Inquiry

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Psychologism in logic: Husserl's critique

Jack W. Meiland

To cite this article: Jack W. Meiland (1976) Psychologism in logic: Husserl's critique, Inquiry,
19:1-4, 325-339, DOI: 10.1080/00201747608601795

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 Inquiry, 19, 325-39

Psychologism in Logic:
Husserl's Critique
Jack W. Meiland
University of Michigan

Psychologism in logic holds that logic is a branch of psychology. This view

has been vigorously defended by John Stuart Mill and by a number of German
philosophers of logic, notably Erdmann. Its chief critics have been Husserl
and Frege and, to a lesser extent, Russell. Husserl set forth a profound and
detailed critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations. This paper examines
this critique. First, I explain why the psychologistic theory is attractive.
Then I show that Husserl's critique is not convincing, partly because he does
not take the theory in its most plausible form and partly because he ignores
certain important distinctions (for example, between what a statement is about
and what it is true in virtue of). Then I raise two new objections to the
psychologistic theory. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the
psychologistic theory remains an important and serious position from which
we can learn much about the status of logic.

I. Introduction
Many philosophers have held that the laws of logic - such as the Prin-
ciple of Non-Contradiction (that no proposition can be both true and
false at the same time) - are laws descriptive of the intrinsic logical
structure of reality. These philosophers believe that reality has a logical
structure independently of the mind and that this structure is represented
by the structure of logic. Those who hold this view may differ as to
whether reality has this intrinsic structure contingently or necessarily.
If it is maintained that reality has this structure contingently, then it is
also natural to maintain that we learn the laws of logic (and the cor-
responding structure of reality) through experience rather than in an
a priori manner. Perhaps this was one of John Stuart Mill's motivations
for holding that the laws of logic were generalizations from experience:

I consider it [the Principle of Non-Contradiction] to be, like other

axioms, one of our first and most familiar generalizations from ex-
perience. The original foundation of it I take to be that Belief and
Disbelief are two different mental states, excluding one another. This
4
326 JackW.Meiland
we know by the simplest observation of our own minds. And if we
carry our observation outward, we also find that light and darkness,
sound and silence, motion and quiescence . . . any positive phenomenon
whatever and its negative, are distinct phenomena, pointedly con-
trasted, and the one always absent where the other is present. I con-
sider the maxim in question to be a generalization from all these facts.1

