Predicate. The fact is, that the ultimate subject in Judgment is always
Reality. Of course the logical subject may be quite different from
the grammatical subject. Some kinds of words cannot in strict grammar
be made subjects of a sentence, though they can represent a logical
subject quite well: _e.g._ “_Now_ is the time.” “_Here_ is the right
place_.” Adverbs, I suppose, cannot be grammatical subjects. But in
these sentences they stand for the logical subjects, certain points in
the perceptive series.
The true logical subject then is always reality, however much disguised
by qualifications or conditions. The logical predicate is always
the meaning of an idea; and the claim to be true consists in the
affirmation of the meaning as belonging to the tissue of reality at
the point indicated by the subject. The connection is always made by
identity of {71} content at the point where the idea joins the reality,
so that _the judgment always appears as a revelation of something which
is in reality_. It simply develops, accents, or gives accuracy to a
recognised quality of the real. This is easily seen in cases of simple
quality--_e.g._ “This colour is sky-blue.” The colour is given, and the
judgment merely identifies it with sky-blue, and so reveals another
element belonging to its identity, the element of being seen in the sky
on a clear day.
The analysis is not quite so easy when there is a concrete subject like
a person; for how can there be an identity between a person and a fact?
“A.B. passed me in the street this afternoon.” Between what elements is
the identity in this case? It is between him, as an individual whom I
know by sight in other places, and him as he appeared this afternoon in
particular surroundings. His identity already extends through a great
many different particulars of time and place, and this judgment merely
recognises one more particular as included in the same continuous
history. “He in this context belongs to him in a former context.” In
this simple case the operative identity is probably that of my friend’s
personal appearance; but the judgment is not merely about that but
about his whole personality, of which his personal appearance is merely
taken as a sign.
Any assertion which is incredible because the identical quality is
wanting will illustrate the required structure. There is a story
commented on by Thackeray in one of his occasional papers, which
implied that the Duke of Wellington took home note-paper from a club to
which he did not {72} belong. (Thackeray gives the true explanation of
the fact on which the suggestion was founded.) The identity concerned
in this case would be that of character. Can we find an identity
between the character involved in a piece of meanness like that
suggested and the character of the Duke of Wellington? No; and _prima
facie_ therefore the judgment is false. The identity which should bind
it together breaks it in two. But yet, again: supposing the external
evidence to be strong enough, we may have to accept a fact which
conflicts with a man’s character as we conceive it. That is so: in such
a case one kind of identity appears to contradict the other. I may
think that I saw a man with my own eyes, doing something which wholly
contradicts his character as I judge it. Then there is a conflict
between identity in personal appearance and identity in character,
and we have to criticise the two estimates of identity--_i.e._ to
refer them both to our general system of knowledge, and to accept the
connection which can be best adapted to that system.
We have got, then, as the active elements in Judgment a Subject in
Reality, the meaning of an idea, and an identity between them.
Is this enough? Have we the peculiar act of affirmation wherever we
have these conditions?
This is not the question by what elements of language the judgment is
rendered. We shall speak of that in the next lecture. The question is
now, simply, “Is a significant idea, referred to reality, always an
assertion?”
The first answer seems to be that such an idea is always _in_ an
assertion, but need not constitute the whole of an {73} assertion. If
we think of a subject in judgment which is represented by a relative
sentence, it seems clear that any idea which can stand a predicate can
also form a part of a subject. “The exhibition which it is proposed
to hold at Chicago in 1893”--has in effect just the same elements of
meaning, and just the same reference to a point in our world of reality
as if the sentence ran, “It is proposed to hold an exhibition at
Chicago in 1893.” In common parlance we should say, that in the former
case we entertain an idea--or conceive or represent it--while in the
latter case we affirm it.
But if we go on to say that the former kind of sentence as truly
represents the nature of thought as the latter, then it seems that we
are mistaken. Even language does not admit such a clause to the rank of
an independent sentence.
If we insist on considering it in its isolation, we probably eke it
out in thought by an unarticulated affirmation such as that which
constitutes an impersonal judgment; in other words, we affirm it to
belong to reality under some condition which remains unspecified.
