The Science of Correct Thinking

Logic

Fr. Celestine N. Bittle

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789120080
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

First published in 1935, the author of this book has attempted to treat the most fundamental department of philosophy—logic—by combining the advantages of both textbooks and monographs, and by avoiding undue complication and technicality. Through the use of simple language and numerous illustrations, Fr. Bittle endeavoured to render the subject understandable, and as such this book is intended as a textbook or as supplementary reading in classwork, or as an introduction to philosophy for the general reader."Philosophy cannot be made easy, but it certainly can be made less difficult. At the same time, the technical side of logic has not been omitted, but has been built up in gradual stages, so that the mind of the student can grow with the subject."—Fr. Celestine N. Bittle

PART I—IDEA AND TERM

CHAPTER I—NATURE OF THE IDEA

Ideas are the building stones of knowledge. They are the elements that constitute judgments; and judgments express truth and error. This being the case, ideas in all their forms must be thoroughly understood by the philosopher, because no building can be solid unless its foundation is solid.

FORMATION OF IDEAS

The process of forming ideas will assist us in understanding their nature. All knowledge starts with the senses. Thus, sugar is presented as an object of perception to various senses. I see it—it is white; I feel it—it is hard and granular; I taste it—it is sweet. The combination of something ‘white,’ ‘hard and granular,’ and ‘sweet’ forms an image in the inner sense, the imagination and memory; and this image is retained even after the object itself, the actual sugar, is removed, because I can recall this image of sugar when I hear the word ‘sugar.’ In a similar way, when words like ‘man,’ ‘automobile,’ ‘dog,’ ‘shovel,’ ‘mountain,’ ‘paper,’ ‘desk,’ ‘rain,’ ‘school,’ ‘hat,’ ‘New York,’ ‘Century of Progress Exposition,’ ‘George Washington,’ ‘Franklin D. Roosevelt,’ and so forth, are mentioned, I can recall their image as long as I have perceived them in fact or have heard or have read of them. Say “Rat!” to a terrier, and watch him start, prick up his ears, bark, and dash madly about in excitement; by means of his memory and imagination he revives the image of a rat that he has seen. This image or phantasm of the imagination is the first step in the formation of the idea.

Man, unlike the brute animal, does not stop at the mere reproduction of an image in his fancy. In the presence of this image man’s mind begins to think. The intellect now gives its attention to this sense-image in order to make its own representation of the thing. It does this by a process of abstraction. An example will make this clearer. Through experience we come in contact with many beings which we designate by the common name ‘man,’ and we soon find that there are great differences between them. Some are small, some are large, some are of medium height; some are thin, some are stout; some are male, others are female; some are blond, others brunette, others black; in some the skin is white, in others yellow or brown or copper-colored or black; some are bearded, others not; some are virtuous, others vicious; some are phlegmatic, others lively; some are melancholy, others gay; some are normal in limb, others crippled; some are healthy, others diseased; and in age they range all the way from infancy to a century. The intellect, noticing and comparing these differences, soon discovers that many of these characteristics change or disappear, while others take their place. The intellect also perceives that certain characteristics remain intact through all changes. Thus, all men have a body, which exists for itself, independent of all others; man, therefore, is a bodily substance. Like the plants, men take in food, assimilate it, grow, develop; man is a living bodily substance. Like the brutes, men see, hear, taste, smell, feel, imagine, remember; man is a sentient, living, bodily substance. Unlike them, men think, reason; man is a rational, sentient, living, bodily substance. And while the intellect perceives these characteristics, it also perceives that they are found in all men at all times and in all places, and without them ‘man’ would cease to be a ‘man.’ True, some men lose their sense of sight or hearing or taste or smell; but some form of sense-life is always retained, so that they are always sentient beings. Other characteristics may be more or less permanent, like arms, legs, bones, sex, etc.; but the intellect sees clearly that a ‘man’ would still be a ‘man’ without them; but ‘man’ must be a rational, sentient, living, bodily substance in order to be a ‘man,’ and the absence of any one of these would make him cease to be a ‘man.’ They are, therefore, the essential elements which constitute his human nature; they belong to man as man.

