800 LOGIC
logic, may well be matter of doubt. For psychology, as ordinarily conceived, has certainly close relations with logic, but in aim and in point of view is distinctly opposed or at all events subordinate to it. The psychological investigation of thought, if carried out consistently, must take one of two forms, either that of description, in which thought, like any other mental fact, is regarded ab extra as that upon which attention and observation are to be directed, – in which case therefore any relations of thoughts among themselves must be of such an external nature as can be presented in the field of observation; or that of genesis, development, in which the subjective processes of mind are viewed as forms of the one great process whereby knowledge is realized in the individual consciousness. Investigations from the first point of view are diametrically opposed to the logical treatment of thought, for in the latter the essential feature, the reference in the subject, with his mental forms, to an objective order within his experience is entirely wanting. Such investigation is abstract; it proceeds upon and remains within the limits of a distinction drawn in and for conscious experience, a distinction the grounds, significance, and modes of which require to be treated by a larger and more comprehensive method. Investigations from the second point of view are subordinate to logic in the wider sense, for the treatment of the subjective processes therein is illuminated and determined by the general principles regarding the nature and meaning of conscious experience which it is the sole function of logic to bring forward and establish. The psychology which Hamilton generally has in view is that commonly called empirical, and with his conception of it the two sciences, logic and psychology, are really one.
33. A possible exit from the difficulties or assumptions of the current Kantian logic may be sought by following out and consistently applying the hint contained in Kant's distinction of analytic and synthetic thought, analytic and synthetic truth. It may be said that all thinking involves the fundamental laws of identity and non-contradiction; that in these laws only is to be found the characteristic and most general feature of thought; that in them only is the form, or element contributed by mind itself, to be detected. Logic would thus be regarded as the explicit statement of the conditions of non-contradictoriness in thought, as the evolution of the formal element in thought, and, since in analytic truth only can non-contradictoriness be discovered without material aid, as the theory of analytic thought. Such is the position assigned to logic by Twesten, Mansel, Spalding, and some others, and the consequences to which it inevitably leads are sufficiently interesting to require that some special examination should be given to it.
In the first place, then, it seems evident that the fundamental distinction implied, that between analytic and synthetic thought, is wrongly conceived. That analysis and synthesis are methods of cognition, differing in many important respects, is undoubted; but such difference lies in a sphere altogether alien to that within which the present distinction is to be sought. Analytic thought, as here conceived, is only to be understood when taken in reference to the judgment, and then also in reference to a peculiarity in the Kantian doctrine. Kant, emphasizing the principle that judgment is essentially the form in which the particular of experience is determined by the universal element of thought, but identifying this universal with a formed concept (resembling, therefore, a class notion), contemplated a class of judgments in which the predicate was merely an explication of the subject notion. Such judgments, had the matter been more fully considered, would have appeared as far from primary, and Kant has himself, in the most unambiguous language, indicated the correct view that analysis is consequent and dependent on synthesis, – that analytic judgments, therefore, are merely special applications of abstracting thought within a sphere already treated, handled, formed by thought. Mansel, too, whose views are generally acute if not profound, has signalized as the primitive unit of cognition the so-called psychological judgment, which is essentially synthetic in character. The logical judgment, in fact, about which his conception of logic centres, is recognized as a posterior act of reflexion, directed upon formed notions, and is not in any way to be regarded as containing what is a common, universal feature of all judgments.
In the second place, even granting what cannot be maintained, that the process of thought is mere explication of the content of previous knowledge, and that the theory of logic has to do with a comparatively small and subordinate portion of cognition, there is in such a principle no means of development. We may take up in succession class-notions, judgments, reasonings, and in relation to each reiterate, as the one axiom of logic, that the constituent elements shall be non-contradictory; but such a treatment is only possible in relation to a material already formed and organized. The utmost possible value being given to such a view, logic, under it, could be but a partial and inchoate doctrine.
