A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2)
John Stuart Mill · en
A third case is where, the antecedent having affirmed a predicate of a
given subject, the consequent affirms of the same subject something
already connoted by the former predicate: as, Socrates is a man, therefore
Socrates is a living creature; where all that is connoted by living
creature was affirmed of Socrates when he was asserted to be a man. If the
propositions are negative, we must invert their order, thus: Socrates is
not a living creature, therefore he is not a man; for if we deny the less,
the greater, which includes it, is already denied by implication. These,
therefore, are not really cases of inference; and yet the trivial examples
by which, in manuals of Logic, the rules of the syllogism are illustrated,
are often of this ill-chosen kind; demonstrations in form, of conclusions
to which whoever understands the terms used in the statement of the data,
has already, and consciously, assented.
The most complex case of this sort of apparent inference is what is called
the Conversion of Propositions; which consists in turning the predicate
into a subject, and the subject into a predicate, and framing out of the
same terms thus reversed, another proposition, which must be true if the
former is true. Thus, from the particular affirmative proposition, Some A
is B, we may infer that Some B is A. From the universal negative, No A is
B, we may conclude that No B is A. From the universal affirmative
proposition, All A is B, it cannot be inferred that All B is A; though all
water is liquid, it is not implied that all liquid is water; but it is
implied that some liquid is so; and hence the proposition, All A is B, is
legitimately convertible into Some B is A. This process, which converts an
universal proposition into a particular, is termed conversion _per
accidens_. From the proposition, Some A is not B, we cannot even infer
that some B is not A; though some men are not Englishmen, it does not
follow that some Englishmen are not men. The only legitimate conversion,
if such it can be called, of a particular negative proposition, is in the
form, Some A is not B, therefore, something which is not B is A; and this
is termed conversion by contraposition. In this case, however, the
predicate and subject are not merely reversed, but one of them is altered.
Instead of [A] and [B], the terms of the new proposition are [a thing
which is not B], and [A]. The original proposition, Some A _is not_ B, is
first changed into a proposition æquipollent with it, Some A _is_ “a thing
which is not B”; and the proposition, being now no longer a particular
negative, but a particular affirmative, admits of conversion in the first
mode, or, as it is called, _simple_ conversion.