THE ESSENTIALS OF LOGIC
being
TEN LECTURES ON JUDGMENT AND INFERENCE
by
BERNARD BOSANQUET
FORMERLY FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
MACMILLAN AND CO.
LONDON AND NEW YORK
1895
The right of Translation is reserved
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.
Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been placed under the paragraphs to
which they relate. A few added footnotes and additions to Bosanquet's
footnotes, giving the equivalents of Greek words in the text, are in
square brackets. Bosanquet's marginal notes have been used as
subheadings. Page numbers from the original are in braces {}.
{v}
PREFACE
In this course of lectures I have attempted to carry out, under
the freer conditions of the University Extension system, a purpose
conceived many years ago at Oxford. It was suggested to me by the
answer of a friend, engaged like myself from time to time in teaching
elementary Logic, to the question which I put to him, “What do you aim
at in teaching Logic to beginners? What do you think can reasonably be
hoped for?” “If the men could learn what an Inference is, it would be
something,” was the reply.
The course of lectures which I now publish was projected in the spirit
thus indicated. Though only the two last discourses deal explicitly
with Inference, yet those which precede them contribute, I hope, no
less essentially, to explain the nature of that single development
which in some stages we call Judgment, and in others Inference. So far
as I could see, the attempt to go to the heart of the subject, however
imperfectly executed, was appreciated by the students, and was rewarded
with a serious attention which would not have been commanded by the
trivialities of formal Logic, although more entertaining and less
abstruse.
The details of traditional terminology may be found in Jevons’s
_Elementary Lessons in Logic_ (Macmillan). Those {vi} who desire to
pursue the study more in the sense of the present work, may be referred
above all to Bradley’s _Principles of Logic_, and also to Lotze’s
_Logic_ (E. Tr.), and to Sigwart’s great work on Logic, the English
translation of which, just completed, opens a storehouse of knowledge
and robust good sense to the English student. My own larger _Logic_
expresses _in extenso_ the views which these lectures set out in a
shorter form.
I hope it will be admitted by my critics that this experiment, whether
successful or unsuccessful, was worth making, and that except in the
University Extension system, it could not easily have been made.
Bernard Bosanquet.
London, January 1895.
{vii}
CONTENTS
LECTURE I THE PROBLEM OF LOGIC
1. Difficulty of the Science 1
2. The Problem stated 3
3. World as Idea 4
4. “World” 5
5. The Animal’s World 6
6. The World as “Objective” 7
i. Common sense 8
ii. Common-sense Theory 8
iii. Philosophic Theory 11
7. Our separate “Worlds” 14
8. Subjective Idealism 19
LECTURE II JUDGMENT AS THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF A WORLD
1. Defect of Subjective Idealism 21
2. The World as Knowledge 22
3. Knowledge is in the form of Judgment 23
a. Necessary 23
b. Universal 26
c. Constructive 27
4. The Continuous Affirmation of Waking
Consciousness 33
5. Comparison with World as Will 37
6. Distribution of Attention 40
{viii}
LECTURE III THE RELATION OF LOGIC TO KNOWLEDGE
1. Meaning of “Form” 42
2. Form of Knowledge dependent on Content 49
3. The Relation of Part and Whole as Form
determined by Content 54
4. Nature of Knowledge 58
5. Conclusion 59
LECTURE IV TYPES OF JUDGMENT, AND THE GENERAL
CONDITIONS INVOLVED IN ASSERTION
1. Correspondence between Types of Judgment
and Nature of Objects as Knowledge 61
_a_. Impersonal Judgment 61
_b_. Perceptive Judgment 62
_c_. Proper Names in Judgment 64
_d_. Abstract Judgment 65
2. The General Definition of Judgment 66
i. What is implied in claiming Truth 67
ii. By what means the claim is made 69
iii. The kind of Ideas which can claim Truth 74
_a_. Idea as Psychical Presentation 74
_b_. Idea as Identical Reference 74
LECTURE V THE PROPOSITION AND THE NAME
1. Judgment translated into Language 80
2. Proposition and Sentence 82
3. Difference between Proposition and Judgment 82
4. “Parts of Speech” 85
5. Denotation and Connotation 88
6. Have Proper Names Connotation? 91
7. Inverse Ratio of Connotation and Denotation 94
{ix}
LECTURE VI PARTS OF THE JUDGMENT, AND ITS UNITY
1. Parts of the Judgment 98
2. Copula 99
3. Are Subject and Predicate necessary? 100
4. Two Ideas or Things 101
a. Two Ideas 102
i. Mental Transition 102
ii. Absence of Assertion 103
b. Two Things 104
5. Distinction between Subject and Predicate 107
LECTURE VII THE CATEGORICAL AND THE HYPOTHETICAL
JUDGMENTS
1. Some Criticisms on the ordinary scheme of
Judgment 112
a. Why we need a Scheme 112
b. The Common Scheme 113
2. Which Judgments are Categorical? 116
(1) The “Particular” Judgment 116
a. Natural Meaning 116
b. Limited Meaning 117
(2) “Singular” Judgment 118
