We have brought out the fact that all judgment arises in a doubt. The
earliest stage of judgment is accordingly a question. Whether the
process stops at that point, or is carried on to an affirmation or
negation, depends upon the particular conditions. The ideas which appear
in questions present no other problem than those of affirmation. They
are ideas, not by virtue of their reference to another content in the
world of meanings, but by virtue of their function, _i. e._, that of
constituting that part of the total experience which is taken as
doubtful, and hence as in process.
In order to make this point clear with reference to negative judgments,
it will be necessary to consider the relation of negative and positive
judgments somewhat more in detail. All judgment is in its earliest
stages a question, but a question is never _mere_ question. There are
always present some suggestions of an answer, which make the process
really a disjunctive judgment. A question might be defined as a
disjunctive judgment in which one member of the disjunction is expressed
and the others implied. If the process goes on to take the form of
affirmation or negation, one of the suggested answers is selected. To
follow out the illustration of the bread used above, the judgment arises
in a doubt as to the nature of the white object perceived, but the doubt
never takes the form of a blank question. It at once suggests certain
possible solutions drawn from the mass of organized experience at the
command of the person judging. At this stage the judgment is
disjunctive. In the illustration it would probably take the form: "This
is either bread or cake." The further course of the judgment rejects the
cake alternative, and selects the bread, and the final outcome of the
judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." But how did
it happen that it did not take the form: "This is not cake"? That
proposition is also involved in the outcome, and implied in the judgment
made. The answer is that the form taken by the final outcome depends
entirely on the direction of interest of the person making the judgment.
If his interest happened to lie in obtaining bread, then the outcome
would naturally take the form: "This is bread," and his act would
consist in eating it. If he happened to want cake, the natural form
would be, "This is not cake," and his act would consist in refraining
from eating. In other words, the question as to whether a judgment turns
out to be negative or positive is a question of whether the stress of
interest happens to fall on the selected or on the rejected portions of
the original disjunction. Every determination of a subject through a
predicate includes both. The selection of one or the other according to
interest affects the final formulation of the process, but does not
change the relations of its various phases. An idea in a negative
judgment is just what it is in a positive judgment. In neither case is
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