dismissing the separate Copula. It has no separate existence in thought
corresponding to its separate place in the typical proposition of
Formal Logic. It has come to be considered separately, because the
abstract verb “is” is used in our languages as a sign of the complete
enunciation. But there is not in the Judgment any separate significant
idea--any third idea--coming in between the Subject and Predicate of
Judgment. We should try to think of the Copula not as a link, separable
and always {100} intrinsically the same, [1] connecting two distinct
things. We should think of it rather as the grip with which the parts
of a single complex whole cohere with one another, differing according
to the nature of the whole and the inter-dependence of its parts. Benno
Erdmann [2] has strikingly expressed this point of view by saying,
that in the Judgment, “The dead ride fast,” the Subject is “the dead,”
the Predicate “fast riding,” _and the Copula “the fast riding of the
dead_.” In other words, the Copula is simply the Judgment considered
exclusively as a cohesion between parts of a complex idea, the
individual connection between which can only be indicated by supplying
the idea of those parts themselves.
[1] In a comic Logic, with pictures, meant to stimulate dull
minds at a University, I have seen the Copula represented as
the coupling-link between two railway carriages. This is an
excellent type of the way in which we should _not_ think of it.
[2] _Logik_, p. 189.
_Are Subject and Predicate necessary?_
3. The explicit Predicate is more necessary than the explicit Subject.
We have spoken of Judgments expressed by one word, “Fire!” “Thieves!”
etc., and also of impersonal Propositions, “It is raining,” “It
is thawing.” These two classes of Judgments show hardly any
explicit Subject at all. But we could not assert anything without
a Predicate--that would be to assert without asserting anything in
particular.
As these Judgments have, roughly speaking, a Predicate and no
Subject, I do not think it convenient to call them, with Dr. Venn,
existential judgments. It is true that they refer to reality, but their
_peculiarity_ is in not referring to a distinct subject. And when used
for definite and complex assertions they become very artificial, _e.g._
“There is a {101} British Constitution by which our liberties are
guaranteed.” Instead of organising the content of the Judgment, such a
form of assertion simply tosses the whole of it into the Predicate in a
single mass.
The question is only one of words; but it appears to me more convenient
to reserve the term Existential judgments for those highly artificial
assertions which actually employ the Predicate “exist” or “existence,”
_e.g._ “Matter exists.” These are at the opposite end of the scale
from those last-mentioned, and are the nearest approach to Judgment
with Subject and no Predicate. That is to say, their Predicate is
the generalised abstract form of predication [1] without any special
content--the kind and degree of existence asserted being understood
from the context.
[1] Expressed in Greek by the word corresponding to “is,” used
with an accent, which does not belong to it in its ordinary use.
He is good = ἄγαθός ἐστι [= agathos esti]; He exists = ἔστι [=
esti Tr.].
Except, however, in the case of these peculiarly abstract and
reflective assertions, it must be laid down that a predicated content
is necessary to judgment, while an _explicit_ subject of predication is
unnecessary.
_Two Ideas of Things_
4. If it is possible, in some cases, to throw the whole content of
judgment into the predicate, this rather disposes us to criticise the
notion that there must be two distinct matters, objects, ideas, or
contents, in every judgment. The notion in question has two forms.
It is thought that the Judgment consists in putting two _ideas_
together, [1] or,
{102} That the Judgment consists in comparing two or
more things. [2]
[1] For this conception, see Hamilton’s _Lectures on Logic_, i.
227, and for a criticism on it. Mill’s _Logic_, Bk. I. ch. v.,
_init_, Dr. Venn seems to incline to Hamilton’s view, but I do
not feel sure that he intends to discuss the question in the
form in which it is referred to in the text. See his _Empirical
Logic_, pp. 210 and 211.
[2] See Jevons, pp. 61-2; and Mill, Bk. I. ch. iii., _init_.;
and ch. iv., _init_.
_Two Ideas_
(_a_) The notion of “two ideas” has two principal difficulties.
_Notion of mental transition pure and simple_
(i.) In its simplest shape the notion of “two ideas” involves the
great blunder which I explained in Lecture IV. It suggests that the
parts of Judgment are separate and successive psychical states, and
that the Judgment consists in a change from the one to the other.
