A CRITICAL STUDY OF BOSANQUET'S THEORY OF JUDGMENT[44]

Bosanquet's theory of the judgment, in common with all such theories of

the judgment, necessarily involves the metaphysical problem of the

nature of reality and of the relation of thought to reality. That the

judgment is the function by which knowledge is attained is a proposition

which would meet with universal acceptance. But knowledge is itself a

relation of some sort between thought and reality. The view which any

logician adopts as to the nature of the knowledge-process is accordingly

conditioned by his metaphysical presuppositions as to the nature of

reality. It is equally true that the theory of the judgment developed

from any metaphysical standpoint serves as a test of the validity of

that standpoint. We shall attempt in the present paper to show how

Bosanquet's theory of the judgment develops from his view of the nature

of reality, and to inquire whether the theory succeeds in giving such an

account of the knowledge-process as to corroborate the presupposition

underlying it.

Bosanquet defines judgment as "the intellectual function which defines

reality by significant ideas and in so doing affirms the reality of

those ideas" (p. 104).[45] The form of the definition suggests the

nature of his fundamental problem. There is, on the one hand, a world

of reality which must be regarded as having existence outside of and

independently of the thoughts or ideas we are now applying to it; and

there is, on the other hand, a world of ideas whose value is measured by

the possibility of applying them to reality, of qualifying reality by

them. The judgment is the function which makes the connection between

these two worlds. If judgment merely brought one set of ideas into

relation with another set, then it could never give us anything more

than purely hypothetical knowledge whose application to the real world

would remain forever problematic. It would mean that knowledge is

impossible, a result which seems to be contradicted by the existence of

knowledge. The logician must, therefore, as Bosanquet tells us, regard

it as an essential of the act of judgment that it always refers to a

reality which goes beyond and is independent of the act itself (p. 104).

His central problem thus becomes that of understanding what the nature

of reality is which permits of being defined by ideas, and what the

nature of an idea is that it can ever be affirmed to be real. How does

the real world get representation in experience, and what is the

guarantee that the representation, when obtained, is correct?

The defining of the problem suggests the view of the nature of reality

out of which Bosanquet's theory of the judgment grows. The real world is

to him a world which has its existence quite independently of the

process by which it is known. The real world is there to be known, and

is in no wise modified by the knowledge which we obtain of it. The work

of thought is to build up a world of ideas which shall represent, or

correspond to, the world of reality. The more complete and perfect the

correspondence, the greater our store of knowledge.

Translated into terms of the judgment, this representational view means

that the subject of the judgment must always be reality, while the

predicate is an idea. But when we examine the content of any universal

judgment, or even of an ordinary judgment of perception, the subject

which appears in the judgment is evidently not reality at all, if by

reality we mean something which is in no sense constituted by the

thought-process. When I say, "The tree is green," the subject, tree,

cannot be regarded as a bit of reality which is given ready-made to the

thought-process. The ability to perceive a tree, to distinguish it from

other objects and single it out for the application of an idea,

evidently implies a long series of previous judgments. The content

"tree" is itself ideal. As Bosanquet forcibly states it: "If a sensation

or elementary perception is in consciousness (and if not we have nothing

to do with it in logic), it already bears the form of thinking" (p. 33).

How, then, can it serve as the subject of a judgment? Bosanquet's

solution of the problem is to say that the real subject of a judgment is

not the grammatical subject which appears in a proposition, but reality

itself. In the more complex forms of judgment the reference to reality

is disguised by the introduction of explicit ideas to designate the

portion of reality to which reference is made (pp. 78, 79). In the

simplest type of judgment known, however, the qualitative judgment of

perception, the reference to reality appears within the judgment itself.

The relations of thought to reality and of the elements of the judgment

to one another can, accordingly, most readily be seen in the

consideration of this rudimentary form of judgment in which the various

parts lie bare before us.

Bosanquet describes it as follows:

If I say, pointing to a particular house, "That is my home," it is

clear that in this act of judgment the reference conveyed by the

demonstrative is indispensable. The significant idea "my home" is

affirmed, not of any other general significant idea in my mind,

but of something which is rendered unique by being present to me

in perception. In making the judgment, "That is my home," I extend

the present sense-perception of a house in a certain landscape by

attaching to it the ideal content or meaning of "home;" and

moreover, in doing this, I pronounce the ideal content to be, so

to speak, of one and the same tissue with what I have before me in

my actual perception. That is to say, I affirm the meaning of the

idea, or the idea considered as a meaning, to be a real quality of

that which I perceive in my perception.

The same account holds good of every perceptive judgment; when I

see a white substance on a plate and judge that "it is bread" I

affirm the reference, or general meaning which constitutes the

symbolic idea "bread" in my mind, to be a real quality of the spot

or point in present perception which I attempt to designate by the

demonstrative "this." The act defines the given but indefinite

real by affirmation of a quality, and affirms reality of the

definite quality by attaching it to the previously undefined real.

Reality is given for me _in_ present sensuous perception, and _in_

the immediate feeling of my own sentient existence that goes with

it. (Pp. 76, 77.)

Again, he says that the general features of the judgment of perception

are as follows:

There is a presence of a something in contact with our sensitive

self, which, as being so in contact, has the character of reality;

and there is the qualification of this reality by the reference to

it of some meaning _such as can_ be symbolized by a name (p. 77).

Our point of contact with reality, the place where reality gets into the

thought-process, is, according to this view, to be found in the

simplest, most indefinite type of judgment of perception. We meet with

reality in the mere undefined "this" of primitive experience. But each

such elementary judgment about an undefined "this" is an isolated bit of

experience. Each "this" could give us only a detached bit of reality at

best, and the further problem now confronts us of how we ever succeed in

piecing our detached bits of reality together to form a real world.

Bosanquet's explanation is, in his words, this:

The real world, as a definite organized system, is _for me_ an

extension of this present sensation and self-feeling by means of

judgment, and it is the essence of judgment to effect and sustain

such an extension (p. 77).

Again he says:

The subject in every judgment of Perception is some given spot or

point in sensuous contact with the percipient self. But, as all

reality is continuous, the subject is not _merely_ this given spot

or point. It is impossible to confine the real world within this

or that presentation. Every definition or qualification of a point

in present perception is affirmed of the real world which is

continuous with present perception. The ultimate subject of the

perceptive judgment is the real world as a whole, and it is of

this that, in judging, we affirm the qualities or characteristics.

(P. 78.)

The problem is the same as that with which Bradley struggles in his

treatment of the subject of the judgment, and the solution is also the

same. Bradley's treatment of the point is perhaps somewhat more

explicit. Like Bosanquet, he starts with the proposition that the

subject of the judgment must be reality itself and not an idea, because,

if it were the latter, judgment could never give us anything but a union

of ideas, and a union of ideas remains forever universal and

hypothetical. It can never acquire the uniqueness, the singularity,

which is necessary to make it refer to the real. Uniqueness can be found

only in our contact with the real. But just where does our contact with

the real occur? Bradley recognizes the fact that it cannot be the

_content_--even in the case of a simple sensation--which gives us

reality. The content of a sensation is a thing which is in my

consciousness, and which has the form which it presents because it is in

my consciousness. Reality is precisely something which is not itself

sensation, and cannot be in my consciousness. If I say, "This is white,"

the "this" has a content which is a sensation of whiteness. But the

sensation of whiteness is not reality. The experience brings with it an

assurance of reality, not because its content is the real, but because

it is "my direct encounter in sensible presentation with the real

world."[46] To make the matter clearer, Bradley draws a distinction

between the _this_ and the _thisness_. In every experience, however

simple, there is a content--a "thisness"--which is not itself unique.

