Page:EB1911 - Volume 16.djvu/906

 memorial judgment is past sense and present memory. So sense, memory and experience, the sum of sense and memory, though requiring conception, are the causes of the experiential judgment that there exist and have existed many similar, sensible things, and these sensory, memorial and experiential judgments about the existence of past and present sensible things beyond conceived ideas become the particular premises of primary inference. Starting from them, inference is enabled to draw conclusions which are inferential judgments about the existence of things similar to sensible things beyond conceived ideas. In rising, however, from particular to universal inference, induction, as we have seen, adds to its particular premise, S is P, a universal premise, every M is similar to S, in order to infer the universal conclusion, every M is P. This universal premise requires a universal conception of a class or whole number of similar particulars, as a condition. But the premise is not that conception; it is a belief that there is a whole number of particulars similar to those already experienced. The generalization of a class is not, as the conceptual logic assumes, the abstraction of a general idea, but an inference from the analogy of a whole individual thing, e.g. a whole man, to a whole number of similar individuals, e.g. the whole of men. The general idea of all men or the combination that the idea of all men is similar to the idea of particular men would not be enough; the universal premise that all men in fact are similar to those who have died is required to induce the universal conclusion that all men in fact die. Universal inference thus requires particular and universal conceptions as its condition; but, so far as it arises from sense, memory, experience, and involves generalization, it consists of judgments which do not consist of conceptions, but are beliefs in things existing beyond conception. Inference then, so far as it starts from categorical and existential premises, causes conclusions, or inferential judgments, which require conceptions, but are categorical and existential judgments beyond conception. Moreover, as it becomes more deductive, and causes conclusions further from sensory experience, these inferential judgments become causes of inferential conceptions. For example, from the evidence of molar changes due to the obvious parts of bodies, science first comes to believe in molecular changes due to imperceptible particles, and then tries to conceive the ideas of particles, molecules, atoms, electrons. The conceptual logic supposes that conception always precedes judgment; but the truth is that sensory judgment begins and inferential judgment ends by preceding conception. The supposed triple order—conception, judgment, reasoning—is defective and false. The real order is sensation and sensory judgment, conception, memory and memorial judgment, experience and experiential judgment, inference, inferential judgment, inferential conception. This is not all: inferential conceptions are inadequate, and finally fail. They are often symbolical; that is, we conceive one thing only by another like it, e.g. atoms by minute bodies not nearly small enough. Often the symbol is not like. What idea can the physicist form of intraspatial ether? What believer in God pretends to conceive Him as He really is? We believe many things that we cannot conceive; as Mill said, the inconceivable is not the incredible; and the point of science is not what we can conceive but what we should believe on evidence. Conception is the weakest, judgment the strongest power of man’s mind. Sense before conception is the original cause of judgment; and inference from sense enables judgment to continue after conception ceases. Finally, as there is judgment without conception, so there is conception without judgment. We often say “I understand, but do not decide.” But this suspension of judgment is a highly refined act, unfitted to the beginning of thought. Conception begins as a condition of memory, and after a long continuous process of inference ends in mere ideation. The conceptual logic has made the mistake of making ideation a stage in thought prior to judgment.