(3) “Universal” Judgment 119
(4) “Hypothetical” Judgment 121
(5) “Disjunctive” Judgment 123
LECTURE VIII NEGATION, AND OPPOSITION OF JUDGMENTS
1. Distinction between Contrary and Contradictory
Opposition 126
2. Contrary Negation 128
3. Why use Negation? 130
4. Stage of Significant Negation; Combination
of Contrary and Contradictory 132
5. Negative Judgment expressing Fact 134
6. Operation of the Denied Idea 135
{x}
LECTURE IX INFERENCE AND THE SYLLOGISTIC FORMS
1. Inference in General 137
2. Conditions of the Possibility of Inference 139
3. System the ultimate condition of Inference 140
4. Immediate Inference 141
5. Number of Instances 142
6. Figures of Syllogism, illustrating Progress
from Guess-work to Demonstration 146
LECTURE X INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, AND CAUSATION
1. Induction 151
a. By simple Enumeration 151
b. Enumeration always has a Ground 152
c. Perfect Induction 152
d. System 153
e. Analogy as Step towards System 155
f. Negative Instance 158
g. Classification and Generalisation 159
h. Hypothesis 161
2. Deduction 162
a. Subsumption 163
b. Construction 163
3. Causation 164
4. The Postulate of Knowledge 165
5. Conclusion 166
{1}
LECTURE I THE PROBLEM OF LOGIC
_Difficulty of the science_
1. There is no science more difficult than that on which we are
entering in these lectures. It is worth while to discuss the nature of
this difficulty. It is a question of interest rather than of intricacy.
All sciences have, perhaps, much the same possibilities of broad theory
and subtle analysis. But Logic stands alone in the difficulty with
which the student sustains his persuasion that its point of view is
worth applying.
In most other sciences, even in the philosophical sciences, there
is a continual stimulus to sense-perception, to curiosity, to human
interest. The learner is called upon to dissect animals or plants,
to undertake delicate manipulations with beautifully contrived
instruments, to acquaint himself with the history of nations, with
the genesis of worlds, with strange and novel speculations upon the
nature of space, or with the industry and well-being of various classes
among mankind at the present day. And these elements of novelty, these
stimulations of sense-perception or of practical interest, carry us
forward imperceptibly, and sustain our {2} eagerness to analyse and
combine in theoretic completeness the novel matter thus constantly
impinging upon us.
In Philosophy, and more especially in Logic, we can promise little
or nothing of this kind. The teacher of Philosophy, from Socrates
downwards, has talked about common things, things already familiar
to his hearers. And although he calls upon them to think of these
things in a peculiar way, and from an unaccustomed point of view, yet
it is likely to be felt that he is demanding a new effort, without
supplying a new interest. And it is a common experience, that after a
time the mind rebels against this artificial attitude, which fatigues
without instructing, if we have accustomed ourselves to understand by
instruction the accumulation of new sense-perceptions and the extension
of historical or scientific vision over a wider superficial area.
Now this I cannot help, and I will not disguise. In Philosophy, and
in Logic above all, it must be so. The whole point and meaning of the
study is that in it we re-traverse familiar ground, and survey it by
unfamiliar processes. We do not, except accidentally, so much as widen
our mental horizon. For those who care to understand, to trace the
connecting principles and functions that permeate our intellectual
world, there is indeed an interest of a peculiar kind. But even
experienced students will occasionally feel the strain of attending to
difficult distinctions, entirely without the excitement of novelty in
sense-perception or of a practical bearing upon human life. It is this
that makes Logic probably the hardest of all the sciences.
{3} _The problem stated_
2. We cannot hope to vanquish this difficulty unless we face it boldly
from the first. There are in the old-fashioned Logic-books tricks and
puzzles, fallacies and repartees, which can in some degree be made
amusing; but of these I do not intend to speak. The course by which
alone I can hope honestly to awaken a true logical interest among
any who may be quite unfamiliar with the subject, is to approach the
matter descriptively, and try to set before you fully and fairly what
the problem is which the process of knowledge has to meet. And then
it may be possible to claim a genuine theoretical curiosity--none the
less genuine that it may be tinged with a sympathy for man’s common
birthright of intelligence--for the detailed explanation of the means
by which this problem is solved from day to day. Such an explanation is
the science of Logic.
The problem may be thus introduced. Several of those present have,
I believe, attended a previous course of lectures on Psychology.
