Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I SUBJECTIVE FACTS AS DATA The problems of logic are coming to form the center of interest in philosophical discussion. Most present controversies in the field of philosophy turn upon some difference which is fundamentally logical. There is need, therefore, to re-examine and clarify the underlying conceptions of logic. Any one of the great historical systems of logic offers a species of laboratory example of the shaping of logical concepts under some specific point of view, and the difficulties which it leaves unresolved offer valuable experimental material for further logical construction. It is with such a purpose that this paper undertakes an analysis of the relation of inference to fact in Mill's logical system. In constructing a theory of inference Mill's problem was to reconcile the associationism of the English empirical school with the procedure of modern physical science. He occupies alternately the subjective point of view of the one position and the objective point of view of the other. This oscillation of position comes out strikingly in the varied status which he gives to facts, which are at one time the ultimate constituents of consciousness and at another time the things and events of an independent world. When stating the relation of inference to its data and thus assigning it a locus, he takes the subjective point of view. When analyzing the nature of inference and basing its validity, he takes the objective point of view. It will be well, then, at the outset, to examine his conception of both subjective and objective facts, and the transition which he seeks to effect from the one to the other. Over against both of these, facts in the mind and facts in nature, Mill naively utilizes a system of meanings which he...
