An Essay Upon the Philosophy of Evidence

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ... INDUCTION OF THE NOVUM ORGANON. 21 mind; my mind arrives at the belief of the matter of fact from the unvarying experience of the past, yet the contraries of such beliefs are perfectly conceivable, consistently with the perfect truth of the premisses from which they are drawn, for I can conceive that the sun may become extinguished to-night, or that the man was an exception to others, and was created his present size. The contrary of the conclusion in a syllogism cannot be reconciled with the truth of the premisses. In drawing conclusions or forming beliefs as to matters of fact, which we do by an inductive process, more or less rapid, I contend, that neither after nor at any stage of this process does the mind build up a major premiss, and then draw its conclusion from this as a logical sequence; but that our belief in matters of fact arises from a wholly different state of the mind to the idea of logical sequence expressed by the syllogism. The induction of the Novum Organon may be thus exemplified. The Palaeontologist discovers the remains of a ruminant but cannot find the oss frontis; now his qusestio is, whether this is a horned animal or not; his mind in order to come to a conclusion follows out this course: ox, sheep, goat, are ruminants: ox, sheep, goat, are horned: ox, sheep, goat, all the ruminants that I have any knowledge of, are horned: my conclusion therefore is that this is a horned animal. This conclusion is drawn by the force of analogy and association, and not by logical sequence. If the third proposition of the induction, i. e. ox, sheep, goat, all the ruminants that I have any knowledge of, are horned, be expressed as a major premiss of a syllogism and the conclusion drawn from this as a logical sequence, thus; all...