Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

On the Evident 41
Despite his polemic against conceiving apodictic judgements as a special class of
judgement, Sigwart occasionally bears witness to the contrary view, as is clear from what
was discussed under (4) above. The knowledge expressed by “I exist”, according to him
(see p. 312), is to be contrasted with our knowledge of axioms in that it pertains to a simple
factual truth. Here he speaks more soundly than his general theory would allow.
Sigwart’s theory of the evident, then, is essentially wrong. Like Descartes, he certainly
took note of the phenomenon; and it must be said to his credit that he exercised great zeal
in trying to analyse it. But like many others who have been concerned with the analysis of
psychological phenomena, he seems not to have stopped at the right place in his eagerness
to complete the analysis; the result was that he attempted to reduce one set of phenomena
to another set of entirely different phenomena.
Obviously any mistake about the nature of the evident can be disastrous for the logician.
We could say that Sigwart’s theory of the evident is the basic defect of his logic—were it
not for his misconception of the nature of judgement in general. Again and again we find
the unhappy results of his theory; an example is his inability to understand the general
causes of error. The principal cause, he says in his Logik (Vol. I, 2nd edn., p. 103n.), is the
imperfection of our language; and this, surely, is a one-sided account. 59
Many other prominent logicians, of recent years, have fared no better than Sigwart with
the theory of the evident. The views of the excellent John Stuart Mill—to cite only one
example—are discussed in note 73 of Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis.
The fact that the nature of the evident is almost universally misunderstood explains
why it is that we often hear the expression “more or less evident”. Even Descartes and
Pascal spoke in this way; but the expression is completely inappropriate. What is evident
is certain; and certainty in the strict sense of the term knows no distinctions of degree. In a
recent issue of the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, we are even told
(the author is serious) that here are evident presumptions which, despite their evidence,
may well be false. Needless to say, I regard this as nonsense. I regret that my own lectures,
given at a time when I took degrees of conviction to be a matter of intensity of judgement,
seem to have been the occasion for such confusions. 60