Logical necessity

“ In such cases it is an empirical law of the mind that reason discerns of itself the logical necessity, that is, if it desires to proceed according to the merits of the case, without, however, acting under physical constraint. ”

“ The problem that confronts you, then, in either kind of analysis, however formal or informal it may be, is, How shall I go to work? The first necessity is the choosing of a basis for division of the subject, whether it be in classification or partition. The necessity for this arises from the demand of the human mind for logical consistency. Life seems often wildly inconsistent, but we demand that explanation of it or any phase of it be arranged according to what seems to us some logical law of progression, some consistent point of view. ”

“ Only when, for a logical implication expressed in the abstract, there is substituted an example so far concrete that the interdependencies can be contemplated, is there an exercise of the mental power by which logical necessity is grasped. ”

“ The question regarding the relation between necessity, the element in which logical thought moves, and freedom, the postulate of the will, carries one beyond the confines of logic and is, in his opinion, the profoundest problem of metaphysics, whose function is to deal with the ultimate relation between "subject and object, the world and the individual, and this is not only basal for logic and all science, but is the crown and end of them all." ”

“ The unchangeable laws of logic, too, are instances of the eternal truth. The principles of the validity of thought are entirely independent of individuals, of the passage of time, and of the environment of man. "Our thought cannot advance in the definite work of building up science without producing and employing a definite logical structure, with fixed principles ”

“ 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. ”

“ When all attempts and efforts on your part fail to fit what is being said into the logical framework, the rational framework, I have to say that you cannot in any way understand what it is all about; it is beyond logic, it is beyond rationality, it is so. ”

“ In fact, no belief which we entertain has so complete a logical basis as that to which I have just referred. It tacitly underlies every process of reasoning; it is the foundation of every act of the will. ”

“ But if one talks of rationality and of reasons for things, and insists that they can't just come in spots, what KIND of a reason can there ultimately be why anything should come at all? Talk of logic and necessity and categories and the absolute and the contents of the whole philosophical machine-shop as you will, the only REAL reason I can think of why anything should ever come is that someone wishes it to be here. It is DEMANDED, demanded, it may be, to give relief to no matter how small a fraction of the world's mass. ”

“ Values, whether ethical or logical, without an examination and formulation of their ground, relations, origin, and interconnection, would be merely rules of thumb, popular phrases, or pastoral precepts. The actual methodology of the sciences or applied logic is logic as art. ”

“ It is folly to pretend that our choices are necessary. The proposition involves absurdity. Choice and necessity are often opposites. Some bewildered in the labyrinth of metaphysics have doubted the plainest truths—the existence of matter! ”

“ What we have termed the absolutistic logic ends, as far as method in social matters is concerned, in a substitution of discussion of concepts and their logical relations to one another for inquiry. Whatever form it assumes, it results in strengthening the reign of dogma. ”

“ Let him produce a body of beliefs which shall be at once living, logical, and sufficient;—not forgetting that it cannot be sufficient unless it includes within the circuit of its doctrines some account of itself regarded as a product of natural causes, nor logical unless it provides a rational explanation of the good fortune which has made causes which are not reasons, mixed, it may be, with causes which are not good reasons, issue in what is, by hypothesis, a perfectly rational system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In respect of Mind and its works, just as in the case of Nature, we must guard against being so far misled by a well-meant endeavour after rational knowledge, as to try to exhibit the necessity of phenomena which are marked by a decided contingency, or, as the phrase is, to construe them a priori. ”

“ 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 "? ”

“ The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness. ”

“ But though logical rules are first felt implicitly, bringing them into explicit consciousness helps the process of analysis and thus makes possible the recognition of old principles in novel situations. This increases our range of adaptability to such an extent as to justify a general distinction between the slave of routine or habit and the freeman who can anticipate and control nature through knowledge of principles. ”

“ If logic is to maintain itself as the science of the principles of the content of knowledge, it must cease to diminish its stature to the measure of the merely subjective, and must advance to an analysis of the structural principles of a thought which can apprehend any object. ”

“ No matter what show of logic may drive us into the corner, our instinctive moral sense prohibits us from entertaining the theorem that the single self who conducts the argument, albeit he is its cause, its designer, its engineer, and its authority, is the sole and absolute Reality, — the only being in existence having such compass, such sovereign judgment, such self-determining causality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The concept of the logical Individual, viewed apart from the question as to the distinctions of the various grades of individuality, finite or infinite, is a problem that frequently has received far too indefinite a treatment in logical discussions. ”

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

“ This very law which the logicians would impose upon us—if I may give the name of logicians to those who would rule out all participation of our willing nature from the formation of our opinions—is based on nothing but their own natural wish to exclude all elements for which they, in their professional quality of logicians, can find no use. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a sort of necessity established in this respect by the general laws of human nature--by the constitution of the human mind. Certain truths can not be discovered, nor inventions made, unless certain others have been made first ”

“ Armed with these logical weapons, we may boldly face Things in themselves, and tender to them the double alternative, sure that they must absolutely elect one or the other side, though we may be for ever precluded from discovering which. ”

“ They are truths which, to an intelligence sufficiently refined, would shine forth in their own unborrowed light, without the need of those connecting links of thought, those steps of wearisome and often painful deduction, by which the knowledge of them is actually acquired. Let us define as fundamental those laws and principles from which all other general truths of science may be deduced, and into which they may all be again resolved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The genuine result of such reasoning, if it were acted upon, would be that we need never, in any science or art whatever, trouble ourselves to enunciate any general principle or maxim, because perfectly useless! ”

“ When we confuse the logical and non-logical87 operations of these processes the result is either that logical processes will merely repeat non-logical operations in which case we have inference that is tautologous and trifling; or the non-logical will attempt to perform logical operations, and our inference is miraculous. If we seek to escape by an appeal to habit, as in empiricism, or to an objective universal, as in idealism and neo-realism, we are merely disguising, not removing the miracle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Observe how they proceed with the distinction between freedom and necessity, in their application of these categories to Nature and Mind. Nature they regard as subject in its workings to necessity; Mind they hold to be free. No doubt there is a real foundation for this distinction in the very core of the Mind itself: but freedom and necessity, when thus abstractly opposed, are terms applicable only in the finite world to which, as such, they belong. ”

“ In all our knowledge of general principles, what actually happens is that first of all we realise some particular application of the principle, and then we realise that the particularity is irrelevant, and that there is a generality which may equally truly be affirmed. ”

“ But the infinite variety of circumstance which is formed in this externality by the light of the essence shining in it,—all this infinite material, with its regulations,—is not the object of philosophy.... To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: for what is is reason. ”

“ If we study the laws of thought merely that we may know what they are, we are making it a speculative science; if we study the same laws with a view to deducing rules for the guidance of thought, we are making it a practical science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our question in the present discussion being this, “What determines us to acknowledge as real one rather than another system of particular facts?” we have here pointed out that the first determining principle, namely, the Ought, requires us to acknowledge at each moment as real certain particular facts which, even while they are conceived as limiting, constraining, and so determining our acts, are also conceived as thereby enabling us even now to accomplish our will better than we could if we did not acknowledge these facts. ”

“ Even if they were universally and exactly true within the bounds of experience, which they never are, still they are not the ultimate laws of human action; they are not the principles of human nature, but results of those principles under the circumstances in which mankind have happened to be placed. ”

“ That you may understand this, I will give you an example of hypothetical necessity. If I shall live, I shall eat. This is an hypothetical necessity. Indeed it is a necessary proposition, that is to say, it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered, but it is not the necessity of the thing, nor is it therefore necessary that the man should live, nor that the man should eat. ”

“ If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them; these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”