Considered merely as content, it is applicable to an indefinite number

of existences; in other words, it is an idea. But there is also in every

experience a "this" which is unique, but which is not a content. It is a

mere sign of existence which gives the experience uniqueness, but

nothing else. The "thisness" falls on the side of the content, and the

"this" on the side of existence. It is exactly the distinction which

Bosanquet has in mind in the passages quoted in which he tells us that

"reality is given for me _in_ present sensuous perception, and _in_ the

immediate feeling of my own sentient existence which goes with it;" and

again when he says: "There is a presence of a something in contact with

our sensitive self, which, as being so in contact, has the character of

reality." The same point is made somewhat more explicitly in his

introduction when he says that the individual's present perception is

not, indeed, reality as such, but is his present point of contact with

reality as such (p. 3).

But has this distinction between the content of an experience and its

existence solved the problem of how we _know_ reality? When Bosanquet

talks of knowing reality, he means possessing ideas which are an

accurate reproduction of reality. It is still far from clear how,

according to his own account, we could ever have any assurance that our

ideas do represent reality accurately, if we can nowhere find a point

at which the content of an experience can be held to give us reality.

The case is still worse when we go beyond the problem of how any

particular bit of reality can be known, and ask ourselves how reality as

a whole can be known. The explanation offered by both Bradley and

Bosanquet is that by means of judgment we extend the bit of reality of

whose existence we get a glimpse through a peep-hole in the curtain of

sensuous perception, and thus build up the organized system of reality.

In a passage previously quoted, Bosanquet tells us that all reality is

continuous, and therefore the real subject of a judgment cannot be the

mere spot or point which is given in sensuous perception, but must be

the real world as a whole. But how does he know that reality is

continuous, and that the real world is an organized system? Our only

knowledge of reality comes through judgment, and judgment brings us into

contact with reality only at isolated points. When he tells us that

reality is a continuous whole, he does so on the basis of a metaphysical

presupposition which is not justifiable by his theory of the judgment.

The only statement about reality which could be maintained on the basis

of his theory is that some sort of a reality exists, but the theory

furnishes equal justification for the assurance that this reality is of

such a nature that we can never know anything more about it than the

bare fact of its existence. Moreover, the bare fact of the existence of

reality comes to us merely in the form of a feeling of our own sentient

existence which goes with sense-perception. But the mere assurance that

somewhere behind the curtain of sensuous perception reality exists (even

if this could go unchallenged), accompanied by the certainty that we can

never by any possibility know anything more about it, is practically

equivalent to the denial of the possibility of knowledge.[47]

Although the denial of the possibility of knowledge seems to be the

logical outcome of the premises, it is not the conclusion reached by

Bosanquet. At the outset of his treatise, Bosanquet propounds the

fundamental question we have been considering in these words: "How does

the analysis of knowledge as a systematic function, or system of

functions, explain that relationship in which truth appears to consist,

between the human intelligence on the one hand, and fact or reality on

the other?" His answer is: "To this difficulty there is only one reply.

If the object-matter of reality lay genuinely outside the system of

thought, not only our analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to

lay hold of reality." (Pp. 2, 3.) The statement is an explicit

recognition of the impossibility of bridging the chasm between a reality

outside the content of knowledge and a known real world. It brings

before us the dilemma contained in Bosanquet's treatment of the subject

of the judgment. On the one hand the subject of the judgment must be

outside the realm of my thoughts. If it were not, judgment would merely

establish a relation between my ideas and would give me no knowledge of

the real world. On the other hand, the subject of the judgment must be

within the realm of my thoughts. If it were not, I could never assert

anything of it; could never judge, or know it. The stress he lays on the

first horn of the dilemma has been shown. It remains to show his

recognition of the second horn, and to find out whether or not he

discovers any real reconciliation between the two.

Bosanquet sums up the section of the introduction on knowledge and its

content, truth, with the following paragraph:

The real world for every individual is thus emphatically _his_

world; an extension and determination of his present perception,

which perception is to him not indeed reality as such, but his

point of contact with reality as such. Thus in the enquiry which

will have to be undertaken as to the logical subject of the

judgment, we shall find that the subject, however it may shift,

contract, and expand, is always in the last resort some greater or

smaller element of this determinate reality, which the individual

has constructed by identifying significant ideas with that world

of which he has assurance through his own perceptive experience.

In analyzing common judgment it is ultimately one to say that _I

judge_ and that _the real world for me, my real world, extends

itself_, or maintains its organized extension. This is the

ultimate connection by which the distinction of subject and

predication is involved in the act of affirmation or enunciation

which is the differentia of judgment. (Pp. 3, 4).

Here the subject of the judgment appears as an element of a reality

_which the individual has constructed_ by identifying significant ideas

with that world of which he has assurance through his own perceptive

experience. But the very point with reference to the subject of the

judgment previously emphasized is that it is not and cannot be something

which the individual has constructed. The subject of the judgment must

be reality, and reality does not consist of ideas, even if it be

determined by them. It does not mend matters to explain that the

individual has constructed his real world by identifying significant

ideas with that world of which he has assurance through his own

perceptive experiences, because, as we have seen, "the individual's

perceptive experiences" either turn out to be merely similar mental

constructions made at a prior time, so that nothing is gained by

attaching to them, or else they mean once more the mere shock of contact

which is supposed to give assurance that some sort of reality exists,

but which gives no assurance of what it is. That and what, this and

thisness still remain detached. When he talks of _the real world for any

individual_ we are left entirely in the dark as to what the relation

between _the real world as it is for any individual_ and _the real

world as it is for itself_ may be, or how the individual is to gain any

assurance that _the real world as it is for him_ represents _the real

world as it is for itself_.

Another attempt at a reconciliation of these opposing views leaves us no

better satisfied. The passage is as follows:

The real world, as a definite organized system, is _for me_ an

extension of this present sensation and self-feeling by means of

judgment, and it is the essence of judgment to effect and sustain

such an extension. It makes no essential difference whether the

ideas whose content is pronounced to be an attribute of reality

appear to fall within what is given in perception, or not. We

shall find hereafter that it is vain to attempt to lay down

boundaries between the given and its extension. The moment we try

to do this we are on the wrong track. The given and its extension

differ not absolutely but relatively; they are continuous with

each other, and the metaphor by which we speak of an extension

conceals from us that the so-called "given" is no less artificial

than that by which it is extended. It is the character and quality

of being directly in contact with sense-perception, not any fixed

datum of content, that forms the constantly shifting center of the

individual's real world, and spreads from that center over every

extension which the system of reality receives from judgment. (P.

77.)

In this passage by the "given" he evidently means the content of sensory

experience, the thisness, the what. It is, as he says, of the same stuff

as that by which it is extended. Both the given and that by which it is

extended are artificial in the sense of not being _real_ according to

Bosanquet's interpretation of reality; they are ideas. But if all this

is admitted, what becomes of the possibility of knowledge? Bosanquet

undertakes to rescue it by assuring us again that it is the character

and quality of being directly in contact with sense-perception, not any

fixed datum of content, that forms the center of the individual's real

world and gives the stamp of reality to his otherwise ideal extension of

this center. Here again we find ourselves with no evidence that the

_content_ of our knowledge bears any relation to reality. We have merely

the feeling of vividness attached to sensory experience which seems to

bring us the certainty that there is some sort of a reality behind it,

but this is not to give assurance that our ideal content even belongs

rightfully to that against which we have bumped, much less of _how_ it

belongs--and only this deserves the title "knowledge."

