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

24
THE NAME, THE TERM, THE CONCEPT,
table, and the table is at once opposed at least to
vacuity,
if not to other articles of furniture. In this
sense, every name is relative. It is possible, however,
to distinguish
"
relative
"
names in a narrower sense, as
Mill has done. "A name is relative, when over and
above the object which it denotes, it implies the exist
ence of another object deriving its denomination from
"
the same fact which is the ground of the first name
:
e.g., "father, child," both terms implying the facts of
parentage; "king, subject," both implying one of the
modes of government. Such pairs of names are called
correlatives.
6. Let us now characterise more precisely the kind
of idea which we use in judgment.
Why do we express our thoughts at all? Because
thought forms a common ground in which different
minds can meet, and which affords them a means of
mutual understanding. Every judgment gives informa
tion ; it points outwards by means of language to other
minds, to whom, actually or in imagination, it is always
addressed. Hence when we express a judgment in the
form of a proposition, S is P, there are two conditions
which the terms must fulfil :
(a) Each term ought to have the same meaning for
the mind using it, at one time, as it has at every other
time ; otherwise it would not be the genuine identifica
tion of a thought ;
(b) Each term ought to have a meaning for other
minds beside the one which judges, otherwise no infor
mation is conveyed; and it ought to have identically
the same meaning for all these various minds, for
otherwise the information
conveyed is confused or
misunderstood.
Thus we see that the meaning of a term in judging,