Herbert Spencer, as I understand him, considers every relation to be
apprehended as a mental change or passage from one idea to another.
This view would degrade logical connection into mere psychical
transition. I do not say that there is no psychical transition in
Judgment. I do say that psychical transition is not enough to make a
Judgment. The parts of Judgment, as we saw in the last lecture, do
not succeed one another separately like the parts of a sentence. The
relation between Subject and Predicate is not a relation between mental
states, but is itself the content of a single though continuous mental
state. Mill has rightly touched on this point. “When I say that fire
causes heat, do I mean that my idea of fire causes my idea of heat?”
[1] and so on. The fact is that “Fire-causing-heat” is itself the
single content or meaning represented in my symbolic idea; it is not a
succession of psychical states in my mind, or a passage from the idea
of fire to the idea of causing heat.
[1] _Logic_, Bk. I. ch. V. § I.
{103} _Absence of assertion_
(ii.) But further, understanding now that the Judgment is composed of
a single ideal content, and is not a transition from one mental state
to another, there is still a difficulty in the conception that its
component elements are nothing but ideas. If the Subject in Judgment is
no more than an ideal content, how, by what means, does the Judgment
claim to be true of Reality? “The Subject cannot belong to the content
or fall within it, for in that case it would be the idea attributed to
itself.” [1] If the Subject were only a part of an ideal content it
would not claim to be true of Reality, and where it _appears_ to be
only an ideal content there is much dispute in what sense the Judgment
does claim to be true of Reality. “Violations of a law of nature are
impossible.” “The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right
angles.” “All trespassers will be prosecuted.” In these Judgments we
should find it hard to make out that the Subjects are real things
corresponding to our ideas. And yet, if they are not, how can the
Judgment attach itself to Reality? This is the difficult question of
the distinction between the categorical and the hypothetical Judgment,
and we shall have to return to it. In the meantime, we must adhere to
our judgment of perception as the true underlying type. The Subject
is here not an idea, but is the given reality, _this_ or _that_, and
the Judgment is not a conjunction of two ideas, but is present reality
qualified by an idea. We say, “It is very hot,” meaning that heat, the
general quality embodied for us in an ideal content, is true of--forms
one tissue with--the surroundings which here and now press upon our
attention. Or again, “This is red,” {104} _i.e._ the content of the
idea red is what my attention selects and emphasises within the mass
of detail presented to it in its own unique focus which the pronoun
“this” simply points out as though with the finger. We shall find such
a structure underlying all the more artificial forms of Judgment.
[1] _Bradley’s Principles of Logic_, p. 14.
_Two Things_
(_b_) Thus it would seem that Jevons and Mill are much nearer the real
point when they say that the proposition has to do with two Things,
or with a Thing and a group of Things. But we must notice in passing
that Mill, [1] after fighting hard against calling them Ideas, takes
our breath away by saying that they are states of consciousness. There
is, of course, a difficulty, which I will not try to deal with now, in
the fact that however much we _refer_ to things, we have nothing to
_work with intellectually_ but our ideas of them, and in some types
of Judgment the reference to real things is difficult to trace. Mill
further emphasises this by showing, that what we assert in ordinary
_general_ Judgment is co-existence of attributes. [2] “Now when we
say, Man is mortal, we mean that wherever these various mental and
physical phenomena (the attributes of man) are all found, then we have
assurance that the other physical and mental phenomenon called death,
will not fail to take place.” That is, no doubt, a very indirect way of
referring to the real things which we call men. Moreover, he treats all
conclusions in geometry and mechanics as hypothetical. [3] All this we
shall have to return to, in order to reconcile it with our doctrine;
which is apparently coincident with {105} Mill’s view in the place
first alluded to, that the subject in Judgment is always reality.
[1] _Logic_, Bk. I. ch. V. § 5. [2] _Ibid_., § 4.
[3] _Ibid_., Bk. II. ch. vi. §§ 3, 4.
