3. In discussing the time relations within judgment (p. 85) Bosanquet
first disposes of the view which holds that the subject is prior to the
predicate in time, and is distinguished from the predicate by its
priority. He emphasizes the fact that no content of consciousness can
have the significance of a subject, except with reference to something
already referred to it as predicate. But while it cannot be true that
the parts of the judgment fall outside of one another in time, it is yet
evident that in one sense at least the judgment is in time. To make this
clear, Bosanquet draws a provisional distinction between the process of
arriving at a judgment and the completed judgment. The process of
arriving at a judgment is a process of passing from a subject with an
indefinite provisional predicate--a sort of disjunctive judgment--to a
subject with a defined predicate. This process is evidently in time, but
it is as evidently not a transition from subject to predicate. It is, as
he says, a modification, _pari passu_, of both subject and predicate.
The same distinction, he thinks, must hold of the judgment when
completed. But this throws us into a dilemma with reference to the
time-factor in judgment. Time either is or is not an essential factor in
judgment. If it is not essential, then how explain the evident fact that
the judgment as an intellectual process does have duration? If it is
essential, then how explain the fact that its parts do not fall outside
one another in time? Bosanquet evidently regards the former problem as
the easier of the two. His solution is that, while the judgment is an
intellectual process in time, still this is a purely external aspect.
The essential relation between subject and predicate is not in time,
since they are coexistent; therefore time is not an essential element in
judgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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