3 o8 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



274. FALLACIES INCIDENT TO JUDGMENT AND IMMEDIATE 

 INFERENCE (Part II.). 1 



(a) THE SELF-CONTRADICTORY JUDGMENT. Many of the 

 fallacies incident to judgment have their source in vagueness of 

 conception, so that the difference between them and those already 

 enumerated is not fundamental. We may commence with the 

 self-contradictory judgment. The mind cannot, of course, con 

 sciously accept what it sees to be a contradiction ; but here, as 

 in the case of the self-contradictory concept, it accepts what is 

 really contradictory just because it does not think clearly. Fol 

 lowing the tendency to make general assertions where only 

 particular assertions are justified, we may be betrayed into the 

 self-contradictory statement that &quot;every rule has exceptions&quot;. 

 By laying down this as universally true we thereby claim that it 

 has no exceptions : therefore some rules have no exceptions : 

 hence our statement contradicts itself. Much ingenuity has been 

 expended in showing that the old sophism of the Liar (A/revSo/z.ei o?) 

 does not really disprove the universal applicability of the law of 

 contradiction. 2 &quot; Epimenides, the Cretan, says that all Cretans 

 are always liars.&quot; On the hypothesis that this assertion of his is 

 true, he too must be lying when he makes the assertion, i.e. the 

 assertion itself must be false on the very hypothesis on which it 

 is true. The statement from his mouth contradicts itself. The 

 essential characteristic of an assertion or proposition is its claim 

 to be true. If we assume that the proposition &quot; All Cretans 

 always lie&quot; is objectively true, it is a contradiction to suppose at 

 the same time that Epimenides can assert this proposition. 



() AMPHIBOLY is the fallacy arising from ambiguity in the 

 structure of a sentence. As equivocation is ambiguity in terms, 

 so amphiboly is ambiguity in propositions. Latin is much ex 

 posed to this fallacy in the construction of the accusative with 

 the infinitive : &quot; Aio te Eacida, Romanes vincere posse &quot; is the 

 well-known reply of the oracle of Apollo to Pyrrhus; &quot;TO /3ou- 

 \&amp;lt;rdai \afteiv fie rov&amp;lt;f 7roXe/uov&amp;lt;? &quot; is one of Aristotle s examples ; 

 the witch s prophecy in Shakespeare s Henry VI., &quot;The duke 

 yet lives that Henry shall depose,&quot; is yet another example. 



This form of ambiguity may easily arise in English from care- 



1 The fallacies incident to mediate inference (Part III.) have been sufficiently 

 considered in connexion with the rules of the syllogism and the various laws and 

 canons of hypothetical and disjunctive reasoning. 



* Cf. KEYNES, Formal Logic, fourth edit., pp. 457 sqq. 



