Judgment
1. Judgment and Conception.—The emphasis now laid on judgment, the recovery from Hume’s confusion of beliefs with ideas and the association of ideas, and the distinction of the mental act of judging from its verbal expression in a proposition, are all healthy signs in recent logic. The most fundamental question, before proceeding to the investigation of inference, is not what we say but what we think in making the judgments which, whether we express them in propositions or not, are both the premises and the conclusion of inference; and, as this question has been diligently studied of late, but has been variously answered, it will be well to give a list of the more important theories of judgment as follows:—
a. It expresses a relation between the content of two ideas, not a relation of these ideas (Lotze).
b. It is consciousness concerning the objective validity of a subjective combination of ideas, i.e. whether between the corresponding objective elements an analogous combination exists (Ueberweg).
c. It is the synthesis of ideas into unity and consciousness of their objective validity, not in the sense of agreement with external reality but in the sense of the logical necessity of their synthesis (Sigwart).
d. It is the analysis of an aggregate idea (Gesammtvorstellung) into subject and predicate; based on a previous association of ideas, on relating and comparing, and on the apperceptive synthesis of an aggregate idea in consequence; but itself consisting in an apperceptive analysis of that aggregate idea; and requiring will in the form of apperception or attention (Wundt).
e. It requires an idea, because every object is conceived as well as recognized or denied; but it is itself an assertion of actual fact, every perception counts for a judgment, and every categorical is changeable into an existential judgment without change of sense (Brentano, who derives his theory from Mill except that he denies the necessity of a combination of ideas, and reduces a categorical to an existential judgment).
f. It is a decision of the validity of an idea requiring will (Bergmann, following Brentano).
g. Judgment (Urtheil) expresses that two ideas belong together: “by-judgment” (Beurtheilung) is the reaction of will expressing the validity or invalidity of the combination of ideas (Windelband, following Bergmann, but distinguishing the decision of validity from the judgment).
h. Judgment is consciousness of the identity or difference and of the causal relations of the given; naming the actual combinations of the data, but also requiring a priori categories of the understanding, the notions of identity, difference and causality, as principles of thought or laws, to combine the plurality of the given into a unity (Schuppe).
i. Judgment is the act which refers an ideal content recognized as such to a reality beyond the act, predicating an idea of a reality, a what of a that; so that the subject is reality and the predicate the meaning of an idea, while the judgment refers the idea to reality by an identity of content (Bradley and Bosanquet).
k. Judgment is an assertion of reality, requiring comparison and ideas which render it directly expressible in words (Hobhouse, mainly following Bradley).
These theories are of varying value in proportion to their proximity to Aristotle’s point that predication is about things, and to Mill’s point that judgments and propositions are about things, not about ideas. The essence of judgment is belief that something is (or is not) determined, either as existing (e.g. “I am,” “A centaur is not”) or as something in particular (e.g. “I am a man,” “I am not a monkey”). Neither Mill, however, nor any of the later logicians whose theories we have quoted, has been able quite to detach judgment from conception; they all suppose that an idea, or ideas, is a condition of all judgment. But judgment starts from sensation (Empfindung) and feeling (Gefühl), and not from idea (Vorstellung). When I feel pleased or pained, or when I use my senses to perceive a pressure, a temperature, a flavour, an odour, a colour, a sound, or when I am conscious of feeling and perceiving, I cannot resist the belief that something sensible is present; and this belief that something exists is already a judgment, a judgment of existence, and, so far as it is limited to sense without inference, a true judgment. It is a matter of words whether or not we should call this sensory belief a judgment; but it is no matter of choice to the logician, who regards all the constituents of inference as judgments; for the fundamental constituents are sensory beliefs, which are therefore judgments in the logical sense. Sense is the evidence of inference; directly of analogical and inductive, directly or indirectly of deductive, inference; and therefore, if logic refuses to include sensory beliefs among judgments, it will omit the fundamental constituents of inference, inference will no longer consist of judgments but of sensory beliefs plus judgments, and the second part of logic, the logic of judgment, the purpose of which is to investigate the constituents of inference, will be like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark. If, on the other hand, all the constituents of inference are judgments, there are judgments of sense; and the evidence of the senses means that a judgment of sense is true, while a judgment of inference is true so far as it is directly or indirectly concluded from judgments of sense. Now a sensory judgment, e.g. that a sensible pressure is existing, is explained by none of the foregoing theories, because it requires nothing but sensation and belief. It requires no will, but is usually involuntary, for the stimulus forces one’s attention, which is not always voluntary; not all judgment then requires will, as Wundt supposes. It requires no reference to reality beyond the sensible pressure, because it is merely a belief that this exists without inference of the external stimulus or any inference at all: not all judgment then requires the reference of subjective to objective supposed by Ueberweg, or the consciousness of logical necessity supposed by Sigwart. It requires in addition to the belief that something exists, no consideration as to whether the belief itself be true, because a man who feels pressure believes in the thing without further question about the belief: not all judgment then requires a decision of validity, as Bergmann supposes. It requires nothing beyond the sensation and belief in the given existence of the given pressure: not all judgment then requires categories of understanding, or notions of identity, difference and causality, or even of existence, such as Schuppe supposes. It requires no comparison in order to express it in words, for a judgment need not be expressed, and a sensory judgment of pressure is an irresistible belief that a real pressure exists, without waiting for words, or for a comparison which is wanted not to make a sensation a judgment, but to turn a judgment into language: not all judgment then requires comparison with a view to its expression, as supposed by Hobhouse. Lastly, all the authors of the above-quoted theories err in supposing that all judgment requires conception; for even Mill thinks a combination of ideas necessary, and Brentano, who comes still nearer to the nature of sensory judgment when he says, “Every perception counts for a judgment,” yet thinks that an idea is necessary at the same time in order to understand the thing judged. In reality, the sensation and the belief are sufficient; when I feel a sensible pressure, I cannot help believing in its reality, and therefore judging that it is real, without any tertium quid—an idea of pressure, or of existence or of pressure existing—intervening between the sensation and the belief. Only after sensation has ceased does an idea, or representation of what is not presented, become necessary as a substitute for a sensation and as a condition not of the first judgment that there is, but of a second judgment that there was, something sensible. Otherwise there would be no judgment of sensible fact, for the first sensation would not give it, and the idea following the sensation would be still farther off. The sensory judgment then, which is nothing but a belief that at the moment of sense something sensible exists, is a proof that not all judgment requires conception, or synthesis or analysis of ideas, or decision about the content, or about the validity, of ideas, or reference of an ideal content to reality, as commonly, though variously, supposed in the logic of our day.
Not, however, that all judgment is sensory: after the first judgments of sense follow judgments of memory, and memory requires ideas. Yet memory is not mere conception, as Aristotle, and Mill after him, have perceived. To remember, we must have a present idea; but we must also have a belief that the thing, of which the idea is a representation, was (or was not) determined; and this belief is the memorial judgment. Originally such judgments arise from sensory judgments followed by
