A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive

by John Stuart Mill

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Philosophy, Logic, Science

586 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's.

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolute marvel. Mill outlines the nature of logical classhood (a precursor to set theory, and Boolean algebra) while extending this manner of ratiocinative and inductive thought (as derived from Hume and Descartes) in order to branch out the bare bone outline of what is to become the nature of scientific analysis as a determination of logical cuts in data that determine thresholds for agental action.

Mill is able to explain the limits of his methodologies all the while noting the nature of logical thought as being often illusionary. We use experimentation in an attempt to calibrate our taxonomic categories all the while we use our taxonomic categories in attempt to verify our agental relations. In effect, this provides the basis for both logic, economics, technocractics, programming, science and mathematics as a methodology for determining effective (objective) difference in our world! You can see the influence of philosophy (Kant, Descartes, Leibniz, Euclid and so on) all the while you see how Mill marvelously and clearly colonizes a cautious methodology for what is assumed to be a rational world. The absent clockmaker indeed!

I understand how this book is dated, and yet, how its difficulty would be rejected from the studies of many young people. But I wish we could have this kind of elucidation in our education so that people can begin to learn the possibility of how their thinking can be structured in various ways. Logic never decides anything, it only suggests consistencies given specific determinations. We never can know the specific determinations as being the right "level" of explanation however, and that's the fascinating conundrum we are often given in our daily lives, our personal relationships and our scientific explorations. Too often do we reason backwards, in an attempt to make the world fit the easiest, most consistent view of our opinions. This illicit extension of rationality is addressed early on in this book, as Mill shows us the role of logic (as first posited by Kant) with the nature of induction as the root of scientific inquiry. There is no basis for any possibility, only conjecture at a given level. This kind of ratiocination is well worth the read. Bravo! I look forward to the rest of the second volume.

[LindaH · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm on page 451 in my ebook edition of A System of Logic, having reached the end of Book I, which has the title of "Of Names And Propositions". Only five Books to go.

Please let me come back as the child of a philosopher, who will teach me Greek along with my ABCs so I'll be able to read all of Aesop's Fables in the original language by the time I'm 8, and be familiar with six of Plato's Dialogues too, and start Latin at 12...like young John Stuart Mill.

I'm enjoying this text...no, following this text, which, given the length and precision of some of the sentences, is no easy feat. I especially liked the last chapter in Book I, "Of Definition". Mill pretty much thinks like I do about definitions.

I think.

[Seth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Outdated (famously, Mill espouses naive direct reference theory, and Frege subsequently started a huge debate over that), and Mill spends much more time going into detail about his system than defending it, and he makes some weird assertions (e.g., he insists on on a kind of prototypical logical positivism - outdated, again - reducing all claims about the external world to claims about sense data, and then turns around and says that minds - plural, not merely one's own - are features of the world about which we must speak directly, seemingly unaware of the contradiction). Not recommended reading in the 21st century.

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am biased but given its providence it is a gear work.