pplied by
the mind, not 'given' to it.]

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,
a