In the chapter on "Quality and Comparison," in which he takes up the

more detailed treatment of the simplest types of judgment of perception,

he comes back to the same contradiction, and again attempts to explain

how both horns of his dilemma must be true. The passage is this:

The Reality to which we ascribe the predicate is undoubtedly

self-existent; it is not _merely_ in my mind or in my act of

judgment; if it were, the judgment would only be a game with my

ideas. It is well to make this clear in the case before us, for in

the later forms of the judgment it will be much disguised. Still

the reality which attracts my concentrated attention is also

within my act of judgment; it is not even the whole reality

present to my perception; still less of course the whole

self-existent Reality which I dimly presuppose. The immediate

subject of the judgment is a mere aspect, too indefinite to be

described by explicit ideas except in as far as the qualitative

predication imposes a first specification upon it. _This_ Reality

_is_ in my judgment; it is the point at which the actual world

impinges upon my consciousness as real, and it is only by judging

with reference to this point that I can refer the ideal content

before my mind to the whole of reality which I at once believe to

exist, and am attempting to construct. The Subject is both in and

out of the Judgment, as Reality is both in and out of my

consciousness. (Pp. 113, 114.)

The conclusion he reaches is a mere restatement of the difficulty. The

problem he is trying to solve is how the subject _can_ be both in and

out of the judgment, and how the subject without is related to the

subject within. The mere assertion that it is so does not help us to

understand it. His procedure seems like taking advantage of two

meanings of sense-perception, its conscious quality and its brute abrupt

immediacy, and then utilizing this ambiguity to solve a problem which

grows out of the conception of judgment as a reference of idea to

reality.

Turning from his treatment of the world of fact to his discussion of the

world of idea, from the subject to the predicate, as it appears in his

theory of the judgment we find again a paradox which must be recognized

and cannot be obviated. An idea is essentially a meaning. It is not a

particular existence whose essence is uniqueness as is the case with the

subject of the judgment, but is a meaning whose importance is that it

may apply to an indefinite number of unique existences. Its

characteristic is universality. And yet an idea regarded as a psychical

existence, an idea as a content in my mind, is just as particular and

unique as any other existence. How, then, does it obtain its

characteristic of universality? Bosanquet's answer is that it must be

universal by means of a reference to something other than itself. Its

meaning resides, not in its existence as a psychical image, but in its

reference to something beyond itself. Now, any idea that is affirmed is

referred to reality, but do ideas exist which are not being affirmed? If

so, their reference cannot be to reality. Bosanquet discusses the

question in the second section of his introduction as follows:

It is not easy to deny that there is a world of ideas or of

meanings, which simply consists in that identical reference of

symbols by which mutual understanding between rational beings is

made possible. A _mere_ suggestion, a _mere_ question, a _mere_

negation, seem all of them to imply that we sometimes _entertain_

ideas without affirming them of reality, and therefore without

affirming their reference to be a reference to something real or

their meaning to be fact. We may be puzzled indeed to say what an

idea can mean, or to what it can refer, if it does not mean or

refer to something real--to some element in the fabric

continuously sustained by the judgment which is our consciousness.

On the other hand, it would be shirking a difficulty to neglect

the consideration that an idea, while denied of reality, may

nevertheless, or even must, possess an identical and so

intelligible reference--a symbolic value--for the rational beings

who deny it. A reference, it may be argued, must be a reference to

something. But it seems as if in this case the something were the

fact of reference itself, the rational convention between

intelligent beings, or rather the world which has existence,

whether for one rational being or for many, merely as contained in

and sustained by such intellectual reference.

I only adduce these considerations in order to explain that

transitional conception of an objective world or world of

meanings, distinct from the real world or world of facts, with

which it is impossible wholly to dispense in an account of thought

starting from the individual subject. The paradox is that the real

world or world of fact thus seems for us to fall within and be

included in the objective world or world of meanings, as if all

that is fact were meaning, but not every meaning were fact. This

results in the contradiction that something is objective, which is

not real. (Pp. 4, 5.)

In the seventh section of the introduction Bosanquet explains his

meaning further by what the reader is privileged to regard as a flight

of the imagination--a mere simile--which he thinks may, nevertheless,

make the matter clearer.

We might try to think that the world, _as known to each of us_, is

constructed and sustained by his individual consciousness; and

that every other individual also frames for himself, and sustains

by the action of his intelligence, the world in which he in

particular lives and moves. Of course such a construction is to be

taken as a reconstruction, a construction by way of knowledge

only; but for our present purpose this is indifferent. Thus we

might think of the ideas and objects of our private world rather

as corresponding to than as from the beginning identical with

those which our fellow-men are occupied in constructing each

within his own sphere of consciousness. And the same would be true

even of the objects and contents within our own world, in as far

as an act or effort would be required to maintain them, of the

same kind with that which was originally required to construct

them.... Thus the paradox of reference would become clearer. We

should understand that we refer to a correspondence by means of a

content. We should soften down the contradiction of saying that a

name to meet which we have and can get nothing but an idea,

nevertheless does not stand for that idea but for something else.

We should be able to say that the name stands for those elements

in the idea which correspond in all our separate worlds, and in

our own world of yesterday and of today, considered as so

corresponding. (Pp. 45, 46.)

According to this view, the idea obtains the universality which

constitutes it an idea by a sort of process of elimination. It is like a

composite photograph. It selects only the common elements in a large

number of particular existences, and thus succeeds in representing, or

referring to, all the particular existences which have gone to make it

up. But when we come to consider the bearing which this view of

universality, or generalized significance, has on our estimate of the

knowledge-process, we feel that it has not solved the problem for us. In

the first place, the idea _in its existence_ is just as particular when

regarded as made up of the common elements of many ideas as is any of

the ideas whose elements are taken. A composite photograph is just as

much a single photograph as any one of the photographs which are taken

to compose it. The chasm between the particularity of the psychical

image and the universality of its meaning is not bridged by regarding

the content of the image as made up by eliminating unlike elements in a

number of images. The stuff with which thought has to work is still

nothing more than a particular psychical image, and the problem of what

gives it its logical value as a general significance is still unsolved.

Nor does it seem possible to find anything in the _existence_ of the

image which could account for its reference to something outside of

itself. The _fact_ of reference itself becomes an ultimate mystery.[48]

But even waiving this difficulty, the judgment must still

appear truncated, if it really totally disregard a part of its

content--_i. e._, the particular existence of the image as part of the

judging consciousness. The theory holds that the particular existence of

the image has no logical value. It is only its meaning, or general

reference, which has logical value. But the image _qua_ image is just as

real as that to which it is supposed to refer. If the judgment really

does ignore its existence, then it ignores a portion of the reality it

attempts to represent, and stands self-confessed as a failure.[49] At

still another point, ideas, as Bosanquet represents them, prove to be

unsatisfactory tools to use in the work of building up reality. In

Bosanquet's words: "The meaning tyrannizes over the psychical image in

another respect. Besides crushing out of sight its particular and

exclusive existence, it also crushes out part of its content" (p. 74).

The idea, as we use it, is not, as to content, a complete or accurate

representation of anything real. To take Bosanquet's illustration:

Some one speaks to me of the Ægean sea, which I have never seen.

He tells me that it is a deep blue sea under a cloudless sky,

studded with rocky islands. The meanings of these words are a

problem set to my thought. I have to meet him in the world of

objective references, which as intelligent beings we have in

common. How I do this is my own affair, and the precise images at

my command will vary from day to day, and from minute to minute.

It sounds simple to say that I combine my recollections of sea and

sky at Torbay with those of the island-studded waters of Orkney

or the Hebrides. Even so, there is much to adjust and to neglect;

the red cliffs of Torbay, and the cloudy skies of the north. But

then again, my recollections are already themselves symbolic

ideas; the reference to Torbay or the Hebrides is itself a problem

set to thought, and puts me upon the selection of index-elements

in fugitive images that are never twice the same. I have _first_

to symbolize the color of Torbay, using for the purpose any blue

that I can call to mind, and fixing, correcting, subtracting from,

the color so recalled, till I reduce it to a mere index quality;

and _then_ I have to deal in the same way with the meaning or

significant idea so obtained, clipping and adjusting the qualities

of Torbay till it seems to serve as a symbol of the Ægean. (Pp.

