Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic — John Shaqi
Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of LogicStebbing, W. (William)
Philosophy
Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic
Stebbing, W. (William)
Logic, Modern -- 19th century; Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873
The _third_ common division is into Universal, Particular, Indefinite,
and Singular. A proposition whose subject is an individual name, even if
not a proper name, is singular, e.g. The founder of Rome was killed. In
particular propositions, if the part of the class meant by the _some_
were specified, the proposition would become either singular, or
universal with a different subject including all the part. Indefinite in
Logic is a solecism like _doubtful gender_ in grammar, for the speaker
must mean to make either a particular or a universal assertion.
CHAPTER V.
THE IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS.
The object of an inquiry into the nature of propositions must be to
analyse, either, 1, the state of mind called belief, or 2, what is
believed. Philosophers have usually, but wrongly, thought the former,
i.e. an analysis of the act of judgment, the chief duty of Logic,
considering a proposition to consist in the denying or affirming one
_idea_ of another. True, we must have the two ideas in the mind
together, in order to believe the assertion about the two _things_; but
so we must also in order to disbelieve it. True also, that besides the
putting the ideas together, there may be a mental process; but this has
nothing to do with the import of propositions, since they are assertions
about things, i.e. facts of external nature, not about the ideas of
them, i.e. facts in our mental history. Logic has suffered from stress
being laid on the relation between the ideas rather than the phenomena,
nature thus coming to be studied by logicians second-hand, that is to
say, as represented in our minds. Our present object, therefore, must
be to investigate judgments, not judgment, and to inquire what it is
which we assert when we make a proposition.
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