Note 27 — CONTENTS

(p. 18). The distinction between “self-evident” and “blind” judgments is something too striking to have altogether escaped notice. Even the sceptical Hume is very far from denying the distinction. Self-evidence, according to him (Enq. concerning Hum. Underst. iv.) may be ascribed, on the one hand, to analytic judgments (to which class belong also the axioms of mathematics and the mathematical demonstrations), and, on the other hand, to certain impressions, but not to the so-called truths of experience. Reason does not lead us here, but rather habit, after a manner entirely irrational; belief, in this case is instinctive and mechanical (ib. v.).

But to observe a fact does not mean to set forth its nature clearly and distinctly. As the nature of the judgment has, until recent times, been almost universally misunderstood, how could it be possible rightly to understand its self-evidence? It is just here that even Descartes’ discernment fails him. How very closely the phenomenon occupied him a passage in the Meditations bears witness: “Cum hic dico me ita doctum esse a natura (he is speaking of the so-called external impressions) intelligo tantum spontaneo quodam impetu me ferri ad hoc credendum non lumine aliquo naturali mihi ostendi esse verum, quae duo multum discrepant. Nam quaecunque lumine naturali mihi ostenduntur (ut quod ex eo quo dubitem sequatur me esse et similia) nullo modo dubia esse possunt quia nulla alia facultas esse potest, cui aeque fidam ac lumini isti, quaeque illa non vera esse possit docere; sed quantum ad impetus naturales jam saepe olim judicavi me ab illis in deteriorem partem fuisse impulsum cum de bono eligendo ageretur, nec video cur iisdem in ulla alia re magis fidam.”—(Medit. iii.).

That Descartes did not mark the fact of self-evidence, that he did not observe the distinction between intuition and blind judgment certainly cannot be affirmed from the above. But, while separating the judgment as a class from the idea, he still leaves behind in the class of ideas the character of self-evidence which distinguishes the judgments of intuition. It consists, according to him, in a special mark of the perception, that is, of the idea lying at the root of the judgment. Descartes even goes so far as actually to call this act of perception a “cognoscere,” a “knowing.” A “knowing,” that is, and still not an act of judgment! These are rudimentary organs which after the progress made, owing to Descartes, in the doctrine of judgment, remind us of a stage of life in Psychology which has been surmounted; but with this distinction, in opposition to similar phenomena in the history of the development of the species, that these organs, in no way adapted, become in the highest degree troublesome, and render all Descartes’ further efforts for the theory of knowledge ineffective. He remains, to use Leibnitz’ phrase, “in the antechamber of truth” (cf. here note 28, towards the end). Only in this way does Descartes’ clara et distincta perceptio—concerning which term itself it is so difficult to gain a clear and distinct idea—in its curious dual nature become perfectly intelligible. The only means of overcoming this confusion is to seek that which distinguishes insight in opposition to other judgments as an inner quality belonging to the act of insight itself.

It is true that some who have sought here have yet failed to find. We saw (cf. note 23) how Sigwart conceives the nature of the judgment. To this, he teaches, there belongs a relation of ideas to one another, and along with this a feeling of obligation respecting this connexion. (Cf. sections 14 and 31, espec. 4 and 5.) Such a feeling therefore, always exists even in the case of the blindest prejudice. It is then abnormal, but is held (as Sigwart expressly explains) to be normal and of universal validity. And what now in contrast to this case, is given in the case of insight? Sigwart replies that its evidence consists in the same feeling (cf. e.g. section 3) which now, however, is not merely held to be normal and universally valid, but is really normal and universally valid.

It seems to me that the weakness of this theory is at once apparent; and it is on many grounds to be rejected.

1. The peculiar nature of insight, the clearness and evidence of certain judgments from which their truth is inseparable has little or nothing to do with any feeling of compulsion. It may well happen that at a given moment I cannot refrain from so judging, yet none the less the essence of its clearness does not consist in the feeling of compulsion, and no consciousness of an obligation so to judge could, as such, afford security as to its truth. He who disbelieves in every form of indeterminism in respect of judging, regards all judgments under the circumstances in which they were passed as necessary, but he does not—and with indisputable right—regard all of them as on that account true.

