A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. IIMill, John Stuart
Philosophy
A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. II
Mill, John Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Science -- Methodology
Fallacies of Induction, where the facts on which the induction proceeds
are erroneous, may be termed Fallacies of Observation. The term is not
strictly accurate, or rather, not accurately coextensive with the class
of fallacies which I propose to designate by it. Induction is not always
grounded on facts immediately observed, but sometimes on facts inferred:
and when these last are erroneous, the error may not be, in the literal
sense of the term, an instance of bad observation, but of bad inference.
It will be convenient, however, to make only one class of all the
inductions of which the error lies in not sufficiently ascertaining the
facts on which the theory is grounded; whether the cause of failure be
mal-observation, or simple non-observation, and whether the
mal-observation be direct, or by means of intermediate marks which do
not prove what they are supposed to prove. And in the absence of any
comprehensive term to denote the ascertainment, by whatever means, of
the facts on which an induction is grounded, I will venture to retain
for this class of fallacies, under the explanation now given, the title
of Fallacies of Observation.
The other class of inductive fallacies, in which the facts are correct,
but the conclusion not warranted by them, are properly denominated
Fallacies of Generalization: and these, again, fall into various
subordinate classes or natural groups, some of which will be enumerated
in their proper place.
When we now turn to Fallacies of Deduction, namely those modes of
incorrect argumentation in which the premises, or some of them, are
general propositions, and the argument a ratiocination; we may of course
subdivide these also into two species similar to the two preceding,
namely, those which proceed on false premises, and those of which the
premises, though true, do not support the conclusion. But of these
species, the first must necessarily fall under some one of the heads
already enumerated. For the error must be either in those premises which
are general propositions, or in those which assert individual facts. In
the former case it is an Inductive Fallacy, of one or the other class;
in the latter it is a Fallacy of Observation: unless, in either case,
the erroneous premise has been assumed on simple inspection, in which
case the fallacy is _à priori_. Or finally, the premises, of whichever
kind they are, may never have been conceived in so distinct a manner as
to produce any clear consciousness by what means they were arrived at;
as in the case of what is called reasoning in a circle: and then the
fallacy is one of Confusion.
There remain, therefore, as the only class of fallacies having properly
their seat in deduction, those in which the premises of the
ratiocination do not bear out its conclusion; the various cases, in
short, of vicious argumentation, provided against by the rules of the
syllogism. We shall call these, Fallacies of Ratiocination.
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