Appendix 11. - (209)
[Stewart's understanding of general ideas]
Stewart seems also to have been led astray over the existence of universal ideas by his failure to notice that relationships between things are resolved into general ideas, and are the basis of common nouns. In fact, a common noun designates an ens by both a common quality and by a relationship. When I utter, for example, the common noun man, I indicate the individual in a genus formed by the common quality humanity. On the other hand, when I say son, I indicate the individual in the genus formed by the relationship of filiality, which also is common to a number of individuals.
To conceive a relationship is to have a general idea, one of those ideas which form genera and give rise to common nouns. If Stewart had noted this, he would not have thought that he had demonstrated the non-existence of general ideas by replacing them with the idea of relationship nor that a reasoning is understood without any need for universal ideas but only by means of ideas of relationship. He says:
|
|
From what has been said, it follows that the assent we give to the conclusion of a syllogism does not result from any examination of the notions expressed by the different propositions of which it is composed, but is an immediate consequence of the relations in which the words stand to one another. |
The fact, accepted by both parties and proving the necessity of general ideas, is this:
|
|
...in every syllogism the inference is only a particular instance of the GENERAL AXIOM |
not mere signs, therefore,
|
|
that whatever is true universally of any sign, must also be true of every individual which that sign can be employed to express. |
In a syllogism, nothing is predicated of the sign, but always of the thing indicated
|
|
Admitting, therefore, that every process of reasoning may be resolved into a series of syllogisms, it follows that this operation of the mind furnishes no proof of the existence of anything corresponding to general terms, distinct from the individuals to which these terms are applicable. |