They have learned, I presume, to think of the mind as the course of
consciousness, a continuous connected presentation, more or less
emphasising within it various images, and groups of images and ideas,
which may be roughly said to act and re-act upon each other, to cohere
in systems, and to give rise to the perception of self. This course
of consciousness, including certain latent elements, the existence
of which it is necessary to assume, is an individual mind, attached
to a particular body, and so far as we know, not separable from the
actions and affections of that body. What is the connection between
such a course of consciousness in any individual, and the world as
that individual knows and wills it? This is the point at {4} which
Psychology passes into Logic. Psychology treats of the course of ideas
and feelings; Logic of the mental construction of reality. How does the
course of my private ideas and feelings contain in it, for me, a world
of things and persons which are _not merely in my mind_?
_World as Idea_
3. Schopenhauer called his great work, _The World as Will and
Idea_. [1] Leaving out Will for the moment, let us consider the world
“as Idea.”
“‘The world is my idea;’ [2] this is a truth which holds
good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone
can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If
he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom.
It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows
is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun,
a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds
him is there only as an idea, _i.e._ only in relation to
something else, the consciousness which is himself. If any
truth can be asserted _a priori_, it is this; for it is the
expression of the most general form of all possible and
thinkable experience: a form which is more general than
time, space, or causality, for they all pre-suppose it.
.....
“No truth, therefore, is more certain, more independent of
all others, and less in need of proof than this, that all that
exists for knowledge, and, therefore, this whole world, is
only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver,
in a word, idea. This is obviously true of the past and the
future, as well as of the present, of what is farthest off, as
of {5} what is near; for it is true of time and space
themselves, in which alone these distinctions arise. All that
in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably
thus conditioned through the subject and exists only for the
subject. The world is idea.”
[1] E. Tr. (Trubner, 1883).
[2] Schopenhauer, _op. cit._ beginning.
The world, then, for each of us, exists in the medium of our mind.
It is a sort of building, of which the materials are our ideas and
perceptions.
_The “world”_
4. So much for “idea.” What do we mean by “world”? A succession of
images passing before us, or rather making up our consciousness, like a
dream, is not a world. The term is very expressive; it is a favourite
word in Shakespeare. When the courtier says —
“Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you,”
he does not mean, as I used to think, “in heaven”; he means in a
better condition of social affairs. In “mad world, mad kings, mad
composition,” the term means more especially the set of political and
family connections within which extraordinary reversals of behaviour
have just taken place. Often we use the expression, with a qualifying
epithet, to indicate some particular sphere of connected action, “the
ecclesiastical world,” “the political world,” and so forth. Always
there seems to be implied the notion of a set of things or persons
bound together by some common quality which enables them to act upon
each other, and to constitute what is technically termed a “whole.”
_The_ “world” _par excellence_, then, ought to mean the one connected
set of things and persons which we all recognise {6} and refer to as
the same, and as including ourselves along with all who use the word in
the same sense.
Then the “world as idea” means no less than this, that the system of
things and persons which surrounds all of us, and which each of us
speaks of and refers to as the same for every one, exists for each of
us as something built up in his own mind--the mind attached to his own
body--and out of the material of his own mind.
_The animal’s world_
5. Let us illustrate this building up by thinking of the world, our
surroundings, as an animal must be aware of it. The lowest beginnings
of sight, for example, give no colour and no shape. An animal in this
stage can, probably, only just take warning if a dark object comes
between him and the light. Therefore he cannot have the ordered visual
image of space definitely stretching away all round him, which is the
primary basis of our idea of a world. He can move, no doubt, but there
is nothing to make us suppose that he records and co-ordinates the
results of his movements into anything like that permanent order of
objects which must be constructed in some way by a human being even
though born blind. Succession, we might say, is much more powerful
with animals than co-existence; but we should have to guard ourselves
against supposing that this was what we mean by succession, that is,
a process definitely recognised as in time, with a connection of some
reasonable kind between its phases. For the most part with animals
out of sight is out of mind; if so, the present is not interpreted,
enlarged, and arranged with reference to what is not present in time
or space by them as it is by us. And therefore the consciousness of a
single system of things, {7} permanent, and distinct from the momentary
presentations of the senses, cannot, in all probability, grow up for
them. If so, they have no real world, but only a dream world, [1]
_i.e._ a world not contrasted with the stream of presentation, nor
taken as the common theatre of all actions and events. This difference
between the world of an animal and that of a human being, is a rough
measure of what man does by mental or intellectual construction in
making his world.
[1] The character of the sensory powers, which are strongest in
many animals, contributes to this conclusion. Mr. F.H. Bradley
is sure that his dog’s system of logic, if he had one, would
run, “What exists smells; what does not smell is nothing.” The
sense of smell can scarcely give rise to the idea of a world of
objects. It has hardly any capacity of structural discernment.
_The world as objective_
6. We have now got the idea of a “world,” as a system of things and
persons connected together, taken to be the same for oneself at
different times and for different minds at the same time, yet existing,
for oneself, in the medium of one’s individual consciousness.
