a standpoint, is the criterion of fact and idea in the stage of
experience previous to the appearance of judgment? The answer is that
the question involves the psychological fallacy. There is no such
distinction as fact and idea in experience previous to the appearance of
judgment. The distinction between fact and idea arises only at the
higher level of experience at which inference becomes conscious of its
grounds. To ask what they were previous to that is to ask _what_ they
were before they _were_--a question which, of course, cannot be
answered.
Our reason for not adopting Hegel's distinction between a judgment and a
proposition would accordingly not be the same as Bosanquet's. The
question has already been touched upon in the distinction between dead
and live judgments. What Hegel calls a proposition is really nothing but
a dead judgment. His illustration of a temporal affirmation is the
sentence: "A carriage is passing the house." That sentence would be a
judgment, he says, only in case there were some doubt as to whether or
not a carriage was passing. But the question to be answered first is:
When would such a "statement" occur in the course of our experience? It
is impossible to conceive of any circumstances in which it would
naturally occur, unless there were some doubt to be solved either of our
own or of another. Perhaps one is expecting a friend, and does not know
at first whether it is a carriage or a cart which is passing. Perhaps
some one has been startled, and asks: "What is this noise?" What Hegel
wishes to call a proposition is, accordingly, nothing but a judgment
taken out of its setting.
2. In dealing with the traditional three parts of the judgment--subject,
predicate, and copula--Bosanquet disposes of the copula at once, by
dividing the judgment into subject and predication. But the two terms
"subject" and "predication" are not co-ordinate. Subject, as he uses it,
is a static term indicating a _content_. Predication is a dynamic term
indicating the act of predicating. It implies something which is
predicated of something else, _i. e._, two contents and the act of
bringing them into relation. Now, if what we understand by the copula is
the _act_ of predicating abstracted from the content which is predicated
of another content, then it does not dispose of the copula as a separate
factor in judgment to include thing predicated and act of predicating
under the single term "predication." The term "predication" might just
as reasonably be made to absorb the subject as well, and would then
appear--as it really is--synonymous with the term "judgment."
But Bosanquet's difficulties with the parts of the judgment are not
disposed of even by the reduction to subject and predication. He goes on
to say:
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