An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS AND JUDGMENTS. Ill
slightest use in helping men to reason correctly. The
value attached to them is merely an illustration of the
bias of happy exercise
"
(Logic, p. 134).
Although the negative interpretation of propositions
does not claim to be more than a mere convention, it is
less of a convention than we are apt to think ; for when
we make a universal proposition, All S is P, as the
result of enumerating all the instances of S and finding
that "without exception" they are P, the proposition
passes its meaning, so to speak, through a double ne
gation. The proposition denies the exception ; and
in such cases the formula nemo non or nullus non is
the primitive formula, not a circumlocution. As the
words
"
"
without exception
of the universal affirmative is
imply, the primary meaning
" No S is other than P."
Nevertheless, to adopt this convention of Symbolic
Logic as the ordinary logical
doctrine of the inter
pretation of propositions, as Dr Keynes proposes to
do, would be to depart far from ordinary forms and
usages.
6. The question which we now proceed to raise
has been answered by implication in the discussions of
2 and 3 ; but it is of such importance as to require
independent treatment. Is the relation, expressed in
the proposition, a relation between words only, or be
tween ideas, or between things?
No one is likely to assert the first. If the proposi
tion were said to express a "relation between two
names," all that could be meant is that it expressed a
relation between the ideas signified by the names.
Every name must stand for some kind of meaning, or
like Ham
it would never be used. But writers who,
ilton, take the conceptualist view of Logic i.e., try to
keep Logic within a
"
"
world of ideas
without any out-