Note 263 — Chapter VIII

The position taken above in regard to subalternation is very well expressed by Mrs Ladd Franklin. “Nothing of course is now illogical that was ever logical before. It is merely a question of what convention in regard to the existence of terms we adopt before we admit the warm-blooded sentences of real life into the iron moulds of logical manipulation. With the old convention (which was never explicitly stated) subalternation ran thus: No x’s are y’s (and we hereby mean to imply that there are x’s, whatever x may be), therefore, Some x’s are non-y’s. With the new convention the requirement is simply that if it is known that there are x’s (as it is known, of course, in by far the greater number of sentences that it interests us to form) that fact must be expressly stated. The argument then is: No x’s are y’s, There are x’s, therefore, There are x’s which are non-y’s.”