No More Learning

The metaphors that underlie the expressions we use when we speak of 11. rasping a thought, of conceiving, laying hold of, seizing, understanding, of mpere, percipere, comprehendere, intelligere, put the matter in essentially the right perspective. What is grasped, taken hold of, is already there and all we do is take possession of it. Likewise, what we see into or single out from nmongst other things is already there and does not come into existence as a result of these activities. Of course all metaphors go lame at some point. We nrc inclined to regard what is independent of our mental processes as Nornething spatial or material, and the words that we have just listed make it look as if this is what a thought actually is. But this is not where the point of lhc comparison lies. What is independent of our mental processes, what is ohjcctive, does not have to be spatial or material or actual. If we were to disregard this we should easily slip into a kind of mythology. To say 'The lnws of gravitation, of inertia, of the parallelogram of forces cause the earth lo move as it does move', might make it look as if these laws, so to speak, look the earth by the ears and kept it on the path they prescribe. Such a use llfthe words 'affect', 'cause', would be misleading. On the other hand, it is nil right to say that the sun and planets act on one another in accordance with the laws of gravitation.
So even if physical bodies and thoughts resemble one another in being Independent of my inner life, we are not entitled to conclude from this that thoughts can be moved as bodies can, or can be smelled or tasted, and it would be invalid to seek somehow to draw from the absurdity of such Inference an objection to our views. Although a law of nature obtains quite Independently of whether we think of it or not, it does not emit light or Mound waves by which our visual or auditory nerves could be affected. But
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do I not then see that this flower has five petals? We can say this, but if we do, the word 'see' is not being used in the sense of having a mere visual experience: what we mean by it is bound up with thinking and judging. Newton did not discover the law of gravitation because his senses were especially acute.
If we wish to speak of a thought as being actual, we can do so only in the sense that the knowledge that a man has of e. g. a law of nature has an influence on the decisions he makes, which in their turn may affect the course of history. We should then be thinking of the recognition of a law as a case of a law's acting upon us, and it is perhaps possible to do this, just as we can regard, say, the seeing of a flower as the flower's indirectly acting on us.
We can disregard thoughts and we can take possession of them. We might conceive of the latter as a case of our acting on thoughts, which seems to speak against their being timeless. But the thought is not changed in itself by being thus acted on, just as the moon is apparently unaffected whether we take any notice of it or not. So even though it may be possible to speak of thoughts as acting on us, we cannot speak of ourselves as acting on thoughts. We might cite, as an instance of thoughts being subject to change, the fact that they are not always immediately clear. But what is called the clarity of a thought in our sense of this word is really a matter of how thoroughly it has been assimilated or grasped, and is not a property of a thought.
It would be wrong to think that it is only true thoughts that obtained independently of our mental life, and that false ones, on the other hand, belonged, as ideas do, to our inner life. Almost everything that we have said about the predicate true holds for the predicate false as well. In the strict sense it applies only to thoughts. Where it looks to be predicated of sentences or ideas, still at bottom it is being predicated of thoughts. What is false is false in itself and independently of our opinions. A dispute over the falsity of something is at the same time a dispute over the truth of some- thing. Therefore the thing whose falsity can be a matter for dispute does not belong to some mind or other.
Separating a Thought from its Trappings
In an assertoric sentence two different kinds of thing are usually intimately bound up with one another: the thought expressed and the assertion of its truth. And this is why these are often not clearly distinguished. However, one can express a thought without at the same time putting it forward as true. A scientist who makes a scientific discovery usually begins by grasping just a though,t, and then he asks himself whether it is to be recognized as true; it is not until his investigation has turned out in favour of the hypothesis, that he ventures to put it forward as true. We express the same
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thought in the question 'Is oxygen condensable? ' and in the sentence 'Oxygen is condensable', joining it in the one case with a request and in the other with an assertion.
When we inwardly recognize that a thought is true, we are making a judgement: when we communicate this recognition, we are making an a. 1? sertion.
We can think without making a judgement.
We have seen that the series of sounds that compose a sentence is often not sufficient for the complete expression of a thought. If we wish to bring the essence of a thought into as sharp a focus as possible, we ought not to overlook the fact that the converse case is not uncommon, the case where a sentence does more than express a thought and assert its truth. In many cases a sentence is meant to have an effect on the ideas and feelings of the hearer as well; and the more closely it approximates to the language of poetry, the greater this effect is meant to be. We have indeed stressed the lnct that language is but poorly suited for calling up at will an idea in the 111ind of a hearer with any precision. Who would ever rely on words to evoke as precise a mental picture of an Apollo as can be produced without difficulty by looking at a piece of sculpture? Even so, we do say that the poet paints pictures. And in fact it cannot be denied that the spoken word affects the ideas we have just because it enters consciousness as a complex of auditory sensations. Right from the start we experience the series of sounds themselves, the tone of the voice, the intonation and rhythm with kclings of pleasure or displeasure. These sensations of sound are linked to nuditory ideas that resemble them and these latter are linked in turn with further ideas reactivated by them. This is the domain of onomatopoeia. Here we may cite the Homeric verse (Odyssey IX, 71): rpzx{}d Kaz' rerpax{}a l~ti:oxzoev le; av'ep,ow.
