We may sum up this discussion by saying that mathematical inference
consists in attaching the same reactions to two different groups of
signs, whose meanings are fixed by convention in relation to their
constituent parts, whereas induction consists, first, in taking
something as a sign of something else, and later, when we have learned
to take A as a sign of B, in taking A as also a sign of C. Thus the
usual cases of induction and deduction are distinguished by the fact
that, in the former, the inference consists in taking one sign as
a sign of two different things, while in the latter the inference
consists in taking two different signs as signs of the same thing.
This statement is a little too antithetical to be taken as an exact
expression of the whole truth in the matter. What is true, however, is
that both kinds of inferences are concerned with the relation of a sign
to what it signifies, and therefore come within the scope of the law of
association.
CHAPTER VIII
KNOWLEDGE BEHAVIOURISTICALLY CONSIDERED
The word “knowledge”, like the word “memory”, is avoided by the
behaviourist. Nevertheless there is a phenomenon commonly called
“knowledge”, which is tested behaviouristically in examinations. I want
to consider this phenomenon in this chapter, with a view to deciding
whether there is anything in it that the behaviourist cannot deal with
adequately.
It will be remembered that, in Chapter II, we were led to the view that
knowledge is a characteristic of the complete process from stimulus to
reaction, or even, in the cases of sight and hearing, from an external
object to a reaction, the external object being connected with the
stimulus by a chain of physical causation in the outer world. Let us,
for the moment, leave on one side such cases as sight and hearing, and
confine ourselves, for the sake of definiteness, to knowledge derived
from touch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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