We see at once that we cannot stop here. We have really got a
contradiction. If the parts of our world are connected with each other,
they are not merely dependent upon us, that is, upon the changes of our
consciousness. And we all take them to be independent of us, in the
sense that we do not suppose the presence or absence of our perception
to make any difference to the world except by the continuance or
cessation of our perception of it or of its parts. This is the state
of mind in which we practically live, philosophers and all. I do not
really take notice of any difference in mode of existence between the
wall in front of me, which I see, and the wall behind me, which I {8}
do not see. While you are in this lecture-hall, if you think of your
rooms at home, you think of them as they look, that is, as they would
look if you were there to see them. How else, indeed, could you think
of them? This is practically necessary, and therefore, for practical
purposes, true.
But if you take it as a theory, omitting the hypothetical factor,
“if I was there to see,” you go wrong. You then treat your world
as being, outside your consciousness, the same that it is inside
your consciousness, without allowing for the withdrawal of your
consciousness. You are then on the way to think that the world, _as
you see, hear, and feel it_, is outside your mind, and that the sight,
hearing, feeling, and the ideas born of them, are inside your mind as
a sort of faint and imperfect _copy_ of the world which you then call
“external,” _in the sense of outside the mind_.
_Common sense_
i. The first position was that of common sense. The second is that
of common-sense theory. Common sense is quite justified. It says,
“Things affect each other, but the mere presence and absence of our
perception does not affect them.” For practical purposes we must
treat them as being, when unapprehended by our minds, just the same
as when apprehended by our minds. This is the first idea or rather
postulate--for it is not a theoretical idea--of objectivity. Objective
= “independent of our consciousness for practical purposes.”
_Common-sense theory_
ii. In describing the second position as that of common-sense theory
I do not refer to the doctrine of any regular school of philosophers.
There was a Scotch school of philosophy--the school of Reid in the
eighteenth century--commonly called the common-sense school. I will say
{9} below how I think this school was related to the position which
I am now describing. But my present purpose is to hit off the simple
theory of reality which common-sense people make for themselves when
they reflect. Now this theory, in which we all live except when we make
a special effort, accepts the distinction between things and the mind.
For example, it defines truth as the conformity of ideas to objects.
That means something of this kind: the ideas are inside our heads,
and the objects are outside our heads. If we are to have knowledge,
the objects have to be represented inside our heads, and they get in
through the senses. And then you have two similar forms of the world,
one outside our heads, which is real, and another like it but less
perfect and without solidity or causal power, inside our heads, which
is ideal or mental. This is what I call the common-sense theory of the
Objective. Like common sense, it assumes that there is a world which
the withdrawal of our individual consciousness does not affect, but
which persists and acts all the same. Unlike common sense, it lays down
an assertion as to the nature of this world, viz. that it is, apart
from our consciousness, the same as it is for our consciousness. The
world in consciousness, it assumes, is subjective, the world out of
consciousness is objective, and the former is an imperfect copy of the
latter in a feebler material.
The schools of common-sense philosophy, such as are represented by
Locke and Reid, are not quite so simple-minded as the reflection of
ordinary common sense, because every systematic thinker sees at once
that the question stares him in the face, “If the world outside the
mind is copied {10} by the world inside the mind, how can we ever know
whether the copy conforms to the original?” We are by the hypothesis
inside the mind; whatever has passed through the senses is inside the
mind. We cannot as at present advised get at anything outside the
senses or outside the mind. In face of this question, the common-sense
philosophies have two courses open. They may start from the idea of
things outside the mind, but admit that in passing through the senses
the things are in some partial respects transformed--as for instance,
that they acquire colour, sound, and smell in passing through the
senses--this is what Locke says. Or again, still starting from the idea
of things outside the mind, they may simply assert that perception
is of such a nature that it gives us things as they really are. The
former was the view of Locke, the latter that of Reid. This latter
view obviously might pass into the most extreme idealism, and its
interpretation, if it does not so pass, is exceedingly difficult.
But whatever may have been the view of the historical “common-sense
school,” [1] the common-sense theory which we all make for ourselves
involves a separation between the mind and reality. The objective world
is the world as independent of mind, and independent of mind means
existing and acting outside mind, exactly, or almost exactly, as it
seems to exist and act before the mind.
[1] See Seth, _Scottish Philosophy_ (Blackwood, 1885).
Now this is an absolute _cul-de-sac_. If the objective is that which is
outside perception, the objective is out of our reach, and the world of
our perception can never be objective. This is the pass to which we are
brought by taking {11} common sense as the guide of theory and not as
its material.
_Philosophical theory._
iii. There is no way out but by retracing our steps, and avoiding a
false turn which we took in passing from common sense to common-sense
theory. It was quite true that the world is unaffected by the
withdrawal of my individual perception and consciousness (except in so
far as I acted _qua_ bodily thing in the world); but it does not follow
from this that _if_ it becomes the object of a consciousness in me,
it can be so otherwise than as presented within that consciousness.
