Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 2
Plato · en
[Footnote 62: Mill, 'System of Logic,' Book V., to which is prefixed
the following citation from Hobbes's 'Logica'. "Errare non modo
affirmando et negando, sed etiam in sentiendo, et in tacitâ hominum
cogitatione, contingit."
Mr. Mill points out forcibly both the operation of moral or emotional
bias in perverting the intellect, and causing sophisms or fallacies
to produce conviction; and the increased chance afforded for the
success of a sophism by the suppression of part of the premisses,
which is unavoidable in informal discussions.
"Bias is not a direct source of wrong conclusions (v. 1-3). We cannot
believe a proposition only by wishing, or only by dreading, to
believe it. Bias acts indirectly by placing the intellectual grounds
of belief in an incomplete or distorted shape before a man's eyes. It
makes him shrink from the irksome labour of a rigorous induction. It
operates too by making him look out eagerly for reasons, or apparent
reasons, to support opinions which are conformable, or resist those
which are repugnant, to his interests or feelings; and when the
interests or feelings are common to great numbers of persons, reasons
are accepted or pass current which would not for a moment be listened
to in that character, if the conclusion had nothing more powerful
than its reasons to speak in its behalf. The natural or acquired
prejudices of mankind are perpetually throwing up philosophical
theories, the sole recommendation of which consists in the premisses
which they afford for proving cherished doctrines, or justifying
favourite feelings; and when any one of these theories has become so
thoroughly discredited as no longer to serve the purpose, another is
always ready to take its place."--"Though the opinions of the
generality of mankind, when not dependent upon mere habit and
inculcation, have their root much more in the inclinations than in
the intellect, it is a necessary condition to the triumph of the
moral bias that it should first pervert the understanding."