The Validity of Judgments
The trustworthiness of intellectual judgment, especially the self-evident first principles of reason and their indemonstrability.
Self-evident judgments — whose predicate is seen to belong necessarily to the subject by anyone who grasps the terms — are infallible because objective evidence is present in the very act of understanding the terms. The principal self-evident first principles are: the Principle of Non-Contradiction, the Principle of Identity, the Principle of Excluded Middle, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and the Principle of Causality. These principles are indemonstrable not as a defect but as a perfection: they carry their own evidence and need no extrinsic proof. Demonstrative judgments — inferred mediately from certain premises by formally correct reasoning — are equally valid, provided the inference is formally correct and the premises are genuinely certain.
Judgments
A judgment is the pronouncement by the mind of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. It is the enunciation whereby one idea (predicate) is asserted as applying or not applying to another idea (subject).
The material element of a judgment is constituted by two ideas and their comparison by the attentive mind. The formal element of a judgment (that which makes a judgment the thing that it is) is the enunciation, the pronouncement, the predication, whereby one idea is affirmed or denied of the other.
Judgment is the basic thought-process. Ideas are not thoughts. Ideas are simple apprehensions of the essences of things. But thought is something that the mind does with its ideas. It pronounces upon them, in the light of what they are. Out of true pronouncements other pronouncements emerge; that is, pronouncements give evidence and occasion for further pronouncements. And “pronouncement” of the mind is judgment. Thus thinking is carried on by means of judgments, and we are justified in declaring the judgment the basic thought-process.
The judgment finds, outward expression in the proposition.
Validity of Judgments
The validity of a judgment is based directly upon the objectivity of the ideas used in the judgment.
While judgment, formally considered, is the enunciation of the connection or relation existing between the ideas, the ideas themselves must be truly valid and objective, or their connection will be illusory.
Now, as we have seen, ideas have objectivity. And when the mind enunciates judgment, this is by reason of evidence which the mind discovers in the ideas themselves, or upon reliable authority. Of course, there can be, and there often are, erroneous judgments. But, as we have many times insisted, the errors of judgment are due to accidental causes, chief of which is precipitateness of mind in pronouncing before the evidence is properly obtained and evaluated. The point here is not that all judgments as such must be true and certain. Here we are concerned to show that judgment, when legitimately evidenced, is true and certain.
The mind does not make its evidence for judgment, nor does the mind pronounce judgment by any natural necessity, independently of objective eviVALIDITY OF JUDGMENTS 225 dence. The argument for our position appears in the following considerations.
- There are some judgments that are self-evident.
When the mind is possessed of two ideas, and when it attentively compares them, the “truth itself shines out,” and the mind sees that these two ideas belong together. Thus the mind sees the relation of the two ideas “whole” and “part” to be such that the judgment, “The whole is greater than a part,” follows of necessity. The mind sees that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. The connection between subject and predicate is, therefore, not contributed by the mind; it is objective; the mind sees the relation between subject and predicate as a thing that is there. Such judgments, therefore, are objective, valid, true, and certain. 2. Sometimes the relation of ideas is not at once obvious. The mind is ignorant or dubious of the relation until it works it out by studious reasoning. The mind does not know at first grasp that the angles of a triangle are equal to 180°. But the evidence can be made clear by slow, connected, attentive steps of thought. When the truth is at last understood thoroughly, then the mind sees that it must be so. Truth and certitude are reached, not by an impulse or natural bent of mind ( for the mind was ignorant or dubious at the start), and the assent of certain judgment was given only when the mind’s study convinced it that the thing is so. And this conviction is not one of mere persuasion; the mind reasons out the judgment and sees that it must be so, and not otherwise. Hence, there is objectivity in the reasoned judgment. It is not a subjective product. 3. Sometimes the judgment enunciates a fact of experience, as in the expression, “This coin is gold.” My senses may grasp polished brass, and my experience may lead me to pronounce at once, “This is gold,” but the mind may avoid precipitateness; it may require tests and proofs; it may hold itself in the state of doubt or opinion, and not give its assent to what appears obvious to the sense-grasp. And when satisfactory proof is adduced, then, and not till then, the mind is equipped for certain judgment.
Thus it appears that the judging mind is not forced into action by its own nature, nor by the force of circumstances, nor by the experience of the senses. The mind can (and, of course, should) require proper evidence suited to each pronouncement, and when the evidence is obtained and understood, then the judgment is enunciated. Judgment, therefore, is truly objective. It has objective value and validity. It can be the expression of truth and certitude. 4. Sometimes judgment is rendered upon authority. We have already seen the requirements for valid authority. When judgment reposes on valid authority, it is itself valid, and objective. It does not come of a necessity imposed by the structure of the mind, nor does it come from gratuitous choice or whim. It comes of objective evidence, and is itself objective.
Summary Of The Article
This brief article has given us the definition of judgment, and has enumerated the material and formal elements of which it is composed. It has set forth the assertion that judgments can be valid, true, and certain. It has proved the assertion by considering various sorts of judgments and showing that these come from the clear vision of mind which makes obvious the connection of subject and predicate in judgment. Thus have we shown that judgment depends upon evidence, upon something objective and valid, and so we conclude to the validity of judgments themselves.