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A LOGICAL
INTRODUCTION TO
PROBABILITY AND
INDUCTION
A LOGICAL
INTRODUCTION
TO PROBABILITY
AND INDUCTION
F R A N Z HU B E R University
of Toronto
1
1
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For password access please contact the author at franz.huber@utoronto.ca
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Logic 1
1.1. Propositional Logic 1
1.2. Predicate Logic 7
1.3. Exercises 14
Readings 19
2. Set Theory 21
2.1. Elementary Postulates 21
2.2. Exercises 28
Readings 35
3. Induction 36
3.1. Confirmation and induction 36
3.2. The problem of induction 38
3.3. Hume’s argument 41
Readings 46
vi CONTENTS
4. Deductive Approaches to Confirmation 47

4.1. Analysis and explication 47
4.2. The ravens paradox 49
4.3. The prediction criterion 53
4.4. The logic of confirmation 55
4.5. The satisfaction criterion 62
4.6. Falsificationism 65
4.7. Hypothetico-deductive confirmation 69
4.8. Exercises 72
Readings 74
5. Probability 75
5.1. The probability calculus 75
5.2. Examples 81
5.3. Conditional probability 84
5.4. Elementary consequences 87
5.5. Probabilities on languages 92
5.6. Exercises 94
Readings 97
6. The Classical Interpretation of Probability 98

6.1. The principle of indifference 98
6.2. Bertrand’s paradox 100
6.3. The paradox of water and wine 106
Reading 110
7. The Logical Interpretation of Probability 111

7.1. State descriptions and structure descriptions 111
7.2. Absolute confirmation and incremental
confirmation 122
7.3. Carnap on Hempel 123
7.4. The justification of logic 126
CONTENTS vii
7.5. The new riddle of induction 132

7.6. Exercises 137
Readings 138
8. The Subjective Interpretation of Probability 139

8.1. Degrees of Belief 139
8.2. The Dutch Book Argument 140
8.3. The Gradational Accuracy Argument 147
8.4. Bayesian Confirmation Theory 155
8.5. Updating 168
8.6. Bayesian Decision Theory 173
8.7. Exercises 180
Readings 185
9. The Chance Interpretation of Probability 187

9.1. Chances 187
9.2. Probability in physics 190
9.3. The principal principle 195
Readings 203
10. The (Limiting) Relative Frequency

Interpretation of Probability 204
10.1. The justification of induction 204
10.2. The straight(-forward) rule 207
10.3. Random variables 215
10.4. Independent and identically distributed
random variables 217
10.5. The strong law of large numbers 222
10.6. Degrees of belief, chances, and relative
frequencies 227
10.7. Descriptive statistics 230
10.8. The central limit theorem 238
viii CONTENTS
10.9. Inferential statistics 243

10.10. Exercises 255
Readings 257
11. Alternative Approaches to Induction 259

11.1. Formal learning theory 259
11.2. Putnam’s argument 265
Readings 268
References 271
Index 283
P R E FA C E
A Logical Introduction to Probability and Induction is an

introduction to the mathematics of the probability calculus
and its applications in philosophy. On the mathematical side,
we will study those parts of propositional and predicate logic
as well as elementary set theory that we need to formulate
the probability calculus. On the philosophical side, we will
mainly be concerned with the so-called problem of induction
and its reception in the philosophy of science, where it is
often discussed under the heading of ‘confirmation theory.’ In
addition, we will consider various interpretations of probability.
These are philosophical accounts of the nature of probability
that interpret the mathematical structure that is the probability
calculus.
The book is divided into five sections. The first section,
Chapters 1–2, provides us with the relevant background in logic
and set theory. It will occupy the first two weeks.
The second section, Chapters 3–5, covers Hume’s argument
for the thesis that we cannot justify induction; Hempel’s work
on the logic of confirmation and the ravens paradox; Popper’s
falsificationism and hypothetico-deductive confirmation; as
x PREFACE
well as Kolmogorov’s axiomatization of the probability calculus.

It will occupy three to four weeks.
The third section, Chapters 6–8, covers the classical,
logical, and subjective interpretation of probability. Topics
include Carnap’s inductive logic and the distinction between
absolute and incremental confirmation; Goodman’s philosophy
of induction and the new riddle of induction; Haack’s dilemma
for deduction; the Dutch Book and gradational accuracy
arguments for the thesis that subjective degrees of belief ought
to obey the probability calculus; Bayesian confirmation theory;
update rules for subjective probabilities or probabilistic degrees
of belief; as well as Bayesian decision theory. It will occupy four
to five weeks.
The fourth section, Chapters 9–10, is devoted to the chance
and (limiting) relative frequency interpretation of probability.
Topics include probability in physics; Lewis’ principal principle
relating subjective probabilities and chances; Reichenbach’s
“straight-(forward) rule;” the strong law of large numbers
relating chances and (limiting) relative frequencies; descriptive
statistics and the distinction between singular and generic
variables; the central limit theorem relating sample means and
expected values; as well as estimation with confidence intervals
and the testing of statistical hypotheses. It will occupy four
weeks and contains a section on the interplay between the three
major interpretations of probability: subjective probabilities,
chances, and relative frequencies.
Along the way, we will come across probability puzzles
such as Bertrand’s paradox and the paradox of water and
wine, as well as paradoxes from logic and set theory such as
the liar paradox and Russell’s paradox. Sections 10.3.-10.9 are
centered around the strong law of large numbers and the central
limit theorem. They are mathematically advanced and can be
considered optional.
PREFACE xi
The last week of a course is usually best spent reviewing

material from previous weeks, and, perhaps, putting things
in perspective by mentioning alternative approaches. The final
section, Chapter 11, contains a suggestion.
The primary aim of this book is to equip students with the
ability to successfully carry out arguments, which is arguably
(sic!) the most important philosophical skill. Fifty exercises that
may be solved in groups rather than individually will help attain
this end. Another skill that is important in philosophy is the
ability to draw conceptual distinctions. Students are best asked
to explain some of the distinctions introduced in this textbook
jointly in the classroom, and individually, in the form of exam
questions similar to those listed in the instructor’s manual. The
latter also contains the solutions to the fifty exercises.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very grateful to Claus Beisbart, Joseph Berkovitz, Michael

Miller, Jonathan Weisberg, and, especially, Alan Hájek, Rory
Harder, and Christopher Hitchcock for their helpful feedback
on an earlier draft of this book. Rory Harder has also created
the figures.
A LOGICAL
INTRODUCTION TO
PROBABILITY AND
INDUCTION
CHAPTER 1
Logic
1.1 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC
The sentence “Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany in August

2017” means, or expresses, the proposition that Angela Merkel
is chancellor of Germany in August 2017. Sentences come in
at least two forms: as abstract types and as concrete tokens.
Consider:
Toronto is a city. Toronto is a city. It is not the case that

Toronto is not a city.
Is there one sentence in the above line, or are there two

sentences, or even three? The correct answer depends on
whether we understand sentences as tokens or as types. There
are two sentence types and three sentence tokens in the line.
Both are different from the one proposition that these three
sentence tokens express, or mean, viz. that Toronto is a city.
Logicians are lazy. They use propositional variables, or
sentence letters, as place-holders (“variables”) for sentence
tokens. For instance:
p Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany in August 2017.

q Toronto is a city.
r The Great Wall of China stretches from east to west.
.. ..
. .
2 INTRODUCTION TO PROBABILITY AND INDUCTION
Sentence tokens can be combined, or connected, to form more

complex sentence tokens by connectives:
Negation: ¬ it is not the case that . . .

(¬q) It is not the case that Toronto is a city.
Conjunction: ∧ (&, .) . . . and . . .
(q ∧ r) The Great Wall of China stretches from east to west,
and Toronto is a city.
Disjunction: ∨ (from the Latin word ‘vel’ that has the same
meaning as the combination of English words ‘and/or’) . . .
and/or . . .; . . . or . . . (or both)
(p ∨ q) The Great Wall of China stretches from east to west,
or Toronto is a city (or both).
Material Conditional: → (⊃) if . . ., then . . .; it is not the
case that . . ., or . . . (or both)
(q → r) If Toronto is a city, then the Great Wall of China
stretches from east to west.
Material Biconditional: ↔ . . . if and only if . . . (iff); . . . just
in case . . .
(q ↔ r) The Great Wall of China stretches from east to west
if and only if Toronto is a city.
Officially we define a formal language L for propositional logic

in the following recursive way:
1. Every propositional variable, or sentence letter, ‘p,’ ‘q,’

‘r,’ . . . is a sentence, or well-formed formula (wff), of L.
2. If α and β are sentences of L, then so are (¬α),

¬β , α ∧ β , α ∨ β , α → β ,and α ↔ β .
3. Nothing else is a sentence of L.
Speakers use languages to talk about things. Those things can

be the chancellor of Germany in August 2017, the weather, or
a language. When a language can be used to talk or write about
LOGIC 3
another language, the former has the latter as an object language.

In 1–3 above, the formal language L is our object language. The
language in which we talk or write about an object language is
a metalanguage for this object language. In 1–3 above, ordinary
English is our metalanguage for the object language L.
Here is another example of this distinction. As a matter of
fact, my English has a somewhat funny (German) accent, and
after class, students sometimes talk about it. In this case, the
language the students talk about, the object language, is my
English with the funny accent. In contrast to this, the language
in which the students talk, the metalanguage, is their perfect
English. Of course, as I am writing this, I use my English with
the funny accent, and one of the things I am writing about is the
students’ perfect English. Therefore, two languages can both be
metalanguages for each other.
Another distinction we need is that between use and
mention. The following two sentences are both true.
Toronto is a city.
‘Toronto’ consists of seven letters.
In the first sentence, we are using the word ‘Toronto.’ In the

second sentence, we are mentioning the word ‘Toronto.’ The
convention is to use left and right single quotes—“’ and ‘’,’
respectively—to indicate that one is mentioning rather than
using a symbol. Take a moment to reflect on what you do when
you introduce yourself to someone, as I do at the beginning of
the first class of a course. Determine which of the following
introductions are philosophically correct:
I am Franz. I am ‘Franz.’
My name is Franz. My name is ‘Franz.’
Now consider again the recursive definition above and, in

particular, the Greek letters ‘α’ and ‘β.’ These Greek letters
are symbols of the metalanguage that we use to talk about

the sentences of the object language L such as ‘(p ∧ q)’ and
‘¬r.’ These Greek letters are not part of the object language.
In contrast to this, the symbols ‘¬,’ ‘∧,’ ‘∨,’ ‘→,’ and ‘↔’ are
symbols of the object language L, and so are the left and right
parentheses, ‘( ’ and ‘ ),’ respectively. This means that the string

