MS 843 (1908) - A Neglected Argument - Fragments

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Various interwoven drafts (sometimes on different sides of same pages) and associated fragments

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O.52

is all moonshine." This is sound argument; but of all forms of presumption it is quite the weakest. I accordingly term it "Crude" Induction or Presumption. It is the only kind of Induction which strictly justifies the inference of a logically universal conclusion from single instances; and this conclusion presents itself in the negative form, "No S is P," which is equivalent to "No object is at once S and P."

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Now every step of argumentation walks on two legs. The leg that is put forward I call the "copulate premiss" for the reason that if there be two premisses, the reasoning cannot proceed until the reasoner has consciously copulated them together. Thus, "Enoch and Elijah were men, and all men die" is the "copulate premiss" of a syllogism. The copulate premiss contains all that the reasoner must consciously judge to be true before he can take the argumentative step. The other leg, which, though behind and unnoticed, alone gives propulsion to the step, is its governing logical principle. Whether [it] intrudes among the premisses or not, it must be active as a habit or disposition in the reasoner's mind.

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the inquirer's making up a sample of a given class of objects, say the Ms, the exact number of the objects in the sample having been determined upon before the first was drawn, by successively drawing single Ms from the entire class under every possible precaution, equally against his being in any way, directly or indirectly, influenced toward taking an M into the sample by the fact of its possessing one certain character, say that of being P, this character having been predesignate antecedently to any drawing, and against his being influenced in the contrary way; and then after the sample has been comple

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If all the arguments that proceed upon any one given principle depend upon the truth of any one proposition, it will suffice if that be in the reasoner's mind, as an active habit, as it certainly must be [be]fore he can veraciously judge it to be true. It therefore belongs to the propulsive leg of the argumentative step and not to that leg which people unwisely call their "best face," because forsooth they put it forward. Such for example is the fact that every reasoner possesses a fund of accumulated experience of objects, of events, and of tendencies. Consequently when I reason, "In all my experience of objects there is not one that is at once S and P," and therefore presumably there never will be such a one, the deference to that great multitude of experience of objects is not logically a

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ted to the predetermined number, and the proportion of its members that are P having been ascertained, in his inferring that approximately the same proportion of Ms will, most likely, be P throughout experience, or would be so if general conditions were to remain unchanged. I call this sort of inference 'Quantitative Probation,' or the inference I term the Second Order of Inductive Probabation is Approximative Induction. It is either of the Qualitative or of the Quantitative family, according as the weight of the instances can only be estimated or can be ascertained by measurement of by counting. We need only describe

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