Thinking and Reasoning

In thinking and reasoning we employ signs and symbols as surrogates of perceived aspects of things and their contexts. These surrogates enable us to define perception with an artificial exactness which is not warranted by direct observation. While in origin these signs and symbols are factual enough, their abstraction from the full course of perception, and their differentiation as norms of behavior, involve the creation of a new and special set of configurations which we call categories of thought. These categories are of various sorts, such as verbal, numerical, graphic, mechanical, and tonal designs, leading to such disciplines as grammar and syntax, mathematics, descriptive geometry, mechanics, and music. Each discipline generates its own laws of continuation and precision, articulation and contour, closure and fulfillment. Operations with these abstracted data lead us into a new and artificial world, the creation of man’s mind. This is the world of logic, with its formal methods of dealing with facts. Arising as it does from perception, logic follows the fundamental principle of closure; but whereas the forms of reasoning are the forms of behavior, they are not a direct counterpart of life, but a formulation of life in artificial terms. In order to avoid idle speculation, these formulations must constantly be checked up with perception. Furthermore, there are at least two other kinds of logic with reference to which formal logic must direct its course.