This is quite independent of the aim of words to express thoughts. Here the sounds are acting only as a sensory stimulus. But because sequences of such sounds are meant to have a sense they act upon the imagination in yet n different way. Anyone who hears the word 'horse' and understands it will probably have straightaway a picture of a horse in his mind. This picture, however, is not to be confused with the sense of the word 'horse'; for the word 'horse' gives no clue to the colour of the horse, or to its carriage when Ntnnding still or in motion, or to the side from which it is seen and the like. If different men were able, say, immediately to project onto a canvas the ideas that sprung up in their minds on hearing the word 'horse', then we should be presented with quite different pictures. And even with the same man the word 'horse' does not always conjure up the same idea. Here a great deal depends on the context. We may compare e. g. the sentences 'With what joy he rides his gallant horse' and 'I just saw a horse stumble on the wet nsphalt'.
So there can be no question of the same idea always being associated with the word 'horse'. Thus in virtue of its sense such a word will excite a certain
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idea in us, but by itself it is far from determining this idea completely. Generally speaking the most we are entitled to assume is that the ideas of the speaker and hearer are very roughly in agreement. If several artists produce, independently of one another, illustrations of the same poem, they will diverge considerably from one another in the portrayal they give. Thus the poet does not really depict anything: he only provides the impetus for others to do so, furnishing hints to this end, and leaving it to the hearer to give his words body and shape. And in this connection it is useful to the poet to have at his disposal a number of different words that can be substituted for one another without altering the thought, but which can act in different ways on the feelings and imagination of the hearer. We may think e. g. of the words 'walk', 'stroll', 'saunter'. These means are also used to the same end in everyday language. If we compare the sentences 'This dog howled the whole night' and 'This cur howled the whole night', we find that the thought is the same. The first sentence tells us neither more nor less than does the second. But whilst the word 'dog' is neutral as between having pleasant or unpleasant associations, the word 'cur' certainly has unpleasant rather than pleasant associations and puts us rather in mind of a dog with a somewhat unkempt appearance. Even if it is grossly unfair to the dog to think of it in this way, we cannot say that this makes the second sentence false. True, anyone who utters this sentence speaks pejoratively, but this is
not part of the thought expressed. What distinguishes the second sentence from the first is of the nature of an interjection. It might be thought that the second sentence does nevertheless tell us more than the first, namely that the speaker has a poor opinion of the dog. In that case, the word 'cur' would contain an entire thought. We can put this to the test in the following way.
We assume that the first sentence is true and the second sentence is spoken by someone who does not actually feel the contempt which the word 'cur' seems to imply. If the objection were correct, the second sentence would now contain two thoughts, one of which was false; so it would assert something false as a whole, whilst the first sentence would be true. We shall hardly go along with this; rather the use of the word 'cur' does not prevent us from holding that the second sentence is true as well. For we have to make a distinction between the thoughts that are expressed and those which the speaker leads others to take as true although he does not express them. If a commander conceals his weakness from the enemy by making his troops keep changing their uniforms, he is not telling a lie; for he is not expressing any thoughts, although his actions are calculated to induce thoughts in others. And we find the same thing in the case of speech itself, as when one gives a special tone to the voice or chooses special words. If someone announces the news of a death in a sad tone of voice without actually being sad, the thought expressed is still true even if the sad tone is assumed in oq:ler to create a false impression. And we can substitute words like 'ah', and 'unfortunately' for such a tone of voice without altering the thought. Naturally things are different if certain actions are specifically
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agreed on as a means of communicating something. In language common usage takes the place of such agreements. Of course borderline cases can arise because language changes. Something that was not originally employed as a means of expressing a thought may eventually come to do this because it has constantly been used in cases of the same kind. A thought which to hegin with was only suggested by an expression may come to be explicitly asserted by it. And in the period in between different interpretations will he possible. But the distinction itself is not obliterated by such fluctuations in language. In the present context the only essential thing for us is that a different thought does not correspond to every difference in the words used, and that we have a means of deciding what is and what is not part of the thought, even though, with language constantly developing, it may at times he difficult to apply.