2. Sigwart, in seeking the consciousness of insight in a feeling of necessity so to think, asserts that the consciousness of one’s being compelled is, at the same time, a consciousness of a necessity for all thinking beings whenever the same grounds are present. If he means, however, that the one conviction is doubtless connected with the other, this is an error. Why, when a person feels bound to pass a judgment upon certain data, should the same compulsion hold good in respect of every other thinking being to whom the same data are also given? It is obvious that only an appeal to the law of causality which, under like conditions demands like results, could be the ground of the logical connexion. Its application, however, to the present case would be entirely erroneous, since this would involve the ignoring of the special psychical dispositions, which, although they do not directly enter into consciousness at all, must yet be regarded, along with the conscious data, as pre-determining conditions, and these are very different in the case of different persons. Hegel and his school, misled by paralogisms, have denied the principle of contradiction; Trendelenburg, who opposed Hegel, has at least restricted its validity (cf. his Abhandlungen über Herbarts Metaphysik). The universal impossibility of inwardly denying the principle which Aristotle asserted cannot therefore, to-day, be any longer defended; Aristotle himself, however, for whom the principle was self-evident, assuredly found its denial impossible.

Whatever is evident to any one is of course certain not only for him, but also for every one else who, in the same way, sees its evidence. The judgment, moreover, which is seen to be evident by any one has also universal validity, i.e. the contradictory of what is seen to be evident by one person, cannot be seen to be evident by another person, and every one who believes in its contradictory is in error. Further, since what is here said belongs to the essence of truth, whoever has evidence of the truth of anything may perceive that he is justified in regarding it as true for all. But he would be guilty of a flagrant confusion of ideas who should regard such a consciousness that a truth is true for all, as equivalent to a consciousness of a universal necessity of thinking.

3. Sigwart involves himself in a multitude of contradictions. He asserts and must assert—if he is not to yield to the sceptics and relinquish his entire logical system—that evident judgments are not merely different from non-evident judgments, but that they are also distinguishable in consciousness. The one class must therefore appear as normal and of universal validity, the other class as not so. But if evident and non-evident judgments alike carry with them the consciousness of universal validity, then the two classes would at first sight exactly agree in the manner in which they present themselves, and only as it were, afterwards (or at the same time, though as a mere concomitant), and by reflection upon some sort of criterion which is applied to them as a standard could the distinction be discovered. And passages are actually to be found in Sigwart where he speaks of a consciousness of agreement with the universal rules which accompany the fully evident judgment. (Cf. e.g. Logic, 2nd ed., 39, p. 311.) But apart from the fact that this contradicts experience—for long before the discovery of the syllogism, conclusions were reached syllogistically and with complete evidence—it is also to be rejected inasmuch as, seeing that the rule itself must be assured, it would lead either to an infinite regress, or to a circulus vitiosus.

4. Another contradiction with which I have to charge Sigwart (though in my opinion it might have been avoided even after his erroneous view as to the nature of the judgment and as to the nature of self-evidence), we meet with in his doctrine of self-consciousness. The knowledge that I am contains only self-evidence, and this exists independent of any consciousness of an obligation so to think and of a necessity which is common to all alike. (At least I am not able otherwise to understand the passage, Logic, 2nd ed., p. 310: “The certainty that I am and think is the absolutely last and fundamental one—the condition of all thinking and certainty at all; here, only immediate evidence can be given; one cannot even say that this thought is necessary, since it is previous to all necessity, and just as immediate and evident is the conscious certainty that I think this or that; it is inextricably interwoven with my self-consciousness; the one is given with the other.”) After Sigwart’s doctrine already examined, this would appear to be a contradictio in adjecto and, as such, quite indefensible.

5. Further contradictions appear in Sigwart’s very peculiar and doubtful doctrine concerning the postulates, which he opposes to the axioms. The latter are to be regarded as certain on the ground of their real intellectual necessity; the former, not on the ground of purely intellectual motives, but on psychological motives of another kind, on the ground of practical needs. (Logic, 2nd ed. p. 412 seq.) The law of causality: e.g. is, according to him, not an axiom, but a mere postulate; we regard it as certain, since we find that without affirming it we should not be able to investigate nature. Sigwart, by this mode of accepting the law of causality, that is, affirming, out of mere good-will, that in nature under like conditions, the same results would constantly be forthcoming, manifestly takes it for granted without being conscious of its intellectual necessity. But, if all “taking-as-true” (Fürwahrhalten) is an act of judgment, this is quite incompatible with his views as to the nature of the judgment. Sigwart has here, as far as I can see, but one way of escape, i.e. to confess that he does not believe in what, as a postulate, he accepts as certain (as e.g. the law of causality); then, however, he will be hardly serious in hoping for it.