It was natural enough that the originators of conceptual logic, seeing that judgments can be expressed by propositions, and conceptions by terms, should fall into the error of supposing that, as propositions consist of terms, so judgments consist of conceptions, and that there is a triple mental order—conception, judgment, reasoning—parallel to the triple linguistic order—term, proposition, discourse. They overlooked the fact that man thinks long before he speaks, makes judgments which he does not express at all, or expresses them by interjections, names and phrases, before he uses regular propositions, and that he does not begin by conceiving and naming, and then proceed to believing and proposing. Feeling and sensation, involving believing or judging, come before conception and language. As conceptions are not always present in judgment, as they are only occasional conditions, and as they are unfitted to cause beliefs or judgments, and especially judgments of existence, and as judgments both precede conceptions in sense and continue after them in inference, it follows that conceptions are not the constituents of judgment, and judgment is not a combination of conceptions. Is there then any analysis of judgment? Paradoxical as it may sound, the truth seems to be that primary judgment, beginning as it does with the simplest feeling and sensation, is not a combination of two mental elements into one, but is a division of one sensible thing into the thing itself and its existence and the belief that it is determined as existing, e.g. that hot exists, cold exists, the pained exists, the pleased exists. Such a judgment has a cause, namely sense, but no mental elements. Afterwards come judgments of complex sense, e.g. that the existing hot is burning or becoming more or less hot, &c. Thus there is a combination of sensations causing the judgment; but the judgment is still a division of the sensible thing into itself and its being, and a belief that it is so determined. Afterwards follow judgments arising from more complex causes, e.g. memory, experience, inference. But however complicated these mental causes, there still remain these points common to all judgment:—(1) The mental causes of judgment are sense, memory, experience and inference; while conception is a condition of some judgments. (2) A judgment is not a combination either of its causes or of its conditions, e.g. it is not a combination of sensations any more than of ideas. (3) A judgment is a unitary mental act, dividing not itself but its object into the object itself and itself as determined, and signifying that it is so determined. (4) A primary judgment is a judgment that a sensible thing is determined as existing; but later judgments are concerned with either existing things, or with ideas, or with words, and signify that they are determined in all sorts of ways. (5) When a judgment is expressed by a proposition, the proposition expresses the results of the division by two terms, subject and predicate, and by the copula that what is signified by the subject is what is signified by the predicate; and the proposition is a combination of the two terms; e.g. border war is evil. (6) A complex judgment is a combination of two judgments, and may be copulative, e.g. you and I are men, or hypothetical, or disjunctive, &c.

Empirical logic, the logic of Aristotle and Bacon, is on the right way. It is the business of the logician to find the causes of the judgments which form the premises and the conclusions of inference, reasoning and science. What knowledge do we get by sense, memory and experience, the first mental causes of judgment? What is judgment, and what its various kinds? What is inference, how does it proceed by combining judgments as premises to cause judgments as conclusions, and what are its various kinds? How does inference draw conclusions more or less probable up to moral certainty? How does it by the aid of identification convert probable into necessary conclusions, which become necessary principles of demonstration? How is categorical succeeded by conditional inference? What is scientific method as a system of inferences about definite subjects? How does inference become the source of error and fallacy? How does the whole process from sense to inference discover the real truth of judgments, which are true so far as they signify things known by sense, memory, experience and inference? These are the fundamental questions of the science of inference. Conceptual logic, on the other hand, is false from the start. It is not the first business of logic to direct us how to form conceptions signified by terms, because sense is a prior cause of judgment and inference. It is not the second business of logic to direct us how out of conceptions to form judgments signified by propositions, because the real causes of judgments are sense, memory, experience and inference. It is, however, the main business of logic to direct us how out of judgments to form inferences signified by discourse; and this is the one point which conceptual logic has contributed to the science of inference. But why spoil the further mental analysis of inference by supposing that conceptions are constituents of judgment and therefore of inference, which thus becomes merely a complex combination of conceptions, an extension of ideas? The mistake has been to convert three operations of mind into three processes in a fixed order—conception, judgment, inference. Conception and judgment are decisions: inference alone is a process, from decisions to decision, from judgments to judgment. Sense, not conception, is the origin of judgment. Inference is the process which from judgments about sensible things proceeds to judgments about things similar to sensible things. Though some conceptions are its conditions and some judgments its causes, inference itself in its conclusions causes many more judgments and conceptions. Finally, inference is an extension, not of ideas, but of beliefs, at first about existing things, afterwards about ideas, and even about words; about anything in short about which we think, in what is too fancifully called “the universe of discourse.”

Formal logic has arisen out of the narrowness of conceptual logic. The science of inference no doubt has to deal primarily with formal truth or the consistency of premises and conclusion. But as all truth, real as well as formal, is consistent, formal rules