The distinction between the active and passive voice belongs here too. The sentences 'M gave document A to N', 'Document A was given by N by M', 'N received document A from M' express exactly the same thought; we learn not a whit more or less from any one of these sentences than we do from the others. Hence it is impossible that one of them should be true whilst another is false. It is the very same thing that is here capable of being true or false. For all this we are not in a position to say that it is a matter of complete indifference which of these sentences we use. As a rule stylistic and uesthetic reasons will give the preference to one of them. If someone asks 'Why has A been arrested? ' it would be unnatural to reply 'B has been rnurdered by him', because it would require a needless switch of the uttention from A to B. Although in actual speech it can certainly be very important where the attention is directed and where the stress falls, it is of no concern to logic.
In translating from one language to another it is sometimes necessary to dispense with the original grammatical construction altogether. Nevertheless, this need not affect the thought and it must not do so, if the translation is to be correct. But it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice the feeling and colour of the original.
Again in the two sentences 'Frederick the Great won the battle of Rossbach' and 'It is true that Frederick the Great won the battle of Rossbach', we have, as we said earlier, the same thought in a different verbal form. In affirming the thought in the first sentence we thereby affirm the thought in the second, and conversely. There are not two different acts of judgement, but only one.
(From all this we can see that the grammatical categories of subject and predicate can have no significance for logic. )
The distinction between what is part of the thought expressed in a Ncntence and what only gets attached to the thought is of the greatest Importance for logic. The purity of the object of one's investigation is not of Importance only to the chemist. How would the chemist be able to recognize, hcyond any doubt, that he has arrived at the same results by different
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means, if the apparent difference of means could be traced back to impurities in the substances used? There is no doubt that the first and most important discoveries in a science are often a matter of recognizing something as the same again. However self-evident it may seen to us that it is the same sun which went down yesterday and rose today, and however insignificant therefore this discovery may seem to us, it has certainly been one of the most important in astronomy and perhaps the one that really laid the foundations of the science. It was also important to recognize that the morning star is the same as the evening star, that three times five is the same as five times three. It is just as important not to distinguish what is the same as it is to be alive to differences when they don't hit one in the eye. So it is quite wrong to think that one can never make too many distinctions. It does nothing but harm to insist on distinctions where they are not relevant. Thus in general mechanics we shall take care not to speak of the chemical differences between substances and not to state the law of inertia in a special form for, say, each chemical element. We shall only take those differences into account that are essential to the formulation of the laws with which we are actually concerned. Above all, we must not let ourselves be seduced by the presence of extraneous factors into seeing distinctions where there are none.
In logic we must reject all distinctions that are made from a purely psychological point of view. What is referred to as a deepening of logic by psychology is nothing but a falsification of it by psychology.
In human beings it is natural for thinking to be intermingled with having images and feeling. Logic has the task of isolating what is logical, not, to be sure, so that we should think without having images, which is no doubt impossible, but so that we should consciously distinguish the logical from what is attached to it in the way of ideas and feelings. There is a difficulty here in that we think in some language or other and that grammar, which has a significance for language analogous to that which logic has for judgement, is a mixture of the logical and the psychological. If this were not so, all languages would necessarily have the same grammar. It is true that we can express the same thought in different languages; but the psychological trappings, the clothing of the thought, will often be different. This is why the learning of foreign languages is useful for one's logical education. Seeing that the same thought can be worded in different ways, we learn better to distinguish the verbal husk from the kernel with which, in any given language, it appears to be organically bound up. This is how the differences between languages can facilitate our grasp of what is logical. But still the difficulties are not wholly removed in this way, and our logic books still keep dragging in a number of things-subject and predicate, for example-which do not, strictly speaking, belong to logic. For this reason it is useful to be acquainted also with a means of expressing thoughts that is of a radically different nature, such as we have in the formula-language of arithmetic or in my concept-script.
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The first and most important task is to set out clearly what the objects to be investigated are. Only if we do this shall we be able to recognize the same as the same: in logic too, such acts of recognition probably constitute the fundamental discoveries. Therefore let us never forget that two different sentences can express the same thought, that we are concerned with only that part of a sentence's content which can be true or false.
Even if there were only a jot more to the thought contained in the passive form than in the active, it would be conceivable that this jot should be false whilst the thought contained in the active form was true, and that we should not be entitled without more ado to go over from the active to the passive form. Likewise if there were only a jot more to the thought contained in the active form than in the passive, we should not be able to go over from the passive form to the active without examining the particular case in hand. But if both transitions can always be made sa/va veritate, then this con- firms that what is true here, namely the thought, is not affected by this change of form. This serves as a warning not to attach too much weight to linguistic distinctions, as logicians are prone to: a case in point being the assumption that every thought-or judgement as it is usually called-has a subject and a predicate, so that the subject and predicate of a thought are determined by the thought, as the subject and predicate of a sentence are unambiguously given along with the sentence. If we make this assumption, we onty get involved in quite unnecessary difficulties, and, grappling with them to no effect, we only strengthen the impression that the science of logic is really quite superfluous.