We must distinguish between the idea that the objective is outside
consciousness and therefore not in consciousness, and the idea that
the objective can be in the individual consciousness, but identified
with something beyond the individual consciousness. It may be that
consciousness is capable of containing a world, not as a copy of a
ready-made original, but as something which it makes for itself by a
necessary process, and which refers beyond this finite and momentary
consciousness.
According to these ideas, the objective is, shortly stated, whatever
we are obliged to think. This, though it is _in_ our thought, is not
considered merely _as_ our thought, or as a train of images or whole
of presentation in our minds. That is an artificial point of view, the
point of view of psychology, and we must carefully avoid starting from
it. But knowledge refers beyond its mental self, and has no limitation
in time or in kind except its own necessity. Thus, I am forced to
think, by a certain context of ideas and perceptions, that there is
now a fire burning in my study at home. This judgment is not barred
by the fact that my mind, as a {12} function attached to my body, is
here three miles away. The thought is objective for me, so long as I am
obliged to think it. My presence in or absence from the room where the
fire is burning has no effect on the question, except as it furnishes
me with evidence one way or the other. Not only absence in space is no
obstacle, but succession in time is no obstacle. My thought, which _is_
here and now, refers confidently to what has happened in long intervals
of time, if the necessity of consistency obliges it to do so. Thus if
I go back to my room and find the fire out and the room very cold, I
infer without hesitation to certain acts and events which are needed
to explain this state of things. And interpretations or explanations
of this kind make up my world, which is for me in my thought, but is
presented as more than my thought, and cannot be a world at all unless
it is more than in my thought. It is in as far as my thought constructs
and presents a world which is more than my momentary psychical state,
that my thought, and the world as presented to me in it, is objective.
The world is not a set of my ideas, but it is a set of objects and
relations of which I frame an idea, and the existence of which has no
meaning for me except as presented in the idea which 1 frame. We are
not to think of (i) Ideas, and (ii) Things which they represent; the
ideas, taken as parts of a world, _are_ the things.
We begin to see, then, how the nature of knowledge meets the puzzle
which I stated above. How, I asked, can a connected “world,” whose
parts act on one another quite independently of my perception, be in
my individual mind? I answer that it does not follow, because the
world _is for me_ {13} only in my presentation, that my presentation
is the only thing which goes on in the world. “What I am obliged to
think” may represent a real development depending on laws and a system
which is not confined to my individual course of consciousness. The
“objective” in this sense is for Logic an assumption, or rather a fact
to be analysed. We do not attempt to prove its existence, except in the
sense of calling attention to its nature in detail. It will be seen
that “outside the mind” ceases, on this view of objectivity, to have
meaning as regards anything that can be related to us. “Outside” is a
relation of bodies to one another; but everything, about which we can
so much as ask a question, is so far inside the mind, _i.e._ given in
its continuum of presentation or idea.
I will recapitulate the three conceptions of the “objective.”
(1) According to practical “common sense” the objective is independent
of our consciousness in the sense that the presence or absence of our
consciousness makes no difference to the operation of things upon each
other.
(2) According to “common-sense theory” the objective is independent
of our consciousness in the sense that the presence or absence of our
consciousness makes no difference in the mode of being of things (viz.
that the world in consciousness approaches objectivity by resembling or
reproducing a similar and quite objective world outside consciousness).
(3) According to philosophical theory the objective is independent of
our consciousness in the sense that it is what we are constrained to
think in order to make our consciousness consistent with itself. “What
we are constrained to {14} think” is not confined, in its _reference_
to our thought, or to thought at all.
_Our separate worlds._
7. Thus, for the purposes of Logic, we must turn our usual ideas upside
down. We must try to imagine something of this kind. We have all seen
a circular panorama. Each one of us, we must think, is shut up alone
inside such a panorama, which is movable and flexible, and follows him
wherever he goes. The things and persons depicted in it move and act
upon one another; but all this is in the panorama, and not beyond it.
The individual cannot get outside this encircling scenery, and no one
else can get inside it. Apart from it, prior to it, we have no self; it
is indeed the stuff of which oneself is made. Is every one’s panorama
exactly the same? No, they are not exactly the same. They are formed
round different centres, each person differing from all the others
by individual qualities, and by his position towards the points and
processes which determine his picture. For--and here is the remarkable
point--every one of us has painted for himself the picture within
which he is shut up, and he is perpetually painting and re-painting
it, not by copying from some original, but by arranging and completing
confused images and tints that are always appearing magically on his
canvas. Now this magical panorama, from which the individual cannot
escape, and the laws of which are the laws of his experience, is simply
his own mind regarded as a content or a world. His own body and mind,
regarded as things, are within the panorama, just as other people’s
bodies and minds are. The whole world, for each of us, _is_ our course
of consciousness, in so far as this is regarded as a system of objects
which we are obliged to {15} think. Not, in so far as it really _is_
a system, for an onlooker, say for a psychologist. For no doubt
every child’s mind, and every animal’s mind, _is_ a working system
of presentations, which a psychologist may study and analyse from
without. Consciousness is consciousness of a world only in so far as
it _presents_ a system, a whole of objects, acting on one another, and
therefore independent of the presence or absence of the consciousness
which presents them.