Thus the linguistic form of the relative clause, as also the separate
existence of the spoken or written word, produces an illusion which
has governed the greater part of logical theory so far as concerns the
separation between concept and judgment, _i.e._ between entertaining
ideas and affirming them in reality. In our waking life, all thought is
judgment, every idea is referred to reality, and in being so referred,
is ultimately affirmed of reality. The separation of elements in the
texture of Judgment into Subjects and Predicates which, as separated,
are conceived as _possible_ Subjects and Predicates, is therefore
{74} theoretical and ideal, an analysis of a living tissue, not an
enumeration of loose bricks out of which something is about to be built
up.
_The kind of ideas which can claim truth_
(iii.) “Idea” has two principal meanings.
(_a_) A psychical presentation and
(_b_) An identical reference.
This distinction is the same as that between our course of ideas and
our world of knowledge. We must try now to define it more accurately.
(_a_) An idea as a psychical presentation is strictly a particular.
Every moment of consciousness is full of a given complex of
presentation which passes away and can never be repeated without some
difference. For this purpose a representation is just the same as a
presentation; is, in fact, a presentation. Its detail at any given
moment is filled in by the influence of the moment, and it can never
occur again with precisely the same elements of detail as before.
If we use the term “idea” in this sense, as a momentary particular
mental state, it is nonsense to speak of having the same idea twice,
or of referring it to a reality other than our mental life. The idea
in this sense is a psychical image. We cannot illustrate this usage
by any recognisable part of our mental furniture, for every such part
which can be described and indicated by a general name, is something
more than a psychical image. We can only say that that which at any
moment we have in consciousness, when our waking perception encounters
reality, is such an idea, and so too is the image supplied by memory,
when considered simply as a datum, a fact, in our mental history.
(_b_) To get at the other sense of “idea” we should think {75} of the
meaning of a word; a very simple case is that of a proper name. What
is the meaning of “St. Paul’s Cathedral in London”? No two people who
have seen it have carried away precisely the same image of it in their
minds, nor does memory, when it represents the Cathedral to each of
them, supply the same image in every detail and association twice over
to the same person, nor do we for a moment think that such an image
_is_ the Cathedral. [1] Yet we neither doubt that the name _means_
something, and that the same to all those who employ it, nor that it
means the same to each of them at one time that it did at every other
time. The psychical images which formed the first vision of it are dead
and gone for ever, and so, after every occasion on which it has been
remembered, are those in which that memory was evoked. The essence of
the idea does not lie in the peculiarities of any one of their varying
presentations, but in the identical reference that runs through them
all, and to which they all serve as material, and the content of this
reference _is_ the object of our thought.
[1] When we are actually looking at the Cathedral, we say,
“_That is_ the Cathedral.” Does not this mean that we take our
momentary image, to which we point, to be the reality of the
Cathedral? Not precisely so. It is the “that,” not our definite
predication about it, which makes us so confident. The “that” is
identified by our judgment, but goes beyond it.
In order to distinguish and employ this reference it is necessary that
there should be a symbol for it, and so long as it brings us to the
object which is the centre of the entire system, this symbol may vary
within considerable limits.
The commonest and most secure means of reference is {76} the word or
name. [1] So confident are we in the “conventional” or artificially
adapted character of this mark or sign of reference, that we are
inclined to treat it as absolutely unvarying on every occasion of
utterance. But of course it is not unvarying. It differs in sound every
time it is spoken, and in context and appearance every time we see
it in a written shape. Our reliance upon it as identical throughout
depends on the fact that it has a recognisable character to which
its variations are irrelevant, and which practically crushes out
these variations from our attention. Unless we are on the look-out
for mispronunciations or misprints, they do not interfere at all
with our attention to the main reference of words. We know that it
is almost impossible to detect misprints so long as one reads a book
with attention to its meaning. This then is a fair parallel to the
distinction which we are considering between two kinds of ideas. If the
momentary sound or look of a word is analogous to idea as psychical
presentation, “the word” as a permanent possession of our knowledge is
analogous to the idea as a reference to an object in our systematic
world, and is the normal instrument of such a reference.
[1] “A name is a sound which has significance according to
convention,” _i.e._ according to rational agreement.--_Ar. de
Interp_. 16a 19.
