The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Natural Rights
• Supplements and Observations
• Editorial Note
• Chapter 1: On Moral Philosophy, Or the Science of Natural Jurisprudence
• Chapter 2: On Lasting Happiness and the Divine Law 1
• Chapter 3: On Human Action In the Divine Court 1
• Chapter 4: Laws, Rights, and Justice 1
• Chapter 5: On Natural Law 1
• Chapter 6: On Duty to God 1
• Chapter 7: On Duty to Oneself 1
• Chapter 8: On Duty to Others, Or Sociability 1
• Chapter 9: Natural Rights and Agreements 1
• Chapter 10: On the Right of Property 1
• Chapter 11: Contracts and Quasi Contracts 1
• Chapter 12: Dissolution of Obligations 1
• Chapter 13: The State of Nature 1
• Chapter 14: On the Rights of Husbands and Wives 1
• Chapter 15: On the Rights of Parents and Children 1
• Chapter 16: On the Rights of Masters and Servants 1
• Chapter 17: On the Origin of Civil Society, Or the Original Contract 1
• Chapter 18: On the Constitution of Civil Government 1
• Chapter 19: On the Limits of Sovereign Power and the Right of Resistance 1
• Chapter 20: On Conquest and Patrimonial Kingdoms 1
• Chapter 21: On the Rights of Citizens 1
• Chapter 22: On the Rights of War and Peace 1
• Chapter 23: Appendix: the Rights and Duties of Men and Citizens In Which Concise Ethical Theses Are Succinctly Set Out In the Order Which Seems Most Natural For the Study of Moral Science 1
• Part II: Natural Theology
• Preface: Natural Theology and the Foundations of Morals
• On the Scope of Natural Theology
• Chapter 1: On the Existence of God
• Chapter 2: On the Attributes of God and First, On the Incommunicable Attributes
• Chapter 3: On the Communicable Attributes of God
• Chapter 4: On the Divine Operations, Or Actions Involving External Objects 1
• Part III: Logic
• Editorial Note
• Preface
• A Short Introduction to Logic
• Chapter 1: On Apprehension
• Chapter 2: On Judgment In General, and On Immediate Judgment In Particular
• Chapter 3: On Mediate Judgment Or Discourse
• Chapter 4: On Method, and Logical Practice
• Part IV: Early Writings: Philosophical Theses
• Philosophical Theses, 1699 On Directing the Mind to Lasting Happiness
• Philosophical Theses, 1707 On Natural Law: How Reverence For God Is Signified By Respect For Human Rights
• Part V: Gershom Carmichael’s Account of His Teaching Method

chapter 2

On Judgment in General, and on Immediate Judgment in Particular

1.

On the nature of judgment; and on the difference between immediate and mediate judgment.

Judgment is the act of the mind by which it gives a verdict on two ideas in comparison with each other: i.e., a verdict as to the identity or difference of the objects represented by them.

The relationship of the ideas so compared is learned either from their immediate juxtaposition (without the intervention of any third idea) or with the assistance of one or more intermediate ideas, with which both of the given ideas are compared. Therefore, one kind of judgment is immediate, by which a verdict is given about ideas which are directly compared; the other is mediate judgment, by which a verdict is given on ideas which are compared with each other through the intervention of some third idea, or even of more, properly ordered in relation to each other.

Mediate judgment has an alternative name, discourse; for it is one and the same thing to deduce one verdict of the mind from other verdicts and to give a verdict because of other verdicts or with regard to them. Therefore just as one must treat discourse under the name of judgment as one species of it, so what is said in this chapter about judgment in general should also be understood to be appropriate to discourse, insofar as discourse is concerned with the relation of two extreme ideas.

2.

On affirmative and negative propositions, and their subjects and predicates.

The particular aim of any judgment is what it defines or what relation it determines to exist between two given ideas; hence we often utter it in words, while not indicating whether that relation between ideas is known to us immediately or mediately, much less what the intermediary is.

