Mary is a child.
Hence, Mary should play.
(2) No teacher should judge hastily.
You are a teacher.
Hence, you should not judge hastily.
In the second syllogism the inference, “you should not judge hastily,” is derived from the other two judgments by merely eliminating the common term teacher and disjoining the remaining two terms. The inference is consequently a new judgment. Therefore, reasoning is only a matter of judging carried to a more complex stage.
To summarize—conception is largely a matter of conjoining a general notion with an individual notion, judging of conjoining and disjoining all kinds of notions and inference of conjoining and disjoining judgments. All three processes go to form the larger process of thinking. The concept, the judgment and the inference are products arising from conjoining and disjoining notions.
12. THINKING AND APPREHENSION.
Says Jevons: “Simple apprehension is the act of the mind by which we merely become aware of something,or have an idea or impression of it brought into the mind;” while Hyslop states that “The process of knowledge which gives us percepts is apprehension.” It is obvious that the idea of the latter is that apprehension yields individual notions only, while Jevons, in citing the term iron as an illustration of his definition, would infer that the general notion is the product of apprehension. The term is strikingly ambiguous and will not be referred to often in this treatise. If the student desires a definition this will cover the concensus of opinion on the meaning of apprehension. Apprehension is that process of the knowing mind which yields the percept and concept. Some logicians give to the thinking mind the three aspects of apprehension, judging and reasoning.