The idea behind this view would be, on my suggestion, that if logical laws
describe the intrinsic (mind-independent) structure of reality and if this
particular structure is one among many possible structures that reality
could have, then we simply have to observe the nature of things to find
out which of the many possible structures reality does in fact have.
Someone might criticize this view by saying that it is not true that
reality could have had other logical structures instead of the one it does
have. One argument supporting this objection might run as follows: if
reality could have had other logical structures, then those other structures
would be described by other systems of logic; but other systems of logic
- systems which, for example, do not contain or conform with the Prin-
ciple of Non-Contradiction - are inconceivable; therefore it is not
possible for reality to have had a different logical structure than it does
have. Notice that the objector agrees with the view that reality has an
intrinsic logical structure; he simply does not agree that reality has this
structure contingently. Instead he believes that reality has this structure
necessarily, that reality could have had no other structure than it does
have.
But there are other philosophers who believe that reality has no in-
herent logical structure and that logical structure is imposed on experience
by the mind in one way or another. Some of those who take this view
believe that logical laws are conventions either freely and consciously
adopted or else (perhaps unconsciously) developed through time by the
society or community employing those laws. These philosophers would
explain the inconceivability of other systems of laws in the following
way: what is possible or conceivable is determined by the logical laws
that we do employ; we have no other standard or criterion of possibility
than this; so of course all other laws of logic which are incompatible with
our present laws are going to be judged impossible or inconceivable on the
basis of our present laws. But an objector might then argue that this
renders the conventionalist view incoherent: the conventionalist view
holds that the laws of logic are conventions; but there are many alterna-
 Psychotogism in Logic 327
tive conventions available; we might have adopted some other conven-
tions instead of the ones we now have; this is, at any rate, a possibility;
but then it follows from the conventionalist position that we might have
had other laws of logic than we now have; so the conventionalist cannot
even maintain that other systems of logic are inconceivable. Moreover,
conventionalism has the following further consequence: in order to ex-
plain the inconceivability of other systems of logic, the conventionalist
would have to say that they are inconceivable given the laws of logic
which we do use; but he would also have to say that in some larger sense
they are not inconceivable since they are alternative conventions which
we might possibly have adopted; yet, he can say this only if he has some
criterion of possibility according to which these alternative conventions
are possible conventions for us to use; this criterion of possibility cannot
be the conventions we do use, since once we have adopted the conventions
we do use, certain alternative conventions are thereby rendered inconceiv-
able; and there is no other criterion of possibility available to us now.
So it is not clear that the conventionalist can even express his own view
that other conventions are possible. The conventionalist may well reply
that other systems of logic are not inconceivable and in fact he conceives
of them by conceiving of different conventions which we might have
adopted. But then conventionalism cannot explain the apparent necessity
of the laws of logic. And if it tries to explain this necessity by saying that
it is a necessity relative to the conventions we do use, then it has no way
- no criterion of possibility, as shown above - to explain how alterna-
tive conventions are themselves possible.
At this point we are in the following situation. Any theory which holds
that the laws of logic are contingent - either mind-independent but
nevertheless contingent structures of reality, or else arbitrary conventions
employed by the mind - encounters the objection that they cannot be
merely contingent because alternatives to them are inconceivable. This
objection cannot be raised to the view that the laws of logic describe a
necessary structure of reality. But this view is open to a different objec-
tion, namely that it is not explained by this view why this structure is
necessary. To say that this structure is necessary is perhaps only to say
that any other structure is inconceivable; it is not to explain why other
structures are inconceivable.
These seeming deficiencies of the theories already described help to
make the psychologistic theory of logic attractive. The psychologistic
theory holds roughly that logic is a branch of psychology. Psychology
328 JackW.Meiland
attempts to describe the workings of the mind; and as a branch of psy-
chology, so does logic. But logic does not attempt to describe or explain
how we do think in particular cases; it does not try to explain why a par-
ticular person first has one thought and then has another thought. In-
stead it is concerned with the parameters within which thinking takes
place. It is concerned with the limits of thinking. It specifies what can be
thought and what cannot be thought. In other words, it tells us what is
conceivable by us. For example, the Principle of Non-Contradiction tells
us that we cannot conceive of a proposition which is both true and false
at the same time and in the same respect. So one major virtue of the psy-
chologistic theory is that while it does not thoroughly explain* why
alternative systems of logic are inconceivable, it at least indicates the area
in which such an explanation is to be found. It is to be found in the nature
of the mind. Thus, on the psychologistic theory, logic does not deal with
mind-independent properties of reality; for it does not deal with proper-
ties of reality at all. It deals with properties of the mind. And the theory
implies, if not explicitly states, that since the mind could have been con-
stituted other than it is, we could have had different laws of logic than
we do have. (We will examine this latter feature of the theory more
closely later.)
I have tried to explain what makes the psychologistic theory of logic
attractive. It is attractive because it offers an outline of an explanation
of why our present laws of logic seem necessary to us and why alternative
laws seen inconceivable, an explanation in terms of the nature of the
mind rather than the nature of reality. Now I want to examine the psy-
chologistic theory further by discussing the most penetrating and pro-
found critique of that theory known to me, the critique to be found in the
first volume of Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations.2 I think that
we can learn a great deal about the nature of the theory itself and of the
underlying issues through such a discussion. Husserl discusses both the
general psychologistic theory and particular versions of psychologism put
forward by various philosophers. I want to focus on his consideration of
the views of B. Erdmann. It may be true, as John Passmore claims, that
'Mill, in particular, is the villain of the piece; it is his psychological
approach to logic which Husserl especially attacks'.3 But I find that
Husserl's discussion of Erdmann contains many of the points he makes
against other psychologistic theories, including Mill's, and in addition
(and more importantly) gets much further into the issues due to the (in
my opinion) much greater sophistication of Erdmann's views. I will
 Psychologism in Logic 329
attempt to defend Erdmann against many of Husserl's criticisms. Then
I will add several of my own criticisms of Erdmann.