But either with the word or without it there may be a symbol of another
kind. Any psychical image that falls within certain limits may appear
as the momentary vehicle of the constant reference to an object. Just
as in recognising the reference of a word we omit to notice the accent
and loudness with which it is pronounced, or the quality of the paper
on which it is printed, just so in recognising the {77} reference of
a psychical image our attention fails to note its momentary context,
colouring, and detail. If it includes something that definitely belongs
to a systematic object in our world of objects, that is enough, unless
counteracted by cross references, to effect the suggestion we require,
and that, and nothing else, arrests our attention for the moment. When
I think of St. Paul’s Cathedral, it may be the west front, or the
dome seen from the outside, or the gallery seen from the inside, that
happens to occur to my mind; and further, that which does occur to me
occurs in a particular form or colouring, dictated by the condition
of my memory and attention at the moment. But these peculiarities are
dwarfed by the meaning, and unless I consider them for psychological
purposes, I do not know that they are there. It is the typical
element only, the element which points to the common reference in
which my interest centres, that forms the content of the idea in this
sense, taken not as a transient feature of the mental complex, but
as definitely suggesting a constant object in our constructed world.
And it suggests this object because it, the typical element, is a
common point that links together the various cases and the various
presentations in which the object is given to us. In this sense it is a
universal or an identity.
How can this conception of a logical idea be applied to a perfectly
simple presentation? It would be impossible so to apply it, but there
does not seem to be such a thing as a simple presentation in the sense
of a presentation that has no connection as a universal with anything
else. In the image of a particular blue colour, we cannot indeed
separate out what makes it blue from what makes it the particular {78}
shade of blue that it is. But nevertheless its blueness makes it a
symbol to us of blue in general, and when so thought of, crushes out of
sight all the visible peculiarities that attend every spatial surface.
We understand perfectly well that the colour is blue, and that in
saying this we have gone beyond the limits of the momentary image, and
have referred something in it as a universal quality to our world of
objects. An idea, in this sense, is both less and more than a psychical
image. It contains less, but stands for more. It includes only what is
central and characteristic in the detail of each mental presentation,
and therefore omits much. But it is not taken as a mental presentation
at all, but as a content belonging to a systematic world of objects
independent of my thought, and therefore stands for something which is
not mere psychical image.
If therefore we are asked to display it as an image, as something
fixed in a permanent outline, however pale or meagre, we cannot do
so. It is not an abstract image, but a concrete habit or tendency. It
can only be displayed in the judgment, that is, in a concrete case
of reference to reality. Apart from this, it is a mere abstraction
of analysis, a tendency to operate in a certain way upon certain
psychical presentations. Psychically speaking, it is when realised in
judgment a process more or less systematic, extending through time, and
dealing with momentary presentations as its material. In other words,
we may describe it as a selective rule, shown by its workings but not
consciously before the mind--for if it were, it would no longer be an
idea, but an idea of an idea.
Every judgment, whether made with language or without, {79} is an
instance of such an idea, which may be called a symbolic idea as
distinct from a psychical image; “symbolic” because the mental units
or images involved are not as such taken as the whole of the object
for which they stand, but are in a secondary sense, as the word in a
primary sense, symbols or vehicles only.
Such ideas can have truth claimed for them, because they have a
reference beyond their mental existence. They point to an object in
a system of permanent objects, and that to which they point may or
may not suit the relation which they claim for it. Therefore the
judgment can only be made by help of symbolic ideas. Mere mental
facts, occurrences in my mental history, taken as such, cannot enter
into judgment. When we judge about them, as in the last sentence,
they are not themselves subject or predicate, but are referred to,
like any other facts, by help of a selective process dealing with our
current mental images of them. We shall not be far wrong then, if in
every judgment, under whatever disguises it may assume, we look for
elements analogous to those which are manifest in the simple perceptive
judgment, “This is green,” or “That is a horse.” The relation between
these and more elaborate forms of affirmation, such as the abstract
judgment of science, has partly been indicated in the earlier portion
of this lecture. The general definition of judgment has therefore
been sufficiently suggested on p. 72. Judgment is the reference of a
significant idea to a subject in reality, by means of an identity of
content between them.
{80}
LECTURE V THE PROPOSITION AND THE NAME
_Judgment translated into language._
1. Judgment expressed in words is a Proposition. _Must_ Judgment be
expressed in words? We have assumed that this need not be so. Mill [1]
says of Inference that “it is an operation which usually takes place
by means of words, and in complicated cases can take place in no other
way.” The same is true of Judgment.
[1] _Logic_ vol. I. c. i., init.
We may say in general that words are not needed, when thinking about
objects by help of pictorial images will do the work demanded of the
mind, _i.e._ when perfectly individualised connections in space and
time are in question. Mr. Stout [1] gives chess-playing as an example.