We shall have no truck with the expressions 'subject' and 'predicate', of which logicians are so fond, especially since they not only make it more difficult for us to recognize the same as the same, but also conceal distinctions that are there. Instead of following grammar blindly, the logician ought rather to see his task as that of freeing us from the fetters of language. For however true it is that thinking, at least in its higher forms, was only made possible by means of language, we have nevertheless to take great care not to become dependent on language; for very many of the mistakes that occur in reasoning have their source in the logical imperfections of language. Of course if we see the task of logic to be that of describing how men actually think, then we shall naturally have to accord great importance to language. But then the name logic is being used for what is really only a branch of psychology. This is as if one imagined that one was doing astronomy when one was developing a psycho-physical theory of how one sees through a telescope. In the former case the things that are the proper concern of logic do not come into view any more than in the latter case do the problems of astronomy. Psychological treatments of logic arise from the mistaken belief that a thought (a judgement as it is usually called) is something psychological like an idea. This view leads necessarily to an idealist theory of knowledge; for if it is correct, then the parts that we distinguish in a thought, such as subject and predicate, must
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belong as much to psychology as do thoughts themselves. Now since every act of cognition is realized in judgements, this means the breakdown of every bridge leading to what is objective. And all our striving to attain to this can be no more than an attempt to draw ourselves up by our own bootstraps. The most we can do is to try to explain how it comes to seem that there is such a thing as what is objective, how we come to assume the existence of something that is not part of our mind without, however, our thereby having any justification for this assumption. Physiological psy- chology provides us with the most striking case of this slide into idealism because its realistic point of departure stands in such sharp contrast to it. We start out with nerve fibres and ganglion cells and make assumptions about impulses and how they are transmitted, and we seek in this way to make ideation more intelligible, since we can't help regarding processes in the ganglion cells and nerve fibres as more intelligible than the process of ideation. As befits a science worthy of the name, we do not hesitate to take it for granted, when we proceed like this, that ganglion cells and nerve fibres are objective and real. This will probably work perfectly well so long as we confine ourselves to ideation. But we do not stop there: we move on to thinking and judgement as well, and at this point what began as realism suddenly turns into an extreme form of idealism; in this way realism itself cuts off the branch on which it is sitting. Now everything is dissolved into ideas and as a result the earlier explanations themselves become illusory. Anatomy and physiology turn into fictions. The whole physio-anatomical foundation of nerve fibres, ganglion cells, stimuli, impulses and transmission
of impulses disintegrates. And what are we left with? Ideas of nerve fibres, ideas of ganglion cells, ideas of stimuli and so on. And what did we start off with the intention of explaining! The having of ideas! Well, can one say of these explanations that there is any truth or reason in them at all? Standing by a river one often sees eddies in the water. Now would it not be absurd to claim that such an eddy of water was sound or true? And even if the dance of the atoms and molecules in my brain was a thousand times more spirited and frenzied than the dance of gnats on a summer evening, would it not be just as absurd to assert that it was sound or true? And if the explanations above were gyrations of this sort, could we say they were true? And is it any different in the end if these explanations are congeries of ideas? And the phantasms that pass before the mind of the typhus victim in a constant procession, as one picture gives way to another, are they true? They are no more true than they are false; they are simply processes, as an eddy in water is a process. And if we are to speak of a right, it can only be the right of things to happen as they do happen. One phantasm contradicts another no more than one eddy in water contradicts another.
If the visual idea of a rose is associated with the idea of a delicate scent and to these a~e added the auditory ideas of the words 'rose' and 'scent', as well as the motor ideas associated with uttering these words, and if we go on and on heaping associations upon associations until the most complex and
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elaborate idea is formed, what purpose does it serve? Do we really think we should have a thought as a result? The result would no more be a thought 1han an automaton, however cunningly contrived, is a living being. Put something together out of parts that are inanimate and you still have something inanimate. Combine ideas and you still have an idea and the most varied and elaborate associations can make no difference. Even if, on top of these, the whole is imbued with feelings and moods, it is all to no avail. The law of gravitation can never come into existence in this way, for this law is 4uite independent of everything that goes on in my mind and of how my ideas change and fluctuate. But still the grasping of this law is a mental process!