II. Laws of Logic as Governing What We Can Understand

Husserl begins by quoting a passage which succinctly expresses Erdmann's
basic position on the status of logical laws. Here is that passage from Erd-
mann.

It has been maintained, since Aristotle, that the necessity of these

(logical) principles is unconditional, their validity therefore eternal.
. . . The decisive reason for this has been sought in the impossibility of
thinking judgments that contradict them. But this only proves that
these principles mirror the essence of our presentation and thinking.
For if they reveal this, it will not be possible to carry out their contra-
dictories, since these seek to abolish the condition to which all our
presentation and thinking, and so all our judgment, is bound. (155)

Husserl interprets Erdmann (correctly, in my opinion) to be saying this:

(1) The main support for the view that logical principles have uncondi-
tional (mind-independent) and eternal validity is the fact that we cannot
'think' or entertain judgments which contradict those principles. (2) But
there is a better explanation of this impossibility of thinking those con-
tradictories than the view that they are eternally valid and mind-
independent. (3) This better explanation is that logical laws express the
conditions which govern our thinking in the sense of describing the limits
of what we can think. I believe that by talking about 'the condition to
which all our presentation and thinking, and so all our judgment, is
bound', Erdmann is saying that logical laws state necessary conditions of
our being able to think anything at all. For example, in the case of the
Principle of Non-Contradiction, if we try to entertain the proposition
that John is six feet tall and John is not six feet tall, we do not succeed
in entertaining any thought. We cannot conceive of, or 'think', such a
situation. Now, of course, it is very important that Erdmann tell us just
what it means to say that such a situation cannot be 'thought'. He can-
not mean that we cannot imagine it in the basic sense of not being
able to form an image of it. This interpretation would be consistent
with Erdmann's emphasis on what the mind can and cannot do. But
nevertheless it is inadequate because we can certainly 'think' things of
330 JackW.Meiland
which we cannot form images (the 1000-sided polygon, for example).
This point - about what it means to be able to 'think' something - will
become important later.4
Notice that in the quotation, Erdmann purports to explain why the
denials of the laws of logic are inconceivable (or 'unthinkable'). Husserl's
first objection is that the theory does not explain what it is supposed to
explain;

It seems quite possible to me that, just on account of those laws to

which all a creature's (e.g. a man's) thinking is subject, individual judg-
ments may be framed denying the validity of these laws. The denial
of these laws contradicts their assertion, but the denial as a real act is
quite compatible with the objective validity of the laws, or with the
real operation of the conditions on which the laws pronounce generally.
(156)

