Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

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The True and the Evident
Are we really supposed to believe, then, that the negative judgement shows up relatively
late (as we are told on pp. 159 ff.) and that, on the basis of these and other considerations,
the negative judgement should be thought unworthy of being placed on an equal footing
with the positive judgement as being an independent species of judgement? The more one
considers Sigwart’s views the clearer it becomes that they do involve the implications
developed here; surely Sigwart would never have maintained such things had he thought
them through. There are passages, of course, in which he contradicts one or another of
these theses which I have shown his views to imply. But what else are we to expect when
everything is in such great confusion and when the attempt to clear up things serves only
to uncover a multiplicity of contradictions?
(3) We have, then, a highly respected logician, misconceiving the nature of judgement,
and then becoming entangled in hopeless confusion with respect to a relatively simple
question. What is the origin of the error? The proton pseudos consists of a mistake which
has been handed down from the older logic; it is the mistake of supposing that a relation
between two ideas is essentially involved in the nature of judgement. Aristotle had
described the relation as being one of combining or separating he
realized, however, that the terminology is not entirely appropriate and he noted that there is
a sense in which both relations could be said to be a matter of combining see De
Anima, III, 6. Scholastic logic and modern logic have retained the two terms “combining”
and “separating”, but in grammar both relations are called “combining” and the symbol
for combining is called the “copula”. Now Sigwart takes these expressions “combining”
and “separating” literally. Hence a negative copula appears to him (see p. 153) to be a
contradiction; and the negative judgement is said to presuppose a positive judgement.
For how can we separate any two things unless they have first been combined? Thus we
find that, according to Sigwart (p. 150 and the passages cited above), it makes no sense
to speak of a negative judgement which does not presuppose a positive judgement. The
consequence is that all the efforts of this distinguished thinker turn out to be in vain; the
negative judgement is no longer even comprehensible.
There is a note, beginning on p. 150, in which Sigwart tells us what finally confirmed
him in his endeavours. What we have here is a remarkable description of the process by
means of which we are supposed to arrive at the negative judgement. The attentive reader
will be able to see the whole series of errors in succession, and he will find that the negative
judgement is actually presupposed long before the point at which it is finally supposed to
emerge.
Sigwart proceeds from the correct observation that our first judgements are all positive.
These judgements are evident and made with complete confidence. “But now”, he says,
“our thought goes out beyond the given; as a result of recollections and associations, other
judgements are formed, also with the thought that they express what is real.” (This means
that the ideas are connected with a consciousness of objective validity, this being of the
essence of judgement, according to Sigwart; sect. 14, p. 98.) These other judgements, he
continues, might be exemplified by our “expecting to find some familiar thing in its usual
place, or our assumption that we will be able to smell a certain flower. But now some
part of what we thus suppose comes into conflict with what it is that we immediately
know”. (Sigwart does not attempt to show how we are able to recognize that something
“conflicts” with what we know, if we are not yet able to make negative judgements and