The Essentials of Logic

ISBN-10: 1230211160
ISBN-13: 9781230211169
Pages: 90
Language: English
Published: 2013-09
Publisher: Theclassics.Us
Author: Roy Wood Sellars

Description

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. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...or unconsciously, that there are universal connections or relations in nature. This assumption, when formulated explicitly, is suggested by the way the mind works and the degree to which nature seems to recognize the tendency to relate terms as invariable signs of one another. But logicians have come to the conclusion that the principle cannot be proved by experience, but can only be relatively confirmed by it. For this reason, it is frequently called a 'postulate.' How Generalization differs from Expectation. Animals develop expectations in much the same way that human beings do. A doctor's horse expects to turn in at a certain farmhouse because it has done so on previous trips. A dog anticipates a walk when his master takes down his hat from the wall. The formation of associations of this character is natural to the mind at fairly low levels as well as at the human level. Is generalization more than this? Though based on it in part, it certainly goes beyond mere expectation. Other mental processes than those of association enter in. The animal glides from the one event to the other without holding them both before the mind as distinct objects of attention. But man does hold both terms of the relation before his mind at one and the same time, and makes them and their internal connection a single complex object of thought. This the animal cannot do. We may say, then, that generalization is a higher development than expectation and depends upon the capacity to conceive two events as classes and to relate them internally as somehow bound together. A generalization is a more or less explicit assertion that two terms are related. The Importance of Generalization. It may not be amiss to call attention once more to the importance of...