Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

Critique of Sigwart’s Theory of the Existential and the Negative Judgement 31
connection of ideas” constitutes a judgement; there must be in addition (he would say) a
certain feeling of compulsion.
Sigwart subsequently formulates another argument (p. 151), but I find it equally difficult
to follow. He notes, quite correctly, that there are countless predicates which we have the
right to deny of any given thing; and he adds, equally correctly, that we do not in fact make
all of these negative judgements. But now— what are we to infer from these premises?
Perhaps this: the fact that a given negative judgement is justified is not itself sufficient to
account for the fact that the judgement is made? 51 And this, of course, we may well admit.
But what Sigwart infers is quite different. A necessary condition for making a negative
judgement, he says, is that we first attempt to make the corresponding positive judgement;
hence if we do not make the attempt at the positive judgement, we do not make the negative
judgement. This is a bold leap indeed, which my logic at least is unable to follow. What
if we were now to ask, “And why is it that all the corresponding positive judgements are
not attempted?” Sigwart’s examples (“This stone reads, writes, sings, composes verses”,
“Justice is blue, green, heptagonal, moves in circles”) would require the following answer:
the reason that we do not attempt the positive judgement is that we have already made the
negative judgement, having found it to be evident and certain. This is what would best
explain why there is no “danger” of “anyone wanting to attribute such predicates to the
stone or to justice”. One might also answer our question by saying this: the reason we do
not attempt all the relevant positive judgements lies in the fact that our consciousness,
after all, has its limitations. I could accept this answer too. But why didn’t Sigwart appeal
directly to this fact earlier in his discussion? He says himself that there is an “unlimited
number” of possible negative judgements.
Sigwart makes still another curious mistake (as Marty has already noted). Affirmative
judgements, he says, differ from negative judgements in that “only a finite number of
predicates can be affirmed of any subject”. How so? Aren’t we justified in saying, for
example, that a whole hour is greater than a half an hour, greater than a third of an hour,
greater than a fourth of an hour, and so on, ad infinitum? 52 If now I do not in fact make
each one of these judgements, there must be a good reason. After all, the limitations of
consciousness would hardly permit it. But these same considerations may be applied
equally well to negative judgements.
We find a third argument somewhat later on. We may treat it briefly here, for I have already
answered it in my Psychologie (Book II, Chapter 7, Section 5). Sigwart reasons as follows
(p. 155 f.): suppose the negative judgement were direct and, as a species of judgement,
co-ordinate with the affirmative judgement; then, if one thinks that the affirmation of the
subject is involved in an affirmative categorical proposition, one should also think that
the denial of the subject is involved in a negative categorical proposition; but this is not
the case. The latter observation is correct (the denial of the subject need not be involved
in the affirmation of a negative proposition). But the observation that precedes it (viz.,
if one thinks that the affirmation of the subject is involved in an affirmative categorical
proposition, one should also think that the denial of the subject is involved in a negative
proposition) is entirely untenable and, indeed, self-contradictory. Precisely because of the
fact that the existence of a whole involves the existence of each of its parts, all that is
needed, if a given whole is not to exist, is that only one of its parts be lacking. 53