Chapter 17

THE FUNCTIONS AND LOGICAL VALUE OF THE SYLLOGISM.

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, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a _petitio principii_; and Dr. Whately's defence of it, that its object is to unfold assertions wrapped up and implied (i.e. in fact, _asserted unconsciously_) in those with which we set out, represents it as a sort of trap. Yet, though no reasoning from generals to particulars can, as such, prove anything, the conclusion _is_ a _bonâ fide_ inference, though not an inference from the general proposition. The general proposition (i.e. in the first figure, the major premiss) contains not only a record of many particular facts which we have observed or inferred, but also instructions for making inferences in unforeseen cases. Thus the inference is completed in the major premiss; and the rest of the syllogism serves only to decipher, as it were, our own notes.

Dr. Whately fails to make out that syllogising, i.e. reasoning from generals to particulars, is the _only_ mode of reasoning. No additional evidence is gained by interpolating a general proposition, and therefore we may, if we please, reason directly from the individual cases, since it is on these alone that the general proposition, if made, would rest. Indeed, thus are in fact drawn, as well the inferences of children and savages, and of animals (which latter having no signs, can frame no general propositions), as even those drawn by grown men generally, from personal experience, and particularly the inferences of men of high practical genius, who, not having been trained to generalise, can apply, but not state, their principles of action. Even when we have general propositions we need not use them. Thus Dugald Stewart showed that the axioms need not be expressly adverted to in order to make good the demonstrations in Euclid; though he held, inconsistently, that the definitions must be. All general propositions, whether called axioms, or definitions, or laws of nature, are merely abridged statements of the particular facts, which, as occasion arises, we either think we may proceed on as proved, or intend to assume.

In short, all inference is from particulars to particulars; and general propositions are both registers or memoranda of such former inferences, and also short formulæ for making more. The major premiss is such a formula; and the conclusion is an inference drawn, not from, but according to that formula. The _actual_ premisses are the particular facts whence the general proposition was collected inductively; and the syllogistic rules are to guide us in reading the register, so as to ascertain what it was that we formerly thought might be inferred from those facts. Even where ratiocination is independent of induction, as, when we accept from a man of science the doctrine that all A is B; or from a legislator, the law that all men shall do this or that, the operation of drawing thence any particular conclusion is a process, not of inference, but of interpretation. In fact, whether the premisses are given by authority, or derived from our own (or predecessors') observation, the object is always simply to interpret, by reference to certain marks, an intention, whether that of the propounder of the principle or enactment, or that which we or our predecessors had when we framed the general proposition, so that we may draw no inferences that were not _intended_ to be drawn. We assent to the conclusion in a syllogism on account of its consistency with what we interpret to have been the intention of the framer of the major premiss, and not, as Dr. Whately held, because the supposition of a false conclusion from the premisses involves a contradiction, since, in fact, the denial, e.g. that an individual now living will die, is not _in terms_ contradictory to the assertion that his ancestors and their contemporaries (to which the general proposition, as a record of facts, really amounts) have all died.

But the syllogistic form, though the process of inference, which there always is when a syllogism is used, lies not in this form, but in the act of generalisation, is yet a great collateral security for the correctness of that generalisation. When all possible inferences from a given set of particulars are thrown into one general expression (and, if the particulars support one inference, they always will support an indefinite number), we are more likely both to feel the need of weighing carefully the sufficiency of the experience, and also, through seeing that the general proposition would equally support some conclusion which we _know_ to be false, to detect any defect in the evidence, which, from bias or negligence, we might otherwise have overlooked. But the syllogistic form, besides being useful (and, when the validity of the reasoning is doubtful, even indispensable) for verifying arguments, has the acknowledged merit of all general language, that it enables us to make an induction once for all. We _can_, indeed, and in simple cases habitually _do_, reason straight from particulars; but in cases at all complicated, all but the most sagacious of men, and they also, unless their experience readily supplied them with parallel instances, would be as helpless as the brutes. The only counterbalancing danger is, that general inferences from insufficient premisses may become hardened into general maxims, and escape being confronted with the particulars.

The major premiss is not really part of the argument. Brown saw that there would be a _petitio principii_ if it were. He, therefore, contended that the conclusion in reasoning follows from the minor premiss alone, thus suppressing the appeal to experience. He argued, that to reason is merely to analyse our general notions or abstract ideas, and that, _provided_ that the relation between the two ideas, e.g. of _man_ and of _mortal_, has been first perceived, we can evolve the one directly from the other. But (to waive the error that a proposition relates to ideas instead of things), besides that this _proviso_ is itself a surrender of the doctrine that an argument consists simply of the minor and the conclusion, the perception of the relation between two ideas, one of which is not implied in the name of the other, must obviously be the result, not of analysis, but of experience. In fact, both the minor premiss, and also the expression of our former experience, must _both_ be present in our reasonings, or the conclusion will not follow. Thus, it appears that the universal type of the reasoning process is: Certain individuals possess (as I or others have observed) a given attribute; An individual resembles the former in certain other attributes: Therefore (the conclusion, however, not being conclusive from its form, as is the conclusion in a syllogism, but requiring to be sanctioned by the canons of induction) he resembles them also in the given attribute. But, though this, and not the syllogistic, is the universal type of reasoning, yet the syllogistic process is a useful test of inferences. It is expedient, _first_, to ascertain generally what attributes are marks of a certain other attribute, so as, subsequently, to have to consider, _secondly_, only whether any given individuals have those former marks. Every process, then, by which anything is inferred respecting an unobserved case, we will consider to consist of both these last-mentioned processes. Both are equally induction; but the name may be conveniently confined to the process of establishing the general formula, while the interpretation of this will be called 'Deduction.'