Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic

BOOK III.. Induction.

INDUCTION.

I. Preliminary Observations on Induction in general 53

II. Inductions improperly so called 54

III. The ground of Induction 57

IV. Laws of Nature 58

V. The Law of Universal Causation 60

VI. The Composition of Causes 66

VII. Observation and Experiment 67

VIII. & Note to IX. The Four Methods of Experimental Enquiry 69

X. Plurality of Causes, and intermixture of Effects 73

XI. The Deductive Method 76

XII. & XIII. The Explanation and Examples of the Explanation of Laws of Nature 77

XIV. The Limits to the Explanation of Laws of Nature; and Hypotheses 79

XV. Progressive Effects, and continued Action of Causes 81

XVI. Empirical Laws 83

XVII. Chance, and its Elimination 85

XVIII. The Calculation of Chances 87

XIX. The Extension of Derivative Laws to Adjacent Cases 89

XX. Analogy 91

XXI. The Evidence of the Law of Universal Causation 92

XXII. Uniformities of Coexistence not dependent on Causation 94

XXIII. Approximate Generalisations, and Probable Evidence 96

XXIV. The remaining Laws of Nature 99

XXV. The grounds of Disbelief 103

BOOK IV.. Operations Subsidiary to Induction.

OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION.

I. Observation and Description 107

II. Abstraction, or the Formation of Conceptions 108

III. Naming as Subsidiary to Induction 111

IV. The Requisites of a Philosophical Language, and the Principles of Definition 112

V. The Natural History of the Variation in the Meaning of Terms 115

VI. Terminology and Nomenclature 117

VII. Classification, as Subsidiary to Induction 121

VIII. Classification by Series 124

BOOK V.. Fallacies.

FALLACIES.

I. Fallacies in general 127

II. Classification of Fallacies 128

III. Fallacies of Simple Inspection; or, à priori Fallacies 130

IV. Fallacies of Observation 134

V. Fallacies of Generalisation 137

VI. Fallacies of Ratiocination 141

VII. Fallacies of Confusion 143

BOOK VI.. On the Logic of the Moral Sciences.

ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES.

I. Introductory Remarks 148

II. Liberty and Necessity 148

III. There is, or may be, a Science of Human Nature 150

IV. The Laws of Mind 151

V. Ethology, or the Science of the Formation of Character 153

VI. General Considerations on the Social Science 155

VII. The Chemical, or Experimental, Method in the Social Science 156

VIII. The Geometrical, or Abstract Method 157

IX. The Physical, or Concrete Deductive Method 158

X. The Inverse Deductive, or Historical Method 161

XI. The Logic of Practice, or Art; including Morality and Policy 165

ANALYSIS OF MILL'S LOGIC.

INTRODUCTION.

No adequate definition is possible till the properties of the thing to be defined are known. Previously we can define only the scope of the inquiry. Now, Logic has been considered as both the science of reasoning, i.e. the analysis of the mental process when we reason, and the art of reasoning, i.e. the rules for the process. The term reasoning, however, is not wide enough. Reasoning means either syllogising, or (and this is its truer sense) the drawing inferences from assertions already admitted. But the Aristotelian or Scholastic logicians included in Logic terms and propositions, and the Port Royal logicians spoke of it as equivalent to the art of thinking. Even popularly, accuracy of classification, and the extent of command over premisses, are thought clearer signs of logical powers than accuracy of deduction. On the other hand, the definition of logic as a 'science treating of the operations of the understanding in the search of truth,' though wide enough, would err through including truths known from intuition; for, though doubtless many seeming intuitions are processes of inference, questions as to what facts are real intuitions belong to Metaphysics, not to Logic.

Logic is the science, not of Belief, but of Proof, or Evidence. Almost all knowledge being matter of inference, the fields of Logic and of Knowledge coincide; but the two differ in so far that Logic does not find evidence, but only judges of it. All science is composed of data, and conclusions thence: Logic shows what relations must subsist between them. All inferential knowledge is true or not, according as the laws of Logic have been obeyed or not. Logic is Bacon's Ars Artium, the science of sciences. Genius sometimes employs laws unconsciously; but only genius: as a rule, the advances of a science have been ever found to be preceded by a fuller knowledge of the laws of Logic applicable to it. Logic, then, may be described as the science of the operations of the understanding which aid in the estimation of evidence. It includes not only the process of proceeding from the known to the unknown, but, as auxiliary thereto, Naming, Definition, and Classification. Conception, Memory, and other like faculties, are not treated by it; but it presupposes them. Our object, therefore, must be to analyse the process of inference and the subsidiary operations, besides framing canons to test any given evidence. We need not, however, carry the analysis beyond what is necessary for the practical uses of Logic; for one step in analysis is good without a second, and our purpose is simply to see the difference between good and ill processes of inference. Minuter analysis befits Metaphysics; though even that science, when stepping beyond the interrogation of our consciousness, or rather of our memory, is, as all other sciences, amenable to Logic.

