Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

120 Notes
39 Brentano’s expression, “the concept horse and its falsehood” is inexact. The proper formulation
would be “the concept horse and its evident rejection” or “the concept horse and the apodictic
rejection of the evidence of its affirmation”.
40 The points that are set forth in this selection might be summarized as follows:
Positive judgements which have a general matter—i.e., which are concerned with the objects of
general concepts—are particular; that is to say, they do not affirm the concept in its total extension.
For example, even though the positive judgement, “There is a dog”, is correct, the negative judgement,
“There is no red dog, no dog that sings, no dog with a diamond necklace, no dog with a bitch, no
dog with a marble palace (etc., etc.)”, may also be correct. In other words: negative judgements about
objects, having “dog” as physical or logical part, may be correct in spite of the fact that the judgement
affirming a dog is also correct. Although positive judgements, therefore, do not affirm the concept
in its entire extension, they do affirm the concept in its entire content. If a dog is correctly affirmed,
then there cannot be a correct judgement which rejects any of the parts (or marks) of the content of
the concept of a dog; neither the “physical parts” (e.g., the mouth and the tail) nor the “logical parts”
(falling under such general concepts as mammal, creature, and thing) could be correctly denied.
We may think about what is designated by the word “dog” without thinking about everything which
thus belongs to the content of the concept dog; we need only think of some part of the content. But
if we were to think of the content in its totality and full distinctness, then we would have to think of
the entire content; we would have to think of the concepts of mammal, creature, thing, and in their
characteristic arrangement and totality.
Negative judgements which have a general matter—i.e., which are concerned with the objects
of general concepts—are universal; they deny the concept in its entire extension. If the judgement
“There is no dog” is correct, then no judgement affirming any dog may be correct—whether the dog
be a red dog, a singing dog, a pug, a St Bernard, a dog with a diamond collar. If the judgement denying
a dog is correct, then no judgement affirming a dog or affirming any object having all the physical
or logical parts of “dog” can be correct.
Negative judgements having a general matter, however, do not deny the entire content. If I correctly
deny or reject a red dog, then the judgement that there is a creature, a thing, a dog, something red, a
mammal, may be correct, in spite of the fact that all these objects belong to the content of the concept
“red dog”. They are its physical or logical parts.
Let us assume that “the non-being of a red dog” is an object of a conceptual thought or idea, that
we are capable of thinking of it and judging about it. Let us now apply the axiomatic truths which we
just developed: if we affirm the “non-being of a red dog”, we affirm it in its entire content, that is, we
affirm it with respect to all its physical and logical parts. But what would these physical and logical
parts be? The parts of the red dog? When we affirm the non-being of a red dog, we do not thereby
affirm the non-being of a dog or the non-being of a red thing. For there may be red things and dogs
of other colours. Nor do we thereby affirm the non-being of a mammal, or of a living creature, or
of an organism, or of any other such thing. None of these things belong to the content of “the nonbeing
of a dog” even though they would all have to be thought if this content were to be thought in
its complete distinctness. Indeed, the content would include the non-being of a red trick-dog, of a red
dog with a collar, with a doghouse, with a bitch, with a master, and so on. And so all of this, and any
amount more, would belong to the concept “non-being of a dog”. If this were so, then we would have
to think of all this, if we were actually to think of the “non-being of a dog” in its complete distinctness,
just as we must think of all the essential physical and logical parts of a dog, if the concept of
a dog is to be thought in its complete distinctness. It is obvious that we cannot do this at all. What
is required for such complete distinctness is nothing more than the distinct idea of the dog and the
thought of its evident rejection. It is also conceivable that one might think of the evident, apodictic
rejection of an evident judgement in which the dog is affirmed (and this is really what it is to have a
thought or idea of the so-called “impossibility” of a correct affirmation).