Logical conclusion

“ Well, of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the logical demand, that one which awakens the active impulses, or satisfies other æsthetic demands better than the other, will be accounted the more rational conception, and will deservedly prevail. ”

“ A reason for a belief is a true proposition from which the truth of the belief follows from which it could be validly inferred. Now these expressions might suggest the idea that I mean to restrict the word "reason," to what, in the strictest sense, might be called a logical reason—to propositions from which the belief in question follows, according to the rules of inference accepted by Formal Logic. ”

“ And all this is established by abstract logical reasoning professing to find self-contradictions in the categories condemned as mere appearance, and to leave no tenable alternative to the kind of Absolute which is finally affirmed to be real. ”

“ Pure logical reasoning inclines to strict logical processes based upon irrefragible facts, it is true—but there is but little pure logical reasoning. The majority of people are governed more by their feelings and inclinations—their loves and their fears—than by logic. ”

“ Even logical development of a subject is subsidiary to the practical psychological order. Formal logic, the analysis of the process of reasoning, is a cultural study rather than a practical one, save in criticism both of one's own work and another's. ”

“ But reason is the mind's eye, and enables us to see why things are, and when and how events may be made to happen or not to happen. The logician endeavors to learn exactly what this reason is which makes the power of men. ”

“ This doctrine, that logical reasoning produces no new truths, but only unfolds and brings into view those truths which were, in effect, contained in the first principles of the reasoning, is assented to by almost all who, in modern times, have attended to the science of logic. ”

“ The only one which I shall here mention is, that conceptions which are really products of logical reflections, without being readily seen to be so, mingle with our ordinary thoughts, and are frequently the causes of great confusion. ”

“ It is necessity, in the metaphysical sense, some here utterly obscure kind of ‘logical necessity’ which is the favourite toy of a number of art critics. To those who have some familiarity both with Logic and with Psychology the regular appearance of the term ‘logical’ in describing these relations is the clearest indication that nothing definite or adequately considered is being said. ”

“ Whilst Psychology explains how the mind goes forward from data to conclusions, Logic takes a conclusion and goes back to the data, inquiring whether those data, together with any other evidence (facts or principles) that can be collected, are of a nature to warrant the conclusion. ”

“ The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this:
Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities. ”

“ This is not due to any accident, but to the fact that every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical. ”

“ It is therefore necessary, in analysing a belief, to look for some other logical form than a two-term relation. Failure to realise this necessity has, in my opinion, vitiated almost everything that has hitherto been written on the theory of knowledge, making the problem of error insoluble and the difference between belief and perception inexplicable.
Modern logic, as I hope is now evident, has the effect of enlarging our abstract imagination, and providing an infinite number of possible hypotheses to be applied in the analysis of any complex fact. ”

“ Our conception of logic wishes to show that all causes and effects are matter of the same kind, and that our faculty of reasoning is a matter of fact thing which brooks no mysteries or metaphysical dreams. ”

“ Positive logic abstains, as we see, from speculating upon the leading principles of knowledge, principles of identity, of contradiction of causality, etc. These kinds of principles are not objects of examination or of discussion. ”

“ By concentrating attention upon the investigation of logical forms, it becomes possible at last for philosophy to deal with its problems piecemeal, and to obtain, as the sciences do, such partial and probably not wholly correct results as subsequent investigation can utilise [113] even while it supplements and improves them. ”

“ Any man of sense has only to open his eyes, or to observe himself within, to appreciate how all original knowledge is of the concrete, the definite, the individual. This, I say, is what the traditional method in logic seems to imply. ”

“ We may conclude with logic as sound and certain as is used in any scientific deduction, that every sense, faculty, and hope of the human soul has an objective reality in relation to which it is developed as surely as the wing argues an atmosphere, or the eye an ether. ”

“ This is why the true universal judgment has long been seen by logicians to be essentially hypothetical, and why, again, thought or knowledge always appears to the common-sense man to be dealing with realities which have previously been given independently of the “work of the mind.” ”

“ What is the precise effect of our argument on the subject of the human mind? Its precise effect and bearing is to turn us to the study of fact—of a clear and a peculiar fact—from the contemplation of an object which is either an hypothesis, or else no object at all (not even an hypothesis but a contradiction) , or else an irrelevant object of research, and one which cannot by any conceivability contain the fact which it is our business to investigate. ”

“ But there is a distinction to be first drawn, which does not answer to any of the divisions of sound arguments, but arises out of the nature of bad ones. We may know exactly what our evidence is, and yet draw a false conclusion from it; we may conceive precisely what our premises are, what alleged matters of fact, or general principles, are the foundation of our inference; and yet, because the premises are false, or because we have inferred from them what they will not support, our conclusion may be erroneous. ”

“ A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science. ”

“ If there be necessary and universal truths expressible in propositions of axiomatic simplicity and obviousness, and having for their subject-matter the elements of all our experience and all our knowledge, surely these are the truths which, if experience suggest to us any truths at all, it ought to suggest most readily, clearly, and unceasingly. ”

“ If you would interpret the riddle of human motives, put no confidence in logic. The principles of logic are founded on the psychology of Anyone. And Anyone is a mechanical waxwork, an intellectual abstraction, a thing without a soul or a sub-consciousness. ”