I take another very rough metaphor to explain this curious contrast
between my mind as a working system, observable from without, and
belonging to my individual body--distinguishable from the thirty or
forty quite different minds belonging to the thirty or forty persons in
this room--and my mind as a continuum of presentations which includes,
as objects, itself, and all the other minds in the room, and the whole
world so far as I have any conscious relation to it whatever.
All of us are familiar with the appearance of a microscope ready
adjusted for use, with its little lamp, its mirror and illuminating
apparatus under the stage, with a specimen on the stage under the
object-glass, its object-glass and its eye-piece. Any one who
understands the working of a microscope finds this a most suggestive
spectacle. He follows in his imagination the light as it comes from
the lamp to the mirror, through the illuminating lenses, through the
transparent specimen, through perhaps a dozen lenses arranged as an
object-glass within an inch of distance, through the eye-piece and
into the observer’s eye. Give him the parts, lenses, prisms, and
mirrors into his hands, and he will test them all, and tell you exactly
how they work. This {16} scientific onlooker may be compared to the
psychologist looking at another man’s mind. He sees it as a thing among
other things, a working system of parts.
But there is one thing that the mere onlooker cannot see. He cannot
see the object. That can only be seen by looking through the tube.
And every one has felt, I should think, the magical transformation,
suggestive of looking through another man’s eye and mind, which occurs
when you put your eye to the eye-piece of an optical instrument. The
outside world of other objects, the tube, the stage, the mirror, the
bystanders, the external light, all disappear, and you see nothing but
the field of vision and whatever distinctly pictured structure may
be displayed within it. The observer who looks through the tube may
be compared with each one of us as he contemplates his own world of
knowledge and perception. This is a thing that no one else can ever do.
The metaphor, indeed, breaks down, in so far as each of us is able to
observe the history and character of his own mind as an object within
the field of presentation which is before his mind. Of course such a
metaphor must break down at some point. But it remains true that the
mind, while directly observing its field of objects, cannot observe its
own peculiarities, and when turned, as we say, upon itself, is still
observing only a part of itself. It remains true that my mind contains
the whole presented world for me and is merely one among thousands of
similar mind-things for you.
Thus, I repeat, the world for each of us is our course of
consciousness, looked at in that way in which it presents a {17}
systematic, organised picture of inter-acting objects, not in that way
in which it is a stream of ideas and feelings, taking place in our
several heads. In the former point of view it is the world as our idea;
in the latter point of view it is simply the consciousness attached to
our body. We might soon puzzle ourselves with the contradictions which
arise if we fail to distinguish these points of view. In one sense my
mind is in my head, in the other sense my head is in my mind. In the
one sense I am in space, in the other sense space is in me. Just so,
however rough the metaphor, from one point of view the microscope is
one among a host of things seen from the outside; from the other point
of view all that we see is in the microscope, which is itself not seen
at all.
It is in this latter sense that our mental equipment is looked at, when
it is regarded as knowledge; and it is in this sense that it forms a
panorama which absolutely shuts in every one of us into his own circle
of ideas. (It is not implied, we should carefully observe, that his
ideas or experience are in any way secondary to his self, or separable
from it, or an adjective of it.) Then how does it happen that our
separate worlds, the panoramas which we construct, do not contradict
one another?
The answer is, that they _correspond_. It is this conception from
which we must start in Logic. We must learn to regard our separate
worlds of knowledge; as something constructed by definite processes,
and corresponding to each other in consequence of the common nature
of these processes. We know that we begin apart. We begin in fact,
though not conscious of our limits, with feelings and fancies and
unorganised experiences which give us little or no {18} common ground
and power of co-operation with other people. But as the constructive
process advances, the correspondence between our worlds is widened
and deepened, and the greater proportion of what we are obliged to
think is in harmony with what other people are obliged to think. Now
of course this would not be so unless reality, the whole actual system
in which we find ourselves, were self-consistent. But more than that,
it would not be so unless the nature of intelligence were the same in
every mind. It is this common nature of intelligence, together with its
differentiated adaptations to reality, that we have to deal with in
Logic.
Thus the separate worlds, in which we are all shut up, must be
considered as corresponding so far as they are objective, that is, so
far as they approach what we are ultimately obliged to think. I say
“corresponding,” because that is the term which expresses the relation
between systems which represent the same thing by the same rules,
but with different starting-points. Drawings in perspective of the
same building from different points of view are such corresponding
systems; the parts represented answer each to each, but the same part
is near or large in one drawing, and distant and small in another; not,
however, by chance, but as a definite consequence of the same laws.