BOOK I. Names and Propositions.

NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE NECESSITY OF COMMENCING WITH AN ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE IN LOGIC.

The fact of Logic being a portion of the art of thinking, and of thought's chief instrument being words, is one reason why we must first inquire into the right use of words. But further, the import of propositions cannot really be examined apart from that of words; and (since whatever can be an object of belief assumes the form of a proposition, and in propositions all truth and error lie) this is a paramount reason why we must, as a preliminary, consider the import of names, the neglecting which, and confining ourselves to things, would indeed be to discard all past experience. The right method is, to take men's classifications of things as shown by names, correcting them as we proceed.

CHAPTER II.. Names.

NAMES.

Hobbes's assertion that a name is a sign, not of a thing, but of our conception of it, is untrue (unless he merely mean that the conception, and not the thing itself, is imparted to the hearer); for we intend by a name, not only to make men conceive what we conceive, but to inform them what we believe as to the things themselves.

Names may be divided according to five principles of classification. The first way of dividing them is into General (not as equivalent to Collective) and Individual names; the second, into Concrete, i.e. the names of objects, and Abstract, i.e. the names of attributes (though Locke improperly extends the term to all names gained by abstraction, that is, to all general names). An abstract name is sometimes general, e.g. colour, and sometimes singular, e.g. milk-whiteness. It may be objected to calling attributes abstract, that also concrete adjectives, e.g. white, are attributes. But a word is the name of the things of which it can be predicated. Hence, white is the name of all things so coloured, given indeed because of the quality, but really the name of the thing, and no more the name of the quality than are names generally, since every one of them, if it signifies anything at all, must imply an attribute.

The third division is into Connotative and Non-connotative (the latter being wrongly called Absolute). By connotative are meant, not (as Mr. James Mill explains it) words which, pointing directly to one thing, tacitly refer to another, but words which denote a subject and imply an attribute; while non-connotatives signify a subject only, or attribute only. All concrete general names are connotative. They are also called denominative, because the subject denoted receives a common name (e.g. snow is named white) from the attribute connoted. Even some abstracts are connotative, for attributes may have attributes ascribed to them, and a word which denotes attributes may connote an attribute of them; e.g. fault connotes hurtfulness. Proper names, on the other hand, though concrete, are not connotative. They are merely distinguishing marks, given perhaps originally for a reason, but, when once given, independent of it, since the reason is proved to be no part of the sense of the word by the fact that the name is still used when the reason is forgotten. But other individual names are connotative. Some of these, viz. those connoting some attribute or some set of attributes possessed by one object only, e.g. Sun, God, are really general names, though happening to be predicable only of a single object. But there are also real connotative individual names, part of whose meaning is, that there exists only one individual with the connoted attribute, e.g. The first Emperor, The father of Socrates; and it is so with many-worded names, made up of a general name limited by other words, e.g. The present Prime Minister of England. In short, the meaning of all names, which have any meaning, resides, not in what they denote, but in what they connote. There perpetually, however, arises a difficulty of deciding how much they do connote, that is, what difference in the object would make a difference in the name. This vagueness comes from our learning the connotation, through a rude generalisation and analysis, from the objects denoted. Thus, men use a name without any precise reference to a definite set of attributes, applying it to new objects on account of superficial resemblance, so that at length all common meaning disappears. Even scientific writers, from ignorance, or from the aversion which men at large feel to the use of new names, often force old terms to express an ever-growing number of distinctions. But every concrete general name should be given a definite connotation with the least possible change in the denotation; and this is what is aimed at in every definition of a general name already in use. But we must not confound the use of names of indeterminate connotation, which is so great an evil, with the employment, necessitated by the paucity of names as compared with the demand, of the same words with different connotations in different relations.

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