International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

[William Alexander Hammond, Assistant Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Æsthetics, Cornell University. b. May 20, 1861, New Athens, Ohio. A.B. Harvard, 1885; Ph.D. Leipzig, 1891. Lecturer on Classics, King's College, Windsor, N. S., 1885-88; Secretary of the University Faculty, Cornell; Member American Psychological Association, American Philosophical Association. Author of The Characters of Theophrastus, translated with Introduction; Aristotle's Psychology, translated with Introduction.]

In 1787, in the preface to the second edition of the Kr. d. r. V., Kant wrote the following words: "That logic, from the earliest times, has followed that secure method" (namely, the secure method of a science witnessed by the unanimity of its workers and the stability of its results) "may be seen from the fact that since Aristotle it has not had to retrace a single step, unless we choose to consider as improvements the removal of some unnecessary subtleties, or the clearer definition of its matter, both of which refer to the elegance rather than to the solidity of the science. It is remarkable, also, that to the present day, it has not been able to make one step in advance, so that to all appearances it may be considered as completed and perfect. If some modern philosophers thought to enlarge it, by introducing psychological chapters on the different faculties of knowledge (faculty of imagination, wit, etc.), or metaphysical chapters on the origin of knowledge or different degrees of certainty according to the difference of objects (idealism, skepticism, etc.), or, lastly, anthropological chapters on prejudices, their causes and remedies, this could only arise from their ignorance of the peculiar nature of logical science. We do not enlarge, but we only disfigure the sciences, if we allow their respective limits to be confounded; and the limits of logic are definitely fixed by the fact that it is a science which has nothing to do but fully to exhibit and strictly to prove the formal rules of all thought (whether it be a priori or empirical, whatever be its origin or its object, and whatever be the impediments, accidental or natural, which it has to encounter in the human mind)."—[Translated by Max Müller.] Scarcely more than half a century after the publication of this statement of Kant's, John Stuart Mill (Introduction to System of Logic) wrote: "There is as great diversity among authors in the modes which they have adopted of defining logic, as in their treatment of the details of it. This is what might naturally be expected on any subject on which writers have availed themselves of the same language as a means of delivering different ideas.... This diversity is not so much an evil to be complained of, as an inevitable, and in some degree a proper result of the imperfect state of those sciences" (that is, of logic, jurisprudence, and ethics). "It is not to be expected that there should be agreement about the definition of anything, until there is agreement about the thing itself." This remarkable disparity of opinion is due partly to the changes in the treatment of logic from Kant to Mill, and partly to the fact that both statements are extreme. That the science of logic was "completed and perfect" in the time of Kant could only with any degree of accuracy be said of the treatment of syllogistic proof or the deductive logic of Aristotle. That the diversity was so great as pictured by Mill is not historically exact, but could be said only of the new epistemological and psychological treatment of logic and not of the traditional formal logic. The confusion in logic is no doubt largely due to disagreement in the delimitation of its proper territory and to the consequent variety of opinions as to its relations to other disciplines. The rise of inductive logic, coincident with the rise and growth of physical science and empiricism, forced the consideration of the question as to the relation of formal thought to reality, and the consequent entanglement of logic in a triple alliance of logic, psychology, and metaphysics. How logic can maintain friendly relations with both of these and yet avoid endangering its territorial integrity has not been made clear by logicians or psychologists or metaphysicians, and that, too, in spite of persistent attempts justly to settle the issue as to their respective spheres of influence. Until modern logic definitely settles the question of its aims and legitimate problems, it is difficult to see how any agreement can be reached as to its relation to the other disciplines. The situation as it confronts one in the discussion of the relations of logic to allied subjects may be analyzed as follows:

1. The relation of logic as science to logic as art.

2. The relation of logic to psychology.

3. The relation of logic to metaphysics.

The development of nineteenth century logic has made an answer to the last two of the foregoing problems exceedingly difficult. Indeed, one may say that the evolution of modern epistemology has had a centrifugal influence on logic, and instead of growth towards unity of conception we have a chaos of diverse and discordant theories. The apple of discord has been the theory of knowledge. A score of years ago when Adamson wrote his admirable article in the Encyclopædia Britannica (article "Logic," 1882), he found the conditions much the same as I now find them. "Looking to the chaotic state of logical text-books at the present time, one would be inclined to say that there does not exist anywhere a recognized currently received body of speculations to which the title logic can be unambiguously assigned, and that we must therefore resign the hope of attaining by any empirical consideration of the received doctrine a precise determination of the nature and limits of logical theory." I do not, however, take quite so despondent a view of the logical chaos as the late Professor Adamson; rather, I believe with Professor Stratton (Psy. Rev. vol. III) that something is to be gained for unity and consistency by more exact delimitation of the subject-matter of the philosophical disciplines and their interrelations, which precision, if secured, would assist in bringing into clear relief the real problems of the several departments of inquiry, and facilitate the proper classification of the disciplines themselves.

