78

Logic 78

been fed with a written statement of fact as premiss.
Since this performance is no more than a machine might go through it has no essential relation to the circumstance that the machine happens to work by an ill-understood arrangement of brain-cells and if there be room for less still less to ht circumstance that a man thinks.
Say if you like that thinking has everything to fo with the life of reasoning I still insist that it has nothing to od with the logical criticism which is equally applicable to the machine's performances and to the man's.
This is simply the question of whether or not the conclusion can be false while the premise is true together with modifications of this question.
Were it a question of whether man can reason ill it might be well to examine the process and mechanism of his thinking.
But there is no question that he often does reason ill and that is the