Finally, there is involved in the doctrine of analytic thought, and in the consequences to which attention will next be drawn, a peculiar and one-sided conception of identity or of the principle of identity as an element in thought. Historically this conception has played a most important part: it lies at the root of all nominalist logic from Antisthenes downwards, and has found metaphysical expression of the most diverse kinds. That things are what they are is the odd fashion in which a well-nigh forgotten English writer states what is taken to be the universal foundation of all thought and knowledge.[1] The representatives of things in our subjective experience, the units of knowledge, may be called notions, and, accordingly, that each notion should be what it is appears as the corresponding logical axiom. The whole process of thought is therefore regarded as merely the explicit statement of what each notion is, and the separation of it by direct or indirect methods from all that it is not. The judgment, essentially the active movement of thought, is reduced to the mere expression of the identity of a notion, and in truth, were the doctrine consistently carried out, Antisthenes's conclusion that the judgment is a fallacious and inept form of thought would be the necessary result. When such a conclusion is not drawn, its place is generally taken by much vague declamation regarding the limited, imperfect, and uncertain character of our knowledge, which is regarded as asymptotically approaching to the adequate determination of truth.
The conception which underlies this view is the abstract separation of thought from things which has been already noted, but the proximate principle is a deduction therefrom. Knowledge or thought is treated externally as a series of isolated units or parts, and the results of cognition – notions, judgments, and reasonings – are viewed as the constituent factors. Thus, e.g., when it is said that a judgment is the expression of an identity, there are possible only two modes of explanation, – the one, that the identity referred to is that between the original notion (subject) as unqualified by its predicates and the same as qualified, in which case manifestly the result of the judgment is taken as being its constituent essence; the other, that the identity is that of the applicability of distinct names to the same fact, in which case we accept without further inquiry and exclude from logical consideration the processes of thought by which the application of names is brought about, and assume as being the procedure of thought itself that which is its consequence. Under all circumstances, difference is as important an element as identity in the judgment, and to concentrate attention upon the identity is to take a one-sided and imperfect view.[2]
34. So soon, however, as the real nature of thought has been thrown out of account as not concerned in the processes of logic, so soon as the law of non-contradiction, in its manifold statement, has been formulated as the one principle of logical or formal thinking, there appears the possibility of evolving an exact system of the conditions of non-contradictoriness. The ultimate units of knowledge, whatsoever we call them, whether notions or ideas of classes or names, have at least one characteristic, – they are what they are, and therefore exclude from themselves whatever is contradictory of their nature. They are combined positions and negations, that which is posited or negated being left undetermined, – referred, in fact, to matter as opposed to form. With respect to any article of thought, therefore, the only logical requirement is that it shall possess the characteristic of not being self-contradictory, and the only logical question is, what exactly is posited and negated thereby. Complex articles of thought viewed in like manner as complexes of positions and negations may have the same condition demanded of them and the same question put regarding them. A judgment and a syllogism, if narrowly investigated, will appear to be merely complex articles of thought, complexes of positions and negations. Proceeding from such a conception there may be treatments more or less systematic and fruitful. In the hands of Kantian logicians, such as Twesten, Mansel, Spalding, and the like, little is effected, for, as the forms of thought are accepted as given and as having their characteristics otherwise fixed (by psychology or critical theory of knowledge), the treatment resolves itself either into repetition, in respect to each, of the fundamental logical condition, or into the erection of a specific kind of thought (analytical) which has no other feature save that of correspondence with the said condition. But it is clear that restriction by any psychological or critical doctrine of thought is an arbitrary limitation. It is needful only to regard the operation of thought as establishment of positions and negations, and to develop, by whatever method, the systematic results of such a view. Hobbes's doctrine of thought as dealing with names and as essentially addition and subtraction of nameable features, Boole's doctrine of thought as the determination of a class, Jevons's view of thought as simple apprehension of qualities, – any of these will serve as starting point, for in all of them the fruitful element is the same. The further step that the generalization of the system of thought must take a symbolic form presents itself as an immediate and natural consequence.
35. By the application of a symbolic method is not to be understood what has been practised by many writers on logic – the illus-
- ↑ John Sergeant. See The Method to Science, by J. S., 8vo, Lend., 1696, pp. 144, 145. This curious book contains much interesting matter.
- ↑ On Condillac's attempt to treat judgments as identities (or equations) some excellent remarks will be found in De Tracy, Idéologie, iii. 133-143, cf. Duhamel, Des Méthodes, i. 89-94.