I interpret this reply to go as follows: let us suppose that Erdmann is right

and that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is a law governing our
thinking. Now we perform the (real) act of denying that Principle. Even
if we deny the Principle, the Principle is nevertheless (by hypothesis) still
true. Our act of denying the Principle does not make it false. So the
Principle continues to govern our thought and to make acts of thought
possible. Thus, the act of denying the Principle of Non-Contradiction
should still be possible to perform. In other words, Husserl is arguing
that if Erdmann is correct about the function of the Principle of Non-
Contradiction, then it follows that it should be possible to deny that
Principle; but what Erdmann is trying to explain is why it is not possible
to deny that Principle; therefore Erdmann's theory does not succeed in
doing what it has been advertised as doing, and it is therefore inadequate.
I think that this criticism by Husserl takes Erdmann's theory in a cer-
tain way. Husserl here takes Erdmann's theory to hold that the laws of
logic determine which acts of thought the mind can perform. The basic
distinction here is between the act of thought and the content of the act
of thought. The very operation of the laws of logic make it possible to
perform acts of thought in the first place and therefore make possible the
particular acts of denying the laws of logic. Husserl uses an analogy to
;nake this point: suppose that the associationists are right in saying that
the laws of the association of ideas govern our thinking; we could still
perform the act of thinking the denial of one of these associationist laws;
 Psychologism in Logic 331
and we could do this precisely because the law itself is true, because the
mind does operate in accordance with those laws of association, and hence
because the mind can perform acts of thought Only because there are
laws of the mind can the mind operate at all. So the laws of the mind
themselves make possible the very acts of denying them. Therefore, it
does not follow from the fact that these laws govern thought that their
denial is impossible; on the contrary, what follows from this fact is that
their denial (and thinking in general) is possible. Let me now put this in
a slightly different way. Husserl is saying that the denial of the Principle
of Non-Contradiction does not prevent thought. And this reply by Hus-
serl shows that he has a certain view about what Erdmann is saying. He
thinks that Erdmann is saying that the reason why the denial of a law
of logic is inconceivable is that denying it somehow renders that law in-
operative and hence thought becomes impossible. (In the same way, I
suppose, Husserl would say that if the laws of combustion became false
or invalid, automobile engines would cease to work.) And so Husserl's
main point is simply that denying the laws of thought does not render
those laws false or invalid; those laws continue to govern thought and
hence acts of thought continue to be possible.
I think that this criticism by Husserl is mistaken. He is misled by his
distinction between the act of thought and the content of that act. When
he says that the act of denying the Principle of Non-Contradiction is
possible, what he probably means is that one can, as it were, think the
words to oneself 'The Principle of Non-Contradiction is false'. But Erd-
mann would not deny that one can think these words to oneself. He
would only say that there is more to thinking the denial of the Principle
than this. Of course, it is at this point that an explanation of what Erd-
mann counts as 'thinking that $ ' becomes crucial. Whatever counts as
this, though, we can see that more is involved than just saying the words
to oneself. Suppose a five-year-old child says to himself the words which
express Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. The child has certainly
performed an act of thought. But it is equally certain that in simply
thinking these words, he has not 'thought' the Special Theory of Rela-
tivity. He does not understand these words, and so this act of thought
does not count as the act of thinking the Special Theory of Relativity. In
exactly the same way, Erdmann should claim that the person who says
the words 'The Principle of Non-Contradiction is false' to himself does
not understand what he is saying to himself and so he is not thinking that
the Principle is false. Thus, Husserl's distinction between act and content,
332 Jack W. Meiland
though useful for other purposes, is misleading in this context. For unless
the act has a certain content, it is not that act but some other act (e.g. not
the act of thinking that the Principle is false but instead the act of saying
some words to oneself). Erdmann is talking about what contents we can
understand, not what words we can say to ourselves. His view is that the
laws of logic govern the mind in the sense of governing what we can
understand (not in the sense of what is intrinsically understandable but in
the sense of what is understandable by us). Through governing what we
can understand, these laws govern (in the way I have tried to explain, in
terms of acts and their contents) what acts of thought we can perform.s