But our point at present is only the duality ascribed to the Judgment
by saying that it essentially deals with _two_ things or groups of
things. Jevons even says [1] that every Judgment is a comparison of
two things--though these “things” are really, it would seem, groups
of things. [2] We thus have it impressed upon our minds that there
is one “thing” corresponding to the Subject-word (or clause) of the
Propositional sentence, and another “thing” corresponding to the
Predicate-word (or clause), and that these are somehow separate, like
two railway carriages, till we bring them together by the coupling-link
of the copula. This is a very inconvenient way of looking at the
matter. It is not true that all Judgment is comparison, in the proper
and usual sense of the word. It is not true that Judgment involves two
things; two or more things may be mentioned in a Judgment, but they
cannot correspond respectively to the Subject and Predicate. It is a
real Comparison if you say, “A.B. is taller than C.D.,” but C.D. is
here not a term in the Judgment. The one person, A.B., is qualified by
the ideal content “taller than C.D.,” and the idea of A.B. so qualified
is referred to, or discriminated within, perceptive reality. Comparison
is a rather complex process, and consists in a cross-reference by which
each of two objects is judged according to a standard furnished by the
other; but this complex process is not necessary to all Judgment, and
cannot be expressed with complete convenience in a single Judgment. And
in {106} any case the two objects that enter into the comparison do not
correspond to two essential parts of Judgment.
[1] _Elementary Lessons in Logic_, p. 61. [2] _Ibid_. p. 62.
It is far more simple and true to say that Judgment is always the
analysis _and_ synthesis of elements in some one thing or ideal
content. “Gold is yellow” has not within it, as Jevons says it has, [1]
any direct comparison of gold with other yellow substances. It simply
drags to light the property “yellow” as distinct within the complex of
attributes belonging to gold, while at the same time insisting that
this property--this meaning of an idea--belongs to, is of one piece
with, perceived reality in so far as gold is given in such reality.
The Judgment exhibits the content in its parts. It breaks it up, and
pronounces it to be all of one tissue, by one and the same indivisible
act. We should practically have a much fairer chance of seeing clearly
what Judgment is if we began by considering it as not two things or
two terms — but as one thing or one term drawn out into elements by
discriminating selection. Even if the paradox that every “Thing” is
a Judgment neglects some necessary distinctions, I am convinced that
we shall understand Judgment much more clearly if we do our best to
approach it from this point of view. Whenever we look or listen, and
_notice_ features and qualities in the perceptions that arrest the
eye and ear, we are rapidly and continuously judging. “The fire is
crackling,” “The daylight is waning,” “That bookshelf is not full,”
“The window-curtain is twisted.” In none of these cases is there
any separation other than an intellectual distinction between the
predicated content and the perceived reality. The Judgment is simply
a distinct {107} insistence on a quality within a certain focus of
reality as belonging to that reality. This is the fundamental nature of
Judgment.
[1] _Loc. cit_.
Therefore, to draw our conclusion as to the Unity of the Judgment, it
is not a transition from one mental state to another; the relation of
which it consists is not between ideas in it, but is the content of the
idea which forms it. Judgment is not primarily comparison between two
things; it is a thing or content displayed as possessing some definite
relation or quality within its identity. Every Judgment is the content
of one idea, but you may of course distinguish relations between ideal
elements within this idea. “Fire causes heat” is a single content or
idea, the nature of fire, expanded into one of its properties.
_Distinction between Subject and Predicate_
5. But then, if the whole Judgment is a single content, what is the
difference between Subject and Predicate, and is it necessary to
distinguish Subject from Predicate at all? If _some_ Judgments can be
made without explicit Subjects, cannot _all_ be made in that way?
This suggestion is very useful as carrying on the simplest type of
Judgment throughout the whole theory of Judgment. By a little torture
of expression any Judgment can be thrown into a form in which undefined
Reality is the general subject, and the whole mass of the Judgment
is the Predicate. “William Pitt was a great statesman” = “There was
a great statesman named William Pitt”; “The three angles of every
triangle are equal to two right angles” = “There are figures known as
triangles with their three angles equal to two right angles”; “All
citizens are members of a moral order” = “There is a moral order,
including the {108} relations of citizenship”; “All trespassers will
be prosecuted” = “Here are conditions which ensure the prosecution of
possible trespassers.” Or you might always put a subject, “Reality is
such that”--“Reality is characterised by.”
