CHAPTER VI

THE FAILURE OF FORMAL LOGIC

In order to escape the necessity of concerning itself with personality and particular circumstances in questions of truth and error, Intellectualism appeals to Logic, which it conceives as a purely formal science and its impregnable citadel.  This appeal, however, rests on a number of questionable assumptions, and most of these are not avowed.

1.  It assumes that forms of thought can be treated in abstraction from their matter—­in other words, that the general types of thinking are never affected by the particular context in which they occur.  Now, this means that the question of real truth must not be raised; for, as we have seen (Chapter V.), real truth is always an affair of particular consequences.  The result is, that as truth-claims are no longer tested, they all pass as true for Logic, and are even raised to the rank of ‘absolute truths,’ or are mistaken for them.  For the notion of a really (’materially’) true judgment which someone has chosen, made, and tested, there is substituted that of a formally valid proposition, and in the end Logic gets so involved in the study of ‘validity’ that it puts aside altogether all real tests of truth, and becomes a game with verbal symbols which is entirely irrelevant to scientific thinking.

2.  Formal Logic assumes the right of abstracting from the whole process of making an assertion.  It presumes that the assertion has already been made somehow.  How, it does not inquire.  Yet it is clear that in each case there were concrete reasons why just that assertion was preferred to any other.  These concrete reasons it makes bold to dismiss as ‘psychological,’ and between ‘logic’ and ’psychology’[F] it decrees an absolute divorce.  Where, when, why, by and to whom, an assertion was made, is taken to be irrelevant, and put aside as ‘extralogical.’

3.  This convenient assumption, however, ultimately necessitates an abstraction from meaning, though Formal Logic does not avow this openly.  Every assertion is meant to convey a certain meaning in a certain context, and therefore its verbal ‘form’ has to take on its own individual nuance of meaning.  What any particular form of words does in fact mean on any particular occasion always depends upon the use of the words in a particular context.  Meaning, therefore, cannot be depersonalized; if meanings are depersonalized, they cease to be real, and become verbal.

Formal Logic has, in fact, mistaken words, which are (within the same language) identical on all occasions, for the thoughts they are intended to express, which are varied to suit each occasion.  Words alone are tolerant of the abstract treatment Formal Logic demands.  This ‘science,’ therefore, finally reduces to mere verbalism, distracted by inconsistent relapses into ‘psychology.’