74, 75.)

And by the time all this is performed what sort of a representation of

reality is the idea? Evidently a very poor and meager and fragmentary

one.

It is so poor and fragmentary, that it cannot itself be that which is

affirmed of reality. It must be some other fuller existence to be found

in the world of meanings which is affirmed. And yet how the meager

content of the idea succeeds in referring to the world of meanings, and

acting as the instrument for referring a meaning to reality, is not at

all clear. It seems impossible to explain reference intelligibly by the

concept of a _correspondence_ of contents.

The fundamental difficulty in the interpretation of the predicate is the

same one that we encountered in the interpretation of the subject. If

the predicate is to be affirmed of reality (and if it be not, it has no

logical value), then it must, when affirmed, be in some sense an

accurate representation of reality. But the predicate is an idea, and,

moreover, an idea which is, both in its existence and in its meaning

palpably the outcome of transformations wrought upon given sensory

contents by the individual consciousness. Since the one point of contact

with reality is in sensory experience, the more simple sensory

experiences are reacted upon and worked over, the farther they recede

from reality. The idea seems, therefore, in its very essence, a thing

which never can be affirmed of reality. As image it is itself a reality,

but not affirmed; as meaning it is that reality (the image) manipulated

for individual ends. Why suppose that by distorting reality we get it in

shape to affirm _of_ reality? Moreover, the farther an idea is removed

from immediate sensory experience--in other words, the more abstract it

becomes--the less is the possibility of affirming it of reality. The

final outcome of this point of view, if we adhere rigorously to its

logic is that the more thinking we do, the less we know about the real

world. Bosanquet avoids this conclusion by a pure act of faith. If

knowledge is to be rescued, we must believe that the work done by

consciousness upon the bits of reality given in sensory experience

really does succeed in building up a knowledge of reality for us. As

Bosanquet puts it: "The presentation of Reality, qualified by an ideal

content, is one aspect of Subject and Predication; and my individual

percipient consciousness determining itself by a symbolic idea is the

other. That the latter is identified with the former follows from the

claim of conscious thought that its nature is to know."[50] (P. 83.)

To sum up the situation, Bosanquet starts out with the assumption that

by knowledge we must mean knowledge of a world entirely independent of

our ideas. If we fail to make this assumption, knowledge becomes merely

a relation between ideas. But its whole importance seems to us to rest

on the conviction that it does give us knowledge of a world which is

what it is quite independently of our ideas about it, and cannot in any

sense be modified by what we think about it. What knowledge does is to

give us a copy or representation of the real world, whose value depends

on the accuracy of the representation. And yet when we examine any

individual knowing consciousness, the subject which appears within the

judgment is never some portion of the world which exists outside of the

knowing consciousness, but always some portion of the world which exists

within the knowing consciousness, and which is constituted by the

knowledge process. The predicate which is affirmed of reality is

constantly found to derive its meaning, its generalized significance,

not from its correspondence with, or reference to, the real world

outside of the knowing consciousness, but from reference to a world of

meanings, which consists in a sort of convention among rational

beings--a world whose existence is distinctly within the knowing

consciousness and not outside of it.[51] Between the real world, as

Bosanquet conceives it, and the world of knowledge, we find inserted on

the side of the subject, the world _as known to each of us_, and on the

side of the predicate, the _objective world of meanings_. Neither of

these is the real world. Both of them are ideal, _i. e._, are

constructions of the individual consciousness. We nowhere find any

satisfactory explanation of how these ideal worlds are related to the

real world. There is merely the assertion that we must believe that they

represent the real world in order that we may believe that knowledge

exists. But the fact remains that whenever we try to analyze and explain

any particular judgment, what we find ourselves dealing with is always

the world as it exists to us as subject, and the objective world of

meanings as predicate. If we stop here, then knowledge turns out to be

just what Bosanquet asserted at the outset that it was _not, i. e._, a

relation between ideas. When we demand a justification for going farther

than this, we find none except the claim of conscious thought that its

nature is to know--a claim whose justice we have no possible means of

testing, and which would not, even if admitted, be of the slightest

value in deciding which _particular_ judgment is true and which false.

Bosanquet's development of his subject has proved to be throughout the

necessary logical outcome of the presuppositions with reference to

reality from which he starts. The fundamental difficulty of erecting a

theory of the knowledge-process upon such a basis is recognized by him

at the start in a passage already quoted: "If the object-matter of

reality lay genuinely outside the system of thought, not only our

analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to lay hold of reality"

(p. 2). But, in spite of this assertion, his fundamental conception of

reality remains that of a system which does lie outside the

thought-process. His theory is an attempt to reconcile the essentially

irreconcilable views that reality is outside of the thought-process, and

that it is inside of the thought-process, and he succeeds only by

calling upon our faith that so it is.

If it be true, as it seems to him to be, that we are compelled to adhere

to both of these views of reality, then surely there is no other

outcome. It means, however, that we finally resign all hope of _knowing_

reality. We may _have faith_ in its existence, but we have no way of

deciding what particular judgment has reality in it as it should have

it, and what as it should not. All stand (and fall) on the same basis.

But does not Bosanquet himself point out a pathway which, if followed

farther, would reach a more satisfactory view of the realm of knowledge?

He has shown us that the only sort of reality _we know_, or can know, is

the reality which appears within our judgment-process--the reality as

known to us. Would it not be possible to drop the presupposed reality

outside of the judgment-process (with which judgment is endeavoring to

make connections) and content ourselves with the sort of reality which

appears within the judgment-process? In other words, may there not be a

satisfactory view of reality which frankly recognizes its organic

relation to the knowledge-process, without at the same time destroying

its value as reality? Is it possible to admit that reality is in a sense

constituted in the judgment without making it at the same time the

figment of the individual imagination--"a game with ideas"?

Let us assume for the moment that the real difficulty with Mr.

Bosanquet's conception, the error that keeps him traveling in his

hopeless circles, is the notion that truth is a matter of reference of

ideas as such to reality as such, leading us to oscillate between the

alternatives that either all ideas have such reference, and so are true,

constitute knowledge; or else none have such reference, and so are

false; or else are mere ideas to which neither truth nor falsity can be

attributed. Let us ask if truth is not rather some _specific_ relation

within experience, something which characterizes one idea rather than

another, so that our problem is not how an idea can refer to a reality

beyond itself, but what are the marks by which we discriminate a true

reference from a false one. Then let us ask for the criterion used in

daily life and in science by which to test reality.

If we ask the philosophically unsophisticated individual why he believes

that his house still exists when he is away from it and has no immediate

evidence of the fact, he will tell you it is because he has found that

he can go back to it time and again and see it and walk into it. It

never fails him when he acts upon the assumption that it is there. He

would never tell you that he believed in its existence when he was not

experiencing it because his mental picture of his house stood for and

represented accurately an object in the real world which was

nevertheless of a different order of existence from his mental picture.

When you ask the physicist why he believes that the laws of motion are

true, he will tell you that it is because he finds that bodies always

do behave according to them. He can predict just what a body will do

under given circumstances. He is never disappointed however long he

takes it for granted that the laws of motion are true and that bodies

behave according to them. The only thing that could make him question

their truth would be to find some body which did not prove to behave in

accordance with them. The criterion is the same in both cases. It is the

practical criterion of what as a matter of fact will work. That which

can safely be taken for granted as a basis for further action is

regarded as real and true. It remains real so long, and only so long, as

it continues to fulfil this condition. As soon as it ceases to do so, it

ceases to be regarded as real. When a man finds that he can no longer

obtain the accustomed experience of seeing and entering his house, he

ceases to regard it as real. It has burned down, or been pulled down.

