Presupposition

“ In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief. ”

“ The chief reason for supposing the principle true is that it seems scarcely possible to believe that we can make a judgment or entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or supposing about. If we make a judgment about (say) Julius Cæsar, it is plain that the actual person who was Julius Cæsar is not a constituent of the judgment. But before going further, it may be well to explain what I mean when I say that this or that is a constituent of a judgment, or of a proposition which we understand. ”

“ If our incapacity to conceive the negation of a given supposition is proof of its truth, because proving that our experience has hitherto been uniform in its favor, the real evidence for the supposition is not the inconceivableness, but the uniformity of experience. ”

“ My first object is to show that we are liable to be affected by our prepossessions at every stage of our mental activity, from our primary reception of impressions from without, to the highest exercise of our reasoning powers; and that the value of the testimony of any individual, therefore, as to any fact whatever, essentially depends upon his freedom from any prepossessions that can affect it. ”

“ This compromise is effected by the doctrine of postulation. For though a postulate proceeds from us, and is meant to guide thought in anticipating facts, it yet allows the facts to test and mould it; so that its working modifies, expands, or restricts its demands, and fits it to meet the exigencies of experience, and permits, also, a certain reinterpretation of the previous 'facts' in order to conform them to the postulate.
A postulate thus fully meets the demands of apriorism. It is 'universal' in claim, because it is convenient and economical to make a rule carry as far as it will go ”

“ So we come back to the situation that a presumption as to the aggressor can exist only if certain facts exist; and that the existence of one or more of these facts may very likely be in doubt or dispute and that, with one exception, there is no procedure for determining such questions of fact so as to be able to say with certainty that the presumption does exist. ”

“ No one is asked to blindly accept any statement I may make, but the one who really wants to learn will accept “on probation” such statements as are not as yet truth to him, and then test them out for himself in every way he may wish until, through his own experience, he is able to see their truth and accept them because he has proved them for himself and not because I have made them. ”

“ Now let us apply this theory of the supposition to the problem of error, and we shall then see how there can be an object present to the mind when we judge falsely, and also that the object is the same whether we judge truly or falsely. Suppositions are real possibilities; they are alternatives that may be fulfilled or that may never be fulfilled. ”

“ Presumptions normally arise when proof of one fact renders the existence of another fact "so probable that it is sensible and timesaving to assume the truth of [the inferred] fact . . . until the adversary disproves it." ”

“ We must distinguish between those appeals to the Universal Postulate in which the act of thought is decomposable, and those in which it is undecomposable. In proportion as the number of concepts which a proposition involves is great, and the mental transitions from concept to concept are numerous, the fallibility of the test will increase; and will do this because the formation of the belief is separable into many steps, each of which involves the postulate. ”

“ A law based on presumption is one in which the lawgiver rules for certain cases according to what experience shows in their regard—viz., that such cases are generally dangerous, or indicative of a particular fact. ”

“ Also and again corresponding to this mental act of supposing and its intended object the supposition, there is a mode of being which is neither existence nor non-existence, but is named subsistence. A supposition, it is said, does not exist—it subsists. This thesis, it will easily be understood, is based on an analysis, and deals with arguments that touch the most fundamental problems of theory of knowledge. ”

“ Logic, we found, is the Theory of Proof. But proof supposes something provable, which must be a Proposition or Assertion; since nothing but a Proposition can be an object of belief, or therefore of proof. A Proposition is, discourse which affirms or denies something of some other thing. ”

“ Is there nothing then about a man that may properly be termed good or bad, when, on such or such an occasion; he suffers himself to be governed by such or such a motive. Yes, certainly: his disposition. Now disposition is a kind of fictitious entity, feigned for the convenience of discourse, in order to express what there is supposed to be permanent in a man's frame of mind, where, on such or such an occasion, he has been influenced by sued or such a motive, to engage in an act, which, as it appeared to him, was of such or such a tendency. ”

“ The presumption in favour of individual judgment is only legitimate, where the judgment is grounded on actual, and especially on present, personal experience; not where it is formed antecedently to experience, and not suffered to be reversed even after experience has condemned it. ”

“ Experiments in thought and life, of even audacious description, were made, not in defiance of precedent—for precedent was hardly respected enough to be defied—but in innocent unconsciousness of precedent. ”

“ And as the evidence is given to you step by step the presumption stands as a guard between innocence and the evidence that is being given, until at last, when your mind is satisfied, when your judgment has come to the conclusion that the men are guilty, the presumption is wiped out, and you are no longer to presume the man innocent. ”

“ These three mental acts are Doubt, Inference, and Assent. A question is the expression of a doubt; a conclusion is the expression of an act of inference; and an assertion is the expression of an act of assent. To doubt, for instance, is not to see one’s way to hold that Free-trade is or that it is not a benefit; to infer, is to hold on sufficient grounds that Free-trade may, must, or should be a benefit; to assent to the proposition, is to hold that Free-trade is a benefit. ”

“ Not all Probabilists use the principle of the presumptive will of the lawgiver for all cases of negative doubt; some employ different principles for different kinds of doubt, and sometimes arrive at other decisions than those given in the preceding paragraphs. ”

“ That which has been delivered in judgment must be taken for established truth. For in all probability it is true in fact, and even if not, it is expedient that it should be held as true none the less. ”

“ Was the court wrong in refusing to give this instruction?
Presumptions, from evidence given in a cause of the existence of particular facts, are in many, if not in all cases, mixed questions of law and fact. ”