III. Contingent Necessity

In the reply to Husserl that I just gave, I took the laws of logic to be laws
about what we can understand. Perhaps there are things which other
beings can or could understand but which we cannot understand. What
we can understand is determined by the nature of our minds; and the
limits of our understanding are expressed by the laws of logic. It is in
this sense that the laws of logic are psychological. If it is a contingent
matter that we have the types of minds we do have, it is a contingent
matter that we only understand certain kinds of things. But it would not
follow from this contingency by itself that the laws of logic are them-
selves contingent. It all depends on what the laws of logic are taken to
say. If they are interpreted as saying that we can understand only such-
and-such sorts of things, then the laws of logic would be contingent if we
might have had different types of minds than we do have. But if the laws
of logic are instead interpreted as saying that anyone with this type of
mind can understand only such-and-such, then the laws of logic would
be necessary truths if it were a necessary feature of this type of mind that
it could only understand such-and-such.
But all this raises a fundamental issue. I have been talking about
whether the laws of logic are contingent or necessary on the psychologistic
theory just outlined. The psychologist's opponent - the absolutist - will
rightly ask at this point what is meant here by 'contingency' and 'neces-
sity'. It is normally the laws of logic which tell us about contingency and
necessity. So it is not clear that the laws of logic could themselves be
contingent. Suppose that the laws of logic were themselves contingent;
and suppose further that the laws of logic held that some proposition $
was necessary. Well, then <b would be necessary relative to our laws of
 Psychologism in Logic 333
logic (which are, by hypothesis, contingent) and therefore O would be
•contingently necessary'. But, the absolutist would continue, the idea of
contingent necessity makes no sense; if O is only contingently necessary,
then it is contingent and not necessary. I think that the absolutist is wrong
here and that the idea of contingent necessity makes perfectly good sense:
*t> is contingently necessary when and only when 0 is necessary relative
to principles which are themselves contingent. The idea of contingent
necessity is senseless only if one assumes the absolutist theory of logic -
that is, only if necessity is an absolute property in the sense that it is not
dependent on something else (in particular, not dependent on some set of
laws). But the absolutist might still press his case in the following way:
he might point out that since the psychologistic theory allows the laws of
logic themselves to have modal properties (such as contingency), $ could
be a law of logic itself; in that case, to say that <1> is contingent is to say
something like 'This law of logic is contingent relative to itself (and to
other laws of logic)'; and this seems to be an illegitimate application of a
principle to itself. But the absolutist must show exactly wherein the
illegitimacy lies. Principles can apply to themselves, at least in some
cases. For example, the principle 'All principles are capable of precise
formulation' may be capable of precise formulation without incoherence.
However, whatever the soundness of the particular objections of this type
raised by the absolutist, he is making a very important point about this
psychologistic theory. He is pointing out that on the psychologistic
theory, judgments of necessity and contingency depend on the very laws
which the psychologistic theory talks about. And this fact will play an
important role in an objection which I will raise to the psychologistic
theory at the end of this paper.

IV. Laws of Logic as Consequences of the Nature of the Mind

Husserl's next objection is put in the form of a dilemma: The laws of
thought of which Erdmann speaks, are either not those laws of which I
and everyone else speaks, in which case my [the logical absolutist] thesis
is still untouched, or he attributes a character to them which is quite at
variance with their sense' (156). He further explains this by making a
distinction between laws which have a 'real content' and laws which are
'purely conceptual propositions' (157). Husserl's point here is that Erd-
mann may be talking about something which exists, namely laws which
govern 'actual acts of assertion' or 'real presentation and judgment'; but
334 Jack W. Meiland
the logical absolutist is talking about laws of a different kind. Thus,
Erdmann may be saying something true about real laws, but by failing
to make the above distinction, he confuses 'real laws' with 'conceptual
laws'. In further explaining this distinction, Husserl says *No proposition
whose roots lie in mere concepts, which merely states what those concepts
contain, and what is given with them, makes an assertion about the real'
(157). Of course, Husserl must do more than merely make the distinction;
he must give some reason to believe that the laws of logic fall on one side
of the distinction rather than the other. Husserl knows this, and he says:

One need only consider the genuine sense of the laws of logic to see
that they do not do this [make an assertion about the real]. Even
where they speak of judgments, they do not refer to what psychological
laws seek to indicate by this word, i.e., judgments as real experiences,
but they mean judgments in the sense of statement-meanings in specie,
meanings which retain their identity whether serving to found actual
acts of assertion or not, and without regard as to who asserts them.
(157)

