Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic

Logic is the theory of Proof, and everything provable can be exhibited as a proposition, propositions alone being objects of belief. Therefore, the import of propositions, that...

The minor premiss always asserts a resemblance between a new case and cases previously known. When this resemblance is not obvious to the senses, or ascertainable at once by dir...

Phenomena in nature stand to each other in two relations, that of simultaneity, and that of succession. On a knowledge of the truths respecting the succession of facts depends o...

The object of an inquiry into the nature of propositions must be to analyse, either, 1, the state of mind called belief, or 2, what is believed. Philosophers have usually, but w...

A definition is a proposition declaring either the special or the ordinary meaning, i.e. in the case of connotative names, the connotation, of a word. This may be effected by st...

The question is, whether the syllogistic process is one of inference, i.e. a process from the known to the unknown. Its assailants say, and truly, that in every syllogism, consi...

This class includes whatever errors of generalisation are not mere blunders, but arise from some wrong general conception of the inductive process. Only a few kinds can be noted...

Under this head come all fallacies which arise, not so much from a false estimate of the probative force of known evidence, as from an indistinct conception what the evidence is.

There must be some _à priori_ knowledge, some propositions to be received without proof; for there cannot be a chain suspended from nothing. What these are is disputed, one scho...

Five canons may be laid down as the principles of experimental enquiry. The first is that of the Method of Agreement, viz.: _If two or more instances of the phenomenon under inv...

There are, we have seen, five facts, one of which every proposition must assert, viz. Existence, Order in Place, Order in Time, Causation, and Resemblance. Causation is not fund...

Hobbes's assertion that a name is a sign, not of a thing, but of our conception of it, is untrue (unless he merely mean that the conception, and not the thing itself, is imparte...

Every name which connotes an attribute thereby divides, but only incidentally, all things, known and unknown, real and imagined, into two classes, viz. those which have, and tho...

The _general_ Science of Society, as contrasted with the branches, shows, not what effect will follow from a given cause under given circumstances, but what are the causes and c...

Concrete general names (and the meaning of abstract names depends on the concrete) should have a fixed and knowable connotation. This is easy enough when, as in the case of new...

Not only must words have a fixed and knowable meaning; but also, no important meaning should be without its word: that is, there should be a name for everything which we have of...

It is merely an accident when general names are names of classes of real objects: e.g. The unity of God, in the Christian sense, and the non-existence of the things called drago...

The complexity in social effects arises from the number, not of the laws, but of the data. Therefore, Sociology, i.e. Social Science, must use the Concrete Deductive Method, com...

The result of examining evidence is not always belief, or even suspension of judgment, but is sometimes positive disbelief. This can ensue only when the affirmative evidence doe...

The constant tendency of science, operating by the Deductive Method, is to resolve all laws, even those which once seemed ultimate and not derivative, into others still more gen...

The deductive method is the main source of our knowledge of complex phenomena, and the sole source of all the theories through which vast and complicated facts have been embrace...

The difficulty in tracing the laws of nature arises chiefly from the Intermixture of Effects, and from the Plurality of Causes. The possibility of the latter in any given case--...

Induction is the process by which what is true at certain times, or of certain individuals, is inferred to be true in like circumstances at all times, or of a whole class. There...

The syllogistic figures are determined by the position of the middle term. There are four, or, if the fourth be classed under the first, three. But syllogisms in the other figur...

The inferences called _probable_ rest on approximate generalisations. Such generalisations, besides the inferior assurance with which they can be applied to individual cases, ar...

The object of Logic is to find how propositions are to be proved. As preliminary to this, it has been already shown that the Conceptualist view of propositions, viz. that they a...

Besides uniformities of succession, which always depend on causation, there are uniformities of coexistence. These also, whenever the coexisting phenomena are effects of causes,...

Abstract Ideas, that is, General Conceptions, certainly do exist, however Metaphysics may decide as to their composition. They _represent_ in our minds the whole classes of thin...

1. The former, which is called Non-observation, is a case, not of a positive mis-estimate of evidence, or of the proper faculties (whether the senses or reason) not having been...

The copula is a mere sign of predication, though it is often confounded with _to be_, the verb of existence (and that not merely by Greeks, but even by moderns, whose larger exp...

