Logic, Inductive and Deductive

by William Minto

Now to apply this Law of our Thought to the interpretation of propositions. Whenever a proposition is uttered we are entitled to infer at once (or immediately) that the speaker has in his mind some counter-proposition, in which what is overtly asserted of the ostensible subject is covertly denied of another subject. And we must know what this counter-proposition, the counter-implicate is, before we can fully and clearly understand his meaning. But inasmuch as any positive may have more than one contrapositive, we cannot tell immediately or without some knowledge of the circumstances or context, what the precise counter-implicate is. The peculiar fallacy incident to this mode of interpretation is, knowing that there must be some counter-implicate, to jump rashly or unwarily to the conclusion that it is some definite one.

Dr. Bain applies the term Material Obverse to the form, Not-S is not P, as distinguished from the form S is not not-P, which he calls the Formal Obverse, on the ground that we can infer the Predicate-contrapositive at once from the form, whereas we cannot tell the Subject-contrapositive without an examination of the matter. But in truth we cannot tell either Predicate-contrapositive or Subject-contrapositive as it is in the mind of the speaker from the bare utterance. We can only tell that if he has in his mind a proposition definitely analysed into subject and predicate, he must have contrapositives in his mind of both, and that they must be homogeneous. Let a man say, "This book is a quarto". For all that we know he may mean that it is not a folio or that it is not an octavo: we only know for certain, under the law of Homogeneous Counter-relativity, that he means some definite other size. Under the same law, we know that he has a homogeneous contrapositive of the subject, a subject that admits of the same predicate, some other book in short. What the particular book is we do not know.

It would however be a waste of ingenuity to dwell upon the manipulation of formulæ founded on this law. The practical concern is to know that for the interpretation of a proposition, a knowledge of the counter-implicate, a knowledge of what it is meant to deny, is essential.

The manipulation of formulæ, indeed, has its own special snare. We are apt to look for the counterparts of them in the grammatical forms of common speech. Thus, it might seem to be a fair application of our law to infer from the sentence, "Wheat is dear," that the speaker had in his mind that Oats or Sugar or Shirting or some other commodity is cheap. But this would be a rash conclusion. The speaker may mean this, but he may also mean that wheat is dear now as compared with some other time: that is, the Positive subject in his mind may be "Wheat as now," and the Contrapositive "Wheat as then". So a man may say, "All men are mortal," meaning that the angels never taste death, "angels" being the contrapositive of his subject "men". Or he may mean merely that mortality is a sad thing, his positive subject being men as they are, and his contrapositive men as he desires them to be. Or his emphasis may be upon the all, and he may mean only to deny that some one man in his mind (Mr. Gladstone, for example) is immortal. It would be misleading, therefore, to prescribe propositions as exercises in Material Obversion, if we give that name to the explicit expression of the Contrapositive Subject: it is only from the context that we can tell what this is. The man who wishes to be clearly understood gives us this information, as when the epigrammatist said: "We are all fallible—even the youngest of us".

But the chief practical value of the law is as a guide in studying the development of opinions. Every doctrine ever put forward has been put forward in opposition to a previous doctrine on the same subject. Until we know what the opposed doctrine is, we cannot be certain of the meaning. We cannot gather it with precision from a mere study of the grammatical or even (in the narrow sense of the word) the logical content of the words used. This is because the framers of doctrines have not always been careful to put them in a clear form of subject and predicate, while their impugners have not moulded their denial exactly on the language of the original. No doubt it would have been more conducive to clearness if they had done so. But they have not, and we must take them as they are. Thus we have seen that the Hegelian doctrine of Relativity is directed against certain other doctrines in Logic and in Ethics; that Ultra-Nominalism is a contradiction of a certain form of Ultra-Realism; and that various theories of Predication each has a backward look at some predecessor.

I quote from Mr. A.B. Walkley a very happy application of this principle of interpretation:—

"It has always been a matter for speculation why so sagacious an observer as Diderot should have formulated the wild paradox that the greatest actor is he who feels his part the least. Mr. Archer's bibliographical research has solved this riddle. Diderot's paradox was a protest against a still wilder one. It seems that a previous eighteenth century writer on the stage, a certain Saint-Albine, had advanced the fantastic propositions that none but a magnanimous man can act magnanimity, that only lovers can do justice to a love scene, and kindred assertions that read like variations on the familiar 'Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat'. Diderot saw the absurdity of this; he saw also the essentially artificial nature of the French tragedy and comedy of his own day; and he hastily took up the position which Mr. Archer has now shown to be untenable."

This instance illustrates another principle that has to be borne in mind in the interpretation of doctrines from their historical context of counter-implication. This is the tendency that men have to put doctrines in too universal a form, and to oppose universal to universal, that is, to deny with the flat contrary, the very reverse, when the more humble contradictory is all that the truth admits of. If a name is wanted for this tendency, it might be called the tendency to Over-Contradiction. Between "All are" and "None are," the sober truth often is that "Some are" and "Some are not," and the process of evolution has often consisted in the substitution of these sober forms for their more violent predecessors.

[Footnote 1:] It is significant of the unsuitableness of the vague unqualified word Relativity to express a logical distinction that Dr. Bain calls his law the Law of Relativity simply, having regard to the relation of difference, i.e., to Counter-Relativity, while Dr. Caird applies the name Relativity simply to the relation of likeness, i.e., to Co-relativity. It is with a view to taking both forms of relation into account that I name our law the Law of Homogeneous Counter-relativity. The Protagorean Law of Relativity has regard to yet another relation, the relation of knowledge to the knowing mind: these other logical laws are of relations among the various items of knowledge. Aristotle's category of Relation is a fourth kind of relation not to be confused with the others. "Father—son," "uncle—nephew," "slave—master," are relata in Aristotle's sense: "father," "uncle" are homogeneous counter-relatives, varieties of kinship; so "slave," "freeman" are counter-relatives in social status.

[Footnote 2:] Dr. Caird's Hegel, p. 134.