Here Husserl invites us to examine the laws of logic and to see that they
are about concepts (they state 'what those concepts contain') rather than
about human psychology. Perhaps he thinks that if the laws of logic
were about the mind, they would mention the mind (or at least the human
being). For example, if the Principle of Non-Contradiction were a law
about human psychology, it might be stated in the following form: 'No
human bemg can conceive a proposition as bemg both true and not true
at the same time'. Here, at least, human beings are mentioned, and so the
law is a law of human psychology. But in fact the correct statement of the
Principle of Non-Contradiction does not mention human beings. Hence
it is not about human beings and therefore not about their psychology.
One determines this merely by just looking to see what the laws of logic
are about.
If this is what Husserl is saying, then I think that his objection is less
than convincing. It is true that the laws of logic do not mention beings
or their psychology. But we must distinguish between what a statement
is explicitly about and what it is true in virtue of. The Principle of Non-
Contradiction is normally stated without reference to human beings. But
it is true for human beings in virtue of their nature, if the psychologists
theory is correct. Perhaps an analogy will help. Kepler's first two laws
 Psychologism in Logic 335
of planetary motion - the law of elliptical movement and the law of
equal areas - are true in virtue of the presence and nature of gravity.
But Kepler's laws do not, of course, refer to or mention gravity. If
gravity were different, as it might well have been - if, for example,
gravity had varied with the cube of the distance instead of the square -
then planetary motions would have been described by different laws.
Just as the laws of planetary motion are not about gravity but are true in
virtue of gravity, so too Erdmann could claim that the laws of logic are
not about the mind or about standard psychological properties but in-
stead are true in virtue of psychological properties or of the nature of the
mind. The laws of logic are consequences of the nature of the mind. Hus-
serl shows that he misconstrues the psychologistic theory by comparing
the laws of logic on the psychologistic theory to associationist laws of
psychology (156). The difference in status between these is immense.
Associationist psychology attempts to construct a physics or mechanics
of thought by describing the way in which the mind actually works and
in particular how one mental state leads to another. But the laws of logic
describe the limits of understanding; they describe consequences of the
way the mind works rather than the way the mind works. So the laws of
logic are psychological laws in this extended sense. But they are nonethe-
less contingent and dependent on the nature of the mind.

V. Concepts as Social Creations

But perhaps, in the objection now being considered, Husserl is trying to
say something rather different from the interpretation which I have de-
veloped above. Perhaps when Husserl says 'One need only consider the
genuine sense of the laws of logic to see that they do not do this [that is,
make assertions about the real]' (157), he means that one need only con-
sider what is meant (rather than, as I interpreted him earlier, what is
mentioned). Perhaps he means that when one states the Principle of Non-
Contradiction, one intends to be talking about concepts (such as those of
'proposition' and 'truth') rather than about human psychology. I think
that the reply given earlier - emphasizing what the laws of logic are
true in virtue of, rather than what they are about — is pertinent here too,
but I think that we can go farther than that. For Husserl would reply
that if the laws of logic are about concepts, then these laws cannot be
consequences of human psychology. For concepts are eternally, unchang-
ingly, mind-independent entities. So the laws about them cannot be de-
336 JackW.Meiland
pendent on the nature of the mind because the subject-matter of these
laws is totally independent of the nature of the mind. This reply by Hus-
serl presupposes that concepts are mind-independent entities, and Husserl
must say something to support this view. For there are other plausible
positions on the nature of concepts. For instance, the sociologist Emile
Durkheim holds that concepts are social creations:

The nature of the concept, thus defined, bespeaks its origin. If it is

common to all, it is the work of the community Now it is un-
questionable that language, and consequently the system of concepts
which it translates, is the product of a collective elaboration. What it
expresses is the manner in which society as a whole represents the facts
of experience.6