of symbols ‘ α ∧ β ’ contains both symbols that are, and symbols
that are not, part of the object language L. Strictly speaking, we
would have to write the following:
‘( ’α‘∧’β‘ )’ is a sentence of L.
However, as mentioned, logicians are lazy. They have introduced

the symbols ‘’ and ‘’ to put single quotes around every symbol
between them whenever single quotes are to be placed, and
not when not. These symbols are called (left and right) Quine
quotes—or, to be philosophically correct, these symbols are called
‘Quine quotes’—being named after the philosopher Quine who
introducedtheminQuine(1940).Nowthatwehavediscussedthe
distinction between use and mention we can ignore it again, as it
quickly becomes quite cumbersome to always use these quotes.
Before we move on to the next topic, let me note that
there are languages—such as the English which I am using to
write this book—that are so rich in expressive power that they
can be metalanguages for themselves. That is, we can use such
languages to talk in them about them. In fact, this is exactly what
I am doing in this paragraph! Such languages are given a special
name, viz. ‘self-referential languages.’ And, while they are great,
they also cause a lot of philosophical trouble. This is illustrated
by the following ‘liar sentence’:
L This sentence is false.
If the sentence L in the line above is true, then it is false, and

if it is false, then it is true. So L is true if and only if it is false.
LOGIC 5
Something has gone wrong. However, it is not the mere fact that
the sentence L speaks about itself that leads to this problem. In
the paragraph above, I use English to speak about itself, and no
problem arises. Similarly, the following sentence makes perfect
sense and is true:
This sentence contains five words.
Try to think about which feature, in addition to self-

referentiality, the sentence L possesses that may cause the
problem mentioned above.
What we have dealt with so far is the syntax of propositional
logic, which is concerned with the question which strings of
symbols are well-formed formulas, or sentences, of the formal
language L. In courses on logic, you will learn more about this
syntax, as well as how to derive, or prove, that some sentences
are theorems of propositional logic (this is sometimes called
proof theory). We will now deal with the semantics (or model
theory) of propositional logic, which studies what the sentences
of the formal language L mean, or express—that is, under
which conditions these sentences are true. A third field of
study that you can learn about in courses on the philosophy
of language is pragmatics. It studies how the way speakers
use a language affects the semantic meanings of syntactically
well-formed sentences.
We assume that every sentence is either true or false, but
not both, so that there are exactly two truth values: T, for truth,
and F, for falsehood.
Negation: A negated sentence (¬α) is true just in case the

sentence α is false. A negated sentence (¬α) is false just
in case the sentence α is true.

Conjunction: A conjunctive sentence α ∧ β is true just
in case both conjuncts α and β are true. A conjunctive

sentence α ∧ β is false just in case the conjunct α is false
or the conjunct β is false or both conjuncts α and β are false.

Disjunction: A disjunctive sentence α ∨ β is true just in
case the disjunct α is true or the disjunct β is true or both

disjuncts α and β are true. A disjunctive sentence α ∨ β
is false just in case both disjuncts α and β are false.

Material conditional: A material conditional α → β is
true just in case the antecedent α is false or the consequent

β is true or both. A material conditional α → β is false
just in case the antecedent α is true and the consequent β is
false.

Material biconditional: A material biconditional α ↔ β
is true just in case the sentence α and the sentence β have

the same truth value. A material biconditional α ↔ β
is false just in case the sentence α and the sentence β have
different truth values.
Unfortunately, the meaning of many English conditionals, or

if-thensentences,isnotcapturedbythematerialconditional.For
this reason, philosophers have come up with other conditional
connectives besides the material conditional. Among these
probably the most important one for philosophical purposes is
the counterfactual conditional which captures the meaning of ‘if’
in sentences such as ‘If things had been such and so, things would
have been thus and so.’ The antecedents, or if-clauses, of these
conditionals may involve a contrary-to-fact supposition (hence
the name ‘counterfactuals’). Can you think of a reason why a
contrary-to-fact supposition may cause trouble for the material
conditional?
The above truth conditions can be summarized by what
logicians call a truth table. Also, note that I have stopped using
single quotes when it became too cumbersome. Otherwise
I should have written ‘that logicians call a ‘truth table.”
LOGIC 7

α β (¬ α) (α ∧ β (α ∨ β (α → β (α ↔ β
T T F T T T T T T T T T T T T T
T F F T T F F T T F T F F T F F
F T T F F F T F T T F T T F F T
F F T F F F F F F F F T F F T F
1.2 PREDICATE LOGIC
Sentences talk about objects, the properties these objects have,

and the relations they stand in. Objects are referred to, denoted
by, or named by, names such as ‘Angela Merkel.’ Since logicians
are lazy, they use the shorter individual constants, which are
usually small letters from the beginning of the alphabet.
a Angela Merkel
b Toronto
c Montréal
.. ..
. .
Properties of one object are referred to by predicates, or

predicate symbols, and relations between two or more objects are
referred to by relation symbols. These are usually capital letters
from the middle of the alphabet.
F . . . is chancellor of Germany in August 2017

G . . . has more inhabitants than . . .
.. ..
. .
A predicate and an individual constant can be combined to

form a sentence, similarly for a binary relation symbol and
two individual constants (that may be two tokens of the same
type).
F (a) Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany in August 2017.

G (b, c) Toronto has more inhabitants than Montréal.
It is customary to identify predicate symbols with unary

relation symbols, and propositional variables, or sentence
letters, with 0-ary relation symbols. This has the consequence
that propositional logic is included in predicate logic as a special
case.
Besides individual constants there are individual variables.
These are usually small letters from the end of the alphabet.
They make predicate logic both powerful and difficult.
x
y
..
.
I have not included a right column for individual variables

because they generally do not occur on their own. Instead
they are generally bound by the existential quantifier ‘∃x’ or the
universal quantifier ‘∀y.’
Existential quantifier: ∃x there exists an x

such that . . . x . . .; some x is such that . . . x . . .; at least one x
is such that . . . x . . .
Universal quantifier: ∀y every y is such that . . .
y . . .; all y are such that . . . y . . .; each y is such that . . . y . . .
When we translate English sentences into well-formed formulas

of predicate logic, it is often helpful to proceed in two steps.
In a first step, we move from the English language to the
regimented English language, which is a clumsy version of
the English language that contains no ambiguities and makes
LOGIC 9
the predicate-logical form of all sentences clear. For instance,

consider the English sentences:
There is a Republican U.S. president in August 2017.

All Canadian cities have at most as many inhabitants as
Toronto.
These two sentences from the English language are transformed

into the following two sentences from the regimented English
language:
There exists at least one object x such that: x is U.S. president

in August 2017 and x is Republican.
All things x are such that: If x is a Canadian city, then x has
at most as many inhabitants as Toronto.
In a second step, we can then transform the sentences from

the regimented English language into the formal language of
predicate logic:
∃x (P (x) ∧ R (x))
∀x (C (x) → M (x, b))
We now subsume the formal language for propositional logic

under the richer formal language for predicate logic, also called
‘L,’ which is defined recursively as follows.
1. If ‘t1 ,’ . . ., ‘tn ’ are n terms, that is, individual constants

or individual variables, and ‘R’ is an n-ary relation
symbol (which includes propositional variables, or
sentence letters, as the special case where n = 0), then
‘R (t1 , . . . , tn )’ is a well-formed formula of L. Specifically,
it is an atomic formula.
2. If α and β are well-formed formulas of L, and if ‘x’ is

an individual variable, then (¬α), ¬β , α ∧ β ,

α ∨ β , α → β , α ↔ β , as well as ∃x (α)
and ∀x (α) are also well-formed formulas of L.
Specifically, they are complex formulas.
3. Nothing else is a well-formed formula, or simply
formula, of L.
In contrast to the previous definition, the first clause now is

more general and includes the previous first clause as a special
case. The same is true for the second clause. Predicate logic thus
covers propositional logic as a special case.
The following is one version of how the truth conditions
for existentially and universally quantified formulas can be
defined. It is not standard, as it assumes that we have a name,
or individual constant, for each object. The standard semantics
does not make this assumption, but it is considerably more
complex (Shapiro 2013: sct. 4, Zach 2016: ch. 5). For our
purposes, the present version will do.
We use the notation ‘α [a/x]’—read: ‘a’ for ‘x’ in α—to
denote that every free occurrence, or token, of the individual
variable ‘x’ in the well-formed formula α has been replaced by
an occurrence, or token, of the individual constant ‘a.’
For instance, consider the well-formed formula ‘∃y (L (x, y))’
in which the individual variable ‘x’ occurs freely, but in which
the individual variable ‘y’ is bound by the quantifier ‘∃y’ and
so does not occur freely. ∃y (L (x, y)) [a/x] is ‘∃y (L (a, y)),’
because ‘x’ occurs freely in ‘∃y (L (x, y))’ and so is replaced

by ‘a.’ ∃y (L (x, y)) b/y is ‘∃y (L (x, y))’ because ‘y’ does not
occur freely in ‘∃y (L (x, y)),’ and so nothing is replaced. Finally,
∃y (L (x, y)) [c/z] is also ‘∃y (L (x, y))’ because ‘z’ does not occur
at all in ‘∃y (L (x, y)).’ Note that the ‘y’ next to the ‘∃’ does not
count as an occurrence of ‘y’ in ‘∃y (L (x, y)).’ Instead it is part of
the quantifier which is ‘∃y’ rather than ‘∃.’
LOGIC 11
Existential quantifier: An existentially quantified formula

∃x (α) is true just in case there is at least one individual
constant ‘a’ such that α [a/x] is true. An existentially
quantified formula ∃x (α) is false just in case all individual
constants ‘a’ are such that α [a/x] is false.
Universal quantifier: A universally quantified formula
∀x (α) is true just in case all individual constants ‘a’ are
such that α [a/x] is true. A universally quantified formula
∀x (α) is false just in case there is at least one individual
constant ‘a’ such that α [a/x] is false.
Now that we have defined the truth conditions, or meaning,

of the connectives and quantifiers, we can define the concepts
that make clear that logic is the study of the validity, or value, of
arguments. An argument consists of one or more premises to the
left of the therefore symbol ‘∴’ and a conclusion to its right. An
argument is logically valid if and only if the premises logically
imply the conclusion. An argument is logically sound if and only
if it is logically valid, and all its premises are true. Thus, the
conclusion of a logically sound argument is also true.
Logical truth: A formula α is logically true, |= α, just in case

