LOGIC 799
importance, whether there remains over and above the difference between the more immediate determinations of thought and its more complex or reflective modes an essential difference in knowledge between thought and reality. In less careful critics the oversight simply leads to the contention that we shall always repeat the problem of knowing and being as insoluble, and shall view knowledge as a mechanical, subjective product.
Many of these objections doubtless result from a very simple fact, more than once alluded to in this article. Particular distinctions, apparently the most elementary, frequently involve and are unintelligible apart from a developed, though not necessarily consistent or well grounded, conception of things in general. Thus the emphasis laid upon thought as essentially subjective, as being merely the system of operations whereby the individual brings into order and coherence in his own experience what is furnished ab extra through the natural connexion in which he is placed to the objective world, seems at first sight the most simple and direct consequence of the actually given distinction between the individual as one natural unit and the sum of things comprehending him and all others. But, on analysing more closely the title for applying to philosophical problems a view which is that of practical life, and doubtless legitimate and necessary within that sphere, we readily become aware of a whole series of speculative assumptions implicit in that view, and possibly without any adequate justification. At all events, whether or not the view be ultimately defensible, and in the same form in which it is at first assumed, it is unphilosophical to start in the treatment of a difficult and important discussion from principles so ambiguous and undetermined. The practical difference between the individual agent and the external sphere within which his individual operations are realized and which is therefore treated by him, from his point of view, as external, throws no light per se on the nature of the ultimate relation between the individual thinker as such and the world within which his thought is exercised. The confusion between ultimate distinctions and practical points of view is productive of most pernicious consequences not only in logic specially but in philosophy at large.
Criticism of the Chief Logical Schools.
31. It will probably be now apparent that determination of the nature, province, and method of logic is, and has always been, dependent on the conception formed as to the nature of knowledge. Discussions regarding the precise definition of logic are not mere analytical disputes regarding the best mode of expressing in terms the nature of a subject sufficiently agreed upon; variations in the treatment of particular portions of logical discipline do not arise from more or less accurate discrimination of the nature and relations of given material; nor are differences in respect to the amount of logical matter to be considered mere expressions of difference as to the range of the same fundamental principles. The grounds for divergence are much more deeply seated, and, looking back upon the historical survey of the main conceptions of logical science, it seems quite impossible to hope that by comparison and selection certain common points of view or methods may be extracted, to which the title of logical might beyond dispute be applied. The logic, as one may call it, of each philosophical theory of knowledge is an integral part or necessary consequence of such theory; and its validity, whether in whole or in part, depends upon the completeness and coherence of the explanation of knowledge in general which forms the essence of that theory. Any criticism of a general conception of logic or special application thereof, which does not rest upon criticism of the theory of knowledge implied in it, must be inept and useless. It is not possible to include such expanded criticism in an article like the present; there remains therefore only one aspect of these various logical schemes which may be subjected to special and isolated examination, viz., the inner coherence of each scheme as presented by its author. Naturally such an examination can be applied only to views which imply the separate existence of logic as a body of doctrine developing into system from its own, peculiar principles. When it is a fundamental position that logic as such has no separate existence, but is one with the all-comprehensive doctrine or theory of the ultimate nature of cognition, it is not possible to criticize such conception of logic separately; criticism of logic then becomes criticism of the whole philosophical system. In most of the views brought before us, however, a special place has been assigned to logic; it is therefore possible to apply internal criticism to the more important of these general views, and to consider how far the pretensions of logic to an independent position and method are substantiated.