Our separate worlds may be compared to such drawings: the things in
them are identified by their relations and functions, so that we can
understand each other, _i.e._ make identical references, though my
drawing be taken from the east, and yours from the west. The things do
not look quite the same in our different worlds; besides being taken
from different standpoints, both drawings are imperfect and incorrect.
But so {19} long as we can make out the correspondence, we have a basis
for co-operation and for discussion. Logic shows us the principles and
processes by which, under the given influences, these drawings are
constructed.
_Subjective Idealism_
8. If we merely hold to the doctrine of separate worlds, without
insisting upon their correspondence with each other and with reality,
we fall back into the position of subjective idealism, which is a
natural completion of common-sense theory, when, instead of turning
round to retrace its path, it runs deeper into the _cul-de-sac_. It
is a very obvious reflection, that each of us is shut up within his
own mind, and much easier to grasp than the reason for assuming a
real system which appears differently, though correspondingly, in the
centres of consciousness which are ourselves. We cannot get at anything
but in terms of consciousness; how can we justify the assumption that
our consciousness of a world of objects is rooted in reality, _e.g._,
that objects may rightly be treated as persisting and inter-acting
when our personal consciousness is withdrawn? And if we once doubt
this, then why should we assume that our ideas need be or tend to
be consistent with themselves and each other, as for the time they
apparently are?
Subjective Idealism necessarily arises if the common-sense theory of
two worlds, the real outside the mind, and the ideal, copying it,
within the mind, is pushed to its conclusion. The real, outside the
mind, being inaccessible, falls away. The arguments of this Idealism,
as Hume said, “admit of no answer and produce no conviction.” [1]
But I {20} mention the idea, because I do not think that any one
can really understand the problem of Logic, or indeed of science in
general, without having thoroughly thought himself into the difficulty
of Subjective Idealism. It is necessary to be wholly dissatisfied with
common-sense theory, and with the notion of a ready-made world set up
for us to copy in the mind, before the logical analysis of intellectual
construction can have interest or meaning for us. And to produce this
dissatisfaction is the value of Subjective Idealism.
[1] Vol. iv. p. 176 (ed. of 1854), _Inquiry concerning Human
Understanding_, sect. 12.
{21}
LECTURE II “JUDGMENT” AS THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF A WORLD
_Defect of Subjective Idealism_
1. The last lecture was devoted to explaining the distinction between
the stream of presentations and the world as it is for knowledge.
I ended by calling attention to the theory known as “Subjective
Idealism.” This, I said, has the merit of forcing upon us the question,
“How do we get from mind to reality? How do we get from subjective to
objective?” For we have always to remember that our knowledge _is_
within consciousness, though it may _refer_ outside it.
On the other hand, Subjective Idealism has the _defect_ of confounding
the very distinction which we took so much trouble to make plain. Its
essence lies in ascribing to the world of knowledge properties which
are only true of the stream of presentation. It is quite true that the
actual presentations of this room, which each of us has in his head
at this moment, are all different from each other, and different from
any which we have had before, and shall ever have again. Every minute,
every second, they differ; they are perishing existences, wholly
mental, and each of them when past is irrecoverably gone. That is the
property of a presentation within the course of consciousness. It is a
particular perishing existence.
{22} But Subjective Idealism says, “Because these mental existences are
particular perishing existences, and all knowledge consists in them as
its medium, therefore the object of knowledge is nothing beyond these
mental facts, and is not rooted in a permanent system [1] independent
of our mental connections.” Here we must check the inference, and
reply, “No, it does not follow. The presentations which themselves come
and go may refer to something in common, and through them all we may
become aware of something that is not wholly in any of them.” In other
words, there is in Knowledge no passage _from_ subjective to objective,
but only a development of the objective.
[1] Our estimate of Berkeley’s view must depend on the degree
in which we judge him to have identified the Deity with, or
separated Him from, a permanent and universal system. The
statement in the text applies fairly to Hume.
_The world as_ Knowledge
2. Therefore we say, coming closer to our subject, that “_Knowledge_
is the medium in which our world, _as an interrelated whole_, [1]
exists for us.” This is more than saying that it exists in mind or
presentation, because the mere course of consciousness need not
amount to Knowledge. A world, that is, a system of things acting
on one another, could not exist merely in the course of our ideas.
But _Knowledge_, we said, is the mental construction of reality. It
consists of what we are obliged to assert in thought, and because we
are all obliged to think assertorily according to the same methods,
the results of our thinking form corresponding systems--systems that
correspond alike to each other and to reality. (I may be asked, does
not this agreement of {23} our knowledge depend on the agreement of
the physical stimuli supplied to us by nature, as well as on the
homogeneousness of our intelligences? The answer is, that these
stimuli, or nature, have no priority in Knowledge. Their identity is
merely a case or consequence of the identity of our experience as a
whole. We are regarding nature as a system developed in experience, not
as an unknown somewhat behind it. To suppose that solid or extended
existence somehow comes before and accounts for everything else, is a
form of the common-sense theory we have dismissed. Knowledge and Truth
have their limitations as forms of Reality, but an appeal to solidity
or extension will not furnish the required supplementation.)
