Note 53 — VIII THE CONTROL OF IDEAS BY FACTS

Mill's doctrine of the ambiguity of the copula (Logic, Book I, chap. IV, § 1) is an instance of one typical way of evading the problem. After insisting with proper force and clearness upon the objective character of our intellectual beliefs and propositions, viz., that when we say fire causes heat we mean actual phenomena, not our ideas of fire and heat (Book I, chap. II and chap. XI, § 1, and chap. V, § 1), he thinks to dispose of the whole problem of the "is" in judgment by saying that it is only a sign of affirmation (chap. I, § 2, and chap. IV, § 1). Of course it is. But unless the affirmation (the sign of thought) "agrees" or "corresponds with" the relations of the phenomena, what becomes of the doctrine of the objective import of propositions? How otherwise shall we maintain with Mill (and with common-sense and science) the difference between asserting "a fact of external nature" and "a fact in my mental history"?