An Elementary Logic - 1906 Author:John Edward Russell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: deafness. These terms, it is said, have no meaning if applied to beings which do not normally possess the powers of sight and hearing. On the other hand, the ter... more »ms not-seeing, not-hearing, are negative; they are applicable to inanimate beings as well as to beings which can possess such powers. The difference between negative and privative is, however, one of degree only; a privative name is a negative name which has the additional implication that the subject ought normally to possess the specified mark or property. 5. Absolute and Relative Concepts. — In formal logic a name is called Absolute when its meaning is complete without involving a relation to another name. A name is Relative if its complete connotation does involve a relation to some other name. For example, the names husband, parent, brother, king, are relative names; while the names, metal, dog, man, happiness, are absolute names; the meaning of husband, parent, brother, king, is not complete without the relation to wife, other brothers or sisters, subjects; while the meaning of metal, dog, man, happiness, involves no such necessary relation. The meaning of a relative name must not be confounded with the meaning which a name may have for any mind in consequence of all it suggests to that mind; in the logical sense of the term a name is not relative because it suggests various other names, every name does that; but because that which is suggested is a part of its meaning. The name home suggests to my mind a thousand things, no one of which is anypart of the logical connotation of this name; likewise the name father calls to my mind a hundred things which are not part of the logical meaning of this name; but this name does suggest one thing which is a necessary part of its connotation, viz. offspring, son or daugh...« less