History of Analytic Philosophy

Series Editor: Michael Beaney, University of York, UK

Titles include:
Stewart Candlish
THE RUSSELL/BRADLEY DISPUTE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY
Siobhan Chapman
SUSAN STEBBING AND THE LANGUAGE OF COMMONSENSE
Annalisa Coliva
MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN
Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense
George Duke
DUMMETT ON ABSTRACT OBJECTS
Mauro Luiz Engelmann
WITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT
Phenomenology, Grammar, Method, and the Anthropological View
Sébastien Gandon
RUSSELL’S UNKNOWN LOGICISM
A Study in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics
Anssi Korhonen
LOGIC AS UNIVERSAL SCIENCE
Russell’s Early Logicism and its Philosophical Context
Gregory Landini
FREGE’S NOTATIONS
What They Are and What They Mean
Sandra Lapointe
BOLZANO’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY
An Introduction
Omar W. Nasim
BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE EDWARDIAN PHILOSOPHERS
Constructing the World
Ulrich Pardey
FREGE ON ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TRUTH
Douglas Patterson
ALFRED TARSKI
Philosophy of Language and Logic
Erich Reck (editor)
THE HISTORIC TURN IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Graham Stevens
THE THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS
Mark Textor
JUDGEMENT AND TRUTH IN EARLY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND
PHENOMENOLOGY
Nuno Venturinha (editor)
WITTGENSTEIN AFTER HIS NACHLASS
Pierre Wagner (editor)
CARNAP’S LOGICAL SYNTAX OF LANGUAGE
Pierre Wagner (editor)
CARNAP’S IDEAL OF EXPLICATION AND NATURALISM

Forthcoming:
Andrew Arana and Carlos Alvarez (editors)
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
Rosalind Carey
RUSSELL ON MEANING
The Emergence of Scientific Philosophy from the 1920s to the 1940s
Giuseppina D’Oro and Constantine Sandis (editors)
REASONS AND CAUSES
Causalism and Non-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action
Sandra Lapointe (translator)
Franz Prihonsky
THE NEW ANTI-KANT
Consuelo Preti
THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF ETHICS
The Early Philosophical Development of G.E. Moore
Maria van der Schaar
G.F. STOUT: ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

History of Analytic Philosophy

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Judgement and Truth in
Early Analytic Philosophy
and Phenomenology
Edited by

Mark Textor
King’s College London, UK
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Contents

Series Editor’s Foreword vi

Acknowledgements ix

Notes on Contributors x

1 Mark Textor: Introduction 1

2 Wayne Martin: Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical
Theory of Judgement 9
3 Gottfried Gabriel: Truth, Value, and Truth Value. Frege’s
Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background 36
4 Wolfgang Künne: Merely Entertaining a Thought,
Judging and Asserting. Notes on a Passage in Frege’s
‘The Thought’ 52
5 Arianna Betti: We Owe It To Sigwart! A New Look at
the Content/Object Distinction in Early Phenomenological
Theories of Judgment from Brentano to Twardowski 74
6 Kevin Mulligan: Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation,
Agreement, Assertion, Belief, Certainty, Conviction,
Denial, Judgment, Refusal and Rejection 97
7 Maria van der Schaar: G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest
Account of Judgement 137
8 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish: The Myth of
the Coherence Theory of Truth 157
9 Consuelo Preti: The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s
‘The Nature of Judgment’ 183
10 Fraser McBride: The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute:
A New Perspective 206
11 Hans-Johann Glock: Judgement and Truth in the Early
Wittgenstein 242

Index 271

v
Series Editor’s Foreword

During the first half of the twentieth century analytic philosophy

gradually established itself as the dominant tradition in the English-
speaking world, and over the last few decades it has taken firm root
in many other parts of the world. There has been increasing debate
over just what ‘analytic philosophy’ means, as the movement has
ramified into the complex tradition that we know today, but the influ-
ence of the concerns, ideas and methods of early analytic philosophy
on contemporary thought is indisputable. All this has led to greater
self-consciousness among analytic philosophers about the nature and
origins of their tradition, and scholarly interest in its historical devel-
opment and philosophical foundations has blossomed in recent years,
with the result that history of analytic philosophy is now recognised as
a major field of philosophy in its own right.
The main aim of the series in which the present book appears,
the first series of its kind, is to create a venue for work on the his-
tory of analytic philosophy, consolidating the area as a major field
of philosophy and promoting further research and debate. The ‘his-
tory of analytic philosophy’ is understood broadly, as covering the
period from the last three decades of the nineteenth century to the
start of the twenty-first century, beginning with the work of Frege,
Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, who are generally regarded as its
main founders, and the influences upon them, and going right up to
the most recent developments. In allowing the ‘history’ to extend to
the present, the aim is to encourage engagement with contemporary
debates in philosophy, for example, in showing how the concerns of
early analytic philosophy relate to current concerns. In focusing on
analytic philosophy, the aim is not to exclude comparisons with
other – earlier or contemporary – traditions, or consideration of
figures or themes that some might regard as marginal to the analytic
tradition but which also throw light on analytic philosophy. Indeed,
a further aim of the series is to deepen our understanding of the
broader context in which analytic philosophy developed, by looking,
for example, at the roots of analytic philosophy in neo-Kantianism
or British idealism, or the connections between analytic philosophy
and phenomenology, or discussing the work of philosophers who

