Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Notes 109
48 This critique constitutes a definite rejection of the correspondence, or “adaequatio”, theory;
Brentano now seems to be preparing the way for the transition from the lecture on truth to his later
views. In any case, he here anticipates a criticism of Marty’s later version of the correspondence
theory. This passage is also of interest in connection with Leonard Nelson’s “Unmöglichkeit der
Erkenntnistheorie”, in Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule, Vol. III (Göttingen, 1911).
49 Now reprinted in Marty’s Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II, Part I.
50 Brentano here refers to the views which he defended in the main text of Vom Ursprung sittlicher
Erkenntnis.
51 Instead of saying “the fact that a given negative judgement is justified…”, it would have been
better to have said, “the fact that a given negative judgement would be justified if it were made…”
52 One might doubt whether these comparative judgements are real predications, in which case another
example would have been preferable. But this is of minor significance in relation to the question at issue.
53 Sigwart contends that if we think of the negative judgement as a species co-ordinate with
the affirmative judgement, we are committed to this consequence: since the affirmation of a man
is included in the proposition “Some man is sick”, the denial or rejection of a man should be
included in “Some man is not sick”. But Brentano replies: in the affirmation (“in the existence”)
of a sick man (which follows from the assertion that some man is sick) the affirmation of a
man and of something sick is included. Hence to deny the whole it suffices either to deny that
there is anything sick or to deny that there is a man. For if there is nothing sick, then there is
no sick man. Therefore the subject of “Some man is sick” need not be denied in order to deny
the whole. The proposition “Some man is not sick” would be false if there were no men, but if
there are men, then “Some man is not sick” would be true provided there is nothing that is sick.
54 What we have here is an argumentatio ad hominem, not an explication of the terms “true” and “false”.
55 In my opinion, Brentano’s criticism of Sigwart at this point is correct insofar as it is directed
against the contention that every positive judgement must be accompanied by a negative judgement
which is an “awareness of the impossibility of the opposite”. It is certain that such negative judgements
do not always accompany positive judgements; consider in particular the positive judgements of
inner and outer perception. But one may still ask whether our assertions of the form “A is”, “A is
not”, A is B”, “A is not B”, do not in fact express certain convictions in addition to the judgements
directed upon A and upon B. It would seem to be the case that these linguistic formulations also
contain the assertion of the correctness of the judgements about A and about B. Any such assertion
of correctness, as Brentano shows here, is a negative judgement, which denies the possibility of
the contradicting judgement being correct. What Sigwart thought to hold of judgements themselves
actually holds only of the linguistic expressions of judgements; these linguistic formulations do bring
several judgements to expression, of which one is necessarily negative. Thus if I say “There is a
God”, not only do I express my belief in God, but I also express my belief that it is correct to believe
in God; in other words, I express my belief (as will be seen more clearly later) that a judgement
contradicting my belief cannot possibly be correct. Analogously for the negative assertion “There
is no God”. In this case, the negative judgement that there is no God is the primary judgement; the
secondary judgement is a second negative judgement to the effect that there cannot possibly be a
correct judgement contradicting the primary judgement. But from the fact that this second judgement
in every case is apodictic, Sigwart is not entitled to infer that the first judgement is always apodictic.
If I say, for example, “I am thinking”, my assertion expresses an assertoric judgement the correctness
of which may also be affirmed in an apodictic judgement. For further details, see George Katkov,
“Bewusstsei n, Gegenstand, Sachverhalt’, in Archiv für Psychologie, Vol. 75 (1930). It may be that
Felix Weltsch has something similar in mind in saying that every judgement contains the “intention
of its own correctness”; in “Kann die Evidenz Sanktion der Ethik sein?”, Ruch Filosoficky, Vol. III.
56 Compare the second edition of Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, Note 34, p. 59. Brentano here
criticizes those modern philosophers who contend that every evident judgement depends upon the
application of some criterion. If this contention were true, then the criterion itself would first have to be