Now a judgment precisely considered, since it defines the relation of two given ideas, may be considered a statement. The statement which expresses a mediate judgment as such is not a mere proposition but an argument. However, it is not altogether appropriate to restrict the term “proposition” to statements which express immediate judgments, since the obvious and universally accepted use of the word is against it.1 Such a statement is commonly called a proposition, and, to differentiate it, a verbal proposition; for the act of judging itself (considered, as I have said, precisely, and so as far as it is signified by a verbal proposition) has also usually been called a proposition, but that is a mental proposition. This latter use of the word, though perhaps less proper and not so common in the usual books of logic, is to be especially kept in view in what follows. For most of what is commonly taught about the proposition, which we shall explain below, properly and primarily applies to the judgment itself, or to the mental proposition, and fits the verbal proposition only secondarily, so far as it is a sign of the mental proposition. The few things that relate particularly to the verbal proposition will become clear as we go.

By virtue of their form, or (as some call it) their internal quality, propositions are divided into affirmative and negative. For in making a judgment, the mind gives a verdict on two ideas in one of two ways. It either unites them because they belong to each other, that is, because they are representations of the same object, and this proposition is said to be affirmative (e.g., the human mind is immortal); or it distinguishes them from each other because they are discrepant from each other, that is, because they are not representations of the same object; and this proposition is said to be negative (e.g., the human mind is not material).

Here one must note that of the two ideas, on whose association the mind gives a verdict in making a judgment, one is, as it were, fundamental (since the other idea is summoned to it to be compared with it); it is commonly called the subject. The other may be called accessory (in the sense that it is brought in to be compared with the other); it is usually called the predicate. Thus in both of the propositions given above, the human mind is the subject; in the affirmative proposition the predicate is immortal; in the negative, material. If the distinct notions of subject and predicate do not seem to be adequately discriminated by the explanations offered, the difference will become clear enough (at least in the propositions where it matters) from the properties of each which we are about to explain.

Here then we note that the words subject and predicate (used in nearly all treatises of logic) are usually applied not only to the actual ideas which are being compared, but also, analogically, to the words by which those ideas are signified; in such a way however, that the epithets mental and verbal may be added, in order to remove ambiguity (as we noted above for the words term and proposition).

Note further that both subject and predicate are commonly called by a single name, the terms of the proposition, which are either mental or verbal, depending whether they refer to the ideas themselves or to the words by which they are signified. The reason for that appellation is that in the simplest and most regular form of the verbal proposition, the subject occupies the first place, and the predicate the last place. Placed between them is a substantive verb, either alone or qualified by a negative, which is commonly called the copula; and which more directly signifies the act of affirming or negating. As these parts frequently change their relative positions, so it very often happens, that the copula is included in the same words as the predicate: e.g., Peter reads, that is, Peter is reading.

[Sections 3 and 4, which contain technical rules of argument, are omitted.]

5.

On propositions which are composite, complex, etc.

Besides the simple and regular form of propositions which we have assumed so far, logicians differentiate several other forms and specify a corresponding number of different classes of propositions which they call composite or complex. However all of them are either (1) of such a kind that each of them is not one proposition or one judgment in the mind, but several taken jointly together in one statement; or (2) really simple propositions in the mind (although consisting of complex terms) by which one predicate is affirmed or denied of one subject, but are expressed in a sort of cryptic manner (in which the true subject and the true predicate do not reveal themselves clearly) because of the shorthand nature of ordinary speech.

To the former class we refer all copulative propositions, such as Peter and Paul read (i.e., Peter reads and Paul reads), and all those which have the force of copulative propositions: that is, propositions which join two or more propositions together in such a way that they assert the truth of each one, whether they distinctly contain the words of each proposition or the second is contained in some part of it: such are the propositions called causal, adversative, and exclusive. We leave to class discussion anything more that needs to be said about them in this first course.

