Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

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The True and the Evident
would seem, therefore, that the only distinguishing mark with which Descartes is left is the
consciousness of an irresistible compulsion.
As recently as Mach, it seems to have been held that evidence is bound up with such a
compulsion. Mach tells us that he gave up solipsism on the ground that he finds himself
absolutely compelled to believe in an external world. But Helmholtz, in his Tatsachen der
Auβenwelt, says that solipsism is a possible hypothesis and one which cannot be refuted.
And Descartes, unlike Mach, found that that compulsion, which one is supposed to feel,
could overcome.
If we are left only with this irresistible compulsion, then truth is by no means assured.
Sophisms tend to make prisoners. And fools are incapable of freeing themselves from fixed
ideas, however absurd. A habit of thought, which has become sufficiently engrained, may
deprive a man of his good sense as well as of his freedom. Pascal seems to have thought of
evidence, at least in the case of direct judgements, as an irresistible and natural compulsion
to make a certain kind of judgement; this led him to the sceptical thought that, as long as
we do not know who the author of our nature is, our trust in those judgements which seem
to be directly enlightening is entirely unfounded.
6. One may say that these observations are pointless inasmuch as they cannot have any
practical results. For if a man is subject to an irresistible compulsion to make a certain
judgement, then he will make that judgement, no matter what considerations there may be
to the contrary. And therefore—one may argue—this principle will always be valid, so far
as he is concerned, as a principle of thought. But this reasoning is clearly unsatisfactory.
What if several such principles were to contradict each other? And there actually is such
a conflict if, as Pascal supposes, reason tells us it is evident that evident propositions are
not to be believed. Here one must believe and one must withhold belief—and thus fall into
despair.
7. It is obvious, therefore, that the evidence of a judgement cannot be identified with any
irresistible compulsion forcing us to make the judgement. How are we to interpret the
concept, then? The correct method is the one that we use in many other cases where we
are concerned with a simple mark or characteristic. We will have to solve the problem by
considering a multiplicity of judgements which are evident and then contrasting them with
other judgements which lack this distinguishing characteristic. This is what we do, after all,
when we make clear to ourselves what is red or not red, and what is coloured or not coloured.
The type of case that Descartes considered was a case of something really being evident
and one having a great variety of instances. It was that of self-perception—our perception
of ourselves as thinking, believing, denying, rejoicing, being in sorrow, and so on. But he
should not have restricted himself to this type of case. He should have considered the kind
of evidence which is exemplified in the apodictic knowledge we have of axioms. In this way
he would have made it possible to make a comparison and thus to single out the common
mark of evidence; then there would have been no need for further explications of the mark
by reference to other attributes which happen to be associated with it. Indeed, as we have
seen, one fares better without such attributes than with the “clare et distincte percipio”.