What Mill did was not to invert Scholastic usage but to revive
the distinction, and extend the word connotative to general
names on the ground that they also imported the possession
of attributes. The word has been as fruitful of meticulous
discussion as it was in the Renaissance of Logic, though
the ground has changed. The point of Mill's innovation was,
premising that general names are not absolute but are applied
in virtue of a meaning, to put emphasis on this meaning as
the cardinal consideration. What he called the connotation had
dropped out of sight as not being required in the Syllogistic
Forms. This was as it were the point at which he put in his
horn to toss the prevalent conception of Logic as Syllogistic.
The real drift of Mill's innovation has been obscured by
the fact that it was introduced among the preliminaries
of Syllogism, whereas its real usefulness and significance
belongs not to Syllogism in the strict sense but to
Definition. He added to the confusion by trying to devise
forms of Syllogism based on connotation, and by discussing
the Axiom of the Syllogism from this point of view. For
syllogistic purposes, as we shall see, Aristotle's forms are
perfect, and his conception of the proposition in extension
the only correct conception. Whether the centre of gravity in
Consistency Logic should not be shifted back from Syllogism to
Definition, the latter being the true centre of consistency,
is another question. The tendency of Mill's polemic was to
make this change. And possibly the secret of the support it
has recently received from Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet is
that they, following Hegel, are moving in the same direction.
In effect, Mill's doctrine of Connotation helped to fix
a conception of the general name first dimly suggested by
Aristotle when he recognised that names of genera and species
signify Quality, in showing what sort a thing is. Occam
carried this a step farther towards clear light by including
among Connotative Terms such general names as "monk," name of
classes that at once suggest a definite attribute. The third
step was made by Mill in extending the term Connotation to
such words as "man," "horse," the _Infimae Species_ of the
Schoolmen, the Species of modern science.
Whether connotation was the best term to use for this purpose,
rather than extension, may be questioned: but at least it was
in the line of tradition through Occam.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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