α is true in all logically possible cases.
Below I will say more about what these logically possible cases
are. For now, a few examples will do. The sentence ‘Toronto is a
city or Toronto is not a city’ is logically true because it is true in
all logically possible cases: if Toronto is a city, and also if Toronto
is not a city. In symbols: |= (q ∨ (¬q)).
Logical consequence (special version): A formula α logically

implies a formula β, or β is a logical consequence of α, α |= β,
just in case β is true in all logically possible cases in which α
is true.
The sentence ‘Toronto is a city’ logically implies the sentence

‘Toronto is a city, or the Great Wall of China stretches from
east to west’ because the latter sentence is true in all logically
possible cases in which the former sentence is true: if Toronto
is a city and the Great Wall of China stretches from east to west,
and also if Toronto is a city and the Great Wall of China does not
stretch from east to west. In symbols: q |= (q ∨ r).
Since arguments generally contain more than one premise,
this definition needs to be generalized as follows:
Logical consequence (general version): Several formulas

α1 , α2 , . . . logically imply a formula β, α1 , α2 , . . . |= β, just
in case β is true in all logically possible cases in which all
formulas α1 , α2 , . . . are true.
The sentences ‘p,’ ‘q,’ and ‘((p ∧ q) → r)’ logically imply the
sentence ‘r’ because ‘r’ is true in all logically possible cases in
which ‘p’ and ‘q’ (and, hence, ‘(p ∧ q)’) as well as ‘(p ∧ q) → r’ are
true: that is, in the one logically possible case where all of ‘p’ and
‘q’ and ‘r’ are true. In symbols: p, q, ((p ∧ q) → r) |= r.
Logical equivalence: A formula α is logically equivalent to a

formula β just in case: β is a logical consequence of α, and α
is a logical consequence of β.
The sentence ‘Toronto is a city’ is logically equivalent to the

sentence ‘It is not the case that Toronto is not a city’ because
these two sentences are logical consequences of each other. In
symbols: q |= ¬¬q and ¬¬q |= q. Logical equivalence can also be
defined as follows:
Logical equivalence (variant): A formula α is logically

equivalent to a formula β just in case the sentence α ↔ β
is logically true.
LOGIC 13
That is, logically equivalent formulas have the same truth

value in all logically possible cases. This means that logically
equivalent sentences express, or mean, the same proposition.
Of course, these definitions say little if we do not specify
what the logically possible cases (that is, the models of model
theory) are. For now, the logically possible cases are the lines
in a truth table. A formula that is logically true with this
understanding of the logically possible cases is said to be
logically true in propositional logic. A formula that logically
implies, or is logically equivalent to, another formula with this
understanding of the logically possible cases is said to logically
imply, or to be logically equivalent to, the former formula in
propositional logic.
Every logical truth, logical implication, and logical
equivalence in propositional logic is also a logical truth,
logical implication, and logical equivalence in predicate logic,
respectively. The converse is not true, though, because
propositional logic, in contrast to predicate logic, does not
have any rules for quantifiers. It treats quantified formulas
as sentence letters that cannot be analyzed further. This is
illustrated by the following three examples.
The formula ∀x (M (x)) → ∃x (M (x))—read: If everything
is material, then something is material—is logically true in
predicate logic. It is not logically true in propositional logic
because the latter treats ∀x (M (x)) and ∃x (M (x)) as two distinct
sentence letters that cannot be analyzed further. Therefore,
there is a line in the truth table in which ∀x (M (x)) is true
and ∃x (M (x)) is false. This line in the truth table shows that
∀x (M (x))→∃x (M (x)) is not logically true in propositional logic.
The argument F (a) ∴ ∃x (F (x))—read: Angela Merkel is
chancellor of Germany in August 2017; therefore, someone is
chancellor of Germany in August 2017—is logically valid in
predicate logic. It is not logically valid in propositional logic
because the latter treats F (a) and ∃x (F (x)) as two distinct
sentence letters that cannot be analyzed further. Therefore,

there is a line in the truth table in which F (a) is true and
∃x (F (x)) is false. This line in the truth table shows that F (a) ∴
∃x (F (x)) is not logically valid in propositional logic.
The formula ¬∀x (M (x))—read: Not everything is material
—is logically equivalent to the formula ∃x (¬ (M (x)))—read:
Something is not material—in predicate logic. The first formula
is not logically equivalent to the second formula in propositional
logic because the latter treats ∀x (M (x)) and ∃x (¬ (M (x))) as
two distinct sentence letters that cannot be analyzed further.
Therefore, there is a line in the truth table in which ∀x (M (x)) is
false—so that its negation ¬∀x (M (x)) is true—and ∃x (M (x)) is
false. This line in the truth table shows that ¬∀x (M (x)) is not
logically equivalent to ∃x (¬ (M (x))) in propositional logic.
We will come across one principle, the principle of the
substitution of logical equivalents (SLE), where the distinction
between logical equivalence in propositional logic as opposed
to logical equivalence in predicate logic is crucial.
Finally, if you think the first example, much like the
claim that something is or is not material, ∃x (M (x) ∨ ¬M (x)),
should not be a logical truth, and the second example, much
like the argument: Winnie-the-Pooh is a bear and speaks
English; therefore, some bears speak English, B (w) ∧ E (w) ∴
∃x (B (x) ∧ E (x)), should not be a logically valid argument, then
you are a proponent of inclusive logic (Nolt 2014). Inclusive logic
rejects the assumptions of classical logic, which we are using,
that at least one thing exists and that names only refer to
existing things.
1.3 EXERCISES
The truth table for the formula ‘((p ∨ q) ∧ ¬ (q))’ is obtained by

first identifying the different types of propositional variables,
or sentence letters, of the formula. These are ‘p’ and ‘q.’ Next, we
LOGIC 15
list all the possible assignments of truth values to these types of

propositional variables.
p q
T T
T F
F T
F F
Then these truth values of the propositional variables,

or sentence letters, are written underneath all tokens, or
occurrences, of them in the formula:
p q (p ∨ q) ∧ ¬ q
T T T T T
T F T F F
F T F T T
F F F F F
In order to reduce the use of parentheses, we adopt the

convention that ‘¬’ binds stronger than ‘∧’ and ‘∨,’ and that ‘∧’
and ‘∨’ bind stronger than ‘→’ and ‘↔.’ In the above table I have
omitted all parentheses that are not needed to avoid ambiguities
in scope. Next, we work our way from the propositional
variables, or sentence letters, to the first connective, then the
next, and so on. . .
p q (p ∨ q) ∧ ¬ q p q (p ∨ q) ∧ ¬ q
T T T T F T T T T T T F T
T F T F T F T F T T F T F
F T F T F T F T F T T F T
F F F F T F F F F F F T F
. . .until we reach the main connective of the formula, ‘∧’:
p q (p ∨ q) ∧ ¬ q
T T T T T F F T
T F T T F T T F
F T F T T F F T
F F F F F F T F
Exercise 1: Write down the truth table for the following formula
‘((p ∧ q) ∨ (¬ (¬q))),’ or simply ‘(p ∧ q) ∨ ¬¬q.’
In this way we can show, or prove, that the formula ‘¬ (p ∧ ¬p)’ is

logically true because it has a ‘T’ under its main connective ‘¬’
in all lines of the truth table.
p ¬ (p ∧ ¬ p) p ¬ (p ∧ ¬ p)
T T T T T F T
F F F F F T F
p ¬ (p ∧ ¬ p) p ¬ (p ∧ ¬ p)
T T F F T T T T F F T
F F F T F F T F F T F
Exercise 2: Show that the formula ‘(p → (p ∨ q)),’ or simply ‘p →

p ∨ q,’ is logically true by showing that it has a ‘T’ under its main
connective ‘→’ in all lines of the truth table.
In this way we can also show, or prove, that two formulas are
logically equivalent by showing that they have the same truth
value under their main connective in all lines of the truth table.
For instance, we can show in this way that the two formulas
‘(p ∨ q)’ and ‘¬ (¬p ∧ ¬q)’ are logically equivalent because they
have the same truth value under their main connective ‘∨’ and
‘¬,’ respectively, in all lines of the truth table.
LOGIC 17
p q (p ∨ q) ¬ (¬ p ∧ ¬ q)
T T T T T T F T F F T
T F T T F T F T F T F
F T F T T T T F F F T
F F F F F F T F T T F
Exercise 3: Show that the two formulas ‘(p ∧ q)’ and ‘¬ (¬p ∨ ¬q)’
are logically equivalent by showing that they have the same
truth value under their main connective ‘∧’ and ‘¬,’ respectively,
in all lines of the truth table.
Furthermore, we can also show, or prove, in this way that one

formula logically implies another formula by showing that the
second sentence, or formula, has a ‘T’ under its main connective
in all lines of the truth table, if any, where the first formula has a
‘T’ under its main connective. For instance, we can show in this
way that the formula ‘¬p’ logically implies the formula ‘p → q’
because the second formula has a ‘T’ under its main connective
‘→’ in all lines of the truth table in which the first formula has
a ‘T’ under its main connective ‘¬.’
p q ¬ p p → q
T T F T T T T
T F F T T F F
F T T F F T T
F F T F F T F
Exercise 4: We adopt the convention that the main connective of

a propositional variable, or sentence letter, is the propositional
variable, or sentence letter, itself. Show that the formula ‘q’
logically implies the formula ‘p → q’ by showing that the second
formula has a ‘T’ under its main connective ‘→’ in all lines of the
truth table in which the first formula has a ‘T’ under its main
connective ‘q.’
Exercise 5: Show that the formula ‘p ∧ q’ logically implies the

formula ‘¬p ↔ ¬q’ by showing that the second formula has a ‘T’
under its main connective ‘↔’ in all lines of the truth table in
which the first formula has a ‘T’ under its main connective ‘∧.’
The method of truth tables allows us to show, or prove,

logical truths, logical implications, and logical equivalences in
propositional logic. The principle of the substitution of logical
equivalents facilitates this task. SLE says that the formula

α β/γ is logically equivalent to the formula α, if the formula
β is logically equivalent to the formula γ in propositional logic.

