Inference by Complex Conception

Three, and this is the one to learn: the context is opaque. Where the relation involves knowledge, belief, intention or description, substituting a wider term for a narrower one is not permitted, because the person concerned may not know that the two are the same.

"Ravi is the treasurer" does not give "Bharat knows Ravi, therefore Bharat knows the treasurer" in any useful sense. Bharat may know Ravi very well and have no idea that he is the treasurer.

In criminal law this matters directly. "The article was stolen property" does not give "the accused received the article, therefore the accused received stolen property" as an inference about his state of mind. Receiving stolen property requires knowledge or reason to believe that it is stolen, and that requirement exists precisely because the substitution is not automatic.

And in fraud. "X is the Managing Director" does not give "a misrepresentation made to X was a misrepresentation made to the Managing Director", where the question is whether X was addressed in that capacity. A statement made to a man at a wedding is not a statement made to him as an officer of the company.

Why the failures happen

The valid version has a suppressed premise, and it is the same shape as in the last chapter: that the relation R attaches to whatever is a P, and not merely to whatever is an S.

Where that premise is true, the inference goes through. Where the relation attaches for some other reason, or where the relation runs through somebody's knowledge or description, it does not.

So complex conception, like added determinants and material obversion, is a formal inference only within limits fixed by the matter, which is exactly why MU groups the three of them under "other immediate inferences" rather than with eduction.

A worked example

Section 25 of the Indian Contract Act 1872 provides, in its second exception, that an agreement without consideration is not void if it is a promise to compensate, wholly or in part, a person who has already voluntarily done something for the promisor.

A proposition from it. "A promise to compensate for past voluntary services is a valid contract."

Apply complex conception. "The breach of a promise to compensate for past voluntary services is the breach of a valid contract." Sound: the relation "breach of" attaches to a promise because it is a contract, so it transfers.

Now one that fails. "The consideration for a promise to compensate for past voluntary services is the consideration for a valid contract." That is nonsense, and instructively so: the whole point of the exception is that there is no consideration. The relation "consideration for" attaches to the wider class of valid contracts generally and does not attach to this species at all, which is failure one in reverse.

And now the opaque one. Suppose a party pleads: "the defendant knew of the agreement; the agreement was a promise to compensate for past voluntary services; therefore the defendant knew of a promise to compensate for past voluntary services." As a statement about what the defendant knew, this does not follow. He may have known of the agreement without knowing anything about the services or about the character of the promise, and if his state of mind is in issue, the substitution has assumed the very thing to be proved.

The practical rule that comes out of it. Wherever a plea turns on knowledge, belief, intention or good faith, a term may not be swapped for a wider one without evidence that the person concerned knew of the connection. That rule is what this chapter is for.

Distinctions that carry marks

What this does not mean

The inference is not generally invalid. It is used constantly and correctly, and most of the time nobody notices it happening.

An opaque context is not a special legal doctrine. It is a general feature of relations that run through somebody's mind, and the law's requirements of knowledge and belief are built on it rather than creating it.

The failures are not about vagueness. They are about whether a relation attaches to a class or only to its members, which is a question about the relation and not about the sharpness of any term.

Quick revision

Form: from "S is P" infer "the R of S is the R of P", where R is a relation applied to both.

Valid when the relation attaches to the subject in virtue of what makes it a P, so that it transfers to the wider class.

Three failures: the relation attaches only to the narrower class; the relation is not distributive over the class; the context is opaque, running through knowledge, belief, intention or description.

The opaque failure is the legally important one: knowing a man is not knowing the office he holds, and receiving an article that is in fact stolen is not receiving what one knows to be stolen.

It is an enthymeme, resting on the unstated premise that the relation attaches to whatever is a P.

Test yourself

1. Define inference by complex conception and give a valid example.

It is the immediate inference in which the subject and predicate of a proposition are each made part of a larger conception by applying the same relation to both, so that from "S is P" one infers "the R of S is the R of P". A valid example is "a partner is an agent of the firm, therefore the act of a partner is the act of an agent of the firm", since a partner acts precisely in the character of an agent.

2. How does it differ from inference by added determinants?

Added determinants attaches a qualifying word to each term, and the terms remain in view, since a white horse is still a horse. Complex conception attaches a relation, and the terms drop out of view, since the head of a horse is not a horse. Correspondingly they fail in different ways: the first fails when the qualifier means two different things, the second when the relation does not transfer from the narrower class to the wider one.

3. On what condition does the inference hold?

That the relation attaches to the subject in virtue of the very feature that makes it a member of the predicate class, so that it attaches equally to the wider class. A horse has a head because it is an animal, so the relation transfers. Where the relation attaches for some other reason, belonging to the species and not to the genus, it does not transfer and the inference fails.

4. What is an opaque context, and why does it defeat the inference?

A context in which the relation runs through somebody's knowledge, belief, intention or description of a thing. It defeats the inference because the person concerned may not know that the narrower and the wider term pick out the same thing. Knowing Ravi is not knowing the treasurer, even where Ravi is the treasurer, since the knowledge may not extend to the office.

5. Give the criminal law application of the opaque-context failure.

That an article was in fact stolen property does not establish that a person who received it received stolen property in the sense the offence requires, since the offence requires knowledge or reason to believe that the property was stolen. The substitution of "stolen property" for "the article" is exactly the step that the mental element forbids, and the requirement of knowledge exists because the substitution is not automatic.

6. Why is this inference described as only partly formal?

Because it rests on a premise that is never stated and that concerns the matter rather than the form: that the relation attaches to whatever is a member of the predicate class. Whether that is so depends on what the relation is and what the classes are, so the correctness of the step cannot be settled by looking at the shape of the proposition. It is grouped with material obversion and added determinants for exactly this reason.