No adequate definition is possible till the properties of the thing to be defined are known. Previously we can define only the scope of the inquiry. Now, Logic has been consider...

In order to calculate chances, we must know that of several events one, and no more, must happen, and also not know, or have any reason to suspect, which of them that one will b...

Practical Ethics, i.e. Morality, is an art; and therefore its Method must be that of Art in general. Now, Art from the major premiss, supplied by itself, viz. that the end is de...

Derivative laws are inferior to ultimate laws, both in the extent of the propositions, and in their degree of certainty within that extent. In particular, the uniformities of co...

Empirical laws are certain only in those limits within which they have been _observed_ to be true. But, even within those limits, the connection of two phenomena may, as the sam...

The validity of all the four inductive methods depends on our assuming that there is a cause for every event. The belief in this, i.e. in the law of universal causation, some af...

The uniformity of the course of nature is a complex fact made up of all the separate uniformities in respect to single phenomena. Each of these separate uniformities, if it be n...

Empirical laws are derivative laws, of which the derivation is not known. They are observed uniformities, which we compare with the result of any deduction to verify it; but of...

By the laws of mind (i.e. as considered in this treatise, the laws of mental phenomena) are meant the laws according to which one state of mind is produced by another. If M. Com...

Since the whole of the present facts are the infallible result of the whole of the past, so that if the prior state of the entire universe could recur it would be followed by th...

The business of Logic is, not to enumerate false opinions, but to enquire what property in the facts led to them, that is, what peculiarity of relation between two facts made us...

Till the Empirical laws of Mind, i.e. the truths of common experience, are _explained_ by being resolved into the causal laws (the subject of the last chapter), they are mere ap...

Some effects are instantaneous (e.g. some sensations), and are prolonged only by the prolongation of the causes; others are in their own nature permanent. In some cases of the l...

The connotation of names shifts not only by reason of gradual inattention to some of the common properties, which, if language were ruled by convention alone, would be in their...

These fallacies (to which the name _Fallacy_ is commonly applied exclusively) would generally be detected if the arguments were set out formally; and the value of the syllogisti...

The object of Classification generally is to bring our ideas of objects into the order best fitted for prosecuting inductive enquiries into the laws of the phenomena generally....

The mental process which Logic deals with, viz. the investigation of truth by means of evidence, is always a process of Induction. Since Induction is simply the extension to a c...

The theory of _free will_, viz. that the will is determined by itself, and not by antecedents, was invented as being more in accordance with the dignity of human nature and our...

The Methods of Elementary Chemistry are applied to social phenomena from carelessness as to, or ignorance of, any of the higher physical sciences: the Geometrical Method, from t...

Induction is generalisation from experience. It assumes, that whatever is true in any one case, is true in all cases of a certain description, whether past, present, or future (...

One of the many meanings of _Analogy_ is, Resemblance of Relations. The value of an analogical argument in this sense depends on the showing that, on the common circumstance whi...

An effect is almost always the result of the concurrence of several causes. When all have their full effect, precisely as if they had operated _successively_, the joint effect (...

As all knowledge not intuitive comes exclusively from inductions, induction is the main topic of Logic; and yet neither have metaphysicians analysed this operation with a view t...

The habit of reasoning well is the only complete safeguard against reasoning ill, that is, against drawing conclusions with insufficient evidence, a practice which the various c...

The preceding book treated, not of the proper subject of logic, viz. the nature of proof, but of assertion. Assertions (as, e.g. definitions) which relate to the meaning of word...

Any facts may be a subject of science, if they follow one another according to constant laws; and this, whether, although the ultimate laws are known, yet, of the derivative law...

The followers of this method do not recognise the laws of social phenomena as merely a composition of the laws of individual human nature. They demand specific experience in all...

As reasoning is from particulars to particulars, and consists simply in recognising one fact as a mark of another, or a mark of a mark of another, the only necessary conditions...

Political and social phenomena have been thought too complex for scientific treatment. Practitioners hitherto have been the only students; and so, as in medicine, before the ris...

The fact of Logic being a portion of the art of thinking, and of thought's chief instrument being words, is one reason why we must first inquire into the right use of words. But...

Many complex problems have been resolved through the use of the Scientific Methods, and thus only. The most complex of all problems are the problems relating to Man himself; and...