The attempt to delimit the spheres of the disciplines, to state their interrelations and classify them, was made early in the history of philosophy, at the very beginning of the development of logic as a science by Aristotle. In Plato's philosophy, logic is not separated from epistemology and metaphysics. The key to his metaphysics is given essentially in his theory of the reality of the concept, which offers an interesting analogy to the position of logic in modern idealism. Before Plato there was no formulation of logical theory, and in his dialogues it is only contained in solution. The nearest approach to any formulation is to be found in an applied logic set forth in the precepts and rules of the rhetoricians and sophists. Properly speaking, Aristotle made the first attempt to define the subject of logic and to determine its relations to the other sciences. In a certain sense logic for Aristotle is not a science at all. For science is concerned with some ens, some branch of reality, while logic is concerned with the methodology of knowing, with the formal processes of thought whereby an ens or a reality is ascertained and appropriated to knowledge. In the sense of a method whereby all scientific knowledge is secured, logic is a propædeutic to the sciences. In the idealism of the Eleatics and Plato, thought and being are ultimately identical, and the laws of thought are the laws of being. In Aristotle's conception, while the processes of thought furnish a knowledge of reality or being, their formal operation constitutes the technique of investigation, and their systematic explanation and description constitute logic. Logic and metaphysics are distinguished as the science of being and the doctrine of the thoughtprocesses whereby being is known. Logic is the doctrine of the organon of science, and when applied is the organon of science. The logic of Aristotle is not a purely formal logic. He is not interested in the merely schematic character of the thought processes, but in their function as mediators of apodictic truth. He begins with the assumption that in the conjunction and disjunction of correctly formed judgments the conjunction or disjunction of reality is mirrored. Aristotle does not here examine into the powers of the mind as a whole; that is done, though fragmentarily, in the De Anima and Parva Naturalia, where the mental powers are regarded as phases of the processes of nature without reference to normation; but in his logic he inquires only into those forms and laws of thinking which mediate proof. Scientific proof, in his conception, is furnished in the form of the syllogism, whose component elements are terms and propositions. In the little tract On Interpretation (i. e. on the judgment as interpreter of thought), if it is genuine, the proposition is considered in its logical bearing. The treatise on the Categories, which discusses the nature of the most general terms, forms a connecting link between logic and metaphysics. The categories are the most general concepts or universal modes under which we have knowledge of the world. They are not simply logical relations; they are existential forms, being not only the modes under which thought regards being, but the modes under which being exists. Aristotle's theory of the methodology of science is intimately connected with his view of knowledge. Scientific knowledge in his opinion refers to the essence of things; for example, to those universal aspects of reality which are given in particulars, but which remain self-identical amidst the variation and passing of particulars. The universal, however, is known only through and after particulars. There is no such thing as innate knowledge or Platonic reminiscence. Knowledge, if not entirely empirical, has its basis in empirical reality. Causes are known only through effects. The universals have no existence apart from things, although they exist realiter in things. Empirical knowledge of particulars must, therefore, precede in time the conceptual or scientific knowledge of universals. In the evolution of scientific knowledge in the individual mind, the body of particulars or of sense-experience is to its conceptual transformation as potentiality is to actuality, matter to form, the completed end of the former being realized in the latter. Only in the sense of this power to transform and conceptualize, does the mind have knowledge within itself. The genetic content is experiential; the developed concept, judgment, or inference is in form noëtic. Knowledge is, therefore, not a mere "precipitate of experience," nor is Aristotle a complete empiricist. The conceptual form of knowledge is not immediately given in things experienced, but is a product of noëtic discrimination and combination. Of a sensible object as such there is no concept; the object of a concept is the generic essence of a thing; and the concept itself is the thought of this generic essence. The individual is generalized; every concept does or can embrace several individuals. It is an "aggregate of distinguishing marks," and is expressed in a definition. The concept as such is neither true nor false. Truth first arises in the form of a judgment or proposition, wherein a subject is coupled with a predicate, and something is said about something. A judgment is true when the thought (whose inward process is the judgment and the expression in vocal symbols is the proposition) regards as conjoined or divided that which is conjoined or divided in actuality; in other words, when the thought is congruous with the real. While Aristotle does not ignore induction as a scientific method, (how could he when he regards the self-subsistent individual as the only real?) yet he says that, as a method, it labors under the defect of being only proximate; a complete induction from all particulars is not possible, and therefore cannot furnish demonstration. Only the deductive process proceeding syllogistically from the universal (or essential truth) to the particular is scientifically cogent or apodictic. Consequently Aristotle developed the science of logic mainly as a syllogistic technique or instrument of demonstration. From this brief sketch of Aristotle's logical views it will be seen that the epistemological and metaphysical relations of logic which involve its greatest difficulty and cause the greatest diversity in its modern exponents, were present in undeveloped form to the mind of the first logician. It would require a mighty optimism to suppose that this difficulty and diversity, which has increased rather than diminished in the progress of historical philosophy, should suddenly be made to vanish by some magic of restatement of subject-matter, or theoretical delimitation of the discipline. As Fichte said of philosophy, "The sort of a philosophy that a man has, depends on the kind of man he is;" so one might almost say of logic, "The sort of logic that a man has, depends on the kind of philosopher he is." If the blight of discord is ever removed from epistemology, we may expect agreement as to the relations of logic to metaphysics. Meanwhile logic has the great body of scientific results deposited in the physical sciences on which to build and test, with some assurance, its doctrine of methodology; and as philosophy moves forward persistently to the final solution of its problems, logic may justly expect to be a beneficiary in its established theories.

