Note 97 — Chapter V · LOGIC OF THE STOICS.

(3) Complete utterance. (a) Judgment. Passing from incomplete to complete utterance, we come, in the first place, to sentences or propositions,97 all the various kinds of which, as they may be deduced from the different forms of syntax, are enumerated by the Stoics with the greatest precision.98 Detailed information is, however, only forthcoming in reference to the theory of judgment (ἀξίωμα), which certainly occupied the chief and most important place in their speculations. A judgment is a perfect utterance, which is either true or false.99 Judgments are divided into two classes: simple judgments, and composite judgments.100 By a simple judgment the Stoics understand a judgment which is purely categorical.101 Under the head of composite judgments are comprised hypothetical, corroborative, copulative, disjunctive, comparative, and causal (α) Simple judgment. judgments.102 In the case of simple judgments, a greater or less definiteness of expression is substituted in place of the ordinary difference in respect of quantity;103 and with regard to quality, they not only make a distinction between affirmative and negative judgments,104 but, following the various forms of language, they speak of judgments of general negation, judgments of particular negation, and judgments of double negation.105 Only affirmative and negative judgments have a contradictory relation to one another; all other judgments stand to each other in the relation of contraries.106 Of two propositions which are related as contradictories, according to the old rule, one must be true and the other false.107