When a physicist finds that a body does not, as a matter of fact, behave

as a given law leads him to expect it would behave, he ceases to regard

the law as _true_.

The contrast between the naïve view of the criterion of reality and the

one we have just been discussing may be brought out by considering how

we should have to interpret from each standpoint the constant succession

of facts in the history of science which have ceased to be facts. For

illustration take the former fact that the earth is flat. It ceased to

be a fact, says the theory we have been reviewing, because further

thought-constructions of the real world convinced us that there is no

reality which the idea "flat-world" represents. The idea "round-world"

alone reproduces reality. It ceased to be a fact, says the naïve view,

because it ceased to be a safe guide for action. Men found they could

sail around the world. Correspondence in one case is pictorial, and its

existence or non-existence can, as we have seen, never be ascertained.

In the other, correspondence is response, adjustment, the co-meeting of

specific conditions in further constituting of experience.

In actual life, therefore, the criterion of reality which we use is a

practical one. The test of reality does not consist in ascertaining the

relationship between an idea and an _x_ which is not idea, but in

ascertaining what experience can be taken for granted as a safe basis

for securing other experiences. The evident advantage of the latter

view, leaving aside for the moment the question of its adequacy in other

respects, is that it avoids the fundamental skepticism at once suggested

by the former. How can we ever be sure that the fact which we have

discovered will stand the test of further thought-constructions? Perhaps

it comes no nearer to reality than the discarded one. Obviously we never

_can_ be sure that any particular content of thought represents reality

so accurately and perfectly that it will never be subject to revision.

If, however, the test of reality is the _adequacy_ of a given content of

consciousness as a stimulus to action, as a mode of control, we have an

applicable standard. A given content of consciousness is real--is a

fact--so long as the act resulting from it is adequate in adaptation to

other contents. It ceases to be real as soon as the act it stimulates

proves to be inadequate.

The view which places the ultimate test of facts, not in any

relationship of contents or existences, but in the practical outcome of

thought, is the one which seems to follow necessarily from a

thoroughgoing conception of the judgment as a function--an act. Our

fundamental biological conception of the activities of living organisms

is that acts exist for the sake of their results. Acts are always

stimulated by some definite set of conditions, and their value is always

tested by the adequacy with which they meet this set of conditions. The

judgment is no exception to the rule. It is always an act stimulated by

some set of conditions which needs readjusting. Its outcome is a

readjustment whose value is and can be tested only by its adequacy. It

is accordingly entirely in line with our reigning biological conceptions

to expect to find the ultimate criterion of truth and reality in the

practical outcome of thought, and to seek for an understanding of the

nature of the "real" and of the "ideal" within the total activity of

judgment.

One difficulty besets us at the outset of such an investigation--that of

being sure that we have a genuine judgment under examination. A large

portion of the so-called judgments considered by logicians, even by

those who emphasize the truth that a judgment is an _act_, are really

not judgments at all, but contents of thought which are the outcome of

judgments--what might be called dead judgments, instead of live

judgments. When we analyze a real act of judgment, as it occurs in a

living process of thought, we find given elements which are always

present. There is always a certain situation which demands a reaction.

The situation is always in part determined and taken for granted, and in

part questioned. It is determined in so far as it is a definite

situation of some sort; it is undetermined in so far as it furnishes an

inadequate basis for further action and therefore comes to consciousness

as a problem. For example, take one of the judgments Bosanquet uses.

"This is bread." We have first to inquire when such a judgment actually

occurs in the living process of thought. A man does not make such a

judgment in the course of his thinking unless there is some instigation

to do so. Perhaps he is in doubt as to whether the white object he

perceives is bread or cake. He wants some bread, but does not want cake.

A closer inspection convinces him that it is bread, and the finished

judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." What is the

test of the reality of the bread, and the truth of the judgment?

Evidently the act based on it. He eats the bread. If it tastes like

bread and affects him like bread, then the bread was real and the

judgment true. If, on the other hand, it does not taste like bread, or

if it makes him violently ill, then the "bread" was not real and the

judgment was false. In either case, the "this"--the experience to be

interpreted--is unquestioned. The man does not question the fact that he

has a perception of a white object. So much is taken for granted and is

unquestioned within that judgment. But there is another part of the

experience which is questioned, and which remains tentative up to the

conclusion of the act of judgment; that is the doubt as to whether the

perceived white object is bread or something else. Every live judgment,

every judgment as it normally occurs in the vital process of thought,

must have these phases. It is only when a judgment is taken out of its

context and reduced to a mere memorandum of past judgments that it fails

to reveal such parts. The man may, of course, go farther back. He may

wonder whether this is really white or not. But he falls back then on

something else which he takes unquestioningly--a "this" experience of

some sort or other.

So far we have considered the practical criterion of reality merely as

the one which is actually operative in everyday life, and as the one

suggested by our biological theory of the functions of living organisms.

It also offers a suggestion for the modified view of the nature of

reality for which we are in search. Our previous discussion brought out

incidentally a contradiction in the traditional theory of the nature of

reality which it will be worth while to consider further. In dealing

with the subject of the judgment, reality seemed to be made synonymous

with fact. In this sense fact, or the real, was set off against the

ideal. Knowledge was viewed as the correspondence between real and

ideal. When we came to deal with the ideal itself--with the predicate

of the judgment--there appeared in it an element of fact or reality

which proved a serious stumbling-block for the theory. As image in my

mind, the idea is just as real as the so-called facts; but this sort of

reality according to the theory in question is neither the reality about

which we are judging nor a real quality of it. Both Bradley and

Bosanquet are forced to admit that the judgment ignores it, and is in so

far by nature inadequate to its appointed task of knowing reality.

The suggestion which the situation offers for a new theory is that the

view of reality has been too narrow. Reality must evidently be a broad

enough term to cover both fact and idea. If so, the reality must be

nothing more nor less than the total process of experience with its

continual opposition of fact and idea, and their continual resolution

through activity. That which previous theory has been calling the real

is not the total reality, but merely one aspect of it. The problem of

relation of fact and idea is thus the problem of the relation of one

form of reality to another, and so a determinate soluble one, not a

_merely_ metaphysical or general one. Granting this, does it still

remain true that reality in the narrower sense, reality as fact, can be

regarded as a different order of existence from the ideal, and set over

against the thought-process? Evidently not. Fact and idea become merely

two aspects of a total reality. The way in which fact and idea are

distinguished has already been suggested by the practical and biological

criterion of fact, or reality in the narrower sense. From this point of

view, fact is not a different order of existence from idea, but is

merely a part of the total process of experience which functions in a

given way. It is merely that part of experience which is taken as given,

and which serves as a stimulus to action. Thus the essential nature of

fact, or reality in the popular sense, falls not at all on the side of

its content, but on the side of its function. Similarly the ideal is

merely that part of the total experience which is taken as tentative.

There is no problem as to how either of them is related to reality. In

this relationship they _are_ reality. That which previous theories had

been calling the whole of reality now appears as merely one aspect of

it--the fact aspect--artificially isolated from the rest.