Thus we see that, as we have said before, in every Judgment the
ultimate subject is Reality, the world in contact with us as we have
already qualified it by previous Judgment. It is a less mistake to
reject the Subject and Predicate in the Judgment altogether, than to
think that they are separate things or ideas, and that in judging you
pass or change from one to the other. Always bear in mind that it is
possible to mass the whole Judgment as a single Predicate directly or
indirectly true of Reality.
Having said this much, to make the Unity of the Judgment unmistakable,
we may now safely distinguish between the Subject and Predicate
in the Judgment. And we shall find the safest clue to be that the
explicit Subject, when there is one, marks the place at which, or the
conditions under which, Reality accepts the Predicate. The natural
Subject is concrete, and the Predicate abstract; the Subject real, and
the Predicate ideal, but pronounced to be real. The reason of this is
that every Judgment is the connection of parts in a whole, and to be
a whole is the characteristic of reality. In other words, the natural
course of thought is to define further what is already in great part
defined, and our real world is that which we have so far defined. The
isolated judgments of the text-books make it very hard to grasp this,
because you seem to begin anywhere for no connected reason at all. But
if we reflect on actual thought, {109} we find that, as Mr. Stout very
cleverly says, we are always developing a “subject” which is in our
minds (in the ordinary sense of a “subject of conversation”), and this
subject is some region or province of the world of reality.
Now the explicit Subject in Judgment or the grammatical Subject in
Proposition does not always set out the full nature of this, but
merely some mark or point in it which we wish to insist upon. So
that we may find in Judgment almost anything serving as explicit
Subject. Thus, as Aristotle said quite plainly and sensibly, it is
natural to say “The horse is white,” but we _may_ have occasion to say
“This white is a horse”; it depends on the way in which the Subject
comes into our minds. [1] Usually the Subject will be what Dr. Venn
calls the heavier term, _i.e._ the term with more connotation. When
there is no difference of concreteness between parts and whole, the
Judgment becomes reversible as in the equation 7 + 5 = 12. There is no
distinction here between Subject and Predicate. The real underlying
unity or Subject is the numerical system.
[1] See Prof. Bain, p. 56, upon the Universe, and Universe of
Discourse, _i.e._ the general subject which you have in your
mind.
Therefore by recognising Subject and Predicate we represent the
organisation of knowledge, and the connection of inherence or
consequence within the content of our knowledge. If we do not
recognise this distinction we throw the whole of Judgment into an
undifferentiated mass of fact, running all assertion into the same
mould, “It is the case that,” etc. One difficulty still remains. If
the relation between Subject and Predicate is within an idea, and
not between ideas--that is, if the whole explicit content, Subject
and {110} Predicate together, can be regarded as predicated of
reality,--why is the act of predication expressed by a verb, _i.e._
a sign of activity within this content? Why is a verb often if not
always the form of predication which connotes Subject and Predicate?
Not because it is a time-word. On the contrary, we want to get rid
of the tense in Logic. The time of a Judgment ought to be determined
only by the special connection between Subject and Predicate, not by
tense, because tense is always subjective, merely relative to the time
of speaking, and is accidental to the content of Judgment. Action
seems nearer to what we want; the _verb_ expresses both action and
predicate. But the _idea_ of action again does not make a predication,
and the verb “is” does not _really indicate_ action. Perhaps it is the
demonstrative element in a finite verb that makes it the vehicle of
predication, _i.e._ in a finite verb you have a meaning referred by a
demonstrative element to something else. Originally the meaning was
always an action; “is” of course meant “breathes.” But now the verb has
lost vitality by wear and tear, and only refers something to something
else. The puzzle is that the Judgment is not referred to us who make
it, but is expressed as if it was accomplished by something outside us.
That puzzle points to the essential feature which we insisted on, viz.
its objectivity; in predication we refer what is mentally our act to a
subject that represents the real world, not to ourselves at all. When
I say “Gladstone comes to London this week,” the verb which expresses
Gladstone’s action also expresses that my real world in his person
accepts the qualification “coming to London this week.” Because of this
objectivity of thought, I attribute to {111} the real world and not to
myself the connection which is presented to my mind, and so it takes
its place as an act of the real world. But I might throw the whole
content into the Predicate by saying, “The ideal content ‘Gladstone
coming to London this week’ is a predication true of Reality.” Thus
though the distinction between Subject and Predicate best exhibits the
living structure of knowledge, we must beware of the notion that two
ideas or two things are needed for Judgment.