Here α β/γ results from α by replacing all occurrences of
γ in α by an occurrence of β. The restriction in SLE that
β and γ are logically equivalent in propositional logic is most
important!
To show, or prove, logical truths, logical implications, and
logical equivalences in predicate logic, we need additional tools.
The first of these is the principle of existential generalization
(EG). EG says that the formula ∃x (α [x/a]) follows logically
in predicate logic from the formula α, provided the individual
variable ‘x’ does not occur in α. Here the formula α [x/a] results
from α by replacing all occurrences of the individual constant
‘a’ in α by an occurrence of the individual variable ‘x.’ We make
use of this principle when we say that, in predicate logic, the
sentence ‘There exists a chancellor of Germany in August 2017’
follows logically from the sentence ‘Angela Merkel is chancellor
of Germany in August 2017,’ F (a) |= ∃x (F (x)).
The second tool is the principle of universal instantiation
(UI). UI says that the formula α [a/x] follows logically in
predicate logic from the formula ∀x (α), where the formula
α [a/x] results from α by replacing all free occurrences of the
individual variable ‘x’ in α by an occurrence of the individual
constant ‘a.’ We make use of this principle when we say that,
in predicate logic, the sentence ‘Muhammad Ali is mortal if
LOGIC 19
Muhammad Ali is human’ follows logically from the sentence

‘All humans are mortal,’ ∀x (H (x) → M (x)) |= H (a) → M (a).
The third tool is the principle of universal generalization
(UG), and it is by far the most difficult one. UG says that the
formula ∀x (α [x/c]) follows logically in predicate logic from the
formula α [c], provided the individual constant ‘c’ is arbitrary
(that is, has not occurred in any formula that was used to
logically infer α [c]), and provided the individual variable ‘x’ is new
(that is, does not occur in α). One way to think of this principle is
as licensing any-all inferences: From the premise that any object
c has a certain property—recall: ‘c’ is arbitrary—one may and
ought to infer the conclusion that all objects have this property.
Before applying these principles in the chapters to follow,
a note on terminology. Logicians often restrict the term
‘sentence’ to these well-formed formulas that do not contain
any free occurrences of individual variables. In this terminology,
‘∀x (F (x))’ is both a sentence and a well-formed formula,
whereas ‘F (x)’ is only a well-formed formula but not also a
sentence. I will try to avoid this terminology, which is why I am
formulating some things in seemingly odd ways.
READINGS
Textbooks that cover similar material as this book are:

Hacking, Ian (2001), An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skyrms, Brian (1966/2000), Choice and Chance: An Introduction
to Inductive Logic. 4th ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson
Learning.
Recommended further readings for the material in the first
chapter are:
Klement, Kevin C. (2016a), Propositional Logic. In J. Fieser & B.
Dowden (eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Papineau, David (2012), Philosophical Devices. Proofs, Probabilities,

Possibilities, and Sets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 10.
and perhaps also
Papineau, David (2012), Philosophical Devices. Proofs, Probabilities,
Possibilities, and Sets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 11.
Shapiro, Stewart (2013), Classical Logic. In E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
CHAPTER 2
Set Theory
2.1 ELEMENTARY POSTULATES
A set is a collection of things, entities, or objects. In the way

philosophers use the term, subjects such as you and I are also
objects. It’s not rude of me to say that you are an object. If
anything, it would be rude of me to say that you are not an
object, as that would be saying something along the lines that
you do not exist.
For instance, the government of Argentina in 2017 is or
can be thought of as the set containing Mauricio Macri and the
members of his cabinet. Similarly, the Library of Alexandria is
or can be thought of as the set containing all its books. We use
the curly brackets ‘{ ’ and ‘ }’ to denote sets, and it is important to
distinguish a set from its members, or elements: Mauricio Macri
and his ministers are human, but the set containing them is not.
The set C containing all and only Canadian cities with more than
1 million inhabitants is

C = Toronto, Montréal, Calgary .
C is also the set of all objects x such that x is a Canadian city with
more than 1 million inhabitants, that is,

C = x : x is a Canadian city with more than 1 million
inhabitants} .
Together with the colon ‘:’ preceded by the individual variable
‘x’ the curly brackets ‘{ ’ and ‘ }’ bind the second occurrence of the
individual variable ‘x’ in the above line. They do so much like the
quantifiers ‘∀x’ and ‘∃y’ bind the individual variables ‘x’ and ‘y’
in ‘∀x∃y (L (x, y)).’
The order in which the members, or elements, of a set are
listed does not matter:

Toronto, Montréal, Calgary = Calgary, Montréal, Toronto
The number of times a member, or an element, is listed does not
matter either:

Toronto, Montréal, Calgary

= Toronto, Toronto, Calgary, Montréal, Toronto
We use ‘∈’ to denote that the object mentioned to the left of ‘∈’
is a member, or an element, of the set mentioned to the right
of ‘∈’, and ‘’ to denote that it is not. For instance, Toronto ∈ C
and Vancouver C.
Sets S and T are identical just in case they contain the
same members, or elements. This is known as the principle of
Extensionality.
Extensionality: For all sets S and T, S = T if and only if for

all objects x, x ∈ S just in case x ∈ T.
In particular, we have for all sets S: S = {x : x ∈ S}, which will turn

out to be a very useful identity. We use ‘⊆’ to denote that all
members of the “subset” mentioned to the left of ‘⊆’ are also
members of the “superset” mentioned to the right of ‘⊆.’ For

instance, C ⊆ x : x is a Canadian city .
We use ‘∅’, or ‘{},’ to denote the empty set that has
no members, or elements, and whose existence set theory
postulates. There are many ways to describe the empty set—for
example, as the set of objects that are not identical to
themselves, or as the set of objects that are both material and
immaterial—but there exists just one empty set.
SET THEORY 23
Furthermore, we have for all sets S and T: S = T if,

and only if, S ⊆ T and T ⊆ S. For instance, since C =

Toronto, Calgary, Montréal , we get that {Toronto, Montréal,

Calgary ⊆ C and C ⊆ Montréal, Toronto, Calgary . The other
direction of this equivalence is useful when we want to prove
that two sets are identical. This follows if we can establish that
they are subsets of each other. In addition, we have for all sets
S: ∅ ⊆ S and S ⊆ S.
Set theory postulates the existence of further sets besides
the empty set. However, unlike the empty set, whose existence
set theory postulates “categorically,” these further sets are only
postulated to exist on the condition that there already are some
sets.
If S and T are sets, then there exists the intersection of S and
T, S ∩ T, which is the set of objects that are elements of both S
and T:
S ∩ T = {x : (x ∈ S) ∧ (x ∈ T)}
For instance, C ∩ {Toronto} = {Toronto}.
S T
If S and T are sets, then there exists the union of S and T, S ∪ T,

which is the set of objects that are elements of S or of T or of
both S and T:
S ∪ T = {x : (x ∈ S) ∨ (x ∈ T)}

For instance, Calgary, Montréal ∪ {Montréal, Toronto} = C.
S T
If S and T are sets, then there exists the complement of S with

respect to T, T \ S, which is the set of objects that are members
of T, but that are not members of S:
T \ S = {x : (x ∈ T) ∧ ¬ (x ∈ S)} = {x : (x ∈ T) ∧ (x S)}

For instance, C \ {Toronto} = Calgary, Montréal .
S T
If S is a set, then there exists the power set of S, ℘ (S), which is the
set of all subsets of S:
℘ (S) = {A : A ⊆ S}
For instance, the power set of C, ℘ {C}, is the set that contains
the following eight sets as elements:

∅, {Toronto} , {Montréal} , Calgary {Toronto, Montréal} ,

Toronto, Calgary , Calgary, Montréal , C
This means that ℘ (C) is the following set of sets:

℘ (C) = ∅, {Toronto} , {Montréal} , Calgary ,

{Toronto, Montréal} , Toronto, Calgary ,

Calgary, Montréal , C
SET THEORY 25
The power set of a set cannot be pictured easily, as it is a set

whose members, or elements, are sets as well.
Note that the above principles have all been formulated
in the language of predicate logic. This means that set theory
can be formulated as a list of sentences of, or as a theory in,
predicate logic. This has the consequence that we can apply all
the logical principles from the previous chapter to prove claims
in set theory. For instance, we can show, or prove, that it is a
logical truth that every object x either is, or is not, an element
of any given set S.
Here is how. First, let ‘y’ and ‘T’ be arbitrary individual
constants. ‘∈’ is the binary relation of set theoretic membership,
or elementhood. In other words, let y and T be arbitrary objects
of which we assume nothing whatsoever. ‘∈ (y, T),’ or more
perspicuously, ‘y ∈ T’ is a well-formed formula, and so (y ∈ T) ∨
¬ (y ∈ T) is logically true. We can show this by the following
truth table, where ‘t’ is the sentence letter for ‘y ∈ T’:
t t ∨ ¬ t
T T T F T
F F T T F
The next step to arrive at our claim consists in noting that
everything is a thing or an object. This includes sets, which are
the objects satisfying the postulates of set theory. If it is true
that, for an arbitrary object y and an arbitrary object T, y does
or does not stand in relation ∈ to T, then it is also true that,
for an arbitrary object y and an arbitrary object T that has the
property of being a set, y does or does not stand in relation
∈ to T. Alternatively, we can use the method of truth tables to
show that (y ∈ T) ∨ ¬ (y ∈ T) logically implies set (T) → (y ∈ T) ∨
¬ (y ∈ T).
Now we apply the principle of universal generalization
(UG), which says that, in predicate logic, set (T) → (y ∈ T) ∨
¬ (y ∈ T) logically implies
∀S (set (S) → (y ∈ S) ∨ ¬ (y ∈ S)) ,
because ‘T’ was arbitrary (that is, it has not occurred before we
introduced it above,) and because ‘S’ is new (that is, it does not
occur in ‘set (T) → (y ∈ T) ∨ ¬ (y ∈ T)).
A second application of the principle of universal
generalization says that, in predicate logic, ∀S (set (S) → (y ∈ S) ∨
¬ (y ∈ S)) logically implies
∀x (∀S (set (S) → (x ∈ S) ∨ ¬ (x ∈ S))) ,
because ‘y’ was arbitrary (that is, it has not occurred before we
introduced it above), and because ‘x’ is new (that is, does not occur
in ‘∀S (set (S) → (y ∈ S) ∨ ¬ (y ∈ S))). This completes our proof.
The above postulates, or axioms, postulate the existence
of various sets: the empty set, the power set of a set, the
union of sets, the intersection of sets, the complement of
a set with respect to a set. Another principle, the so-called
unrestricted comprehension principle, has been postulated by
Frege (1893/1903), who thought that for each property P there
exists the set SP of objects that posses the property P, SP =

