39$ THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



fact of sense experience, we dissent entirely from his views on the 

 nature of the universal judgment, on the nature of the inductive 

 process by which we &quot; ascend &quot; to it from particular facts, on the 

 function it discharges in the &quot; descending,&quot; deductive, syllogistic 

 process, of reaching scientific conclusions ; and also as to the part 

 of the whole process which deserves the name of &quot; logical infer 

 ence &quot; : he bestowing this title on the &quot; ascending &quot; or inductive &quot; 

 stage alone; we, on certain steps in the &quot;ascending&quot; or &quot;in 

 ductive &quot; stage, and on the whole &quot; descending or &quot; deductive&quot; 

 stage. 1 



Beginning, then, with an examination of the paradox, we must 

 endeavour to answer the question by which we introduced it : 

 What sort or what degree of difference must there be between 

 premisses and conclusion, in order to constitute the passage from 

 the former to the latter a logical inference? A mere verbal 

 difference is certainly not sufficient to constitute a logical infer 

 ence. There must be a difference in meaning, i.e. the conclusion 

 must contain as (part, at least, of) its meaning, some element 

 which was no part of the meaning of the premiss or premisses, 

 but which was, nevertheless, an implication of the latter. Now, 

 each of these elements of the judgment meaning and implica 

 tion is, in the first place, mental or subjective, but is also real or 

 objective, inasmuch as the judgment is a subjective representation 

 or interpretation of some objective reality. It is, however, an 

 inadequate representation of the latter ; and it is just precisely 

 because this is so that inference is possible (82, 116). It is 

 because we can distinguish between the subjective, conventional, 

 and objective intension (31) of the concepts which enter into our 

 judgments, that we can also distinguish between what we may 

 call the individual psychological content, the current logical mean 

 ing, and the sum-total of the logical implications of these judgments 

 themselves. 2 



Now, there can be no doubt that the mental formulation of a 

 given judgment or judgments brings into consciousness a certain 

 psychological content which varies from one individual to an 

 other ; that out of this a certain definite portion is selected and 

 fixed so as to constitute the &quot;meaning&quot; of those judgments; 

 and that, finally, an individual may be in conscious possession of 



1 These divergences of view will be gradually illustrated and justified in the 

 course of our treatment of Induction. 

 *Cf. KEYNKS, op. cit., p. 421. 