Yes, indeed, but it is a process which takes place on the very ~:onfines of the mental and which for that reason cannot be completely understood from a purely psychological standpoint. For in grasping the law something comes into view whose nature is no longer mental in the proper sense, namely the thought; and this process is perhaps the most mysterious of all. But just because it is mental in character we do not need to concern ourselves with it in logic. It is enough for us that we can grasp thoughts and recognize them to be true; how this takes place is a question in its own right. * It is surely enough for the chemist too that he can see, smell and taste; it is not his business to investigate how these things take place. It is not immaterial to the success of a scientific investigation that questions which can be treated independently of others are not confounded with them, with the result that we create unnecessary difficulties. That easily leads to our seeing things crossways on. So we shall not trouble ourselves with asking how we actually think or arrive at our convictions. It is not the holding something to be true that concerns us but the laws of truth. We can also think of these as prescriptions for making judgements; we must comply with them in our judgements if we are not to fail of the truth. So if we call them laws of thought or, better, laws of judgement, we must not forget we are concerned here with laws which, like the principles of morals or the laws of the state, prescribe how we are to act, and do not, like the laws of nature, define the actual course of events. Thinking, as it actually takes place, is not always in agreement with the laws of logic any more than men's actual hehaviour is in agreement with the moral law. I therefore think it better to avoid the expression 'laws of thought' altogether in logic, because it always misleads us into thinking oflaws of thought as laws of nature. If that is what they were we should have to assign them to psychology. We could, with c4ual justice, think of the laws of geometry and the laws of physics as laws of thought or laws of judgement, namely as prescriptions to which our judgements must conform in a different domain if they are to remain in
* I should say that this question is still far from being grasped in all its difficulty. People are usually quite content to smuggle thinking in through a hack door in the imagination, so that they don't themselves know how it really got in.
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agreement with the truth. Logic, then, is no more the right place for conducting psychological investigations than is geometry or physics. To explain how thinking and judging take place is certainly a feasible undertaking, but it is not a logical one.
Accordingly, the logician does not have to ask what course thinking naturally takes in the human mind. What is natural to one man may well be unnatural to another. The great difference between grammars itself bears witness to this. The logician need fear nothing less than to be reproached with the fact that his statements do not accord with how we think naturally. The normal person with no training in mathematics would find it highly unnatural if he were to have the rudiments of the subject explained to him in terms of the utmost rigour, and for that very reason. A prudent teacher will therefore tend to let rigour go by the board in introducing the subject and will only seek to awaken the need for it bit by bit. Even in the history of mathematics we find that the highest degree of rigour is achieved only towards the end and that consequently it is at the farthest removed from what is natural. Hence to strive to present the process of thinking in its natural form would lead us directly away from logic. If the logician tried to take account of objections on the score that what he said was unnatural, he would be in danger of involving himself in endless disputes over what is natural-disputes which logic is quite incapable of resolving on its own grounds and which, therefore, do not belong to logic. To resolve them we should presumably have to resort to observing primitive peoples.
But above all we should be wary of the view that it is the business of logic to investigate how we actually think and judge when we are in agreement with the laws of truth. If that were so, we should have constantly to have one eye on the one thing and one eye on the other, and continue paying attention to the latter whilst taking a sidelong glance at the former, and in the process we should easily lose sight of a definite goal altogether. We should be seduced into asking questions with no clear meaning and as a result a satisfactory outcome to our investigations would be as good as impossible.
What are often called laws of thought, namely laws in accordance with which judging, at least in normal cases, takes place, can be nothing but laws for holding something to be true, not laws of truth. If a man holds something to be true-and the psychological logicians will surely hold that their own statements at least are true-he thereby acknowledges that there is such a thing as something's being true. But in that case it is surely probable that there will be laws of truth as well, and if there are, these must provide the norm for holding something to be true. And these will be the laws of logic proper. In supplement No. 26 to the 1897 Proceedings of the Allgemeinl Zeitung, T. Achelis writes in a paper entitled 'Volkerkunde und Philosophie': :But we are now clear about this, that the norms which hold in general for thinking and acting cannot be arrived at by the one-sided exercise of pure deductive abstraction alone; what is required is an empirico?
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critical determination of the objective principles of our psycho-physical organization which are valid at all times for the great consciousness of mankind. '
It is not quite clear whether this is about laws in accordance with which judgements are made or about laws in accordance with which they should be made. It appears to be about both. That is to say, the laws in accordance with which judgements are made are set up as a norm for how judgements are to be made. But why do we need to do this? Don't we automatically judge in accordance with these laws? No! Not automatically; normally, yes, but not always! So these are laws which have exceptions, but the exceptions will themselves be governed by further laws. So the laws that we have set up do not comprise all of them. Now what is our justification for isolating a part of the entire corpus of laws and setting it up as a norm? To do that is like wanting to present Kepler's laws of planetary motion as a norm and then being forced, alas, to recognize that the planets in their wilfulness do not behave in strict conformity with them but, like spoilt children, have disturbing effects on one another. Such behaviour would then have to be severely reprimanded.
