How We Think

[1] This mode of thinking in its contrast with thoughtful inquiry receives special notice in the next chapter.

[2]Implies is more often used when a principle or general truth brings about belief in some other truth; the other phrases are more frequently used to denote the cases in which one fact or event leads us to believe in something else.

[3] Mill, System of Logic, Introduction, § 5.

[4] Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, first paragraph.

[5] In another place he says: "Men's prejudices and inclinations impose often upon themselves.... Inclination suggests and slides into discourse favorable terms, which introduce favorable ideas; till at last by this means that is concluded clear and evident, thus dressed up, which, taken in its native state, by making use of none but precise determined ideas, would find no admittance at all."

[6]The Conduct of the Understanding, § 3.

[7]Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. IV, ch. XX, "Of Wrong Assent or Error."

[8] Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution, p. 195.

[9] A child of four or five who had been repeatedly called to the house by his mother with no apparent response on his own part, was asked if he did not hear her. He replied quite judicially, "Oh, yes, but she doesn't call very mad yet."

[10] People who have number-forms—i.e. project number series into space and see them arranged in certain shapes—when asked why they have not mentioned the fact before, often reply that it never occurred to them; they supposed that everybody had the same power.

[11] Of course, any one subject has all three aspects: e.g. in arithmetic, counting, writing, and reading numbers, rapid adding, etc., are cases of skill in doing; the tables of weights and measures are a matter of information, etc.

[12] Denoting whatever has to do with the natural constitution and functions of an individual.

[13] These are taken, almost verbatim, from the class papers of students.

[14] This term is sometimes extended to denote the entire reflective process—just as inference (which in the sense of test is best reserved for the third step) is sometimes used in the same broad sense. But reasoning (or ratiocination) seems to be peculiarly adapted to express what the older writers called the "notional" or "dialectic" process of developing the meaning of a given idea.

[15] See Vailati, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. V, No. 12.

[16] In terms of the phrases used in logical treatises, the so-called "methods of agreement" (comparison) and "difference" (contrast) must accompany each other or constitute a "joint method" in order to be of logical use.

[17] These processes are further discussed in Chapter IX.

[18] Compare what was said about analysis.

[19] The term idea is also used popularly to denote (a) a mere fancy, (b) an accepted belief, and also (c) judgment itself. But logically it denotes a certain factor in judgment, as explained in the text.

[20] See Ward, Psychic Factors of Civilization, p. 153.

[21] Thus arise all those falsely analytic methods in geography, reading, writing, drawing, botany, arithmetic, which we have already considered in another connection. (See p. 59.)

[22] James, Principles of Psychology, vol. I, p. 221. To know and to know that are perhaps more precise equivalents; compare "I know him" and "I know that he has gone home." The former expresses a fact simply; for the latter, evidence might be demanded and supplied.

[23]Principles of Psychology, vol. I, p. 488.

[24] The next two paragraphs repeat, for purposes of the present discussion, what we have already noted in a different context. See p. 88 and p. 99.

[25]Psychology, vol. II. p. 342.

[26] Bain, The Senses and Intellect, third American ed., 1879, p. 492 (italics not in original).

[27] Compare the quotation from Bain on p. 155.

[28] The term general is itself an ambiguous term, meaning (in its best logical sense) the related and also (in its natural usage) the indefinite, the vague. General, in the first sense, denotes the discrimination of a principle or generic relation; in the second sense, it denotes the absence of discrimination of specific or individual properties.

[29] A large amount of material illustrating the twofold change in the sense of words will be found in Jevons, Lessons in Logic.