| III. | |
| That distant house | is 60 ft. high |
| It appears to be scaffolded to a third of its height | the scaffold is about 20 feet high |
In these cases we have not seen the man or the scaffolding before, and have not measured the latter or the distance to the former: the conclusions are imaginary judgments fairly drawn from known premises.
***
The deciphering of hieroglyphics, cuneiform inscriptions, and remains of other dead and forgotten languages, is argument in causation. Examples cannot conveniently be quoted even in a condensed form, but this kind of reasoning is most interesting dialectically from the slightness of the analogies that are nevertheless found to give valid conclusions.
***
This is considered argument by Whately—
| I. | |
| Louis | is a good king |
| The governor of France is Louis | therefore the g. of F. is a good king |
The supposed case is a verbal proposition, serving to rename the subject of precedent. There is no reasoning. If we already know that Louis is a good king and is also the governor of France (the given matters of fact), there is no rational imagination involved in rearranging these data as in the proposed conclusion.
***
'He who calls you a man speaks truly; he who calls you a fool calls you a man; therefore he who calls you a fool speaks truly.'—A fallacy of cross reasoning, and the predicate is a class.