With the board before him, even an ordinary player does not need words
to describe to himself the move which he is about to make.
[1] In _Mind_, no. 62.
Words are needed when we have to attend to the general plan of any
system, as in thinking about organisms with reference to their type,
or about political relations--about anything, that is, which is not
of such a nature that the members of the idea can be symbolised in
pictorial form. It would be difficult, for example, to comprehend the
respiration of plants under a symbolic picture-idea drawn {81} from the
respiration of the higher animals. The relations which constitute a
common element between the two processes do not include the movements,
feelings, and visible changes in the circulatory fluid from which our
image of animal respiration is chiefly drawn; and we could hardly
frame a pictorial idea that would duly insist on the chemical and
organic conditions on which the common element of the process depends.
In a case of this kind the word is the symbol which enables us to
hold together in a coherent system, though not in a single image, the
relations which make up the content of our thought.
“Words” may be of many different kinds--spoken, written, indicated
by deaf and dumb signs; all of these are derived from the word as
it is in speech, although writing and printing become practically
independent of sound, and we read, like the deaf and dumb alphabet,
directly by the eye. Then there may be any kind of conventional signals
either for letters, words, or sentences, and any kind of cipher or
_memoria technica_ either for private or for general use--in these the
“conventional” nature of language reaches its climax, and the relation
to a natural growth of speech has disappeared. And finally there are
all forms of picture-writing, which need not, so far as its intrinsic
nature goes, have any connection with speech at all, and which seems to
form a direct transition between picture-thinking and thinking through
the written sign.
All these must be considered under the head of language, as a fixed
system or signs for meanings, before we can ultimately pronounce that
we think without words.
Every Judgment, however, can be expressed in words, {82} though not
every Judgment need be so expressed or can readily be so.
_Proposition and sentence._
2. A Judgment expressed in words is a Proposition, which is one kind
of sentence. A command question or wish is a sentence but not a
proposition. A detached relative clause [1] is not even a complete
sentence. The meaning of the imperative and the question seems to
include some act of _will_; the meaning of a proposition is always
given out simply for fact or truth. We need not consider any sentence
that has no meaning at all.
[1] See above, Lect. IV.
_Difference between Proposition and Judgment_
3. Almost all English logicians speak of the Proposition and not of the
Judgment. [1] This does not matter, so long as we are agreed about what
they mean. They must mean the proposition _as understood_, and this is
what we call the judgment.
[1] So Mill, Venn, Jevons, Bain (see his note, p. 80).
In order to make this distinction clear, let us consider the
proposition as it reaches us from without, that is to say, either as
spoken or as written. The words, the parts of such a proposition, as we
hear or read them, are separate and successive either in time alone, or
in time and space. Further, the mere sounds or signs can be mastered
apart from the meaning. You can repeat them or copy them without
understanding them in the least, as _e.g._ in the case of a proposition
in an unknown language. So far, the proposition has not become a
judgment, and I do not suppose that any logician would admit that it
deserved the name even of a proposition. But if not, then we must not
confuse the attributes which it has before it becomes a proposition
with those which it has after.
{83} Further, in understanding a proposition, or in construing a
sentence into a proposition (if the sentence only becomes a proposition
when understood), there are many degrees. I read upon a postcard,
“A meeting will be held on Saturday next by the Women’s Liberal
Association, to discuss the taxation of ground-rents.” The meaning of
such a sentence takes time to grasp, and if the words are read aloud
to us, must of necessity be apprehended by degrees. We understand very
quickly that a meeting is to be held next Saturday. This understanding
is already a judgment. It is something quite different from merely
repeating the words which we read. It consists in realising them as
meanings, and bringing these meanings together into a connected idea,
and affirming this idea to belong to our real world. The meanings are
not separate, outside one another, as the words are when we first
hear or read them. They enter into each other, modify each other, and
become parts of an ideal whole. This gradual apprehension of a sentence
recalls to one the boyish amusement of melting down bits of lead in a
ladle. At first the pieces all lie about, rigid and out of contact; but
as they begin to be fused a fluid system is formed in which they give
up their rigidity and independence, and enter into the closest possible
contact, so that their movements and position determine each other. But
still some parts, like words not yet grasped, remain hard and separate,
and it is only when the melting is complete that this isolation is
destroyed, and there are no longer detached fragments, but a fluid body
such that all its parts are in the closest connection with one another.