Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 2 - Charles S. Peirce

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proposition (for example), “All reasoning from humanity to mortality is certain,” only says in other words that every man is mortal. But if the judgment amounts merely to this, that the argument in question belongs to some genus all under which are valid, then in one sense it does, and in another it does not, contain a premise. It does in this sense, that by an act of attention such a proposition may be shown to have been virtually involved in it; it does not in this sense, that the person making the judgment did not actually understand this premise to be contained in it. This I express by saying that this proposition is contained in the leading principle, but is not laid down. This manner of stating the matter frees us at once from all psychological perplexities; and at the same time we lose nothing, since all that we know of thought is but a reflection of what we know of its expression.

      These vague arguments are just such as alone are suitable to oratory or popular discourse, and they are appropriate to no other; and this fact justifies the appellation, “rhetorical argument.” There is also authority for this use of the term. “Complete” and “incomplete” are adjectives which I have preferred to “perfect” and “imperfect,” as being less misleading when applied to argument, although the latter are the best when syllogism is the noun to be limited.

      2. This operation will be termed a contraposition of the premise and conclusion.

      3. What S is meant being generally undetermined.

      4. Except so far as conditioned by the other premise.

      5. Except so far as conditioned by the other premise.

      6. A formal inference is a substitution having the form of an inference.

      7. Hypotheticals have not been considered above, the well-known opinion having been adopted that, “If A, then B,” means the same as “Every state of things in which A is true is a state of things in which B is (or will be) true.”

      8. Positivism, apart from its theory of history and of the relations between the sciences, is distinguished from other doctrines by the manner in which it regards hypotheses. Almost all men think that metaphysical theories are valueless, because metaphysicians differ so much among themselves; but the positivists give another reason, namely, that these theories violate the sole condition of all legitimate hypothesis. This condition is that every good hypothesis must be such as is certainly capable of subsequent verification with the degree of certainty proper to the conclusions of the branch of science to which it belongs. There is, it seems to me, a confusion here between the probability of a hypothesis in itself, and its admissibility into any one of those bodies of doctrine which have received distinct names, or have been admitted into a scheme of the sciences, and which admit only conclusions which have a very high probability indeed. I have here to deal with the rule only so far as it is a general canon of the legitimacy of hypotheses, and not so far as it determines their relevancy to a particular science; and I shall, therefore, consider only another common statement of it; namely, “that no hypothesis is admissible which is not capable of verification by direct observation.” The positivist regards an hypothesis, not as an inference, but as a device for stimulating and directing observation. But I have shown above that certain premises will render an hypothesis probable, so that there is such a thing as legitimate hypothetic inference. It may be replied that such conclusions are not hypotheses, but inductions. That the sense in which I have used “hypothesis” is supported by good usage, I could prove by a hundred authorities. The following is from Kant: “An hypothesis is the holding for true of the judgment of the truth of a reason on account of the sufficiency of its consequents.” Mill’s definition (Logic, Book III, Ch. XIV, §4) also nearly coincides with mine. Moreover, an hypothesis in every sense is an inference, because it is adopted for some reason, good or bad, and that reason, in being regarded as such, is regarded as lending the hypothesis some plausibility. The arguments which I term hypothetic are certainly not inductions, for induction is reasoning from particulars to generals, and this does not take place in these cases. The positivist canon for hypotheses is neither sufficient nor necessary. If it is granted that hypotheses are inferred, it will hardly be questioned that the observed facts must follow apodictically from the hypothesis without the aid of subsidiary hypotheses, and that the characters of that which is predicated in the hypothesis, and from which the inference is drawn, must be taken as they occur, and not be picked out in order to make a plausible argument. That the maxim of the positivists is superfluous or worse, is shown, first, by the fact that it is not implied in the proof that hypothetic inference is valid; and next, by the absurdities to which it gives rise when strictly applied to history, which is entirely hypothetical, and is absolutely incapable of verification by direct observation. To this last argument I know of but two answers: first, that this pushes the rule further than was intended, it being considered that history has already been so verified; and second, that the positivist does not pretend to know the world as it absolutely exists, but only the world which appears to him. To the first answer, the rejoinder is that a rule must be pushed to its logical consequences in all cases, until it can be shown that some of these cases differ in some material respect from the others. To the second answer, the rejoinder is double: first, that I mean no more by “is” than the positivist by “appears” in the sense in which he uses it in saying that only what “appears” is known, so that the answer is irrelevant; second, that positivists, like the rest of the world, reject historic testimony sometimes, and in doing so distinguish hypothetically between what is and what in some other sense appears, and yet have no means of verifying the distinction by direct observation.

      Another error in reference to hypothesis is, that the antecedent probability of what is testified to cannot affect the probability of the testimony of a good witness. This is as much as to say that probable arguments can neither support nor weaken one another. Mr. Venn goes so far as to maintain the impossibility of a conflict of probabilities. The difficulty is instantly removed by admitting indeterminate probabilities.

       On a New List of Categories

       P 32: Presented 14 May 1867

      §1. This paper is based upon the theory already established, that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity, and that the validity of a conception consists in the impossibility of reducing the content of consciousness to unity without the introduction of it.

      §2. This theory gives rise to a conception of gradation among those conceptions which are universal. For one such conception may unite the manifold of sense and yet another may be required to unite the conception and the manifold to which it is applied; and so on.

      §3. That universal conception which is nearest to sense is that of the present, in general. This is a conception, because it is universal. But as the act of attention has no connotation at all, but is the pure denotative power of the mind, that is to say, the power which directs the mind to an object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any predicate of that object,—so the conception of what is present in general, which is nothing but the general recognition of what is contained in attention, has no connotation, and therefore no proper unity. This conception of the present in general, or IT in general, is rendered in philosophical language by the word “substance” in one of its meanings. Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of substance.

      §4. The unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is the unity of a proposition. This unity consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject; and, therefore, that which is implied in the copula, or the conception of being, is that which completes the work of conceptions of reducing the manifold to unity. The copula (or rather the verb which is copula in one of its senses) means either actually is or would be, as in the two propositions, “There is no griffin,” and “A griffin is a winged quadruped.” The conception of being contains only that junction of predicate to subject wherein these

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