Note 258 — Chapter VIII

It has been objected that to base our view of the existential import of propositions upon the validity or invalidity of immediate inferences is to argue in a circle. “Whether,” it is said, “the immediate inferences are valid or not must be a consequence of the view taken of the existential import of the proposition and should not, therefore, be made a portion of the ground on which that view is based.” This objection involves a confusion between different points of view from which the problem of the relation between the existential import of propositions and the validity of logical operations may be regarded. In section 158 the logical consequences of various assumptions were worked out without any attempt being made to decide between these assumptions. Our point of view is now different; we are investigating the grounds on which one of the assumptions may be preferred to the others, and there is no reason why the consequences previously deduced should not form part of our data for deciding this question. The argument contains nothing that is of the nature of a circulus in probando.