On this view we shall have to exercise every care not to stray from the path taken by the solid majority. We shall even mistrust the greatest geniuses; for if they were normal, they would be mediocre.
With the psychological conception of logic we lose the distinction between the grounds that justify a conviction and the causes that actually produce it. This means that a justification in the proper sense is not possible; what we have in its place is an account of how the conviction was arrived at, from which it is to be inferred that everything has been caused by psychological factors. This puts a superstition on the same footing as a scientific discovery.
If we think of the laws of logic as psychological, we shall be inclined to raise the question whether they are somehow subject to change. Are they like the grammar of a language which may, of course, change with the passage of time? This is a possibility we really have to face up to if we hold that the laws of logic derive their authority from a source similar to that of the laws of grammar, if they are norms only because we seldom deviate from them, if it is normal to judge in accordance with our laws of logic as it is normal to walk upright. Just as there may have been a time when it was not normal for our ancestors to walk upright, so many modes of thinking might have been normal in the past which are not so now, and in the future something might be normal that is not so at the present time. In a language whose form is not yet fixed there are always points of grammar on which our sense of idiom is unreliable, and a similar thing would have to hold in respect of the laws of logic whenever we were in a period of transition. We might, for instance, be in two minds whether it is correct to judge that every object is identical with itself. If that were so, we should not really be entitled to speak of logical laws, but only of logical rules that specify what is
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Logic
regarded as normal at a particular time. We should not be entitled to express such a rule in a form like 'Every object is identical with itself' for there is here no mention at all of the class of beings for whose judgements the rule is meant to be valid, but we should have to say something like 'At the present time it is normal for men-with the possible exception of certain primitive peoples for whom the matter has not yet been investigated-to judge that every object is identical with itself'. However, once there are laws, even if they are psychological, then, as we have seen, they must always be true, or better, they must be timelessly true if they are true at all. Therefore if we had observed that from a certain time a law ceased to hold, then we should have to say that it was altogether false. What we could do, however, is to try to find a condition that would have to be added to the law. Let us assume that for a certain period of time men make judgements in accordance with the law that every object is identical with itself, but that after this time they cease to do so. Then the cause of this might be that the phosphorus content in the cerebral cortex had changed, and we should then have to say something like 'If the amount of phosphorus present in any part of man's cerebral cortex does not exceed 4%, his judgement will always be in
accordance with the law that every object is identical with itself. '
We can at least conceive of psychological laws that refer in this way to the chemical composition of the brain or to its anatomical structure. On the other hand, such a reference would be absurd in the case of logical laws, for these are not concerned with what this or that man holds to be true, but with what is true. Whether a man holds the thought that 2 ? 2 = 4 to be true or to be false may depend on the chemical composition of his brain, but whether this thought is true cannot depend on that. Whether it is true that Julius
Caesar was assassinated by Brutus cannot depend upon the structure of Professor Mommsen's brain.
People sometimes raise the question whether the laws of logic can change with time. The laws of truth, like all thoughts, are always true if they are true at all. Nor can they contain a condition which might be satisfied at certain times but not at others, because they are concerned with the truth of thoughts and if these are true, they are true timelessly. So if at one time the truth of some thought follows from the truth of certain others, then it must always follow.
Let us summarize what we have elicited about thoughts (properly so? called).
Unlike ideas, thoughts do not belong to the individual mind (they are not subjective), but are independent of our thinking and confront each one of Ul in the same way (objectively). They are not the product of thinking, but are only grasped by thinking. In this respect they are like physical bodies. What distinguishes them from physical bodies is that they are non-spatial, and we could perhap~ really go as far as to say that they are essentially timeless-at least inasmuch as they are immune from anything that could effect a chanae in their intrinsic nature. They are like ideas in being non-spatial.
Since thoughts are not mental in nature, it follows that every
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psychological treatment of logic can only do harm. It is rather the task of this science to purify logic of all that is alien and hence of all that is psychological, and to free thinking from the fetters of language by pointing up the logical imperfections of language. Logic is concerned with the laws of truth, not with the laws of holding something to be true, not with the 4uestion of how men think, but with the question of how they must think if they are not to miss the truth.