“ Whether one promise be the consideration for another, or whether the performance, and not the mere promise, be the consideration, is to be determined by the intention and meaning of the parties, as collected from the instrument, and the application of good sense and right reason to each particular case. ”

“ The presumption is of course scientifically admissible that he is personally, and as an industrial factor, the evil agent alleged. The evidence in our possession leads us to adopt a different presumption. ”

“ And I shall proceed to consider the testimony of Experience, when I shall have first advertis’d You, that if Men were as perfectly rational as ’tis to be wish’d they were, this sensible way of Probation would be as needless as ’tis wont to be imperfect. ”

“ It is now impossible to say whether I am right or wrong in all my conclusions, but the body beside which we are standing is the final piece of evidence which seems to support what must be a partly speculative line of deduction. ”

“ In all cases therefore, the probability of compliance is much greater when nothing but compliance is expected, than when a thought of the contrary is, by some inauspicious word, or a mere look of doubt and anxiety, suggested. ”

“ It will be instructive, as well as interesting, as a phase of human nature, to refer, by way of introduction, to some curious wills, which may form an inviting prelude to a more serious treatment of the subject.
As might be anticipated, many wills reflect the singular notions, the eccentricities and prejudices of the makers. In many cases, the testator speaks his mind so freely that his opinion of others really amounts to a libel ”

“ And a presumption, which necessarily arises from circumstances, is very often more convincing and more satisfactory than any other kind of evidence: because it is not within the reach and compass of human abilities to invent a train of circumstances which shall be so connected together as to amount to a proof of guilt, without affording opportunities of contradicting a great part, if not all, of these circumstances. ”

“ When a testator uses a word which has a well-known, ordinary acceptation, it must appear very certain that he has said, on the face of the will, that he uses it in another sense, before the ordinary sense can be interfered with.... ”

“ Things the most absurd in speculation become necessary in practice. Such is the human constitution, and reason excuses them on the account of this necessity. Reason does even a little more, and it is all she can do. ”

“ As DEMONSTRATION is the showing the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the intervention of one or more proofs, which have a constant, immutable, and visible connexion one with another; so PROBABILITY is nothing but the appearance of such an agreement or disagreement, by the intervention of proofs, whose connexion is not constant and immutable, or at least is not perceived to be so, but is, or appears for the most part to be so, and is enough to induce the mind to judge the proposition to be true or false, rather than the contrary. ”

“ Who knows how many links we may have to ascend in the vast cycle of worlds around, ere we arrive at the one which is knowledge—where we may look before, and after, and judge of the whole? How many stages of probation may we yet have to pass! ”

“ No, the two ideas can easily be seen to be one and the same; in each case it is red we are actually acquainted with, and the difference is in affirming or denying existence to the one idea. The difference is in our judgment, which may be affirmative or negative. A supposition is like a judgment in this respect; it may be either affirmative or negative, but it differs from a judgment in another respect, that while a judgment always conveys a conviction, always expresses belief or disbelief, a supposition does not—it is neither believed nor disbelieved. ”

“ But since, by supposition, the new individual has the marks, whether we have ascertained him to have them or not; if we have affirmed the major premise, we have asserted him to be mortal. Now my position is that this assertion can not be a necessary part of the argument. It can not be a necessary condition of reasoning that we should begin by making an assertion, which is afterward to be employed in proving a part of itself. ”

“ It should be noted, however, that the acts of the speculative reason, although they do not belong to prudence itself, are like other acts subject to the direction of prudence; for in pursuing speculative studies one should use good judgment as to the subjects to be considered, the time, place, manner, etc., of study. ”

“ For the more a Book contains of what is marvellous and extraordinary, [Pg 288] the more 'tis liable to Suspicion. This is the Supposition you your self wou'd form of any other Book, and if you don't think so of this, 'tis only the Effect: of your Prepossession which is very palpable, because it inclines you to admit such Evidence to prove the Truth of a Book as wou'd, if you were not prejudic'd in your Judgment, serve for the effectual Destruction of its Credit. ”

“ Thus, in all these four points, the form of the demand, the fact of the demand, the substance of the demand, and the implication in it that to give or withhold assent was a matter to be determined by inclination, this man stands not as an example of a doubter, but as an example, of which there are too many copies amongst us always, of a determined disbeliever and rejecter. ”

“ In other cases one may change the probability of fact into a probability of law by recourse to a probable opinion or argument that under the existing doubt of fact the legislator does not wish the law to oblige. ”

“ If the evidence of its being a revelation, or that this is its true sense, be only on probable proofs, our assent can reach no higher than an assurance or diffidence, arising from the more or less apparent probability of the proofs. ”

“ The answer is, that the objects of thought about which we make judgments are suppositions, and our judgments {88} concern their fulfilment, and their fulfilment is a relation external to them—it is their agreement or disagreement with reality. ”

“ What has been said can be expressed in a formal manner by saying that the nature of judgment or the proposition in general, which involves the distinction of subject and predicate, is subverted and destroyed by the speculative judgment ”

“ Proposition I.—A testator is always presumed to use the words in which he expresses himself according to their strict and primary acceptation, unless from the context of the will it appears that he has used them in a different sense, in which case the sense in which he thus appears to have used them will be the sense in which they are to be construed. ”

“ Among objections made to any doctrine, those which come from avowed supporters of an adverse doctrine must be considered, other things equal, as of less weight than those which come from men uncommitted to an adverse doctrine, or but partially committed to it. The element of prepossession, distinctly present in the one case and in the other case mainly or quite absent, is a well-recognized cause of difference in the values of the judgments: supposing the judgments to be otherwise fairly comparable. ”