x : x possesses property P . For instance, P may be the property
of being a Canadian city with more than 1 million inhabitants.
(Here we count everything as a property that can be described
by a well-formed formula of predicate logic α [x] in which the
individual variable ‘x’ occurs freely.)
As we have just seen, sets can be members of sets, just
as chefs can cook the dinners of chefs. For instance, each set
S is a member of its power set, and so is the empty set, but
not conversely: S ∈ ℘ (S) and ∅ ∈ S, but ℘ (S) S and S ∅.
Russell (1902) used the following property of sets to show that
the unrestricted comprehension principle is logically false, or
contradictory:
Set S possesses the Russell property just in case S S.
Compare: A chef is special if and only if she does not cook

her own dinner. According to the unrestricted comprehension
SET THEORY 27
principle, for each property there exists the set of objects that
have this property. The Russell property is a property, and so the
unrestricted comprehension principle implies that there exists
the set, the so-called “Russell set” SR , containing all and only
the objects that possess the Russell property:
SR = {S : S S}
This cannot be true, though. Consider the question whether the
Russell set has the Russell property. Suppose first it does so that
RS RS . In this case, RS possesses the Russell property and so
is a member of RS , RS ∈ RS . Suppose next it does not so that
RS ∈ RS . In this case, RS is a member of RS and so possesses the
Russell property, RS RS . Hence, RS ∈ RS if and only if RS RS ,
which is logically false.
In the same way we can prove that it is logically false that
there exists a chef who cooks the dinners of all and only these
chefs who do not cook their own dinners, that is, it is logically
false that there exists a chef who cooks the dinners of all and
only the special chefs. Suppose there exists such a chef and
consider the question if she is special and does not cook her own
dinner. Suppose first she does not cook her own dinner and so is
special. Then she is one of these chefs who she is cooking dinner
for, and so she is not special after all. Suppose next she cooks her
own dinner. Then she is not special, and so is not one of these
chefs she is cooking dinner for. Hence, she is special if only if
she is not, which is a contradiction, that is, a sentence that is
logically false.
The set theory we use relies on a weaker version of the
unrestricted comprehension principle that is known as the
restricted comprehension axiom. The latter principle says that
for each set S and each property P there exists the set SP of
objects which are members of S and possess the property P.
The restricted comprehension axiom is not logically false. It
avoids Russell’s paradox because it assumes there to be a set
S—say, the set of Canadian cities—and then merely postulates
the existence of the subset of S whose members have a given

property—for example, the set of Canadian cities with more
than 1 million inhabitants.
2.2 EXERCISES
Let us show that, in set theory, the following is true of every

set P:
P = P∪P
1. P = {x : x ∈ P} from Extensionality.
2. P = {x : (x ∈ P) ∨ (x ∈ P)} from 1. and because x ∈ P is
logically equivalent to (x ∈ P) ∨ (x ∈ P) in propositional
logic, which can be shown by the method of truth
tables.
3. P = {x : x ∈ (P ∪ P)} from 2. and the definition of ∪.
4. P = P ∪ P from 3. and Extensionality.
Here are the relevant truth tables, where ‘p’ is the sentence letter
for ‘x ∈ P’:
p p p ∨ p p p ∨ p p
T T T T T T T T T T
F F F F F F F F F F
Since we are arguing inside the scope of ‘{x : . . . x . . .},’ we need to
be careful and so will restrict ourselves to what is logically true
in propositional logic. In this section, logical equivalence means
logical equivalence in propositional logic. The principle that
allows us to substitute a formula inside the scope of ‘{x : . . . x . . .}’
for another formula that is logically equivalent to the former in
propositional logic is the principle of Extensionality. It implies
that the curly brackets do not create what philosophers call a
“hyperintensional” context in which this is not allowed. This
is different for concepts such as actual belief which creates a
hyperintensional context.
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gambling house had gone, the revolver as an outside garniture of apparel
had disappeared.
I could write with some facility. In other respects, I was awkward,
unassimilative with the new element about me, and what is called “shy and
retiring” which really implies a kind of vanity demanding that the world
shall come and pet you without your having the courage to boldly face it
and assert your place in it or whatever you may think your place. I was
afraid of being quizzed or made a mark of ridicule by others, and any
pretentious fop could with ease make me take a back seat and make me
keep my mouth shut. One night Mr. Lawrence invited me to call with him
on a noted actress. I refused out of pure dread. Dread of what? Of an
opinion I had previously manufactured in my own mind of what the actress
might think of me; when I should probably have been of about as much
importance to her as a house fly. The consequence which we shy and
retiring people attach to ourselves in our secret mind is ridiculously
appalling.
Mr. Lawrence remained in San Francisco but a few months after my
advent on the Era. While he stayed he did all in his power to give me,
socially and otherwise, a good “send off.” He introduced me to aspiring and
successful people, placed me in good material surroundings and opened for
me the door to a successful element. That was all he could do, and in my
estimation about all one person can do to really advance the fortunes of
another.
But when he left I descended, hired the cheapest lodgings, lived on the
cheese-paring plan, and was thereby brought mainly into contact with that
cheap element in human nature which longs for the best things in the world,
is willing even in some way to beg for them, looks on the prosperous with
envy and aversion and expends most of its force in anxiety or grumbling,
instead of devising ways and means to push forward.
So for the most part I did. I accepted the lowest remuneration for my
services, deeming it the inevitable, went figuratively hat in hand to those
who bought my articles, and brought my mind at last to think they had done
me a great favor on paying me my just dues. I was always expecting
starvation or failure of some sort and for that very reason got a near
approach to it. My cheap lodgings brought me a sneak thief who stole the
first decent suit of clothes I had worn for years in less than forty-eight hours
after I had put them on. My associations brought me people who were
always moaning over their luck, living mentally in the poorhouse, and
therefore we mutually strengthened and supported each other on the road to
what was little better than the poorhouse.
Like them, I never thought of being else than a worker for wages, and
ran away mentally at any idea of taking responsibilities. Like them I
regarded the class who did, as living in a world I never could reach. Like
them I regarded the only sure and safe haven was a “job,” or situation at
steady, regular wages.
So, for years I had indifferent luck, and lived a good deal on the
threadbare side of life. The cause and the fault lay entirely in myself.
Industriously, though unconsciously I sat down on myself, punched myself
into corners; as I in mind accepted the bottom of the heap as the inevitable I
stayed near the bottom.
If I should live that and previous portions of my life over again, I should
probably do the same thing. Because I believe there is a truth in
predestination. In other words, when you are in a certain mental condition
your physical life and fortune will be an exact correspondence or material
reflection of that condition. When you grow out of that condition and get a
different mind your surroundings, fortunes, and associations will be in
accordance with that state of mind. Thank Heaven, we can grow. But the I
that existed twenty-five years ago was predestined to meet the fortunes it
did twenty-five years ago, and those fortunes could only change as the mind
of that “I” changed.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
EDITING VS. WRITING.
In course of time I came temporarily to the occupancy of an editorial

chair. I became a “We.” Because on becoming an editor you cease to be an
“I,” you are more. You are several persons rolled into one. You are then the
publisher, the proprietor, the paper’s biggest paying advertisers, the political
party you represent, and the rest of your brother editors. Under these
circumstances it is impossible for you to say what “I” think. Because in
some cases you may not know what your own private opinions really are, or
if they should assert themselves strongly you might not want to know them.
You are a “we,” one advantage of which is that as in a sense you have
ceased to exist as a personality. You are no longer personally responsible for
what you say in print. The responsibility of the “we” can be distributed
among so many that it need not stick anywhere and the bigger the paper the
larger the area over which it can be distributed.
I knew there was a difference between “editing” a paper and writing for
one, but how much of a difference I did not realize until my destiny placed
me temporarily in charge of the Sunday supplement of a city daily, which,
in accordance with the regulations, or rather exactions, of modern
journalism, published a Sunday paper, or rather magazine, of sixteen pages.
I had about forty-six columns to “edit.”
To “edit” is not to write. I speak thus plainly for the benefit of the many
young men and maidens who are to swell the ranks of the great army now
industriously engaged in sending contributions to the editor’s waste basket,
and who still imagine that the editor does nothing but write for the paper.
I pause here a moment to ask where, at the present increase of size and
amount of matter published, are our Sunday papers to stop. Already the
contents of some Sunday issues amount to more than that of the average
monthly magazine.
While this competition is going on at such a lively and increasing rate
between newspaper publishers to give the most reading matter for the least
money, I wonder if the idea may not in due course of time strike them that
they may be giving to those who read more than they can really read and
digest.
Our business men to-day do not read one-half the contents of the daily
paper. They have only time to glance at them. They would really be much
better suited could some device of journalism give them their news in
readable print in the compass of a handkerchief, and give them no more.
I entered on my duties in a blissful ignorance of the trials that awaited
me. I did not know how to “put a head” on an article or a selected “reprint.”
I know nothing of the hieroglyphics necessary to let the printer know the
various kinds of typo in which my headings should be set up. I did not
realize that the writer’s manuscript must be, in a sense, ground through the
editor’s mill and go through a certain process before being put in the
printer’s hands. I did know that something was to be done, but the extent of
that something I did not know. Of the signs to be placed on manuscript to
show whether the type used should be “brevier” or “minion” or “agate,” or
those to designate “full-face caps” for my upper headings and “full-face
lower case” for my lower headings, of a “display heading,” of “balancing
the columns,” nor that the headings on a page should not be jammed up
together or too far apart. I was in that condition of ignorance that the
smallest part of a printer was justified in looking down on me with
contempt.
N. B.—In the composing room a printer is a much larger-sized Indian

than a mere writer.
You who read the instructive and entertaining columns of ghastliness,

