Proposition

“ To object is to argue; and to argue is to assert the validity of argument, and, therefore, of the primary evidence, from which the evidence of each succeeding proposition of the argument flows. To object to the authority of such primary intuitive belief, would thus be to reason against reason,—to affirm and deny at the same moment,—and to own that the very arguments which we urge are unworthy of being received and credited. ”

“ Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. ”

“ Proposition of Fact and Proposition of Theory.+—Some propositions state facts and some propositions state theories. Every argument therefore aims either to prove the occurrence of a fact or the truth of a theory. ”

“ Such a proposition may safely be permitted to rest upon a strong internal, and very general conviction of its truth. A proposition which is generally assented to, and thus received as the common belief of the world, may still need to be proved. ”

“ To question all things; never to turn away from any difficulty; to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism, letting no fallacy, or incoherence, or confusion of thought, slip by unperceived; above all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it ”

“ The answer to every question which it is possible to frame, must be contained in a Proposition, or Assertion. Whatever can be an object of belief, or even of disbelief, must, when put into words, assume the form of a proposition. ”

“ A proposition, considered as a fact on its own account, may be a set of words which a man says over to himself, or a complex image, or train of images passing through his mind, or a set of incipient bodily movements. ”

“ Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
(An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) ”

“ ⁠My academical education, Sir, bids me tell you, that it is necessary to establish the truth of your first proposition, before you presume to draw inferences from it. ”

“ The judgment or proposition, which is the characteristic form in which the result of reflection finds its expression, consists, in its most rudimentary shape, of the embodiment of this distinction in the separation of predicate from subject, and the subsequent affirmation of the first about the second. The work of thought or knowledge in making our world more intelligible to us essentially consists in the progressive analysis of a content or what, considered in abstraction from the this to which it belongs. ”

“ In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: 'The individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which the subject and the predicate first confront each other, when the functions of the notion are taken in their immediate character or first abstraction. [Propositions such as, 'The particular is the universal,' and 'The individual is the particular,' belong to the further specialisation of the judgment.] ”

“ 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 ”

“ A proposition being a portion of discourse in which something is affirmed or denied of something, the first division of propositions is into affirmative and negative. An affirmative proposition is that in which the predicate is affirmed of the subject; as, Cæsar is dead. A negative proposition is that in which the predicate is denied of the subject; as, Cæsar is not dead. The copula, in this last species of proposition, consists of the words is not, which are the sign of negation; is being the sign of affirmation. ”

“ These three different phrases, in communicating our ideas of providence, do every one of them exhibit the same idea, to all persons of common understanding, who are acquainted with the English language. In fine, every one's experience may convince them that they cannot assent to, or dissent from the truth of any matter of fact, doctrine or proposition whatever, contrary to their judgment ”

“ When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from being immediate ”

“ In every proposition, be it affirmative or negative, the latter appellation either comprehendeth the former, as in this proposition, charity is a virtue, 24the name of virtue comprehendeth the name of charity, and many other virtues beside; and then is the proposition said to be true, or truth: for, truth, and a true proposition, is all one. ”

“ Since, then, the objects of all Belief and of all Inquiry express themselves in propositions; a sufficient scrutiny of Propositions and of their varieties will apprize us what questions mankind have actually asked of themselves, and what, in the nature of answers to those questions, they have actually thought they had grounds to believe. ”

“ To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side. ”

“ Logic, assuming certain principles to be true of experience, or at least to be conditions of consistent discourse, distinguishes the kinds of propositions that can be shown to agree with these principles, and explains by what means the agreement can best be exhibited. ”

“ There is a clear distinction between things which are according to, above, and contrary to, reason. The first are propositions, the truth of which may be discovered by the use of the ideas we have acquired from sensation and reflection. ”

“ The only question which appears to us important is, whether we can understand and reason upon the meaning of the terms and propositions addressed to us. If we can, the subjects propounded must be cogitable and conceivable, whether we admit the propositions affirmed concerning them or not; if we cannot, then these subjects are indeed incogitable by ourselves in the present state of our knowledge, but they may not be so to our opponent who employs the terms. ”

“ We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together. ”

“ In propositions, then, whose certainty is built upon the clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, attained either by immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or by evident deductions of reason in demonstrations we need not the assistance of revelation, as necessary to gain our assent, and introduce them into our minds. ”

“ The instances we have given are all of them propositions or judgments, or else conceptions formed out of propositions or judgments, the purpose of which is to interpret experience. The actual experience itself, in so far as it consists of the actual presence of the object to the mind aware of it, is, as we have seen, neither truth nor error; it simply is what it is. ”