From the foregoing remarks it will also have become apparent that a general classification of logical schools, as opposed to the reference of these to ultimate distinctions of philosophical theory, is impossible. A distribution into formal (subjective), real (empirical, or, as certain German authorities designate it, Erkenntnisstheoretisch), and metaphysical conceptions of logic is rather confusing than helpful. For the formal logics of the Kantian writers, of Hamilton, and of Mansel are distinct, not only from one another, but from such equally formal logics as those of Hobbes, Condillac, Leibnitz, Herbart, Ulrici, Boole, De Morgan, and Jevons. Logic as theory of knowledge presents quite special features when handled by Mill, or by Schleiermacher, Ueberweg, Beneke, and Wundt. And it cannot even be admitted that the threefold classification affords room, without violence, for the Aristotelian logical researches. There are no points of agreement and difference so unambiguous that by their aid a division can be effected.[1]
32. Few conceptions of logic contain, with so little real ground, such professions of completeness and independence as that developed in the writings of the Kantian school.[2] According to this view, logic is a pure science, having as its special material the form of thought, demonstrative in character and with theorems capable of complete deduction from the elementary principles contained in the very notion of form as opposed to matter of thought. But, when one comes to the examination of the system itself, one finds (a) that the notions of form and matter are much too stubborn to lend themselves readily to analysis, and that explanations of what exactly constitutes form fluctuate between a merely negative definition (whatever is not treated in any other science, philosophical or otherwise) and a psychological deduction from the assumed nature of thought;[3] (b) that the really important factor in determining the contents of logical science is psychology, from which much more is borrowed than the mere preliminary definition of thought; (c) that demonstrative character rests entirely on an abstract interpretation of the laws of identity and non-contradiction; (d) that throughout the whole system there is not a trace of development, but merely the reiterated application of the law of identity and contradiction, or of some confused distinction between form and matter, to logical products, the notion, judgment, and syllogism, whose nature, characteristics, and distribution are arbitrarily accepted from psychology or general criticism or what not. Thus, in the majority of cases, logicians who simply followed the lines indicated by Kant introduced into their system, without any criticism, the fundamental distinctions contained in the Kritik d. reinen Vernunft. The fourfold scheme of quantity, quality, relation, and modality was applied without hesitation, though in varied and always artificial fashion, to notions;[4] judgments were accepted as being categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive in kind, though the differences are altogether foreign to the logical principle applied; and generally no attempt was made to do more than treat, in an abstract fashion, some aspects of a procedure of thought determined in all its phases by extra-logical considerations. The inevitable result of such a treatment was the undue preponderance given to the doctrine of notions, which, being viewed after the fashion of Kant as given, completed products, appeared as the ultimate units of thought, to be combined, separated, and grouped together in all the higher processes. The peculiarities of the logical system which is commonly associated with the name of Sir W. Hamilton spring entirely from this view of notions. For, if notions be regarded as the elements of thought, then the judgment which elaborates them can only present itself as the explicit statement of immediate relations discernible among notions. These immediate relations reduce themselves, for Hamilton, to one, – the quantitative relation of whole and part, – and, attention being concentrated on the extensive reference of concepts, the eightfold scheme of prepositional forms is the natural consequence. To such a scheme the objections are manifold. It is neither coherent in itself, nor expressive of the nature of thinking, nor deduced truly from the general principle of the Hamiltonian logic. For it ought to have been kept in mind that extension is but an aspect of the notion, not a separable fact upon which the logical processes of elaboration are to be directed. It is, moreover, sufficiently clear that the relation of whole and part is far from exhausting or even adequately representing the relations in which things become for intelligence matters of cognition, and it is further evident that the procedure by which types of judgment are distinguished according to the total or partial reference to extension contained in them assumes a stage and amount of knowledge which is really the completed result of cognition, not that with which it starts, or by which it proceeds.[5]
The utility of basing logical theorems on psychological premisses, a method involved in the procedure of most expositions of formal
- ↑ Nor are more detailed classifications, such as those of Rosenkranz (Die Modificationen der Logik, 1842), Prantl (Die Bedeutung der Logik, 1849), Rabus (Neueste Bestrebungen, 1880), of service, except when historical.
- ↑ Under this head Kant himself, for reasons above given, is not included; the writers referred to are named in Ueberweg (Logik, § 34).
- ↑ Mill's criticism on Hamilton's confused statements regarding forms (Exam. of Hamilton, 438-454), is perfectly applicable to the generality of the Kantian treatises on logic.
- ↑ See, e.g., Krug, Logik, § 25 sq. v.
- ↑ The extension of a notion has no numerical or quantitative definiteness. To formulate the judgment as expressing definite amounts of extension, therefore, presupposes complete empirical survey of what, by its very essence, remains incomplete. This is specially noteworthy in the case of Hamilton's particular judgments. A judgment such as only some A is all B assumes total and perfect knowledge of the whole spheres of A and B. It is In the strictest sense of the word universal. Hamilton, it may be added, finds it completely impossible to work out a coherent doctrine of syllogism from the point of view taken in the treatment of the judgment.