After Aristotle's death logic lapsed into a formalism more and more removed from any vital connection with reality and oblivious to the profound epistemological and methodological questions that Aristotle had at least raised. In the Middle Ages it became a highly developed exercise in inference applied to the traditional dogmas of theology and science as premises, with mainly apologetic or polemical functions. Its chief importance is found in its application to the problem of realism and nominalism, the question as to the nature of universals. At the height of scholasticism realism gained its victory by syllogistically showing the congruity of its premises with certain fundamental dogmas of the Church, especially with the dogma of the unity and reality of the Godhead. The heretical conclusion involved in nominalism is equivalent (the accepted dogma of the Church being axiomatic) to reductio ad absurdum. A use of logic such as this, tending to conserve rather than to increase the body of knowledge, was bound to meet with attack on the awakening of post-renaissance interest in the physical world, and the acquirement of a body of truth to which the scholastic formal logic had no relation. The anti-scholastic movement in logic was inaugurated by Francis Bacon, who sought in his Novum Organum to give science a real content through the application of induction to experience and the discovery of universal truths from particular instances. The syllogism is rejected as a scientific instrument, because it does not lead to principles, but proceeds only from principles, and is therefore not useful for discovery. It permits at most only refinements on knowledge already possessed, but cannot be regarded as creative or productive. The Baconian theory of induction regarded the accumulation of facts and the derivation of general principles and laws from them as the true and fruitful method of science. In England this empirical view of logic has been altogether dominant, and the most illustrious English exponents of logical theory, Herschel, Whewell, and Mill, have stood on that ground. Since the introduction of German idealism in the last half century a new logic has grown up whose chief business is with the theory of knowledge.

Kant's departure in logic is based on an epistemological examination of the nature of judgment, and on the answer to his own question, "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" The a priori elements in knowledge make knowledge of the real nature of things impossible. Human knowledge extends to the phenomenal world, which is seen under the a priori forms of the understanding. Logic for Kant is the science of the formal and necessary laws of thought, apart from any reference to objects. Pure or universal logic aims to understand the forms of thought without regard to metaphysical or psychological relations, and this position of Kant is the historical beginning of the subjective formal logic.

In the metaphysical logic of Hegel, which rests on a panlogistic basis, being and thought, form and content, are identical. Logical necessity is the measure and criterion of objective reality. The body of reality is developed through the dialectic self-movement of the idea. In such an idealistic monism, formal and real logic are by the metaphysical postulate coincident.