Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Relation of Inference to Fact in Mill's Logic
The significance of this conclusion for our purpose lies in this, that the two modes of organizing experience allow a very different place for inference. Hume relies directly on custom, and gets no place at all for inference; mental states simply are or are not; they are all equally im mediate. Kant relies not at all on custom, but believes himself to be in possession of a system of organizing principles independent of experience, which put objects into genuinely objective relations, and seem to make a place for inference regarding them. Now Mill holds substantially each of these positions in turn. He relies indirectly on custom, and so far as he does so has no place for inference, as we saw above; but when he has thus reached his objective principles of organization they then work with a universality unlike that of Hume and like that Of Kant. Mill therefore is able to produce a logic which was impossible to pure associa tionism. And his logic, in practically all of its actual construction, can be regarded as based on a purely naturalistic foundation. After once getting to the level where its procedure is worked out, Mill's logic is no longer sensational and associational, but realistic, and must be judged on that ground. One motive, it is true, among others in constructing his logic was to vindicate the associational philosophy by showing that a logic could be built upon it,3 but such a Vindication would of course have to rest in part upon the cogency of the transition from the subjective to the objective level, as well as upon the adequacy of procedure of a quasi-realistic logic after the objective level has been reached. We have tried to show that the transition is not cogent. The difficulties of the realistic logic to which it leads Mill will appear below.
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