Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

xxiv Introduction
13. Ehrenfels has proposed an objection, and this will throw light upon our problem.
Suppose there are certain things which, for one reason or another, are entirely inaccessible
to any knowledge, positive or negative; it is impossible, say, to find out whether or not
there is a diamond weighing exactly 100 kilograms. Hence neither a judgement affirming
such a diamond nor one denying it can be brought into contradiction with what is evident.
And therefore, according to what we have said above, both judgements—the one affirming
that there is such a diamond and the one denying it—would have to be called “true”. And
both would have to be called “false” as well, since neither an affirmative nor a negative
judgement about this diamond could be evident.
The objection is easy to answer. Let us suppose that there is such an unknowable
diamond. Then if it were possible for someone to know about the diamond, the knowledge
could not possibly be negative—the knowledge could not be a judgement that denies or
rejects the diamond. But it would be a mistake to say that, if there were such knowledge
of the diamond, it could not possibly be affirmative. Hence, on our assumption about
the unknowable thing, an evident denial is impossible for two reasons. First, our general
assumption (that the diamond is unknowable) precludes the possibility of any knowledge
about the thing. But secondly, our additional assumption (that there is such a diamond)
implies that even if such knowledge were possible, it could not be knowledge which is
negative. But there is only one reason for saying that affirmative knowledge about the thing
is impossible—namely, our assumption that the thing is unknowable.*
Inaccessibility to our knowledge, then, is no reason for concluding that the negative
judgement is true. For what we have been saying is this: a true judgement about a thing is one
such that, whether or not knowledge about the thing is possible, knowledge contradicting
the judgement is impossible. The affirmative judgement about the unknowable diamond,
although it is a judgement which cannot be evident, is one which we must call true. For,
whether or not it is possible to know anything about the diamond, negative knowledge
contradicting the affirmative judgement is impossible.
14. It should be sufficiently clear from what has preceded that we are far from immersing
logic in the psychology of evidence.† We have noted that, in saying of a judgement that it
is true, we are not predicating evidence of the judgement; indeed, we are not predicating
anything of the judgement. But the assertion “Such and such a judgement is true”
unavoidably contains the thought of an evident judgement—the thought, namely, that any
judgement contradicting the one that is being called “true” cannot possibly be evident: one
apodictically denies that any such judgement is evident. What is asserted, then, may also
be expressed by saying that it is impossible for an evident judgement to contradict the one
that is being called “true”. In saying this we are not merely expressing something which
is logically equivalent to the statement that the judgement is true; we are expressing its
meaning, its sense, what must be thought if the statement is to be understood.
Husserl, on the other hand, would connect the “concept” of truth with the “possibility
of evident judgement”, saying that a true judgement is one such that it is possible for it
* By altering our second assumption and supposing now that there is no such diamond, we arrive
at analogous results, mutatis mutandis.
† See Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I, p. 184.