accident, and crime in your morning paper—you who are unfortunately or
otherwise neither writers nor printers, you think you could easily write one
of those staring sensational headings over the article which tell all about it
before you read it and whet your appetite for reading it. But you might not.
It is not so much the literary ability needed. It is the printer who stands in
the way. It is the printer who must have just so many words for one kind of
“head” and so many for another. You must get your sense, sensation, and
information condensed into say twenty-four or twenty-six words for one
part of the “head” and ten or twelve for another part, and these must neither
run over nor run under these numbers. If they do and the spaces are uneven
that issue of the paper would, in that printer’s estimation, be ruined. If you,
the editor, do not “make up” your pages so that the columns “balance,” the
paper, for him, would be a wreck. The foreman of the composing room
values a newspaper for its typographical appearance. This is right. A paper,
like a house, should look neat. Only the foreman need not forget that there
is something in the articles besides types. The magnate of our composing
room called all written matter “stuff.” “What are you going to do with this
stuff?” he would remark, and he used to put such an inflection of contempt
on that word “stuff” that it would have made any but an old tough writer
sick to hear him. Poems literally perspiring with inspiration, beautiful
descriptive articles reeking with soul and sentiment, lively humor,
manuscript written and re-written so lovingly and carefully—children of
many a brilliant brain—all with him was but “stuff”!
During all the years that I had been writing I had bestowed no attention
on the “making up” of a paper. I had a vague idea that the paper made up
itself. I had passed in my articles, and had seen them in their places a few
hours later, and never dreamt that the placing of these, so that the columns
should end evenly or that the page should not look like a tiresome expanse
of unbroken type, required study, taste, and experience.
I was aroused from this dream when first called on to “make up” my
eight-page supplement. Of course, the foreman expected me to go right on
like an old hand, and lay out in the printed form where the continued story
should be and how many columns it should fill, where the foreign
correspondence and illustrated articles should appear, where the paste pot
and scissored matter, shorter articles, and paragraphs should be, so that the
printer could place his galleys in the form as marked out per schedule.
I was confronted within a single week with all this mass of my own
editorial and typographical ignorance, and even more than can here be told.
It had not before dawned upon me that an editor should be—well, we will
say, the skeleton of a printer. I was not even the ghost of one. I was not
before aware that in the recesses of editorial dens and composing rooms the
printer stood higher than the writer. “Everybody” writes nowadays. But
“everybody” does not set type or “make up” papers.
I saw then what I had done. I saw that I had rashly assumed to govern a
realm of which I was entirely ignorant. I made a full and free confession to
our foreman. I put myself before him as an accomplished ignoramus. He
was a good fellow and helped me through. It was tough work, however, for
several weeks. As Sunday came nearer and nearer, my spasms of dread and
anxiety increased. I was seized in the dead of night with fears lest I had not
sent up sufficient “stuff” to fill my forty-six columns. Then I would be
taken with counter fears lest I had sent up too much, and so run up an
overplus on the week’s composing bill. I worried and fretted so that by
Saturday night I had no clear idea at all or judgment in the matter, and let
things take their own course.
But the hardest task of all was dealing with the mourners—I mean the
manuscript bearers. I found myself suddenly inside of the place, where I
had so often stood outside. I was the man in the editorial chair, the arbiter of
manuscript destiny, the despot who could accept or reject the writer’s
article. But I was very uncomfortable. I hated to reject anybody’s writings, I
felt so keenly for them. I had so many times been there myself. I wished I
could take and pay for everybody’s manuscript. But I could not. The
requirements of the paper stood like a wall ’twixt my duty and my
sympathy. The commands from the management allowed only a certain
amount to be expended weekly for original articles. I felt like a fiend—an
unwilling one—as I said “No” time after time and sent men and women
away with heavy hearts. In cases I tried even to get from the rejected a little
sympathy for myself. I told them how hard it was for me to say “No.” I
tried to convince them that mine was a much harder lot than theirs, and that
mine was by far the greater misery.
And how many times after I had suffered and rejected the MSS. did I try
to answer in a manner satisfactory to them this question: “Did I know of
any newspaper or magazine that would be likely to accept their matter?”
How I tried to say that I did not, in a cheerful, consoling, and encouraging
manner, in a manner which would convey to them and fill them with the
idea that the town was full of places yawning and gaping for their articles,
until they were outside of my office themselves, when I was willing that the
cold unwelcome truth should freeze them.
Then I received letters asking for the return of manuscript. On entering
on my duties I found the shelves piled with them—legacies left me by
various predecessors—whether read, accepted, or rejected, I could not find
out. But there they lay roll on roll—silent, dust covered. It seemed a literary
receiving vault, full of corpses.
It was a suggestive and solemn spectacle for a young writer to look
upon. Those many pounds of manuscript—articles which might make a
sensation if printed—truths, maybe, which had not yet dawned on the world
—all lying unread, dead, cold and unpublished.
Lone, lorn ladies came to me with the children of their brains. I referred
them at times to the editor of the daily up-stairs. He referred them to me
back again. Sometimes this shuttlecock process was reversed. The daily
editor fired the applicant down at me. I fired him up again. The trouble in
all these cases lay in the inability of these people to recognize a rejection
when it was mildly and sympathetically applied. It was necessary in some
cases for us to fire these people up and down at each other a dozen times
before their weary legs gave them a hint of the true state of the case.
I saw more than once the man who thought to clinch an acceptance of
his matter by giving me a long explanation of his article, and its value to
this or that interest. I had the traveller from distant lands, who wanted to tell
in print over again what he had seen. I received copies of verses,
accompanied by modest notes from the senders that they might find a place
“in some corner” of the paper. I was beset by a delusionist who had a theory
for doing away with death, and who left me, as he said to “prefer death” and
die in my sins, because I told him I had really no desire to obtain
information on the subject.
Then I had the “space grabber” to deal with—the poor fellow who writes
to live at so much per column, who tries to write as many columns as
possible, and half of whose mind while writing is working more to fill up
his columns with words rather than ideas. But our modern system of
elephantine journalism is in a measure responsible for the “space grabbing”
tendency, since our daily and weekly journalistic mammoths and
megatheriums gape ever for more and more matter. There is so much space
which must be filled, and if not filled stuffed. Every demand brings some
sort of supply, and as the paper must be stuffed, the “space grabber” is
developed to stuff it.
I had also to cope and meet with the literary rehasher. The rehasher is
another journalistic brother who writes the same story, experience,
description, etc., over and over again in different ways. He wrote it years
ago. It proved a success. He has been writing it ever since. He serves it up
roast, baked, boiled, broiled, fried, stewed.
These processes may endure for several years. Then he shoves it on your
table, covered with a thin disguise—a gravy, so to speak—of his more
recent opinion or experience. But it is about the same dish. The older and
more experienced journalistic nose detects it by the same old smell. Finally
it comes up as hash, plain hash, dry hash, wet hash, baked hash, but after all
the same old hash.
Our papers and magazines even to-day abound with the work of the
rehasher. It is just as good for the young readers. Every ten years a
generation comes along for whom the rehash is quite new. They do not
know that it is the same old hash written and read years and years ago by
people dead and gone. The pretentious magazines dish up more or less of
this hash. It is served up in style, garnished with sprigs of fine language and
sentiment and has often a “dressing” of elegant illustrations poured over it.
But it’s the same old hash for all that. If you look over the magazines for a
period say of twenty years, you will find these rehashes—articles
descriptive of Rome, Egypt, London, the Bayeaux tapestry, travels in
countries worn footsore by travellers for generations, the essay on Dante,
Shakespeare, Goethe. As for the frontier romance and “Wild Injun” story,
that has been ground and reground into hash so fine that it has become
“spoon victuals,” and is eaten only by the young and callow of the reading
brood.
A literary colleague, who commands an editorial chair, says that he
allows his rehashers to serve him the same article four times, providing the
garnishing and dressing of the dish show artistic cookery. But he shuts
down after that. This is not only charitable on his part, but possibly a great
benefit to the rehasher, for if he is allowed to go on unchecked, the mental
rehashing process will become automatic, the result of which will be the
unconscious rehashing of the same article through all eternity.
This experience gave me, in certain respects, an entire change of heart. I
will never think hard again of an editor though he does not return my
manuscript even if I send stamps. I will still continue to think kindly of him
though he “declines with thanks.” For I realize now that the “editor” who
would do his duty must have nerves of steel and a heart of stone.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
OPINIONS JOURNALISTIC.
For five years I wrote for many papers in San Francisco and wrote some
things good, some bad, some indifferent. I attacked and ridiculed the errors
and foibles of others with the miraculous confidence and inferred self-
righteousness of a man who had not as yet begun to realize his own
shortcomings. I assailed abuses and was sometimes disgusted at what then I
deemed the timidity and lack of nerve on the part of newspaper publishers,
when they refused to print my tirades, reproofs, and sarcasms. As a
champion I was very brave to speak on paper in the privacy of my own
room. As a man with no capital at stake, I was very wise in showing others
where to put their money.
I was rated in San Francisco as a “Bohemian” and deserved the name. I
was largely in sympathy with the idea that life being short should be
worked at a rapid pace for all that could be got out of it, and that we the
dwellers on the top floor of intellect were justified in regarding with a
certain scorn the duller and generally wealthier plodders on the lower floors
of business. We were as proud of our comparative poverty and disregard of
money because we held in some way we never could explain that such
poverty argued for us the possession of more brains, though we were very
glad to receive our money from people we deemed ourselves so far above. I
think this is all nonsense.
I think now that the ability to express ideas well on paper is a vastly
over-rated and over-praised talent. A man may write well and not have
sufficient executive ability to build a hen coop or govern one after it is built,
and brains play a very important part in any kind of managerial ability, be
the field large or small.
Bohemianism as it existed thirty years ago is nearly dead. It has been
discovered that late hours, gin, and nocturnal out-pourings of wit, brain, and
brilliancy, do not increase the writer’s originality, or fertility of idea, and
that a great deal of force is wasted at such times which should be turned
into dollars and cents.
A man or woman to-day who succeeds permanently with the pen will
not only live well-ordered lives, but possess a business ability outside of the
pen, in order to get their ideas before the public. Never before were there so
many writers, and never before so many able writers. The literary
mediocrity of to-day would have made a brilliant reputation sixty years ago.
But of those who are merely writers, even if good writers, three-fourths as
regards compensation are almost on the same relative plane as the type-
writer. The supply is greater than the demand. People must write even if not
paid for the pleasure of seeing their ideas in print, and for this reason to-day
do we find country weeklies furnished regularly free of expense with
interesting correspondence from abroad by the editor’s travelling friends.
As a newspaper man and correspondent, I was not always very particular
in writing about people, and dragging their personality before the public. I
wanted subjects and something or somebody to write about. These were my
capital stock in trade.
I don’t wonder that a certain unpopularity with a class attaches itself to
“newspaper men,” “correspondents” and reporters. The tendency and
temptation is to become social Paul Pry’s, especially when family or
individual secrets will swell a column and bring dollars. Of all this I did my
share, and regard myself now with small favor for so doing.
The freedom of the Press has developed Press freebooters male and
female, and the Press has now all the freedom of the village gossip.
On the other hand a great many people like to see their names in print.
The remark “don’t put my name in the paper” often means “do put my
name in the paper,” with little care as to the accompanying comment.
Many people have a terrible and I think needless fear of what the
newspaper can do and say to make or unmake them, to give a book or a
play a reputation or kill it outright. I notice that a play often becomes very
popular when its first critics condemned it, and the same can be said of
books. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, Helper’s
Irrepressible Conflict and Bret Harte’s Heathen Chinee were not advertised
into notice by the Press. Their force made the Press advertise them.
The Press, which so often claims to “mould popular opinion” is in reality
moulded by popular opinion and follows it, while sometimes claiming to
lead it. There is a power which brings men and movements for greater or
lesser periods into public notice, which the Press does not manufacture.
The Press which claims indirectly to have so much of the public morals
and the public good in its care and keeping—this “lever of civilization”
which will deluge its columns for days and weeks with the preliminaries of
a prize fight or parades for a similar time the details of a scandal, places a
great deal before the eyes of every boy and girl which seems to me neither
civilized nor civilizing.
I object here neither to the prize fight nor its publication. But I can’t
think the man who spreads it all broadcast day after day before the
community as a promoter of the highest refinement or civilization.
The Press of to-day is either ridiculing ideas or ignoring them entirely,
which the Press of a near Future will treat as most important realities, just
as fifty years ago, nine-tenths of the American newspapers treated the
subject of human slavery. Did the Press of America mould public opinion in
this respect or was it the idea that moulded public opinion first and as a
necessary consequence the Press followed. Not that I advocate the idea that
the editor should express himself far in advance of public opinion or rather
of public knowledge. It is a very unwise thing to do. The inevitable result is
the kick instead of the copper. Martyrdom is not the business of a
newspaper. Many a leading editor of to-day deemed conservative and old
fogyish is really more liberal and progressive than those who rail at him.
But he is wiser than they and has learned that ideas which may be accepted
and in full sway a century hence, cannot be argued as if in full fruition to-
day. He may know also how to pave the way for a new idea, and is often
doing it while his readers never realize his intent.
CHAPTER XXXV.
RECENT ANTIQUITY.
I was soon to leave for the Eastern States. When I realized that I was
going, I found to my surprise that I had made a home in California, that it
was an old home and about it clung all the memories and associations of an
old home.
I wanted to visit the mines and take a farewell look at the camps where I
had lived and worked in a period now fast becoming “old times,” and I
went.
The term antiquity is relative in its character. Twenty years may involve
an antiquity as much as 200 or 2,000. Indeed, as regards sensation and
emotion, the more recent antiquity is the more strongly is it realized and
more keenly felt. Standing to-day on the hillside and looking down on the
site of the camp where you mined twenty-five years ago, and then going
down that hill and treading over that site, now silent and deserted, and you
realize, so to speak, a live antiquity. So far as ancient Greece or Rome are
concerned, their histories would make no different impression on us if dated
600 years ago or 6,000. We are imposed upon by these rows of ciphers.
They convey really no sense of time’s duration. They are but mathematical
sounds. We know only that these nations and these men and women lived,
ate, slept, drank, quarrelled, coveted, loved, hated, and died a long time ere
we were born and that of it all we have but fragments of their history, or
rather fragments of the history of a few prominent individuals.
But when you stand alone at Dry Bar, where you mined when it was a
lively camp in 1857, with its score of muddy sluice streams coursing hither
and thither, its stores, its saloons, its hotel and its express office, and see
now but one rotting pine-log cabin, whose roof has tumbled in and whose
sides have tumbled out; where all about is a silent waste of long-worked-off
banks or bare ledge and piles of boulders in which the herbage has taken
root; where every mark of the former houses and cabins has disappeared,
save a mound here, or a pile of stone indicating a former chimney there,
you have a lively realization of antiquity, though it be a recent one. You
knew the men who lived here; you worked with them; you know the sites of
the houses in which they lived; you have an event and a memory for every
acre of territory hereabout. Down there, where the river narrows between
those two high points of rock, once stood a rickety bridge. It became more
and more shaky and dangerous, until one day Tom Wharton, the Justice of
the Peace, fired by a desire pro bono publico and rather more than his
ordinary quantity of whiskey, cut the bridge away with his axe and it floated
down stream. Over yonder, on that sandy point, was the richest claim on the
bar.
Will you go down to Pot-Hole Bar, two miles below? The trail ran by the
river. But freshet after freshet has rushed over the bank and wiped out the
track made by the footprints of a few years. There is no trace of the trail.
The chaparral has grown over and quite closed it up. Here and there is a
faint trace, and then it brings up short against a young pine or a buckeye,
the growth of the last ten years. Yet in former days this path ranked in your
mind of the importance of a town street. You had no idea how quickly
nature, if left alone, will restore things to what we term “primitive
conditions.” If a great city was deserted in these foothills, within twenty
years’ time the native growths would creep down and in upon it, start
plantations of chaparral in the streets, festoon the houses with vines, while
winged seeds would fill the gutters and cornices with verdure. It is a hard
struggle through the undergrowth to Pot-Hole Bar. No man lives there now.
No man goes there. Even the boulder piles and bare ledges of fifteen years
ago, marking the scarifying work of your race on mother earth’s face, are
now mounds overgrown with weeds. What solitude of ancient ruined cities
equals this? Their former thousands are nothing to you as individuals; but
you knew all the boys at Pot-Hole. It was a favorite after-supper trip from
Dry Bar to Pot-Hole to see how the “boys” were getting on, and vice versa
from Pot-Hole to Dry Bar.
A cotton-tail rabbit sends a flash of white through the bushes. His family
now inhabits Pot-Hole. They came back after all of your troublesome race
had left, and very glad were the “cotton-tails” of the riddance. There is a
broken shovel at your feet and near by in the long grass you see the
fragment of a sluice’s false bottom, bored through with anger holes to catch
the gold and worn quite thin by the attrition of pebble and boulder along its
upper surface. This is about the only vestige of the miner’s former work.
Stop! On the hillside yonder is a mound-like elevation and beyond that a
long green raised line. One marks the reservoir and the other the ditch. It
was the Pot-Hole Company’s reservoir, built after they had concluded to
take water from the ditch and wash off a point of gravel jutting toward the
river. They had washed it all off by 1856, and then the company disbanded
and went their respective ways. Pot-Hole lay very quiet for a couple of
years, but little doing there save rocker washing for grub and whiskey by
four or five men who had concluded that “grub and whiskey” was about all
in life worth living for. A “slouchy” crowd, prone to bits of rope to tie up
their suspenders, unshaven faces, and not a Sunday suit among them.
They pottered about the bar and the bank, working sometimes in concert
and then quarrelling, and every man betaking himself to his private rocker,
pick, and shovel for a few days or weeks and coming together again, as
compelled by necessity. One of them commenced picking into a slim streak
of gravel at the base of the red hard-pan bank left by the pot-holers. It paid
to the pan first two cents and a little farther in three, and a little farther
seven, and then the gold became coarser and heavier and it yielded a bit to
the pan. The blue ledge “pitched in,” the gravel streak grew wider and
richer, the crowd took up the whole face of the bank, 150 feet to the man,
and found they had struck fortunes. And then they worked at short intervals
and “went it” at long ones, and all save four drank themselves to death
within four years.
They have all long since gone. They are scattered for the most part you
know not where. Two are living in San Francisco and are now men of might
and mark. Another you have heard of far away in the Eastern States, living
in a remote village, whose name is never heard of outside the county
bounds. One has been reported to you as “up North somewhere;” another
down in Arizona “somewhere,” and three you can locate in the county. That
is but seven out of the one hundred who once dwelt here and roundabout.
Now that recollection concentrates herself you do call to mind two others—
one died in the county almshouse and another became insane and was sent
to Stockton. That is all. Nine out of the one hundred that once resided at
Dry Bar. It is mournful. The river monotonously drones, gurgles, and
murmurs over the riffle. The sound is the same as in ’58. A bird on the
opposite bank gives forth, at regular intervals, a loud querulous cry. It was a
bird of the same species whose note so wore on the nerves of Mike
McDonald as he lay dying of consumption in a big house which stood
yonder, that, after anathematizing it, he would beseech his watcher to take a
gun and blow the “cussed” thing’s head off. Perhaps it is the same bird. The
afternoon shadows are creeping down the mountain side. The outline of the
hills opposite has not at all changed, and there, down by the bank, is the
enormous fragment of broken rock against which Dick Childs built his
brush shelter for the summer and out of which he was chased by a sudden
fall rise of the river. But it is very lonesome with all these people here so
vivid in memory, yet all gone, and never, never to come back.
You wonder if any of the “old crowd” now living, live over as you do the
past life here; if a single one within the last ten years has ever revisited the
spot; or if any of them have any desire to revisit it. Some of them did so
once. There was Jake Bennett. As late as ’62, Jake, who had removed to the
next county, would come every summer on a pilgrimage to “see the boys,”
and the boys at Dry Bar were even then sadly reduced in number, for the
camp ran down very quickly within the four years dating from ’58. But Jake
was faithful to old memories and associations, and proved it by the ten-
miles’ walk he was obliged to take to reach Dry Bar. Dry Bar was never on
a regular stage route. Jake was an ex-Philadelphian and called rest “west”
and violin “wiolin.” But no one comes here now, at least on any such
errand. It’s a troublesome and rather expensive locality to reach and mere
sentiment does not pay. The nearest resident is a Missouri hog-rancher,
whose house is above on the hill a couple of miles away. He neither knows
nor cares for Dry Bar’s former history. He came here but ten years ago. His
half-wild swine are ambushed about in the shelter of the elder and buckeye
bushes, and frightened at your approach plunge snorting into the deeper
thickets.
Here it is. The remains of your own cabin chimney, a pile of smoke-
blackened stones in the tall grass. Of the cabin every vestige has
disappeared. You built that chimney yourself. It was an awkward affair, but
it served to carry out the smoke, and when finished you surveyed it with
pleasure and some pride, for it was your chimney. Have you ever felt
“snugger” and more cozy and comfortable since than you did on the long,
rainy winter nights, when, the supper finished and the crockery washed, you
and your “pard” sat by the glowing coals and prepared your pipes for the
evening smoke? There were great hopes and some great strikes on Dry Bar
in those days; that was in ’52. Mining was still in the pan, rocker and long
tom era; sluices were just coming in. Hydraulicking 100-foot banks and
washing hills off the face of the earth had not been thought of. The dispute
as to the respective merits of the long vs. the short-handled shovel was still
going on. A gray or red shirt was a badge of honor. The deep river-beds
were held to contain enormous store of golden nuggets. River mining was
in its wing and coffer-dam phase.
Perhaps the world then seemed younger to you than now? Perhaps your
mind then set little store on this picturesque spot, so wrapped were you in
visions of the future? Perhaps then you wrote regularly to that girl in the
States—your first heart’s-trouble—and your anticipation was fixed entirely
on the home to be built up there on the gold you were to dig here? Perhaps
the girl never married you, the home was never built and nothing
approaching the amount of oro expected dug out. You held, then, Dry Bar in
light estimation. It was for you only a temporary stopping place, from
which you wished to get its gold as quickly as you could and get away from
as soon as possible. You never expected Dry Bar, its memories and
associations thus to make for themselves a “local habitation and a name” in
your mind. We live sometimes in homes we do not realize until much of
their material part has passed away. A horned toad scuttles along the dry
grass and inflates himself to terrify you as you approach. Those rat-like
ground squirrels are running from hole to hole, like gossiping neighbors,
and “chipping” shrilly at each other. These are old summer acquaintances at
Dry Bar.
Is it with a feeling of curiosity you take up one of those stones handled
by you thirty-one years ago and wonder how like or unlike you may be to
yourself at that time? Are you the same man? Not the same young man,
certainly. The face is worn; the eyes deeper set; the hair more or less gray
and there are lines and wrinkles where none existed then. But that is only
the outside of your “soul case.” Suppose that you, the John Doe of 1883,
could and should meet the John Doe of 1853? Would you know him?
Would you agree on all points with him? Could you “get” along with him?
Could you “cabin” with him? Could you “summer and winter” with him?
Would the friends of the John Doe of ’53, who piled up that chimney, be the
friends of the present John Doe, who stands regarding its ruins? Are the
beliefs and convictions of that J. Doe those of this J. Doe? Are the jokes
deemed so clever by that J. Doe clever to this J. Doe? Are the men great to
that J. Doe great to the present J. Doe? Does he now see the filmly, frothy
fragments of scores of pricked bubbles sailing away and vanishing in air? If
a man die shall he live again? But how much of a man’s mind may die out
and be supplanted by other ideas ere his body goes back to dust? How much
of this J. Doe belongs to that J. Doe, and how much of the same man is
there standing here?
CHAPTER XXXVI.
GOING HOME.
After sixteen years of exile in California, I found myself rolling