Negation
1\ thought proper is either true or false. When we make a judgement about a thought, then we either accept it as true or we reject it as false. The last expression, however, can mislead us by suggesting that a thought which has been rejected ought to be consigned to oblivion as quickly as possible as being no longer of any use. On the contrary, the recognition that a thought 1s false may be just as fruitful as the recognition that a thought is true. Properly understood, there is no difference at all between the two cases. To hold one thought to be false is to hold a (different) thought to be true-a thought which we call the opposite of the first. In the German language we usually indicate that a thought is false by inserting the word 'not' into the predicate. But the assertion is still conveyed by the indicative form, and has no necessary connection with the word 'not'. The negative form can be retained although the assertion has been dropped. We can speak equally well of 'The thought that Peter did not come to Rome' as of 'The thought that Peter came to Rome'. Thus it is clear that when I assert that Peter did not come to Rome, the act of asserting and judging is no different from when I assert that Peter did come to Rome; the only difference is that we hnvc the opposite thought. So to each thought there corresponds an oppo- Nite. Here we have a symmetrical relation: If the first thought is the opposite of the second, then the second is the opposite of the first. To declare false the thought that Peter did not come to Rome is to assert that Peter came to Rome. We could declare it false by inserting a second 'not' and saying 'Peter did (not) not come to Rome' or 'It is not true that Peter did not come to Rome'. And from this it follows that two negatives cancel one another out. If we take the opposite of the opposite of something, we have what
we began with.
When it is a question of whether some thought is true, we are poised
hctwcen opposite thoughts, and the same act which recognizes one of them IIN true recognizes the other as false. Analogous relations of opposition hold In other cases too, e. g. between what is beautiful and ugly, good and bad, rtcusant and unpleasant and positive and negative in mathematics and Jlhysics. But these are different from our case in two respects. In the first ptncc there is nothing here which, like nought or a neutrally charged body, occupies a mean between opposites. We can of course say that, in relation lo positive and negative numbers, nought is its own opposite, but there is no
? 150 Logic
thought which could count as its own opposite. This is true even of fict- ions. In the second place we do not have here two classes such that one contains thoughts that are the opposite of those contained in the other, as there is a class of positive and a class of negative numbers. At any rate, I have not yet found any feature that could be used to effect such a division; for the use of the word 'not' in ordinary language is a purely external cri- terion and an unreliable one at that. We have other signs for negation like 'no', and we often use the prefix 'un' as, for example, in 'unsatisfactory'. Now in view of the fact that 'unsatisfactory' and 'bad' are very close in sense to one another, there would surely appear to be little point in wishing to assign the thoughts contained in 'This work is bad' and 'This work is satis- factory' to the first class and those contained in 'The work is not bad' and 'The work is unsatisfactory' to the second class, and it may well be the case that in some other language the word for 'unsatisfactory' is one in which a negative form is no more to be discerned that it is in 'bad'. We cannot define in what respect the first two thoughts might be supposed to be more closely related than the first and fourth. There is the further fact that negatives can occur elsewhere than in the predicate of a main clause, and that such nega- tives do not simply cancel each other out: an example would be 'Not all pieces of work are unsatisfactory'. We cannot put for this 'All pieces of work are satisfactory', and nor can we put 'Whoever has worked hard is rewarded,
for 'Whoever has not worked hard is not rewarded'. If we compare these with the sentences 'Whoever is rewarded has worked hard', 'Whoever has not worked hard goes away empty-handed', 'Whoever has been idle is not rewarded', '24 is not different from 42' and '24 is the same as 42', we shall see that we are tangling with some thorny problems here. What is more it is simply not worth while to try to extricate ourselves, and to expend a great deal of effort on finding answers to them. I at any rate know of no logical law which would take cognizance of a division of thoughts into positive and negative. We shall therefore leave the matter to look after itself until such time as it should become clear to us that such a division is somehow necessary. At which juncture we should naturally expect a criterion to emerge by which the division could be effected.
The prefix 'un', is not always used to negate. There is hardly any difference in sense between 'unhappy' and 'miserable'. Here we have a word which is the opposite of 'happy', and yet is not its negation. For this reason the sentences 'This man is not unhappy' and 'This man is happy' do not have the same sense.
Compound Thoughts
If the jury ret~rn a 'Yes' to the question 'Did the accused wilfully set fire to a pile of wood and (wilfully) start a forest fire? ' they have simultaneously asserted the two thoughts:
? Logic 151 (1) The accused wilfully set fire to a pile of wood,
(2) The accused wilfully started a forest fire.