The intellect now strips (in thought, of course, not in reality) the individuals of all the non-essential qualities, retains the essential attributes only, and forms them into one intellectual image—’man’ is a ‘rational, sentient, living, bodily substance’—and since a ‘sentient, living, bodily substance’ is called an ‘animal,’ man is a rational animal. This intellectual image of ‘man’ is the idea of ‘man.’

Another example: We perceive an innumerable variety of plants which we call ‘trees.’ Disregarding all the differences among them in size, age, color, texture, shape, seasonal change, sex, etc., the intellect retains merely the essential elements of the type, those found in all trees, and combines them into a single intellectual image or idea: namely, a ‘tree’ is a ‘woody perennial plant with a single main stem, usually about at least ten feet high.’ Again, we observe a multitude of ‘circles’ in rings, wheels, clock dials, coins, disks, drawings, etc., consisting of a variety of materials, sizes, and colors. Leaving all the differentiating peculiarities aside, the intellect seizes upon those elements which are common to them all and are necessary to them all as ‘circles,’ and forms these elements into the idea of the mathematical figure of a ‘circle’; namely, ‘a plane figure bounded by a single curved line called its circumference, every part of which is equally distant from a point within it, called the center.’ Just as the idea of ‘man’ will fit each and every man, so the idea of ‘tree’ will fit each and every tree and the idea of ‘circle’ will apply to any and all circles, irrespective of their individual differences among themselves.

The intellect, of course, will make its own image or representation even of a single object, without comparing it with similar objects of its class. Thus, by merely putting my attention to the tree across the street and thinking about it, my intellect makes an idea of it, even if I never see another tree. This idea would be a real, though not the most complete, idea of a ‘tree.’ To become complete, I would have to compare this tree with others and make an intellectual image of the essence of all trees. Ideas or concepts are therefore twofold. In a wider sense an idea is the simple intellectual apprehension of a thing, and it is made as soon as the intellect turns its attention to an object and makes its own image of the thing from the phantasm. In a narrower and stricter sense an idea is the intellectual image of a thing, representing its essential elements, and this is the product of an extensive and exhaustive comparison of a large number of objects belonging to the same class. Since, however, there is only a difference of degree between the idea in a wider and the idea in a stricter sense, our definition must include both. Hence we define the idea (concept) as the intellectual image or representation of a thing. This covers everything.

IDEA AND PHANTASM

There is always great danger of confusing the phantasm (sense-image) of the imagination with the idea (concept) of the intellect. There is a marked difference between the two, and from the very outset it is necessary to grasp and understand this difference very clearly. A close comparison of the two will remove any existing confusion.

For one thing, the phantasm is always something concrete and individual, fitting at the most only a few objects at one and the same time. We have indeed general images of a dog, a horse, a fish, a tree, a house, a polar bear, a man, etc.; but this is only because we retain in such an image the more striking and similar features of a class and ignore the distinguishing characteristics of the individuals. But we cannot form a phantasm or sense-image of all the members of a class, much less of a number of classes taken together. For instance: Our imagination can make a general picture or phantasm of a ‘rose,’ but it cannot make a phantasm that will fit a red rose and a white rose at the same time, because the image will fit either the red rose or the white rose but not both. Similarly, with the general phantasm of a ‘tree,’ what image can cover at the same time the wine-glass shape of an elm, the pyramidal shape of a fir, the spherical shape of a maple, and the fan-spread shape of a palm? So, too, with the general phantasm of a ‘dog’; it cannot cover at the same time the peculiarities of a pekingese, a bulldog, a dachshund, and a mastiff. The same is true of the general phantasm of ‘man’; no single image will adequately fit at the same time a baby, a ten-year-old boy, a twenty-year-old girl, Henry VIII, Napoleon, George Washington, and the more than four-score-and-ten John D. Rockefeller. One can multiply such instances indefinitely. The phantasm becomes utterly inadequate and impossible, when applied to several classes at once. No single phantasm of a ‘plant’ can include at the same time the hollyhock, the pumpkin, the lily, the apple tree, the cedar, the hawthorn, the grapevine, the wisteria, etc. Much less can the single phantasm of a ‘living being’ cover the characteristics of an amoeba, a whale, a rose, an orange, a spider, an elephant, a chrysanthemum, a horse, an Indian, a Negro, Abraham Lincoln, etc. The reason is plain: the senses picture single concrete objects, and the imagination makes its images or phantasms from these sense pictures; therefore, the phantasm is also concrete and individual by nature.

