Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/230

 216 ISAAC HUSIK : what are not, incompatible. If this be so, positive and negative may be nothing more than names of modes of consciousness found to be incompatible. If we designate the number of these in- compatibles by n, and posit any one of them, A, all the other n-1 modes constitute not-A ; and the whole number of n incompatibles constitutes a region. The definition of region would then be an aggregate of incompatible modes of consciousness ; and it is clear that experience alone constructs these regions for us. 1 Opposite attributes, then, being positive and negative, and the latter being what experience finds to be incompatible, the law of contradiction quoted at the beginning of the paper reduces itself to the law of identity a thing cannot have at the same time what experience finds it cannot have at the same time. Moreover, if the above analysis be correct, it is conceivable that there might be a state of experience even if our present regions of incompatibles were dissolved. By this is not meant a chaos in which all things are and are not at the same time. All it involves is a state of thinking with the a priori element reduced to a minimum. If we were to construct a logic on this hypothesis, the implication of the assumption would be that the judgment A is B is to be taken at its face value, and no inference be allowed regard- ing not-B. Similarly the negative judgment A is not-B should be limited to its direct and explicit statement, and all a priori infer- ence as to B be excluded. B and not-B, in other words, are to be treated, in accordance with this hypothesis, as B and C are in our actual logic. The psychological attitude of this hypothetical logic it is, of course, impossible for us to realise, as it is impossible to realise psychologically a fourth dimension or the meeting of parallel lines. All that can be done is to clear the ground, as it were, all around it, so that there shall at least not be any obstacles we can help in the way of approximating to the situation suggested ; and this is what I have attempted so far to do. With the idea of the judgment as bearing no implications beyond its explicit statement, we have next to consider what would become of the syllogism. Those who assert that the syllogism is based on the law of contradiction would, of course, deny that a syllogism is possible on this hypothesis. Their assertion, however, seems to me not true. The inference of the conclusion from the premisses is based simply on the right to repeat separately a judgment regarding an object or group of objects, which was made before regarding the same plus others ; and the law of contradiction is not at all in- volved in the inferential process as such. Thus in the syllogism : All A is B All C is A .-. All CisB 1 This seems also to be the idea of Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ii., 423-424.