“ Wherever we perceive any agreement or disagreement amongst them, there we have general knowledge; and by putting the names of those ideas together accordingly in propositions, can with certainty pronounce general truths.... What is once known of such ideas will be perpetually and forever true. ”

“ II.—For this, as for the former questions, we must take some principle, on the strength of which we may fashion the arguments of the truth which is to be expounded. For what does it profit to labour, even-258- in speaking truth, unless we start from a principle? For the principle alone is the root of all the propositions which are the means of proof. ”

“ It would, however, be an error to suppose that even with respect to tendencies we could arrive in this manner at any great number of propositions which will be true in all societies without exception. ”

“ In those subjects which are at the same time familiar and complicated, and especially in those which are so in as great a degree as moral and social subjects are, it is a matter of common remark how many important propositions are believed and repeated from habit, while no account could be given, and no sense is practically manifested, of the truths which they convey. ”

“ Accordingly those who have attained a sufficient familiarity with its easier portions should be led backward from propositions to which they have assented as self-evident to more and more fundamental principles from which what had previously appeared as premises can be deduced. ”

“ Most of the propositions, whether affirmative or negative, universal, particular, or singular, which we believe, are not believed on their own evidence, but on the ground of something previously assented to, and from which they are said to be inferred. ”

“ To mark strongly the opposition between the propositions and the counter-propositions, it may be stated that the propositions declare what we do think, the counter-propositions declare what we think we think, but do not think: in other words, the propositions represent our real thinking, the counter-propositions our apparent thinking. ”

“ This golden rule is—give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted.
The enunciation of this great first commandment of science consecrated Doubt. ”

“ These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use. ”

“ “Either A is B or C is D,” means, “if A is not B, C is D; and if C is not D, A is B.” All hypothetical propositions, therefore, though disjunctive in form, are conditional in meaning; and the words hypothetical and conditional may be, as indeed they generally are, used synonymously. ”

“ Must we not, in fact, say alike to the followers of Logic, of Ethics, of Religion, and of Art, “Your claims on the world are ultimately all of the same kind; they are made with equal right, and so long as any one of you is content to advance his postulate as a postulate, and at his own personal risk, no one of you has any pretension to criticise or reject the postulates of the others”? ”

“ We must not, however, conclude that the generality of the principle is merely verbal; it will be found on inspection to be no vague or unmeaning assertion, but a most important and really fundamental truth. ”

“ No one stably or sincerely uses the more critical notion, of a group of sense- qualities united by a law. With these categories in our hand, we make our plans and plot together, and connect all the remoter parts of experience with what lies before our eyes. Our later and more critical philosophies are mere fads and fancies compared with this natural mother-tongue of thought.
Common sense appears thus as a perfectly definite stage in our understanding of things, a stage that satisfies in an extraordinarily successful way the purposes for which we think. ”

“ It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'—like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others—give rise to reasonable objection. ”

“ I assent to the veracity of sense, and I believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object, and on no account whatever will I consent 'to disclaim this principle.' Your philosophy—your more rational opinions— representation—your reasonings which, you say, necessitate me to depart from my primary instincts—all these I give, without reservation, to the winds. ”

“ But since almost any extended argument will draw upon more than one source we must look, to answer the inquiry we are now starting, at the prevailing source, or the source which is most frequently called upon in the total persuasive effort. We shall say that this predominating source gives to the argument an aspect, and our present question is, what can be inferred from the aspect of any argument or body of arguments about the philosophy of its maker? All men argue alike when they argue validly because the modes of inference are formulas, from which deviation is error. ”

“ For these systems or masses of experience are the substance of Logic and Methodology, which are their skeletons abstracted from them. They are the basis of all effective comparison and criticism; agreement or disagreement with them is the test of truth or error. ”

“ The ordinary text-books of formal logic do not seem to meet the special aim which I am now trying to impress as desirable—namely, the habit of valuing, not merely speculative nor scientific truth, but the truth of practical life; a practising of the intellect in forming and expressing the opinions and judgments that form the staple of our daily discourse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The principle by which the Reflective faculty of Judgment regulates and arranges the products of animated nature is described as the End or final cause,—the notion in action, the universal at once determining and determinate in itself. ”

“ From the Companion of two or more Ideas clearly Conceived arises a Judgment, which we may lay down for a Principle, and as we have occasion Argue from. Always observing that those Judgments which we take for Axioms or Principles, be such as carry the highest Evidence and Conviction, such as every one who will but in the least Attend may Clearly see, and be fully convinced of, and which need not another Idea for their Demonstration. ”

“ Without attempting in this place to justify my opinion, or even to define the kind of justification which it admits of, I merely declare my conviction, that the general principle to which all rules of practice ought to conform, and the test by which they should be tried, is that of conduciveness to the happiness of mankind, or rather, of all sentient beings ”