Using this theory, Durkheim can account for the various properties of
concepts which lead others to take the Platonic view that concepts are
independent of human beings. For example, the impersonality and ob-
jectivity of concepts is due to their being social, rather than individual,
creations. Their apparent immutability is accounted for in the same gen-
eral way (see 481-2). Now, I think that the availability of the Durk-
heimian theory of concepts considerably strengthens our reply to Husserl.
For we can agree with Husserl that the laws of logic are about concepts
and at the same time maintain that the laws of logic are consequences of
human psychology. For on this theory of concepts, concepts themselves
can be regarded, at least in part, as consequences of the nature of the
mind.

VI. Two Objections to the Psychologistic Theory

I have been defending the psychologistic theory of logic against Husserl's
objections. Now I want to leave Husserl and raise several objections
myself against the psychologistic theory.
In order to raise the first objection, I want to first outline what seems
to me to be Erdmann's fundamental argument. Although Erdmann does
not put his argument in this way as far as I know, nevertheless I think
that the following represents its general lines:
(a) Our logical laws depend on the nature of our minds.
(b) The nature of our minds could change.
(c) Therefore, the laws of logic could change too.
 Psychologism in Logic 337
Now, as a start, I want to raise the following as an objection to this
argument. Erdmann's conclusion entails that the Principle of Non-
Contradiction might some day no longer be a law for us. This means that
at some future time, it is possible that a proposition be both true and
false. Now, this conclusion states something to be possible which our
present laws of logic tell us to be impossible. But even on Erdmann's view,
one would suppose that in order to judge at a given moment t what is
possible and what is impossible, one must use the laws of logic in effect
for one at that time t. And the laws of logic which are in effect for us
now tell us that it is not possible at any time, including any future time,
for a proposition to be both true and false. Hence, statement (c) above -
that is, the conclusion of my representation of Erdmann's argument -
entails an impossibility and hence is itself necessarily false. Consequently
the argument is, of course, unsound. Erdmann is simply not entitled,
even on his own view, to talk about certain things as possible when our
own present laws of logic show them to be impossible.
Erdmann might reply that there is nothing impossible in his argument
even according to our present laws of logic. Neither of the premises, (a)
and (b), of his argument are shown to be impossible by our present laws.
And what his argument shows is that what was thought to be an impos-
sibility - that at some future time a proposition may be both true and
false - is in fact not an impossibility. One has to begin with the premises
in checking on possibility. But the critic might then say this: what Erd-
mann's argument shows is that, even if neither (a) nor (b) is impossible
taken separately, their conjunction is impossible because this conjunction
entails a conclusion which in turn entails an impossibility.
The general difficulty here is that Erdmann must make judgments
about possibility in order to give his argument. It would seem that the
only standards of possibility available to him are those embodied in our
present logical laws. Yet his judgments of possibility violate those laws.
So the question arises as to what standards of possibility he is using in
order to arrive at those judgments. The psychologistic position will not
be satisfactory until this question is given a satisfactory answer.
A second, and very different, objection to the psychologistic theory is
this. Suppose that the absolutist admits, for the sake of argument, that
logical laws depend on the nature of our minds, that the nature of our
minds can change, and that therefore logical laws can change. In other
words, suppose that the absolutist admits all of Erdmann's argument as
I have outlined it above. The absolutist may still say that although logical
- 338 Jack W. Meiland
laws may change, the way in which they may change is not the way in
which Erdmann thinks that they may change. Erdmann seems to believe
that they can change in such a way that a proposition could be both true
and false. But in fact the only kind of change that is possible is a change
in the concepts that we use. The mind gradually changes all the time in
this sense, since we gradually drop some concepts and begin to use others.
And it might happen that some day we would drop the concepts of truth,
falsity, proposition, and the like, and begin to use other concepts in their
place. Then we would have different laws of logic. For the laws of logic
express (according to the absolutist of Husserl's stripe, as we saw earlier)