When we translate this view of the nature of reality into terms of a

theory of the judgment, we find that we can agree with Bosanquet in his

definition of a judgment. It is an act, and an act which refers an ideal

content to reality. The judgment must be an act, because it is

essentially an adaptation--a reaction toward a given situation. The

subject of the judgment is that part of the content of experience which

represents the situation to be reacted to. It is that which is taken for

granted as given in each case. Now this is, as we have seen, reality--in

the narrower sense of that term. What Bosanquet has been calling reality

now appears merely as the subject of the judgment taken out of its

normal function and considered as an isolated thing. It is an artificial

abstraction. It is accordingly true, as Bosanquet insists, that the

subject of the judgment must always be reality--both in his sense of the

term and in ours. This reality is not real, however, by virtue of its

independence from the judgment, but by virtue of its function within the

judgment. His fundamental problem with reference to the subject of the

judgment is disposed of from this point of view. The subject is wholly

within the judgment, not in any sense outside of it; but it is at the

same time true that the subject of the judgment is reality. The fact

that the subjects of all judgments--even those of the most elementary

type--bear evident marks of the work done by thought upon them, ceases

to be a problem. The subject is essentially a thing constituted by the

doubt-inquiry process, and functioning within it. The necessity for an

intermediate _real world as it is to me_ between the real world and the

knowing process disappears, because the _real world as it is to me_ is

the only real world of which the judgment can take account. There is no

longer any divorce between the content of the subject and its existence.

Reality in his sense of the term--reality as fact--does not fall on the

side of _existence_ in distinction from content, but on the side of

_function_ in distinction from content.

The predicate of the judgment is that part of the total experience which

is taken as doubtful, or tentative. As we have seen, every act of

adaptation involves a definite situation to be reacted to (subject) and

an indefinite or tentative material with which to react (predicate). We

have pointed out that a situation which demands a judgment never appears

in consciousness as mere questioned or questionable situation.[52] There

is always present, as soon as the doubt arises, some sort of tentative

solution. This is the predicate or idea. Just as the fact, or real in

the narrower sense, is that which is taken as given in the situation, so

the ideal is that which is taken as tentative. Its ideality does not

consist in its reference to another order of existence, the objective

world of meanings, but in its function within the judgment, the estimate

of the whole situation as leading up to the adequate act. Just as we no

longer have any need for the mediation of the _real world as known to

me_ between subject and reality, so we no longer need _the objective

world of meanings_ to bridge the chasm between the predicate and

reality. The difficulty of understanding how ideas can be used to build

up facts disappears when we regard fact and idea, not as different

orders of existence, but as contents marking different phases of a total

function.

Ideas, as Bosanquet represented them, proved to be extremely

unsatisfactory tools to use in building up a knowledge of reality. In

the first place, their value as instruments of thought depends upon

their universality. We have already reviewed Bosanquet's difficulties in

attempting to explain the universality of ideas. The universality of an

idea cannot reside in its mere existence as image. Its existence is

purely particular. Its universality must reside in its reference to

something outside of itself. But no explanation of how the particular

existence--image--could refer to another and fuller content of a

different order of existence could be discovered. The fact of reference

remained an ultimate mystery. From the new point of view the image gains

its universality through its organizing function. It represents an

organized habit which may be brought to bear upon the present situation,

and which serves, by directing action, to organize and unify experience

as a whole. It is only as function that the concept of reference can be

made intelligible.

Of course, considered as content, the idea is just as particular from

this point of view as from any other. We still have to discuss the

question as to whether or not the particularity of the idea has a

logical value. The fact that it had none in Bosanquet's theory sets a

limit to the validity of thought. But if the real test of the validity

of a judgment is the act in which it issues, then the existential aspect

of the idea must have logical value. The existential aspect of the idea

is the "my" side of it. It is as my personal experience that it exists.

But it is only as my idea that it has any impulsive power, or can issue

in action. Far from being ignored, therefore, the existential aspect is

essential to the logical, the determinative, value of an idea.

Ideas, according to the representational theory of knowledge, proved to

be a poor medium for knowing reality in still another respect. They are

in their very nature contents that have been reduced from the fulness

of experience to mere index-signs. Even though their reference to a

fuller content in the objective world of meanings presented no problem,

still this objective world of meanings is far removed from reality. And

yet, in order to know, we must be able to affirm ideas of reality. On

the functional theory of ideas, their value does not rest at all upon

their representational nature. They are not taken either in their

existence or in their meaning as representations of any other content.

They are taken as contents which mark a given function, and their value

is determined entirely by the adequacy of the function of which they are

the conscious expression. Their content may be as meager as you please.

It may have been obtained by a long process of reducing and transforming

sensory experience, but if it serve to enable its possessor to meet the

situation which called it up with the appropriate act, then it has truth

and value in the fullest sense. The reduction of the idea to a mere

index-sign presents no problem when we realize that it is the tool of a

given function, not the sign for a different and fuller content. The

idea thus becomes a commendable economy in the thought-process, rather

than a reprehensible departure from reality.

We have already upon general considerations criticised the point of view

which holds that ideality consists in reference to another content. In

arguing that this reference cannot be primarily to reality itself, but

rather to an intermediate world of meanings, Bosanquet cites the

question and the negative judgment. In the question ideas are not

affirmed of reality, and in negation they are definitely denied of

reality, hence their reference cannot be to reality. It must therefore

be to an objective world of meanings. It may be worth while to point out

in passing that, from the functional point of view, the part played by

ideas in the question and in negative judgment is the same that it is in

affirmation.

We have brought out the fact that all judgment arises in a doubt. The

earliest stage of judgment is accordingly a question. Whether the

process stops at that point, or is carried on to an affirmation or

negation, depends upon the particular conditions. The ideas which appear

in questions present no other problem than those of affirmation. They

are ideas, not by virtue of their reference to another content in the

world of meanings, but by virtue of their function, _i. e._, that of

constituting that part of the total experience which is taken as

doubtful, and hence as in process.

In order to make this point clear with reference to negative judgments,

it will be necessary to consider the relation of negative and positive

judgments somewhat more in detail. All judgment is in its earliest

stages a question, but a question is never _mere_ question. There are

always present some suggestions of an answer, which make the process

really a disjunctive judgment. A question might be defined as a

disjunctive judgment in which one member of the disjunction is expressed

and the others implied. If the process goes on to take the form of

affirmation or negation, one of the suggested answers is selected. To

follow out the illustration of the bread used above, the judgment arises

in a doubt as to the nature of the white object perceived, but the doubt

never takes the form of a blank question. It at once suggests certain

possible solutions drawn from the mass of organized experience at the

command of the person judging. At this stage the judgment is

disjunctive. In the illustration it would probably take the form: "This

is either bread or cake." The further course of the judgment rejects the

cake alternative, and selects the bread, and the final outcome of the

judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." But how did

it happen that it did not take the form: "This is not cake"? That

proposition is also involved in the outcome, and implied in the judgment

made. The answer is that the form taken by the final outcome depends

entirely on the direction of interest of the person making the judgment.

If his interest happened to lie in obtaining bread, then the outcome

would naturally take the form: "This is bread," and his act would

consist in eating it. If he happened to want cake, the natural form

would be, "This is not cake," and his act would consist in refraining

from eating. In other words, the question as to whether a judgment turns

out to be negative or positive is a question of whether the stress of

interest happens to fall on the selected or on the rejected portions of

the original disjunction. Every determination of a subject through a

predicate includes both. The selection of one or the other according to

interest affects the final formulation of the process, but does not

change the relations of its various phases. An idea in a negative

judgment is just what it is in a positive judgment. In neither case is

it constituted an idea by reference to some other content.

So far we have outlined Bosanquet's theory of the judgment; have noted

the apparently insoluble problems inherent in his system, and have

sketched a radically different theory which offered a possible solution

for his difficulties. It now remains to develop the implications of the

new theory further by comparing its application to some of the more

important problems of logic with that of Bosanquet. In closing we shall

have to inquire to what extent the new theory of the judgment with its

metaphysical implications has proved more satisfactory than that of

Bosanquet.

