middle ages, "Dialectica est ars artium scientia scientiarum, ad omnium methodorum principia viam habens. Sola enim dialectica probabiliter disputat de principiis omnium aliarum scientiarum." In short, we may state it as a historical fact that logic has been essentially the science of the structure of arguments, whereby we can distinguish good arguments from bad ones, can estimate the value of an argument, can determine upon what conditions it is valid, how it needs to be modified, and what can be inferred from a given state of facts. |
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The cause of the existence of logic has as a historical fact been a desire to have a science for testing inferences. That logic serves other ends and is susceptible of a higher definition I admit; but that cannot be understood at the beginning. Before Aristotle, logic consisted of an inductive method of reaching definitions and a large quantity of sophisms. The former was a mode of drawing inferences so that they should be certain. And what was the interest of these sophisms? To prove, perhaps, that things were self-contradictory. But so far they created no logical knowledge; only when the interest in them came to be the trying of the sufficiency and validity of adopted forms of thought did it at once become necessary to have a science of the syllogism. I think that it must have been that the consideration of such sophisms did much to creating Aristotle's syllogistic theory. In so far as this is a true account of the origin of logic, it originated in a desire to form a theory of inference. But, as Duns Scotus shows, 1 whatever logic treats of besides inferences, that is to say, propositions and terms, are only parts of syllogisms and these are only treated in logic in their reference to syllogism. Why is the grammatical treatment of propositions so different from that of logic? Merely because logic only considers those differences between propositions upon which differences between syllogisms depend. Logic says nothing about interrogative, imperative, and optative sentences which are of fundamental importance in the general theory of propositions; but on the other hand the distinctions of affirmative and negative, universal and particular which are hardly worth mentioning in grammar are always allowed to be of the highest importance in logic. The reason plainly is that interrogations, commands, and wishes can form no part of a syllogism, while the difference between a valid and an invalid syllogism will often depend on the difference between a universal and a particular or on that between an affirmative and a negative proposition. The same thing may be said of terms. The principles of extension and comprehension, distinctness and confusion, which logic considers, are of importance relatively to the theory of inferences, while the distinctions of noun and adjective, compound names and simple names, singulars and plurals, together with the innumerable distinctions of verbs which it omits have no apparent bearing upon inference. Having this conviction, I believe it to be altogether wrong to treat propositions and terms before syllogism; for since no distinctions of propositions and terms are to be introduced which the theory of syllogism does not require, none ought to be introduced before the theory of syllogism has shown the necessity of it. During the thirteenth century, a form of argument different from the syllogism came into use, which was called the consequentia and which deserves consideration. Here is an actual example of such an argument which I copy from Duns Scotus and which I will make the text of an explanation. It is an argument to show that the subject of Aristotle's book of the categories is not the ten categories, founded on the assumption that it is a logical work. I abridge the argument a little. |
De istis est scientia realis; non ergo Logica. Consequentia patet per Aristotelem 3. de Anima, cont. 38. Scientiae secantur, ut res; sed Logica est diversa ab omni scientia reali; ergo subiectum eius a subiecto cuiuslibet scientiae realis est diversum. Probatio antecedentis; quia de istis determinat Metaphysicus, ut patet 5 Metaph. cont. 14. et inde, et 7. Metaphysicae, cont. 1. et inde. |
This I should translate as follows. A real science treats of the ten categories; logic, therefore, does not. The consequence (the validity of bond between antecedent and consequent) appears from what Aristotle says in the third book De Anima contextus 38. "The divisions of the sciences follow the divisions of the objects to which they relate." Now logic is other than any real science and consequently its subject is other than that of any real science. Proof of the antecedent: metaphysics treats of the ten categories, as appears from two passages in Aristotle. It will be perceived that this form of setting forth an argument supposes that an argument is composed of an antecedent or premiss and a consequent (consequens) or conclusion; while the validity of the argument depends on the truth of a general principle called the consequence (consequentia). 1. Super Universalia, quaestio 3. Scotus maintains that the object of logic is the syllogism. |
P 54: North American Review 110 The Secret of Swedenborg: being an Elucidation of his Doctrine of the Divine Natural Humanity. By Henry James. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co. 8vo. pp. 243. 1869. Though this book presents some very interesting and impressive religious views, and the spiritual tone of it is in general eminently healthy, it is altogether out of harmony with the spirit of this age. If we understand the theory which is here presented as Swedenborg's, it is essentially as follows:-- Philosophy and religion are one. The matter of deepest moment to the heart is the matter of deepest moment to the head. That root of existence for which metaphysics inquires is God. The business of philosophy is to explain the relation between being and appearing; but that which alone has existence independent of everything else is God, while all that appears is relative to the human mind, and so is only man; thus, what is and what appears are God and man, and it is the relations of God and man that philosophy has to expound. In any real object, that is, any permanent appearance, we may distinguish two elements, the permanence and the appearance. The permanence, the reality, is called by Mr. James the being; the appearance or emergence into the world of phenomena is called the existence. This distinction is no mere logical convenience or necessity, but is a real partition, for it lies in the very esse of a thing. The reality is that on which the appearance is founded, and, therefore, the "being" of a thing is its creator, while the "existence" is the creature in himself. But the creature, because he does not contain within his own self the essence of his being, is, in himself, a mere phantom and no reality. But if an underlying being is essential to existence, no less is manifestation essential to being. It can make no difference whatever whether a thing is or is not, if it is never to any mind to give any sign of its being. Hence, to be without being manifested is a kind of being which does not differ from its negative, but is a meaningless form of words. Thus, it is of the very esse |