A New Law of Thought and Its Logical Bearings

by E. E. Constance Jones, G. F. Stout (Introduction)

Overview

MISS JONES'S object in this [book] is to propound "a certain analysis of categorical propositions of the forms S is P, S is not P, to show that this is the only general analysis which it is possible to accept, and to indicate its bearing upon logical science." We need propositions of these forms for significant assertion, and without them no satisfactory statement can be given of the three fundamental laws of thought. The first two of these are commonly formulated as (1) A is A, (2) A is not non-A, and the third sometimes as A is either A or non-A. Desperate efforts have been made by logicians to give a valuable meaning to A is A; but if A is A, interpreted as A is A, is retained as the first fundamental law, there is no possible passage from it to A is B. Lotze therefore gives up (theoretically) S is P. A is A tells us no more than A is A, and if we begin with it, we must also end with it, if we are to be consistent. We must, then, not begin with it, but with a law of significant assertion—assertion of the forms S is P, S is not P. If we start with the principle that every subject of Predication is an identity (of denotation) in diversity (of intension) this law and the laws of contradiction and excluded middle do furnish a real and adequate and obvious basis and starting point of "formal logic.

Miss Jones illustrates and applies her contention in a concise but interesting way, and Prof. Stout thinks that she makes out her case.

— Nature, Volume 87 [1911]

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663520753
Publisher:	Dapper Moose Entertainment
Publication date:	06/23/2020
Series:	Girton College Studies , #4
Pages:	86
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.21(d)

About the Author

Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones (19 February 1848 – 9 April 1922) known as Constance Jones or E.E. Constance Jones, was an English philosopher and educator. She worked in logic and ethics. Her most significant contribution to philosophy was in logic and she was widely regarded to be an authority in this area by her contemporaries. Her major work is A New Law of Thought and its Logical Bearings (Cambridge, 1911). She was chiefly concerned with the import and interpretation of propositions. G.F. Stout says of her: "She did good service in insisting on the distinction between interpretation from the point of view of the speaker and that of the hearer". In her autobiography, Jones wrote of an early fascination with issues related to the nature and structure of content: "This unsettled question—what is asserted when you make a statement, and what is the proper form of statement?—had deeply interested me from the time when I was a student and puzzled over Mill's and Jevons' accounts of propositions