William Stanley Jevons · 1870
On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference
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- English
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- archive.org
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- Ben Breen, 2026-09-29; suggested by Claude research agents, 29 Sep 2026
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- Arguments unverified; quotations chosen by machine, unchecked
Q01THINKING
Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
Q10JUDGMENT
Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?Yes. inference can be mechanized. Jevons contrasts the incompleteness of the ancient syllogism with deduction founded on fundamental laws of thought that can be embodied in uniform mechanical movements.
The ancient syllogism was incapable of mechanical performance because of its extreme incompleteness and crudeness, and it is only when we found our system upon the fundamental laws of thought themselves that we arrive at a system of deduction which can be embodied in a machine acting by simple and uniform movements.
OCR corrected
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 160 (1870), pp. 497-518; JSTOR 109068; Internet Archive copy listed.