[1] The words italicised make a reservation in favour of
feeling, which has its own form of reality, but is not
relational.
_Knowledge is in the form of Judgement_
3. All that we have been saying about Knowledge is summed up in the
sentence, “Knowledge is a judgment, an affirmation.” We need not
trouble ourselves yet about negation. We all know what affirmative
assertion is, and it is near enough for the present to say that all
knowledge is judgment in the sense of affirmative assertion.
I will explain how we sum up all we have said of knowledge by calling
it a judgment.
Judgment or affirmation always implies three properties, though they
are not always recognised.
It is (a) necessary, (b) universal, and (c) constructive.
_Judgment necessary_
(a) Judgment is necessary. In saying this, we express all that we said
about the objectivity of the world in knowledge. “Objective” meant, we
concluded, what we are obliged to think. And judgment is necessary,
because it expresses what we are obliged to think; obliged, that is,
not as we are obliged to feel pain, as an unexplained and {24} isolated
fact, but obliged by a necessity operative within the movement of our
consciousness, though not, of course, theoretically recognised as
necessity in common thinking. Thus, in the simplest phases of Judgment,
necessity does begin to approach the kind of necessity by which we feel
pain or are visited by persistent irrational associations.
We can trace an explicit sense of necessity in any scientific matter,
or in any doubtful and complex matters in which we are aware of our own
reflections. We constantly hear and read such phrases as, “I am unable
to resist the conclusion”; “I am forced to believe”; “I am driven to
think”; “I have no alternative but to suppose.” These are every-day
phrases in controversy and in theoretical discussion. And what they all
mean is just what was insisted on in the last lecture; the objective or
real for us is what we are obliged to think. Given our perceptive state
and our mental equipment, the judgment follows.
In trivial or simple judgments this necessity is harder to observe
within consciousness, and approaches more and more to the mere
constraint exercised upon us by physical reality. In a judgment of
mere sensuous comparison, such as a “colour-match,” the necessity is
not that of an intellectual system, but almost that of a feeling which
we cannot dispel. The chief intellectual labour is here negative, and
consists in precautions to remove all disturbing influences, both
mental and material, so as to let the perception operate freely on the
mind. But yet here _is_ necessity; we never for a moment think that we
can modify the result; our aim is simply to distinguish from all others
the particular strand of necessity by which we desire to be guided.
{25} It is easy for an observer to detect intellectual necessity in
judgment, even where the judging subject is wholly unreflective. If
you contradict an obvious judgment made by an uneducated man, he will
no doubt be quite unable to point out the intellectual necessity
which constrains him to it, _i.e._ to argue in support of it; but he
will be bewildered and probably indignant, which shows that, unknown
to himself, his whole intellectual existence is really impeached by
impeachment of a necessary conclusion from it. Many people cannot see
the difference between impeaching their argument and impeaching their
veracity; and this confusion arises, I presume, from a just feeling
that their whole mind is on its trial in the one case as in the other,
although they do not distinguish between the forms of its action which
are concerned. We are told, indeed, in formal logic, that ordinary
statements of fact do not claim necessity; but this merely arises
from confining necessity to explicit necessity expressed in a special
grammatical form.
But, it may be objected, we do not always feel that every trivial
judgment emanates from and so implicates our whole mental constitution
and equipment. If I say to a friend, “I saw you at Charing Cross
yesterday,” and he says, “No, you could not, for I was out of town,”
then, unless I was very certain indeed, I should admit having made a
mistake, and think no more about the matter. That only means, (1) that
the unity of the mind is not thoroughly complete--there are many more
or less detached systems in the mind, and one of them may not be very
deeply inwrought in the whole intellectual frame; and (2) the necessity
of thought may itself modify the certainty of the fact, _e.g._ I know
that {26} a mistake of identity is quite a common thing, and this
knowledge co-operates with my friend’s denial.
But in any perceptive judgment, however unimportant its immediate
content, if it is clear and persistent, a contradiction is a most
serious thing. There is a well-known form of bewilderment connected
with the judgment of direction; if you forget or do not know of a turn
that you have taken, and come out, for example, on familiar ground from
the North when you think you are coming on it from the South, so that
objects have the reverse position of what you expected, then, supposing
that you cannot explain the contradiction, the result is sometimes
a very grave perplexity; some men are quite unhinged by it for the
moment, and a psychologist in France [1] has given it a new name,
“Vertigo of Direction.” This again shows how your whole intellectual
nature is staked upon the most trifling perception, and if you seem to
be forced to a flat contradiction even in the simplest judgment you are
almost “beside yourself.”
[1] M. Binet. See _Mind_, x. 156.
_Judgment universal_