Logic, Inductive and Deductive

by William Minto

You are hit, e.g., by a snowball, and the blow is followed by a feeling of pain. The sun, we shall say, was shining at the moment of the impact of the snowball on your body. The sunshine preceded your feeling of pain as well as the blow. But you do not expect the pain to recur next time that the sun shines. You do expect it to recur next time you are hit by a snowball.

The taking of food and a certain feeling of strength are causally connected. If we go without food, we are not surprised when faintness or weariness supervenes.

Suppose that when our village matron administered her remedy to her own child, a dog stood by the bedside and barked. The barking in that case would precede the cure. Now, if the matron were what we should call a superstitious person, and believed that this concomitant had a certain efficacy, that the dog's barking and the cure were causally connected, she would take the dog with her when she went to cure her neighbour's child. Otherwise she would not. She would say that the barking was an accidental, casual, fortuitous coincidence, and would build no expectation upon it.

These illustrations may serve to remind us of the familiar fact that the causal nexus is at least one of the things that we depend on in our inferences to the unobserved. To a simple sequence we attach no importance, but a causal sequence or consequence that has been observed is a mainstay of inference.

Whether the causal sequence holds or not as a matter of fact, we depend upon it if we believe in it as a matter of fact. But unless it does hold as a matter of fact, it is valueless as a guide to the unknown, and our belief is irrational. Clearly, therefore, if rational belief is what we aim at, it is of importance that we should make sure of cause and effect as matter of fact in the sequence of events.

One large department of Inductive Logic, the so-called Experimental Methods, is designed to help us in thus making sure, i.e., in ascertaining causal sequence as a matter of fact. It is assumed that by careful observation of the circumstances, we can distinguish between mere simple sequence and causal sequence or consequence, and methods are recommended of observing with the proper precautions against error.

Observe that these methods, though called Inductive, are not concerned with arriving at general propositions. The principle we go upon is simply this, that if it can be ascertained as matter of fact that a certain thing is related to another as cause and effect, we may count upon the same relation as holding in unobserved Nature, on the general ground that like causes produce like effects in like circumstances.

Observe, also, that I deliberately speak of the causal relation as a relation among phenomena. Whether this use of the words cause and effect is philosophically justifiable, is a question that will be raised and partly discussed later on. Here I simply follow the common usage, in accordance with which objects of perception, e.g., the administration of a drug and the recovery of a patient, are spoken of as cause and effect. Such observable sequences are causal sequences in the ordinary sense, and it is part of the work of Science to observe them. I do not deny that the true cause, of the cause that science aims ultimately at discovering, is to be found in the latent constitution or composition of the things concerned. Only that, as we shall see more precisely, is a cause of another description. Meantime, let us take the word to cover what it undoubtedly covers in ordinary speech, the perceptible antecedent of a perceptible consequent.

Strictly speaking, as we shall find, Science has only one method of directly observing when events are in causal sequence. But there are various indirect methods, which shall be described in some sort of order.

For the practical purposes of life, a single ascertained causal sequence is of little value as a basis of inference, because we can infer only to its repetition in identical circumstances. Suppose our village matron had been able to ascertain as a matter of fact—a feat as we shall find not to be achieved by direct observation—that the drug did cure her child, this knowledge by itself would have been practically valueless, because the only legitimate inference would have been that an exactly similar dose would have the same effect in exactly similar circumstances. But, as we shall find, though practically valueless, a single ascertained causal sequence is of supreme value in testing scientific speculations as to the underlying causes.