Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/270

 254 CRITICAL NOTICES: "In every judgment (we are told) something is affirmed or denied of something " ( 13) ; thus " every judgment contains as its presupposition and basis the mere positing or ideating of an object " (Gegenstand). (On the other hand there are many ideas to the positing of which a number of judgments must have been preliminary.) But there is more in judgment than this, and a judgment (p. 69) is not about the idea which it contains, but about the thing, which that idea is the idea of. E.g., in the judgment that Ellipses are conic sections, I go beyond the relations of extent which obtain between the concepts of Ellipse and Conic Section, and so on, and judge of the ellipses themselves, that they are conic sections. Judgments are neither ideas nor combinations of concepts, and cannot be resolved into such ( 14). Hence the meaning of Judgment cannot be elucidated by a mere reference to the mean- ing of Concept. Judgment, like Vorstellung, is unique, and can- not be explained by reference to anything other than itself. We may say, however, that every judgment which affirms of any thing or class of things, refers, to the subject of which it judges, some determination, which may indeed be the content of another concept, but need not necessarily be so. If a determination is referred to a thing, the thing is of course thought (ideated, con- ceived of), as with this determination. Thus the determination predicated in an universal affirmative judgment always makes part .of the content of the notion which the person judging has of the subject of his judgment (p. 72). As already pointed out, Bergmann distinguishes between Predication and Judgment or (as he also expresses it) between a wider and a narrower sense of Judgment. Predication or Judgment in the wider sense, means the mere reference of a determination to a Subject. This reference is necessary for judgment in the narrower sense, in which there is explicit acceptance or rejection, explicit recognition of the validity or invalidity, of the reference which constitutes the predication thus within the sphere of Judgment in the narrower and proper sense, we get the distinction between affirmative and negative judgments. Every judgment in the narrower sense, says Dr. Bergmann, contains first, an idea that is, the positing of an object second, a predication that is, the reference of an ampliative determina- tion to an ideated object ; third, a critical attitude towards this Predication, a decision concerning its validity. The above view of negation involves that before I can assert S is not P, I must have before me the suggestion S with P, or S is P, and reject it as affirmation in the truest sense involves that I must have before me the same suggestion and accept it. (Could we not equally well start with S is not P, and get denial or affirmation by means of its acceptance or rejection ?) No doubt before P can be either affirmed or denied of S, the ideas of S and P must be before the mind, as not only simul-