Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

On the Evident 39
then he is mistaken. Given that on the basis of certain data one thinker is compelled to
make a certain judgement, why should it be that every thinker on the basis of the same
data would have a similar compulsion? One may be tempted, in this connection, to appeal
to the general causal law according to which, if all the relevant conditions are the same,
the effects will also be the same. But this general law is not applicable in the present case.
For the relevant causal conditions will include all those psychical dispositions which may
not enter directly into consciousness at all but which will exercise their effects upon one’s
judging; and these dispositions are different for different people.
Misled by paralogisms, Hegel and his school have even denied the law of contradiction;
and Trendelenburg, who opposes Hegel, has at least restricted its validity (see his
Abhandlungen über Herbarts Metaphysik). Hence we can no longer say, as Aristotle did,
that it is impossible for anyone inwardly to deny the principle. But for Aristotle himself, to
whom the principle was clearly evident, its denial was certainly impossible.
But it is true that anything that is seen to be evident by one person is certain, not only for
him, but also for anyone else who sees it in a similar way. Moreover, any judgement which
is thus seen by one person to be true is universally valid; its contradictory cannot be seen
to be evident by any other person; and anyone who accepts its contradictory is ipso facto
mistaken. What I am here saying pertains to the nature of truth: anyone who thus sees into
something as true is also able to see that he is justified in regarding it as true for all. 58 But
it would be a gross confusion to suppose that this awareness of something being true for
everyone implies an awareness of a universal compulsion to believe.
(3) Sigwart entangles himself in a multiplicity of contradictions. He says—as he must
if he is not to give in to scepticism or to abandon his entire logic—that judgements which
are evident may be distinguished from judgements which are not, and that we can make the
distinction in our own consciousness. Thus the one class of judgements, but not the other,
must appear as normative and universal. But he also says that both classes of judgements—
those which are evident and those which are not—are made with a consciousness of universal
validity. The two types of judgement, therefore, would seem to present themselves in
precisely the same way. If this were true, then one could make out the distinction between
the two types of judgement only by means of reflection—supplementary and possibly later
than the judgement itself—in the course of which one would appeal to some criterion or
other which would then be a kind of measuring rod. There are actually passages in which
Sigwart says that there is an awareness of agreement with universal rules and that this
awareness accompanies every perfectly evident judgement (op. cit., 2nd edn., Section 39,
p. 311). But this is hardly in agreement with our experience—it was possible to reason
syllogistically with perfect evidence long before the discovery of the rules of the syllogism.
And in any case, we cannot be content with what Sigwart is here saying, for the rule to
which he appeals is itself something that must be assured. Given Sigwart’s view, such
assurance would require either an infinite regress or a vicious circle.
(4) Sigwart is involved in still another contradiction (but one which, it seems to me,
he could have avoided even after arriving at his erroneous conceptions of the nature of
judgement and of evidence); this concerns his view of self-awareness. What is expressed by
“I exist” is said to be just evident and not to be accompanied by any feeling of compulsion or
of universal necessity. (At any rate, this is the only way I am able to interpret the following
passage from his Logik, 2nd edn., Vol. I, p. 310: “The certainty that I exist and that I think