It is true that our question contains one thought, for it can be answered by making one judgement; but this thought is composed of two thoughts-each of these being capable of being judged on its own-in such a way that by affirming the whole thought I affirm at the same time the component thoughts. Now it might seem that this is really neither here nor there and that the matter is of little importance; but it will become evident that it is closely bound up with very important logical laws. This comes out more clearly as soon as one considers the negation of such a compound thought. When will the jury have to say 'No' to the question above? Obviously the moment they hold but one of the two component thoughts to be false; for example, if they are of the opinion that whilst there is no doubt that the accused wilfully set fire to the pile of wood, he did not intend as a consequence that the forest should catch fire. '
? ? The Argument for my stricter Canons of Definition1 [1897/98 or shortly afterwards]
Since the necessity for my stricter canons of definition may not yet be sufficiently evident from what I said on the matter in the first part,2 and since, as it appears, opinion is still greatly divided on this matter, I want to try to argue for my view once again, by drawing a comparison with Peano's mathematical logic. What is at stake here is perhaps the deepest difference between the two concept-scripts. I have drawn attention to certain shortcomings which struck me in the definition of the Peano deduction-sign ':::::>',which roughly corresponds to my 't'. These shortcomings are certainly due to the fact that, whereas Peano takes a first step in my direction, he doesn't take the second. His definition of the sign ':::::>' for the case where it stands between sentences containing no indefinitely indicating letters (lettres variables) agrees in essentials with my definition of the sign 't'; but for the case where indefinitely indicating letters (lettres variables) occur on both sides of the sign ':::::>', another definition is given whose relation to the first remains unclear. In my case the combination of condition and consequence is presented as analysed into two components, of which the one is generality, signified by the use of roman letters, while the other is designated by the sign 't'. This analysis cannot be clearly discerned in Peano's case because the use of lettres variables and the sign ':::::>' are both defined simultaneously. In his most recent account, Peano has attempted to remove this shortcoming, but unfortunately, not by following me in taking my
1 The text was presumably composed in 1897/8 or shortly thereafter: right at the beginning Frege mentions having 'drawn attention to certain shortcomings in the definition of the Peano deduction-sign'. This must refer to the article of Frege: Ober die Begri. ffsschrift des Herrn Peano und meine eigene that appeared in 1897. Later on Frege talks of Peano's attempts in his most recent account to overcome these shortcomings. From the details ofwhat Frege says, this must refer to the definition of'-::;,' in Formulaire de Mathematiques' Vol. 11, p. 24. which appeared at the end of 1897. (The corresponding definition in Form. Vol. I, pp. V/VI, No. 17 is still in the form that Frege criticized in his article) (ed. ). It seems to us a natural conjecture that the present article and the next are preliminary drafts of material intended for inclusion in Volume 11 of the Grundgesetze: this both because of the overlap in content between parts of this article and early parts of Volume 11 and above all because of the way in which Grundgesetze Volume I is simply referred to as 'the first part' or 'my first volume' (trans. ).
2 As the editors point out, the reference here is clearly to the rirst part of the Grundgesetze (trans. ).
? The Argumentfor my stricter Canons ofDefinition 153
second step, but by retracting the first. He completely abandons the definition of the deduction-sign which agrees in essentials with mine, and now completely excludes this case-the one where '"::J' stands between sentences containing no indefinitely indicating letters. But there surely do occur cases where even in speech the form of a hypothetical sentence ('if . . . then . . . ')is used, without the content being general. Let us, however, waive this objection.
As an example, let us take a look now at the Peano sentence 'u, v e K. fe vfu. ]e ufv . ::J. num u = num v',
which corresponds in essentials to my ? ~nu= nv '
u'"' (v'"' ) p) v'"' (u'"' ) $. P)
Admittedly in my case the two Peano conditions u, v e K are missing, but this does not make my sentence false. Rather, my signs are so defined, that, without the truth of the claim being put in jeopardy, names of objects other than classes can also be substituted for u and v. In this formula u, v e K is meant to state that by u and v classes are to be understood. The other two conditions 'f e vfu' and '] e ufv' state thatf is a function mapping u into v and whose inverse maps v into u. According to Peano these conditions restrict the domain of what is to be understood by the letters. Now this still leaves open a certain leeway for the meanings* (significations) of the letters und that creates generality. Now how is a particular case derived from such n general sentence? Obviously by assigning, subject to the restrictions imposed by the antecedents, particular meanings to the letters in the consequent (the part of the formula to the right of the '::J'), and so by replacing the letters by signs which have these particular meanings at all times. Here in fact the letter 'f' doesn't occur in the consequent at all. Nevertheless we must still be able to specify such a meaning for this letter too. The antecedents are now dropped, because they have done their job for this case, and because the deduction-sign '::J' would otherwise stand between Ncntences that contained no indefinitely indicating letters, which according to the latest version of the Peano concept-script is forbidden. Thus, of the original general sentence there only remains the consequent, which now, however, no longer has any generality.
Let's now look at a sentence which our general sentence may be converted into, by taking as the new consequent the negation of an nntccedent, and making the negation of the original consequent into an
*By using italics I indicate that I am using this word in the sense of l'cano's 'signification'.
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