seaward and homeward through the Golden Gate in the Panama steamer
Sacramento. The parting gun had been fired, the captain, naval cloak, cap,
eye-glass and all, had descended from his perch of command on the paddle-
box, the engine settled steadily to its work, Telegraph Hill, Meigg’s Wharf,
Black Point, Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort Point, one by one receded and crept
into the depressing gloomy fog, the mantle in which San Francisco loves so
well to wrap herself. The heave of the Pacific began to be plainly felt, and
with it the customary misery.
The first two days out are devoted to sea and homesickness. Everybody
is wretched about something. No sooner is the steamer a mile beyond the
Heads than we, who for years have been awaiting a blessed deliverance
from California, are seized with unutterable longings to return. All at once
we discover how pleasant is the land and its people. We review its
associations, its life, its peculiar excitements, and the warm friendships we
have made there. And now it is all fading in the fog: the Cliff House is
disappearing, it is going, it is gone. Heart and stomach are
contemporaneously wretched: we bury ourselves in our berths; we call upon
the steward and stewardess; we wish ardently that some accident may befall
the ship and oblige her to put back. No! Not more inexorable, certain and
inevitable is the earth in its revolution, the moon in its orbit, or one’s
landlord when the rent is overdue, than is the course of the stately vessel
south. South, day after day, she plunges; the North Star sinks, the sky
becomes fairer, the air milder, the ocean of a softer blue; the sunsets
develop the tints of Fairyland; the sunrise mocks all human ornamentation
in its gorgeousness. Light coats and muslin dresses blossom on the
promenade-deck; the colored waiters develop white linen suits and faultless
neckties. The sea air on the northern edge of the tropic zone is a balm for
every wound, and forces us into content against our perverse wills.
We had a medley on board. There was a batch of sea-captains going
East, some with wives, some without; one of the maritime madams, they
said, could navigate a vessel as well as her husband; she certainly had a
sailor balance in walking the deck in rough weather. There was a tall
Mephistophelic-looking German youth, who daily took up a position on
deck, fortified by a novel, a cigar, and a field-glass, never spoke a word to
any one, and was reported to be a baron. There were a dogmatic young
Englishman with a heavy burr in his voice, who seemed making a business
of seeing the world; a stocky young fellow, one of Morgan’s men during the
war, and another who had seen his term of service on the Federal side; a
stout lady, dissatisfied with everything, sick of travelling, dragging about
with her a thin-legged husband well stricken in years, who interfered feebly
with her tantrums; and a young man who at the commencement of the trip
started out with amazing celerity and success in making himself popular.
This last was a cheery, chippery young fellow; his stock in trade was small,
but he knew how to display it to the best advantage. It gave out in about ten
days, and everybody voted him a bore. He took seriously to drinking brandy
ere we arrived in New York. And then came the rank and file, without
sufficient individuality as yet developed to be even disagreeable.
But there was one other, a well-to-do Dutchess County farmer, who had
travelled across the continent to see “Californy,” and concluded to take the
steamer on his way home to observe as much as he might of Central
America; a man who had served the Empire State in her legislature; a man
mighty in reading. Such a walking encyclopædia of facts, figures, history,
poetry, metaphysics and philosophy I never met before. He could quote
Seward, Bancroft, Carl Schurz, Clay, and Webster by the hour. His voice
was of the sonorous, nasal order, with a genuine Yankee twang. I tried in
vain to spring on him some subject whereof he should appear ignorant. One
might as well have endeavored to show Noah Webster a new word in the
English language. And all this knowledge during the trip he ground out in
lots to order. It fell from his lips dry and dusty. It lacked soul. It smelt
overmuch of histories, biographies, and political pamphlets. He turned it all
out in that mechanical way, as though it were ground through a coffee-mill.
Even his admiration was dry and lifeless. So was his enthusiasm. He kept
both measured out for occasions. It is a pleasant sail along the Central
American coast, to see the shores lined with forests so green, with palms
and cocoanuts, and in the background dark voltanic cones; and this man, in
a respectable black suit, a standing collar and a beaver hat, would gaze
thereon by the hour and grind out his dusty admiration. Among the steerage
passengers was a bugler who every night gave a free entertainment. He
played with taste and feeling, and when once we had all allowed our souls
to drift away in “The Last Rose of Summer,” the Grinder in the midst of the
beautiful strain brought us plump to earth by turning out the remark that “a
bewgle made abeout as nice music as any instrument goin’, ef it was well
played.” Had he been thrown overboard he would have drifted ashore, and
bored the natives to death with a long and lifeless story of his escape from
drowning.
Dames Rumor and Gossip are at home on the high seas. They commence
operations as soon as their stomachs are on sea-legs. Everybody then
undergoes an inspection from everybody else, and we report to each other.
Mrs. Bluster! Mrs. Bluster’s conduct is perfectly scandalous before we have
been out a week: she nibbling around young men of one-half—ay, one-
fourth—her age! The young miss who came on board in charge of an
elderly couple has seceded from them; promenades the hurricane-deck very
late with a dashing young Californian; but then birds of a feather, male and
female, will flock together. Mr. Bleareye is full of brandy every morning
before ten o’clock; and the “catamaran” with the thin-legged and subjected
husband does nothing but talk of her home in ——. We know the color and
pattern of her carpets, the number of her servants, the quality of her plate,
and yesterday she brought out her jewelry and made thereof a public
exhibition in the saloon. All this is faithfully and promptly borne per rail
over the Isthmus, and goes over to the Atlantic steamer. I am conscientious
in this matter of gossip: I had made resolutions. There was a lady likewise
conscientious on board, and one night upon the quarter-deck, when we had
talked propriety threadbare, when we were both bursting with our fill of
observation, we met each other halfway and confessed that unless we
indulged ourselves also in a little scandal we should die, and then, the
flood-gates being opened, how we riddled them! But there is a difference
between criticism of character and downright scandal, you know; in that
way did we poultice our bruised consciences.
On a voyage everybody has confidences to make, private griefs to
disclose, to everybody else. This is especially the case during the first few
days out. We feel so lone and lorn; we have all undergone the misery of
parting, the breaking of tender ties; we seem a huddle of human units