“ The traditional Logic of the text-books, when it reasons from universals to their subalternate particulars, or derives particular conclusions from universal premises, does so by tacitly and, in general, by unjustifiably assuming the external existence of the objects reasoned about, while all the time still sundering external and internal. Reasoning itself is, to be sure, experience, but is, by hypothesis, experience of internal meanings, not of the external meanings which are taken, by this sort of thinking, to be the Reality. ”

“ But by what rules of logic we make these inferences, it is impossible to show, nay, it is impossible to show how our sensations and thoughts can give us the very notion and conception either of a mind or of a faculty. ”

“ At every step we must assure ourselves that no other law of nature has superseded, or intermingled its operation with, those which are the premises of the reasoning; and how can this be done by merely looking at the words? We must not only be constantly thinking of the phenomena themselves, but we must be constantly studying them; making ourselves acquainted with the peculiarities of every case to which we attempt to apply our general principles. ”

“ In that case, logic would be an imperative, not directed at the knowledge of truth, but at the adjusting and fixing of a world which must seem true to us. In short, the question is a debatable one: are the axioms of logic adequate to reality, or are they measures and means by which alone we can, create realities, or the concept " reality "? ”

“ Whether the Absolute does or does not exist, is it, either in idea or reality, of any use to us? The reply is that its value lies in this, that it reveals to us the nature of reality and the meaning of truth. Logic is the creative power of thought which leads us to the discovery of higher and higher degrees of reality. ”

“ Finally, formal logic, with its creed of absolute certitude, abhors the very mention of adventure and risk, the life blood of actual human thinking, which is aroused by doubts and questions, and proceeds by guesses, hypotheses, and experiments, to a decision which is always somewhat arbitrary and subject to the risk of later revision. ”

“ The first principles of every kind of reasoning are given us by nature, and are of equal authority with the faculty of reason itself, which is also the gift of nature. The conclusions of reason are all built upon first principles, and can have no other foundation. ”

“ When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself. ”

“ While traditional logic has much to say about truth, the truth it talks about is mere formal consistency, since it declines to consider the material application of its premises. Relevance—a fundamental conception of concrete thought—is excluded because it goes with selection, with selection of the part that is useful, while formal logic professes an all-inclusive ideal. ”

“ Now Reasoning being nothing else but a Comparison of Ideas, and a deducing of Conclusions from Clear and Evident Principles, it is in the first place requisite that our Ideas be Clear and Just, and our Principles True, else all our Discourse will be Nonsense and Absurdity, Falshood and Error. ”

“ In general, when we judge in universal ways, we begin, before we attain an insight into the truth of our judgment, by stating, as abstractly possible, more ideal alternatives than in the end will prove to be determinately possible, or to be valid possibilities. ”

“ It is usual to point out that Psychology tries to explain the subjective processes of conception, judgment and reasoning, and to give their natural history; but that Logic is wholly concerned with the results of such processes, with concepts, judgments and reasonings, and merely with the validity of the results, that is, with their truth or consistency; whilst Psychology has nothing to do with their validity, but only with their causes. ”

“ Now in this extremely elementary consideration, namely, in the consideration that unless ideas first voluntarily bind themselves to a given task, and so, by their internal purpose, already commit themselves to a certain selection of its object, they are neither true nor false, — in this consideration, I say, there may be hidden consequences that we shall later find momentous for the whole theory of Being and of truth. ”

“ But in fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new. ”

“ For the propositions of which necessary truth is composed are so linked together that, given one, the rest can always follow. But necessary truth, which is arrived at 'a priori,' that is, by the mind's own working, is quite as real as contingent truth, which is arrived at 'a posteriori,' or by the teachings of experience, in other words, through our own senses or those of others. ”

“ I agree with the Humanists that, in all argument, the important thing to attend to is the meaning, and that the most serious difficulties of reasoning occur in dealing with the matter reasoned about; but I find [Pg vi] that a pure science of relation has a necessary place in the system of knowledge, and that the formulæ known as laws of contradiction, syllogism and causation are useful guides in the framing and testing of arguments and experiments concerning matters of fact. ”

“ He here asserts that to establish the conclusion ‘Conduct is better in proportion as it is more evolved’ an entirely new proof is necessary. That conclusion will be false, unless a certain proposition, of which we have heard nothing so far, is true—unless it be true that life is pleasant on the whole. ”

“ Finally, by the application of logic to objective realities, namely, by the study of metaphysics, a wonderful bond is established between the rational faculty and objective truth, the first getting hold of the second, and the second reacting after its own manner on the first; so that reason, enlightened by objective truth, knows how to pronounce a right judgment on the merit of things, and in its natural rectitude feels compelled to give them that relative place in its estimation to which each of them is reasonably entitled. ”

“ And, as we have already seen, and in the present lecture shall further illustrate, the relation of partial and total meaning is, at the same time, the relation of any finite will to the expression of the complete intent of that same will. Without contradiction, therefore, you are unable to assert the real Being of any world, unless you conceive that world as the expressed will whose partial momentary embodiment you even now observe, whenever you get any rational idea before your mind. ”