Part 11 (1/2)
1. Football is known to have benefited Henry Harvey.
2. Football is known to have benefited Frank Barrs.
3. Football is known to have benefited Penn Armstrong.
(Deduction.)
1. The game affords the players regular exercise.
2. The game takes them out in the open air.
3. The game develops the lungs.
The deductive reasoning expressed in full would be:--
(1) A. All games that afford the players regular exercise benefit them physically.
B. Football affords the players regular exercise.
C. Therefore football benefits the players physically.
The reasoning given in (2) and (3) may be expressed in similar syllogisms.
To test the inductive part of this argument, one should determine how well the three examples show the existence of a general law. To test the deductive part, he should ask whether the premises, both those stated and those suppressed, are admitted facts, or whether they need to be proved.
If all reasoning were purely inductive or purely deductive, and if it always appeared in as simple a form as in the preceding ill.u.s.tration, one would have little difficulty in cla.s.sifying and testing it. But frequently the two kinds appear in such obscure form and in such varied combinations that only an expert logician can separate and cla.s.sify them. Because of this difficulty, it is worth while to know a second method of cla.s.sification, one which is often of greater practical service than the method already discussed in a.s.sisting the arguer to determine what methods of reasoning are strong and what are weak. A knowledge of this cla.s.sification is also very helpful to one who is searching for ways in which to generate proof. This method considers proof from the standpoint of its use in practical argument; it teaches not so much the different ways in which the mind may work, as the ways in which it must work to arrive at a sound conclusion.
1. ARGUMENT FROM ANTECEDENT PROBABILITY.
_The process of reasoning from cause to effect is known as the argument from antecedent probability._ Whenever a thinking man is asked to believe a statement, he is much readier to accept it as true if some reasonable _cause_ is a.s.signed for the existence of the fact that is being established. The argument from antecedent probability supplies this cause. The reasoning may be from the past toward the present, or from the present toward the future. If an inspector condemns a bridge as unsafe, the question arises, ”What has made it so?” If some one prophesies a rise in the price of railroad bonds, he is not likely to be believed unless he can show an adequate cause for the increase. In itself, the establishment of a cause proves nothing. A bridge may have been subjected to great strain and still be unimpaired. Though at present there may be ample cause for a future rise in the securities market, some other condition may intervene and prevent its operation. The a.s.signment of a cause can at best establish merely a _probability_, and yet the laws of cause and effect are so fundamental that man is usually loath to believe that a condition exists or will exist, until he knows what has brought it about or what will bring it about. A course of reasoning which argues that a proposition is true because the fact affirmed is the logical result of some adequate cause is called _argument from antecedent probability_.
Simple examples of this kind of reasoning are found in the following sentences: ”It will rain because an east wind is blowing”; ”As most of our officers in the standing army have been West Point graduates, the United States military system has reached a high standard of efficiency.” The following are more extended ill.u.s.trations:--
It appears to have been fully established that, in certain industries, various economies in production--such as eliminating cross freights, concentrating the superintending force, running best plants to full capacity, etc.--can be made from production on a large scale, or, in other instances, through the combination of different establishments favorably located in different sections of the country.
It is, of course, not to be expected that any one source of saving will be found applicable in all industries, nor that the importance of any will be the same in different industries; but in many industries enough sources of saving will be found to make combination profitable.
This statement does not ignore the fact that there may be, in many instances, disadvantages enough to offset the benefits; but experience does seem to show that, in many cases, at least, the cost of manufacture, and distribution is materially lessened.
Granting that these savings can be made, it is evident that the influence of Industrial Combinations might readily be to lower prices to consumers. [Footnote: Jeremiah W. Jenks, North American Review, June, 1901, page 907.]
In attempting to prove that operas can be successfully produced in English, Francis Rogers says:--
We have a poetic literature of marvelous richness. Only the Germans can lay claim to a lyric wealth as great as ours. The language we inherit is an extraordinarily rich one. A German authority credits it with a vocabulary three times as large as that of France, the poorest, in number of words, of all the great languages. With such an enormous fund of words to choose from it seems as if we should be able to express our thoughts not only with unparalleled exactness and subtlety, but also with unequalled variety of sound. Further it is probable that English surpa.s.ses the other three great languages of song, German, Italian, and French, in number of distinguishable vowel sounds, but in questions of ear authorities usually differ, and it is hazardous to claim in this an indubitable supremacy. It seems certain, however, that English has rather more than twice as many vowel sounds as Italian (the poorest language in this respect), which has only seven or eight. [Footnote: Scribner's, January, 1909, p. 42.]
Since reasoning from antecedent probability can at best establish only a strong presumption, and since it is often not of sufficient weight to accomplish even this, an arguer, to be successful, must know the tests that determine how strong and how weak an argument of this sort is. He may apply these tests both to his own reasoning and to the reasoning of others. The first test is:--
(1) _Is the a.s.signed cause of sufficient strength to produce the alleged effect?_
The significance of this question is at once apparent. In the case of a criminal prosecution, it asks whether the accused had sufficient motive for performing the deed. In connection with political and economic propositions that advocate a change in existing conditions, this test asks whether the new method proposed is sufficiently virile and far-reaching actually to produce the excellent results antic.i.p.ated. A few years ago the advocates of free silver were maintaining that ”sixteen to one” would be a sure cure for all poverty and financial distress. A careful application of this test would have materially weakened such an argument. Believers in reformatory rather than punitive methods of imprisonment say it is antecedently probable that kind treatment, healthful surroundings, and instruction in various directions will reclaim most criminals to an honest life.
Before accepting or rejecting this argument, one should decide in his own mind whether or not such treatment is adequate to make a released convict give up his former criminal practices.
If the argument stands the first test, the next question to ask is:--