The special problems to be considered are (1) the relation of judgment

to inference; (2) the parts of the judgment and their relationship; (3)

the time element in the judgment; and (4) the way in which one judgment

can be separated from another.

1. The discussion of the relation between judgment and inference comes

up incidentally in Bosanquet's treatment of the distinction between a

judgment and a proposition (p. 79). The proposition, he says, is merely

the enunciative sentence which represents the act of thought called

judgment. With this distinction we should agree. In his discussion of

the point, however, he criticises Hegel's doctrine that a judgment is

distinguished from a proposition in that a judgment maintains itself

against a doubt, while a proposition is a mere temporal affirmation, not

implying the presence of a doubt. The ground of his criticism is that

judgment must be regarded as operative before the existence of a

conscious doubt, and that, while it is true, as Hegel suggests, that

judgment and inference begin together, they both begin farther back than

the point at which conscious doubt arises. Doubt marks the point at

which inference becomes conscious of its ground. Now, it is undoubted

that inferences in which the ground is implicit exist at an earlier

stage of experience than those in which it is explicit. The former we

usually call simple apprehension, and the latter judgment. What

Bosanquet wishes to do is to make the term "judgment" cover both the

implicit and the explicit activities. The question at once arises

whether such a use of terms is accurate. There is certainly a wide

difference between an inference which is conscious of its ground, and

one which is not. It is conceivably a distinction of philosophic

importance. To slur the difference by applying one name to both

accomplishes nothing. It will be remembered that the presence of a

conscious doubt is the criterion of judgment adopted in the standpoint

from which we have been criticising Bosanquet's theory. We should

accordingly make the term "inference" a wider one than the term

"judgment." A judgment is an inference which is conscious of its ground.

Since fact and idea have been represented as constituted in and through

judgment, the question which at once suggests itself is: What, from such

a standpoint, is the criterion of fact and idea in the stage of

experience previous to the appearance of judgment? The answer is that

the question involves the psychological fallacy. There is no such

distinction as fact and idea in experience previous to the appearance of

judgment. The distinction between fact and idea arises only at the

higher level of experience at which inference becomes conscious of its

grounds. To ask what they were previous to that is to ask _what_ they

were before they _were_--a question which, of course, cannot be

answered.

Our reason for not adopting Hegel's distinction between a judgment and a

proposition would accordingly not be the same as Bosanquet's. The

question has already been touched upon in the distinction between dead

and live judgments. What Hegel calls a proposition is really nothing but

a dead judgment. His illustration of a temporal affirmation is the

sentence: "A carriage is passing the house." That sentence would be a

judgment, he says, only in case there were some doubt as to whether or

not a carriage was passing. But the question to be answered first is:

When would such a "statement" occur in the course of our experience? It

is impossible to conceive of any circumstances in which it would

naturally occur, unless there were some doubt to be solved either of our

own or of another. Perhaps one is expecting a friend, and does not know

at first whether it is a carriage or a cart which is passing. Perhaps

some one has been startled, and asks: "What is this noise?" What Hegel

wishes to call a proposition is, accordingly, nothing but a judgment

taken out of its setting.

2. In dealing with the traditional three parts of the judgment--subject,

predicate, and copula--Bosanquet disposes of the copula at once, by

dividing the judgment into subject and predication. But the two terms

"subject" and "predication" are not co-ordinate. Subject, as he uses it,

is a static term indicating a _content_. Predication is a dynamic term

indicating the act of predicating. It implies something which is

predicated of something else, _i. e._, two contents and the act of

bringing them into relation. Now, if what we understand by the copula is

the _act_ of predicating abstracted from the content which is predicated

of another content, then it does not dispose of the copula as a separate

factor in judgment to include thing predicated and act of predicating

under the single term "predication." The term "predication" might just

as reasonably be made to absorb the subject as well, and would then

appear--as it really is--synonymous with the term "judgment."

But Bosanquet's difficulties with the parts of the judgment are not

disposed of even by the reduction to subject and predication. He goes on

to say:

It is plain that the judgment, however complex, is a single idea.

The relations within it are not relations between ideas, but are

themselves a part of the idea which is predicated. In other words,

the subject must be outside the judgment in order that the content

of the judgment may be predicated of it. If not, we fall back into

"my idea of the earth goes round my idea of the sun," and this, as

we have seen, is never the meaning of "The earth goes round the

sun." What we want is, "The real world has in it as a fact what I

mean by earth-going-round-sun." (P. 81.)

We have already pointed out the difficulties into which Bosanquet's

presupposition as to the nature of reality plunges him. This is but

another technical statement of the same problem. If the subject is

really outside of judgment, then the entire _content_ of the judgment

must fall on the side of predicate, or idea. In the paragraphs that

follow, Bosanquet brings out the point that the judgment must

nevertheless contain the distinction of subject and predicate, since it

is impossible to affirm without introducing a distinction into the

_content_ of the affirmation. Yet he considers this distinction to be

_merely_ a difference within an identity. It serves to mark off the

grammatical subject and predicate, but cannot be the essential

distinction of subject and predicate. His solution of the puzzle is

really the one for which we have been contending, _i. e._, that "the

real world is primarily and emphatically my world," but he still cannot

be satisfied with that kind of a real world as ultimate. Behind the

subject which presents my world he postulates a real world which is not

my world, but which my world represents. It is the relation between this

real world and the total content of a judgment which he considers the

essential relation of judgment. This leaves him--as we have pointed

out--as far as ever from a theory of the relation of thought to reality,

and, moreover, with no criterion for the distinction of subject and

predicate within the judgment. To say that it is a difference within an

identity does not explain how, on a mere basis of content, such a

difference is distinguished within an identity or how it assumes the

importance it actually has. He vibrates between taking the whole

intellectual content as predicate, the reality to be represented as

subject (in which case the copula would be the "contact of

sense-perception") and a distinction appearing without reasonable ground

or bearing _within_ the intellectual content. When subject and predicate

are regarded as the contents in which phases of a function appear, this

difficulty no longer exists.

3. In discussing the time relations within judgment (p. 85) Bosanquet

first disposes of the view which holds that the subject is prior to the

predicate in time, and is distinguished from the predicate by its

priority. He emphasizes the fact that no content of consciousness can

have the significance of a subject, except with reference to something

already referred to it as predicate. But while it cannot be true that

the parts of the judgment fall outside of one another in time, it is yet

evident that in one sense at least the judgment is in time. To make this

clear, Bosanquet draws a provisional distinction between the process of

arriving at a judgment and the completed judgment. The process of

arriving at a judgment is a process of passing from a subject with an

indefinite provisional predicate--a sort of disjunctive judgment--to a

subject with a defined predicate. This process is evidently in time, but

it is as evidently not a transition from subject to predicate. It is, as

he says, a modification, _pari passu_, of both subject and predicate.

The same distinction, he thinks, must hold of the judgment when

completed. But this throws us into a dilemma with reference to the

time-factor in judgment. Time either is or is not an essential factor in

judgment. If it is not essential, then how explain the evident fact that

the judgment as an intellectual process does have duration? If it is

essential, then how explain the fact that its parts do not fall outside

one another in time? Bosanquet evidently regards the former problem as

the easier of the two. His solution is that, while the judgment is an

intellectual process in time, still this is a purely external aspect.

The essential relation between subject and predicate is not in time,

since they are coexistent; therefore time is not an essential element in

judgment.