To the latter class (that is, the class of those propositions which are simple in the mind, though they are not expressed simply and in regular form) belong particularly conditional propositions, such as, if God exists, the world is ruled by providence. Such propositions contain as it were the material of two propositions (the proposition which is supposed is called the antecedent, and the one which is said to follow from the supposed proposition is called the consequent). But they do not absolutely posit the truth of either the one or the other, but only go so far as to assert the consequence of the latter from the former. They are easily reduced to a simple, or (as it is usually called) categorical, form. For we note that a particular conditional, if, has precisely the value of, in the case that; and thus the proposition just quoted comes out as, in the case that (or in every case in which) God exists, the world is ruled by providence. But if in turn we transpose the terms which are here put forward obliquely, to the direct case, we shall have the following categorical proposition, by which one predicate is affirmed of one subject: every case which posits that God exists (i.e., in which God exists) is a case which posits that the world is ruled by providence. In the same way, any other conditional can be reduced to categorical form, some more easily than others.

[Several paragraphs of section 5 are omitted.]

6.

On certain and uncertain judgment.

A judgment may be certain, in which case it has in itself a certain inexpressible gleam of truth, which is found only in true judgments (though not in all of them), and thus excludes all suspicion of falsity; or it may be uncertain or doubtful, in which case, since it is without the infallible character of truth, it does not escape all suspicion of falsity. We may understand from what was said at p. 299, why we use the term judgment here rather than proposition when we are considering subjective certainty (i.e., the certitude which is actually present to the mind) and the uncertainty opposed to it. Hence too it is quite evident that objective certainty is more correctly attributed to the proposition in the case where we can know with certainty the relationship which it defines between ideas; and similarly the uncertainty opposed to it, where it cannot.

7.

Of immediate judgment in particular, and of its double kind.

Of immediate judgment as such, little remains to be said, except to stress that all our knowledge of every kind must be resolved ultimately into immediate propositions, or propositions known by their own light. Hence whether the relation of terms of any given proposition is known from one term or through several mediate terms, it is always necessary that the relation of any intermediate idea to the ideas which are directly compared with it on either side be immediately knowable.

The principles on which our knowledge rests may be reduced to two kinds. Some principles are abstract. What abstraction is, we have said above at p. 294. We may understand from this that one idea can be said to be abstracted from another whenever it is recognized by the mind as separate from the other with which it had previously constituted the same complex. But an idea simply is called abstract when it is abstracted from the particular consideration of any singular thing which is offered to our senses or reflection, such as the ideas of a whole, of a part, etc.2 Their truth is known from the mere comparison with each other of abstract ideas, without the mind’s taking notice of the thing itself as it exists in nature; an example is: every whole is greater than its part. Others are intuitive, or experiential, and these consist in an intimate sense, or awareness which the mind has, of a thing’s being intimately present to itself; an example is the proposition, I thinking exist.

Propositions which are deduced solely from principles of the former kind are purely hypothetical, and do not absolutely posit the existence of anything. Such are the predications by which a property is attributed to something on the condition of its existence, a property which, though it does not enter into the actual concept of the thing, still has a necessary connection with that concept. The logicians call this a property, as in the following: Every rational creature is subject to the moral rule.

All absolute propositions presuppose principles of the latter kind, that is, propositions which absolutely attribute actual existence to some thing or which attribute a predicate that actually belongs to it. In this sense one normally attributes any predicate which belongs to a subject only contingently, such as logicians call a common accident, as in the proposition, Peter is learned. Property and common accident, together with species, genus, and differentia (see pp. 296–97) are the five usual predicables of the logicians.

[1.] The previous two sentences were a footnote in Carmichael’s text.

[2.] The previous three sentences beginning, “What abstraction is …” were a footnote in Carmichael’s text. In his Annotations on the Art of Thinking, p. 90, Carmichael asked his students to write the following note: “It is not only the existence of our thoughts that we know by reflection, properly so called, but also innumerable abstract truths, which by collation of abstract ideas become more certainly known than any of those external things which we perceive by the evidence of the senses.”