STUDIES IN DEDUCTIVE LOGIC CHAPTER I THE DOCTRINE OF TERMS INTRODUCTION I. IN accordance with custom, I begin this book of logical studies with the treatment of Terms. Besides being customary, this way of beginning is convenient, because some difficulties which might otherwise be encountered in the treatment of propositions and arguments are cleared out of the way. But the continued study of logic convinces me that this doctrine of terms is really a composite and for the most part extra-logical body of doctrine. It is in fact a survival, derived from the voluminous controversies of the schoolmen. 2. The difficulties of metaphysics, of physics, of grammar, and of logic itself, are entangled together in this part of logical doctrine. Thus, if we take such a term as colour, and endeavour to decide upon its logical characters, we should say that it is categorematic, because it can stand as the subject of a proposition; it is positive, because it im B plies the presence rather than the absence of qualities. But is it abstract or concrete? If concrete, it should be the name of a thing, not of the attributes of a thing. Now colour is certainly an attribute of gold or vermilion ; nevertheless, colour has the attribute of being yellow or red or blue. Thus I should say that yellowness is an attribute of colour, and if so, colour is concrete compared with yellowness or blueness, while it is abstract compared with gold or cobalt. If this view is right, abstractness becomes a question of degree. 3. Again, a relative term is one which cannot be thought except in relation to something else, the correlative. Thus nephew cannot be thought but as the nephew of an uncle or aunt; an instrument cannot be thought but as the instrument to some end or operation. But the question arises, Can anything be thought except as in relation to something else? What is the meaning of a table but as that on which dinner is put? What is a chair but the seat of some person? Every planet is related to the sun, and the sun to the planets. Even meteoric stones moving through empty space are related by gravity to the sun attracting them. philosophy. All is relative, both in nature and 4. As to the distinctions of general, singular, and proper terms, connotative and non-connotative terms, etc., they seem to me to be involved in complete confusion. I have shown in the Elementary Lessons in Logic (pp. 41-44) that Proper Names are certainly connotative. There would be an impossible breach of continuity in supposing that, after narrowing the extension of 'thing' successively down to animal, vertebrate, mammalian, man, Englishman, educated at Cambridge, mathematician, great logician, and so forth, thus increasing the intension all the time, the single re |