The first point at which we take issue with this treatment of time in

relation to judgment is in the distinction between the process of

arriving at the judgment and the completed judgment. Bosanquet himself

defines judgment as an intellectual act by which an ideal content is

referred to reality. Now, at what point does this act begin? Certainly

at the point where an ideal content is first applying to reality, and

this, as he points out, is at the beginning of the process which he

describes as the process of arriving at a judgment. It is nothing to the

point that at this stage the predicate is tentative, while later it

becomes defined. His process of arriving at the judgment is exactly the

process we have been describing as the early stages of any and every

judgment. When he talks about the judgment as completed, he has

apparently shifted from the dynamic view of judgment implied in his

definition to a static view. All he could mean by a completed

judgment--in distinction to the total activity of arriving at a

judgment--is the new content of which we find ourselves possessed when

the total process of predication is complete. But this content is not a

judgment at all. It is a new construction of reality which may serve

either as subject or as predicate in future judgments.

Now, if we regard the judgment as the total activity by which an ideal

content is referred to reality, then must we not regard time as an

essential element? Bosanquet answers this question in the negative,

because he believes that if time is an essential element, then the parts

of the judgment must necessarily fall outside one another in time. But

is this necessary? If the essence of judgment is the very modification,

_pari passu_, of subject and predicate, then time must be an essential

element in it, but it is not at all necessary that its elements should

fall outside of one another in time. In other words, the dilemma which

Bosanquet points out on p. 87 is not a genuine one. There is no

difficulty involved in admitting that the judgment is a transition in

time, and still holding that its _parts_ do not fall outside _one

another_ in time. His own solution of the problem--_i. e._, that,

although judgment is an intellectual process in time, still time is not

an essential feature of it, because subject and predicate are coexistent

and judgment is a relation between them--involves a desertion of his

dynamic view of judgment. He defines judgment, not as a relation between

subject and predicate, but as an intellectual _act_.[53]

4. The discussion of the time-element in judgment leads up to the next

puzzle--that as to the way in which one judgment can be marked off from

another in the total activity of thought. Bosanquet has pointed out that

subject and predicate are both of them present at every stage of the

judging process, and are undergoing progressive modification. If,

therefore, we take a cross-section of the process at any point, we find

both subject and predicate present; but a cross-section at one point

would not reveal quite the same subject and predicate as the

cross-section at another point. He comes to the conclusion that judgment

breaks up into judgments as rhomboidal spar into rhomboids (p. 88). It

is, accordingly, quite arbitrary to mark out any limits for a single

judgment. The illustration he gives of the point is as follows:

Take such an every-day judgment of mixed perception and inference

as, "He is coming down stairs and going into the street." It is

the merest chance whether I break up the process thus, into two

judgments as united by a mere conjunction, or, knowing the man's

habits, say, when I hear him half way down stairs, "He is going

out." In the latter case I summarize a more various set of

observations and inferences in a single judgment; but the judgment

is as truly single as each of the two which were before separated

by a conjunction; for each of them was also a summary of a set of

perceptions, which might, had I chosen, have been subdivided into

distinct propositions expressing separate judgments; _e. g._, "He

has opened his door, and is going toward the staircase, and is

half way down, and is in the passage," etc. If I simply say, "He

is going out," I am not a whit the less conscious that I judge all

these different relations, but I then include them all in a single

systematic content "going out." (P. 89.)

But is it a question of merest chance which of these various

possibilities is actualized? Is Bosanquet really looking--as he

thinks--at the actual life of thought, or is he considering, not what as

a matter of fact does take place under a concrete set of circumstances,

but what might take place under slightly differing sets of

circumstances? If it is true that judgment is a crisis developing

through adequate interaction of stimulus and response into a definite

situation, beginning with doubt and ending with a solution of the doubt,

then it is not true that its limits are purely arbitrary. It begins with

the appearance of the problem and its tentative solutions, and ends with

the solution of a final response. It does, of course, depend upon

momentary interest, but this does not make its limits arbitrary, for the

interest is inherent, not external. In the case of Bosanquet's

illustration, the question of whether one judgment or half a dozen is

made is not a question of merest chance. It depends upon where the

interest of the person making the judgment is centered--in other words,

upon what is the particular doubt to be solved. If the real doubt is as

to whether the man will stay in his room or go out, then when he is

heard leaving his room the solution comes in the form: "He is going

out." But if the doubt is as to whether he will stay in his room, go

out, or go into some other room, then the succession of judgments

occurs, each of which solves a problem. "He has opened his door"--then

he is not going to stay in his room; "He is going toward the

staircase"--then he is not going into a room in the opposite direction,

etc. It is impossible to conceive of such a series of judgments as

actually being made, unless each one represents a problematic situation

and its determination. The only time that a man would, as a matter of

fact, choose to break up the judgment, "He is going out," into such a

series, would be the time when each member of the series had its own

special interest as representing a specific uncertain aim or problem.

Nor is it altogether true that in making the judgment, "He is going

out," one is not a whit the less conscious that he judges all these

different relations. He judges only such relations as are necessary to

the solution of the problem in hand. If hearing the man open his door is

a sufficient basis for the solution, then that is the only one which

consciously enters into the formation of the judgment.

We have attempted to bring out in the preceding pages what seem to be

the contradictions and insoluble problems involved in Bosanquet's theory

of the judgment, and to exhibit them as the logical outcome of his

metaphysical presuppositions. We have also tried to develop another

theory of the judgment involving a different view of the nature of

reality, and to show that the new theory is able to avoid the

difficulties inherent in Bosanquet's system. The change in view-point

briefly is this: Instead of regarding the real world as self-existent,

independently of the judgments we make about it, we viewed it as the

totality of experience which is assured, _i. e._, determined as to

certainty or specific availability, through the instrumentality of

judgment. We thus avoided the essentially insoluble problem of how a

real world whose content is self-existent quite outside of knowledge can

ever be correctly represented by ideas. The difficulty in understanding

the relation of the subject and the predicate of judgment to reality

disappears when we cease to regard reality as self-existent outside of

knowledge. Subject and predicate become instrumentalities in the process

of building up reality. Thought no longer seems to carry us farther and

farther from reality as ideas become abstract and recede from the

immediate sensory experience in which contact with the real occurs. On

the contrary, thought carries us constantly toward reality. Finally, we

avoid the fundamental skepticism about the possibility of knowledge

which, from the other standpoint, is forced upon us by the long

succession of facts which have faded into the realm of false opinions,

and the lack of any guarantee that our present so-called knowledge of

reality shall not meet the same fate. From that point of view, reality

seems to be not only unknown, but unknowable.

The criticism sure to be passed upon the alternative view developed is

that the solution of Bosanquet's problems which it affords is not a real

solution, but rather the abandonment of an attempt at a solution. It

represents reality as a thing which is itself in process of development.

It would force us to admit that the reality of a hundred years ago, or

even of yesterday, was not in content the reality of today. A growing,

developing reality is, it will be said, an imperfect reality, while we

must conceive of reality as complete and perfect in itself. The only

answer which can be made is to insist again that we have no right to

assume that reality is such an already completed existence, unless such

an assumption enables us to understand experience and organize it into a

consistent whole. The attempt of this paper has been to show that such a

conception of reality really makes it inherently impossible to give an

intelligible account of experience as a whole, while the view which

regards reality as developing in and through judgment does enable us to

build up a consistent and understandable view of the world. This

suggests that the "perfect" may not after all be that which is finished

and ended, but that whose reality is so abundant and vital as to issue

in continuous self-modification. The Reality that evolves and moves may

be more perfect, less finite, than that which has exhausted itself.

Moreover, only the view that Reality is developmental in quality, and

that the instrument of its development is judgment involving the

psychical in its determination of subject and predicate gives the

psychical as such any significant place in knowledge or in reality.

According to the view of knowledge as representation of an eternal

content, the psychical is a mere logical surd.