Logical Introduction To Probability and Induction Franz Huber Full Chapter

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Logical Introduction to Probability and

Induction Franz Huber

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada

The instructor’s manual can be found online at the following webaddress:

4. Deductive Approaches to Confirmation 47

6. The Classical Interpretation of Probability 98

7. The Logical Interpretation of Probability 111

7.5. The new riddle of induction 132

8. The Subjective Interpretation of Probability 139

9. The Chance Interpretation of Probability 187

10. The (Limiting) Relative Frequency

10.9. Inferential statistics 243

11. Alternative Approaches to Induction 259

A Logical Introduction to Probability and Induction is an

well as Kolmogorov’s axiomatization of the probability calculus.

The last week of a course is usually best spent reviewing

I am very grateful to Claus Beisbart, Joseph Berkovitz, Michael

1.1 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

The sentence “Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany in August

Toronto is a city. Toronto is a city. It is not the case that

Is there one sentence in the above line, or are there two

p Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany in August 2017.

Sentence tokens can be combined, or connected, to form more

Negation: ¬ it is not the case that . . .

Officially we define a formal language L for propositional logic

1. Every propositional variable, or sentence letter, ‘p,’ ‘q,’

Speakers use languages to talk about things. Those things can

another language, the former has the latter as an object language.

In the first sentence, we are using the word ‘Toronto.’ In the

Now consider again the recursive definition above and, in

are symbols of the metalanguage that we use to talk about

However, as mentioned, logicians are lazy. They have introduced

L This sentence is false.

If the sentence L in the line above is true, then it is false, and

This sentence contains five words.

Try to think about which feature, in addition to self-

Negation: A negated sentence (¬α) is true just in case the

Unfortunately, the meaning of many English conditionals, or

1.2 PREDICATE LOGIC

Sentences talk about objects, the properties these objects have,

Properties of one object are referred to by predicates, or

F . . . is chancellor of Germany in August 2017

A predicate and an individual constant can be combined to

F (a) Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany in August 2017.

It is customary to identify predicate symbols with unary

I have not included a right column for individual variables

Existential quantifier: ∃x there exists an x

When we translate English sentences into well-formed formulas

the predicate-logical form of all sentences clear. For instance,

There is a Republican U.S. president in August 2017.

These two sentences from the English language are transformed

There exists at least one object x such that: x is U.S. president

In a second step, we can then transform the sentences from

We now subsume the formal language for propositional logic

1. If ‘t1 ,’ . . ., ‘tn ’ are n terms, that is, individual constants

2. If α and β are well-formed formulas of L, and if ‘x’ is

In contrast to the previous definition, the first clause now is

Existential quantifier: An existentially quantified formula