A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2) — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Vol. 1 of 2)
John Stuart Mill · en
The reviewer has recourse for an example, to syllogisms in the
second figure (though all are, by a mere verbal transformation,
reducible to the first), and asks, where is the _petitio
principii_ in this syllogism, “Every poet is a man of genius, A B
is not a man of genius, therefore A B is not a poet.” It is true
that in a syllogism of this particular type, the _petitio
principii_ is disguised. A B is not included in the terms, every
poet. But the proposition, “every poet is a man of genius” (a very
questionable proposition, by the way), cannot have been
inductively proved, unless the negative branch of the enquiry has
been attended to as well as the positive; unless it has been fully
considered whether among persons who are not “men of genius,”
there are not some who ought to be termed poets, and unless this
has been determined in the negative. Therefore, the case of A B
has been decided by implication, as much as the case of Socrates
in the first example. The proposition, Every poet is a man of
genius, is confessedly æquipollent with “No one who is not a man
of genius is a poet,” and in this the _petitio principii_, as
regards A B, is no longer implied, but express, as in an ordinary
syllogism of the first figure.
Another critic has endeavoured to get rid of the _petitio
principii_ in the syllogism by substituting for the common form of
expression, the following form—All _known_ men were mortal,
Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. To this, however,
there is the fatal objection, that the syllogism, thus
transformed, does not prove the conclusion; it wants not the form
only, but the substance of proof. It is not merely because a thing
is true in all _known_ instances that it can be inferred to be
true in any new instance: many things may be true of all known men
which would not be true of all men; while, on the other hand, a
thing may be superabundantly proved true of all men, without
having been ascertained by actual experience to be true of all
known men, or even of the hundredth part of them.
CHAPTER IV. OF TRAINS OF REASONING, AND DEDUCTIVE SCIENCES.
§ 1. In our analysis of the syllogism it appeared that the minor premiss
always affirms a resemblance between a new case, and some cases previously
known; while the major premiss asserts something which, having been found
true of those known cases, we consider ourselves warranted in holding true
of any other case resembling the former in certain given particulars.