Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic by W. Stebbing

Author:W. Stebbing [Stebbing, W. (William)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-01-06T05:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XIX.

THE EXTENSION OF DERIVATIVE LAWS TO ADJACENT CASES.

Derivative laws are inferior to ultimate laws, both in the extent of the propositions, and in their degree of certainty within that extent. In particular, the uniformities of coexistence and sequence which obtain between effects depending on different primæval causes, vary along with any variation in the collocation of these causes. Even when the derivative uniformity is between different effects of the same cause, it cannot be trusted to, since one or more of the effects may be producible by another cause also. The effects, even, of derivative laws of causation (resulting, i.e. the laws, from the combination of several causes) are not independent of collocations; for, though laws of causation, whether ultimate or derivative, are themselves universal, being fulfilled even when counteracted, the peculiar probability of the latter kind of laws of causation being counteracted (as compared with ultimate laws, which are liable to frustration only from one set of counteracting causes) is fatal to the universality of the derivative uniformities made up of the sequences or coexistences of their effects; and, therefore, such derivative uniformities as the latter are to be relied on only when the collocations are known not to have changed.

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