the content of certain concepts. So if we jettison our present concepts
and adopt others, there will be different laws which express the content
of these new concepts. But the important point to notice here is that this
kind of change would not permit a proposition to be both true and false.
For we are supposing such concepts as truth and falsity to have been
jettisoned. So nothing would count any longer as true or false, let alone
as both true and false. Thus, the only kind of change which is possible is
not a kind of change which allows the present laws of logic to be false.
We would merely shift to a different and unrelated set of laws.
We must be careful as to the import of this objection. This objection is
an objection to the psychologistic theory, but it is not any support at all
for Husserl's variety of absolutist theory. Here I am taking the absolutist
theory to hold that logical laws express the content of concepts where the
concepts are viewed as Platonic, changeless, eternal entities. Nothing is
said in this second objection about the nature of concepts; for all the ob-
jection says, concepts might indeed be social products along Durkheimian
lines. So even if this objection is sound, it does not support the Platonic
features of an absolutist theory.
I do not believe that these two objections which I have raised are at
all fatal to the psychologistic theory. I think that the psychologistic
theory is a very strong theory (much stronger than even its best critics
[such as Husserl] believe) when it is properly understood. In this paper
I have tried to make that theory even stronger by bringing out some of its
more profound features through answering some of Husserl's objections.
The theory would be improved even more by satisfactory answers to the
two objections I have raised.
 Psychologism in Logic 339
NOTES
1 John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Longmans Green, London 1956, p. 183.
2 Translated by J. N. Findlay (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1970). All page
references in the body of this paper will be to this volume.
3 John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, Penguin Books, London 1968,
p. 186.
4 One may also wonder why the fact that we cannot 'think' a contradictory situa-
tion was taken by some philosophers (according to the quotation from Erd-
mann) to support the view that the laws of logic have a mind-independent,
eternal validity. Perhaps the argument would run as follows: The Principle of
Non-Contradiction is about propositions; now, propositions are entities which
exist independently of the mind and have certain properties eternally and neces-
sarily; one of their necessary properties is that of having only one truth-value
at a time; so if one thinks a certain proposition as being both true and false,
one is not thinking about that (or any) proposition. Here it is reference which
connects the mind with external reality; and the conditions which limit what
we can think are the conditions of reference. In part, it is the properties of the
object being referred to that set the conditions of successful reference. And in
this case, in thinking a property (namely being both true and false) which the
object cannot have, one's thought fails to be about that object, or one fails to
refer successfully to that object, namely a proposition.
5 Husserl continues with several examples of apparent denials of logical truths.
He takes Erdmann to be claiming that such denials are impossible: 'The im-
possibility of denying the laws of thought is conceived by Erdmann as the
impossibility of performing such a denial' (158). So what Husserl wants to show
with his examples is that it is possible to perform such denials and that therefore
Erdmann's theory does not account for logical impossibility. Here are his ex-
amples:

In the actual thought of normal persons the actual belief of a law of thought
does not usually occur, but it can scarcely be said that it cannot thus occur,
since philosophers like Epicurus and Hegel have denied the law of contradic-
tion . . . One should also reflect that it is in the same sense impossible to think
the negation of the consequences of primitive logical principles as the negation
of these principles themselves. It is well-known, however, that we can be mis-
taken regarding complicated syllogistic or arithmetical theorems . . . (158)

Our reply applies to these examples too. If Erdmann's psychologistic theory is

correct, then Epicurus and Hegel have only verbally denied (uttered or said to
themselves the words which would express the denial of) the law of contradic-
tion. The same reply can be given in the case of the apparent denial of compli-
cated syllogistic or mathematical theorems, though, of course, in this case we
must distinguish this sort of case from denials that these theorems follow from
the axioms employed.
6 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Free Press, New
York 1965, p. 482.