6. This point becomes still more doubtful on reflection upon what (2) has been previously discussed. The consciousness of a universal necessity of thought does not, according to Sigwart, belong to the postulates, but rather to the axioms. (Cf. 5.) But Sigwart could only with any plausibility exhibit the consciousness of this universal necessity of thinking as operating in the consciousness of one’s personal necessity of thinking by making use of the universal law of causation. But this causal law is itself merely a postulate; it is destitute of self-evidence. It is therefore obvious that the universal thought-necessity in the case of the axioms is also a postulate, and consequently they lose what, according to Sigwart, is their most essential distinction from the postulates. It may perhaps be in accordance with this that Sigwart calls the belief in the trustworthiness of “self-evidence” a postulate. But how the statement so interpreted, can be brought into harmony with the remaining parts of his doctrine I am at a loss to conceive.

7. Sigwart denies (31) the distinction between assertorical and apodictic judgments, since in every judgment the sense of necessity in respect of its function is essential. Consequently this assertion likewise hangs together with his erroneous fundamental view of the judgment; he would appear to identify the feeling which he sometimes calls the feeling of evidence with the apodictic character of a judgment. But it would be quite unjustifiable to overlook the modal peculiarity of certain judgments, as for example, the law of contradiction in distinction from other forms of judgment like that of the consciousness that I am. In the first instance, we have to do with what is “necessarily true or false,” in the second instance only with what is “true or false as a matter of fact,” though both are in the same sense evident and do not differ in respect of their certainty. Only in the case of judgments like the former, not, however, from such as the latter do we draw the notions of impossibility and necessity.

That Sigwart, in opposing the view which regards the apodictic judgment as a special class, also occasionally bears witness against himself is clear from what has been already said (4). The knowledge that I am, he calls, in opposition to the knowledge of an axiom, the knowledge of a simple actual truth (p. 312). Here he speaks more soundly than his general statements would really allow.

Sigwart’s theory of self-evidence is, therefore, essentially false. As in the case of Descartes, so here it cannot be said that Sigwart was not conscious of the phenomenon; indeed, we must rather say in his praise, that with the greatest zeal he has sought to analyze it, but as is the case with many in psychological analysis, it would seem that in the eagerness of analyzing he did not stop at the right point, and has sought to resolve into one another phenomena very distinct in nature.

It is obvious that an error respecting the nature of evidence is fraught with the gravest consequence for the logician. It might well be said that we have here touched upon the deep-seated organic disease in Sigwart’s logic, if this may not rather be said to consist in a misunderstanding of the nature of the judgment in general. Again and again its evil results become manifest, as for example, in Sigwart’s inability to understand the most essential causes of our errors, Cf. Logic, vol. i. 2nd ed. p. 103, note, where, with strange partiality he assigns the chief blame to the defective development of our language.

For the rest, many another celebrated logician in recent times can claim no superiority over Sigwart here. As a further example we need only observe how the doctrine of evidence fares at the hands of the admirable J. S. Mill. Cf. note 69, p. 99.

Owing to the great unclearness as to the nature of evidence, almost universal, it becomes conceivable why, as often happens, we meet with the expression “more or less self-evident.” Even Descartes and Pascal use such expressions, although it is clearly quite unsuitable. Whatever is self-evident is certain, and certainty in the real sense knows no distinctions of degree. Even quite recently we find the opinion expressed in the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie (and the writer is manifestly quite serious), that there exist self-evident suppositions which, in spite of their self-evidence, may quite well be false. It is unnecessary to add that I hold this to be opposed to reason. I may here, however, express regret that lectures delivered by me at a time when I still regarded degrees of conviction as intensities of judgment, seem to have given an occasion for such confusions.