 In standard syllogistic inferences, he argues, for arguments to be valid, the conclusion must already have been asserted in the premises. By way of example, in the above argument, the conclusion must already have been asserted in the  Premise 1—the  proposition that all men are mortal must be said to include the proposition that Socrates is mortal if the argument is to be valid. No new knowledge is therefore acquired in reasoning from premises to conclusion. The claim is perhaps more difficult to support than Mill appreciates, depending, as it does, upon equating of the meaning of a universal statement with the meaning of a conjunction of singular statement (Fumerton 2017: 200). Nevertheless, Mill’s argument that we can learn nothing about the world by reflecting on our language dovetails neatly with his naturalistic claim that all genuine cognitive advancement must take place by observation.