{112}
LECTURE VII THE CATEGORICAL AND HYPOTHETICAL CHARACTERS IN
JUDGMENT
_Some criticism on the ordinary scheme_ [1]
1. We will first consider why we want to examine the types of Judgment,
and then what arrangement of them best fulfils our want.
[1] Read Mill, ch. iv. (Bk. I.), on Propositions; Venn,
_Empirical Logic_, ch. ix., x. Cf. _Knowledge and Reality_ pp.
57-8; and Venn, p. 264. Ordinary statement, Jevons, p. 60, ff.;
cf. p. 163.
_Why we need an arrangement_
(_a_) If we attended purely to the propositions in common use, we
should get an unmanageable variety of forms, though the reality of
thought would be fairly represented. We cannot quite do this; we must
try to select the forms which for some reason are the most fundamental
and constant.
On the other hand, it is possible to think simply of what is convenient
in logical combination; and then for working with syllogistic Logic we
get the well-known scheme of four propositions, each with Subject and
Predicate; and for working with symbolic Logic we get the existential
scheme in which Subject and Predicate disappear, and “All S. are P.”
turns into “There exists no S. which is not P.”; or we get Jevons’
Equational Logic, in which “All A is B” stands as A = AB. Now every
Judgment has a great many aspects, {113} being really a very complex
systematic act of mind, and a logical method can be founded on any of
these aspects which is sufficiently constant to stand for the Judgment.
You can take “All men are mortal” to mean “There are no not-mortal
men,” or “Men = some mortals,” or two or three more meanings. The two
former are artificial or formal corollaries from the natural Judgment,
representing it for some purposes but omitting a great part of its
natural meaning. They tell you nothing about a relation of causality
between the content of man and the property mortal, and they destroy
all implication of existence in the Subject man.
What we want is neither to follow _mere_ everyday language, nor be
guided by mere convenience of logical combination. We want to look at
the Judgment on its merits with reference to its power of expressing
the principal kinds of our experience, which in fact are constructed in
the medium of Judgment. The great kingdoms of intellectual experience
are Perception, History, and Science, and of these three, Science,
including Philosophy, is the form towards which all knowledge presses
on, and its judgment must therefore be considered as the most complete
type.
_The common scheme_
(_b_) With this purpose in mind, let us look at the traditional scheme,
omitting the negative Judgments of which we have not yet spoken. We may
dismiss the Indefinite Judgment “Men are mortal” as imperfect by not
being “quantified,” and we have left, as Categorical Judgments, the
Particular Affirmative “Some men are mortal,” the Universal Affirmative
“All men are mortal,” and the Singular Affirmative “Socrates is
mortal.” The Singular Affirmative, however, is not treated of any
further under the old scheme, {114} because in it the Subject is taken
in its full extent, and therefore the Singular Affirmative Judgment is
ranked with the Universal Affirmative. So as Categorical Judgments we
have left the Particular Affirmative and the Universal Affirmative.
Outside the account of the Categorical Judgment we find the
Hypothetical and Disjunctive Judgments touched on as a sort of
Appendix, standing as “Conditional.” The historical reason of this
is, that they were not recognised by Aristotle, and have never been
incorporated in the diagram of judgments employed in traditional Logic.
Then on the ordinary scheme we have--
Categorical. Conditional.
Particular Universal Hypothetical Disjunctive
Judgments. Judgments, Judgments.
including
Singular
Judgments.
The defects of this scheme from our point of view are—
(i.) Our Impersonal and Demonstrative Judgments are omitted. They
_might_ be classed under the particular, which also has an undefined
element in the subject.
(ii.) The Singular Judgment (of which the chief instance is the
judgment with proper name) is rightly classed as Universal, but yet is
wrongly absorbed in the abstract universal, from which it ought to be
distinguished.
(iii.) In the treatment of the Universal Judgment there are two
defects—