The reverse is true of the idea or concept of the intellect: it is universal and for this reason applies with equal facility to an individual and to a class and to a number of classes. Take the idea of ‘man’ as a rational animal. By ‘rational’ we mean a being that has the power to think and by ‘animal’ we mean a sentient being; by ‘man’ we therefore designate ‘a sentient being that has the power to think.’ This idea applies at the same time to every single human being taken individually and to all men taken as a class. It fits the infant, the child, the youth, the middle-aged and the old-aged person; it fits male and female; the Negro, the Caucasian, the Indian, the Chinese, the Polynesian; the large and the small, the slim and the stout, the healthy and the sick, the blond and the brunette. Now extend the class to include another. Take the idea of ‘animal’ as ‘a sentient being.’ This idea embraces all brutes and all men without any difficulty—the reptiles, the insects, the fishes, the birds, the mammals, and all men. The idea ‘living being’ will apply not only to all brutes and men, but will also include all plants of whatever nature and kind. Going a step farther in the scale of beings, we have the idea of ‘substance’ by which we designate ‘a being that exists in and by and for itself and does not need another as a subject in which to inhere.’ This applies to all inorganic beings, metallic and non-metallic, ranging from electrons and atoms up to the stars and the universe, and applies also to the entire field of the kingdom of plants, animals, and men. Not only does this idea fit the various classes as a whole but also each and every individual belonging to these classes. Here you have one of the main differences between an idea and a phantasm.

Another difference: A phantasm, being a sensible image, becomes very vague and indistinct with complexity and minuteness of details. We can readily form a phantasm of five trees in a row. But to imagine fifty (not forty-nine or fifty-one) trees in a row will be for most people an impossible task. To imagine five thousand (not more or less) trees in a row is an utter impossibility. But my idea of five thousand or five million trees is just as clear to my intellect as five or ten; I have no more difficulty in understanding the number 5,000,000 trees than I have in understanding the number 4,999,999 or 5.000,001. Similarly, in geometry a ‘line’ is conceived as having length but no width; in other words, a line has dimension in one direction only. While this idea of a line is perfectly clear to my intellect, the phantasm or sense-image of a line will always be cast in two dimensions—length and width. Again, a geometrical ‘point’ is ‘a limit terminating a line’ or ‘that which has position but no magnitude’; a ‘point,’ therefore, as considered in geometry, has position, but it has neither length nor width nor depth. However, just as little as any draftsman can make a point without giving it magnitude (for he will always make it something like a ‘period’ at the end of a printed sentence), just as little can the phantasm picture it without magnitude. But the intellect finds no difficulty in formulating the idea of a mathematical ‘point,’ as we see by the very fact of its definition.

Finally, there are many things of which we have a very clear idea, but of which no reasonable phantasm can be formed. Everybody sp...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENT
• AUTHOR’S PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I-IDEA AND TERM
• PART II-JUDGMENT AND PROPOSITION
• PART III-INFERENCE AND ARGUMENTATION: DEDUCTION
• PART IV-INFERENCE AND ARGUMENTATION: INDUCTION
• GLOSSARY OF DEFINITIONS
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER