Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/64

50 from it are not always so convincing. As an example of this the discussion of the relation of reality to the judgment is well worth attention. We have seen that the facts from which we start form the 'presupposition' of every judgment. Let us take, for example, the judgment 'Dogs are carnivorous.' It would seem that in this instance 'dogs' with their known qualities and relations to things about them constitute the facts. There is, however, no point at which a line could be drawn and the relations of the subject to the world about it be said to stop. Consequently the whole of reality must be included in the subject. With this, however, Professor Baldwin does not agree. Instead, he separates the subject of the judgment from reality in general, regarding the latter alone as the 'presupposition' of the judgment and, moreover, as its predicate. The logical process, he holds, consists in the establishment and acknowledgment of the hypothesis, or 'assumption,' within reality or some sphere of reality. This reference, or assignment, to reality, he holds, occurs in the predicate, and so reality is the predicate of the judgment.

This position, which seems to be a mistaken one, appears to be founded upon the belief that in the act of predication the subject is first referred to or made a part of reality. As a matter of fact, however, its relations to reality are in the main already established before the judgment is made at all. It is merely the extension and elaboration of these, or some one of these, that is demanded. Even if we take the case of the existential judgment, as 'Sea-serpents exist,' the most of the qualities and characteristics of sea-serpents are established before the judgment; and just so far as that is the case are they a part of reality and connected with the whole. Indeed it is only their relation to reality that makes it possible for them to be anything at all. The only question to be determined by this judgment is the existential one, and even though the conclusion be that they do not possess existential being, that by no means makes them unreal or cancels their relations to other parts of reality. The point of my