vi
 Series Editor’s Foreword vii

were important in the development of analytic philosophy but who

are now often forgotten.
One of the most well-known events in the history of analytic
philosophy is Wittgenstein’s critique in 1913 of Russell’s theory of
judgement. Wittgenstein’s objections led to the abandonment of the
book that Russell was then writing on the theory of knowledge and
marks the point at which Wittgenstein starts to take over from Russell
as the leading figure in British analytic philosophy. The dispute between
Russell and Wittgenstein, however, took place in a much wider con-
text, and concern with the nature of judgement was central to a lot
of philosophical thinking from the late nineteenth century onwards,
not just among the early analytic philosophers but also in idealism,
neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. This wider context and concern
is the subject of the present volume, edited by Mark Textor, which
brings together contributions from some of the leading scholars of the
history of analytic philosophy and phenomenology.
As Textor makes clear in his introduction, the debate about judge-
ment goes back to Kant’s synthesis model of judgement, which had
been taken up and developed by both continental and British idealists.
It came under fire in the late nineteenth century from various quarters.
Moore’s critique of Kant’s and Bradley’s conceptions of judgement is
another of the founding events of analytic philosophy, but what is less
well known is the influence that Brentano had on Moore, especially
as mediated by the work of G.F. Stout, who had been one of Moore’s
teachers in Cambridge. Brentano influenced a whole generation of
philosophers, such as Husserl, Twardowski and Reinach, and his influ-
ence and interests demonstrates the extent to which there are common
roots to analytic philosophy and phenomenology. It also shows how
important the wider context is in understanding the development of
both traditions: idealist and neo-Kantian conceptions also feed in to the
debates that were going on at the time.
The present volume contains discussion of key figures from all
these philosophical traditions and explores the intricate relations
between the relevant concepts – judgement, acknowledgement, asser-
tion, denial, truth, thought, and so on. It demonstrates just how
fundamental the topic of judgement was in early analytic philosophy
and phenomenology and sheds much light on the interconnections
between the ideas of those whom we now tend to see as represen-
tatives of different philosophical traditions but who had shared
interests that should make us wary about classifying in too simple
viii Series Editor’s Foreword

a way. At the same time the nuanced differences between their respec-
tive views show the richness of the discussions that were taking place
and the potential they still have for contributing to philosophical
debate today.

Michael Beaney
August 2012
Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of several of the contributions included here were

presented at the conference ‘Judgement and Truth in Early Analytic
Philosophy and Phenomenology’ (Fifth Zurich Workshop on Concepts)
in Zurich in October 2009. The conference was organised and financed
by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Zurich,
whom I thank for their support. Thanks are due to Hanjo Glock and his
team for organising the conference, and also to the participants for their
contributions to the workshop. Special thanks go to Michael Beaney for
help and advice during the preparation of this book.

ix
Notes on Contributors

Arianna Betti is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Free University

in Amsterdam.

Stewart Candlish is Professor and senior honorary research fellow at

the University of Western Australia.

Nic Damnjanovic is Assistant Professor at the University of Western

Australia.

Gottried Gabriel is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University

of Jena.

Hans-Johann Glock is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the

University of Zurich.
Wolfgang Künne is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University
of Hamburg.

Fraser MacBride is university lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy at

the University of Cambridge.

Wayne Martin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex.

Kevin Mulligan is Professor of Analytic Philosophy at the University

of Geneva.

Consuelo Preti is Professor of Philosophy at the College of New Jersey.

Maria van der Schaar is Assistant Professor in the Institute of

Philosophy at the University of Leiden.

x
1
Introduction
Mark Textor
King’s College, London

At the heart of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was the idea that judgement
is the synthesis of representations into a unity. The synthesis model of
judgement proved to be highly influential. Idealists on the continent
and in Britain conceived of judgement as a unifying act. (On the latter
see Preti’s paper, sect. 3.) However, the end of the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the twentieth century saw a major change in the
theory of judgement. Both early analytic philosophers and phenom-
enologists aimed to overcome the synthesis view of judgement and to
replace it with a different conception in which the notion of truth is
central. The reconceptualisation of judgement shaped both the analytic
and the phenomenological tradition in philosophy. This book aims
bring the contributions of early analytic philosophers and phenom-
enologists to this development into focus.
Franz Brentano (1838–1917) was instrumental in dismantling the
synthesis model of judgement. In his Psychology from an Empirical
Standpoint (1874) he argued that a judgement and an idea can represent
the same thing in the same way. The difference between them resides
entirely in the attitude towards the represented content. If I acknow-
ledge or reject an object, I make a judgement:

The person who affirms, the person who negates and the person
who asks with uncertainty have the same object in their con-
sciousness; the last one in that he merely presents (vorstellt) it,
the first one in that she presents it and simultaneously acknow-
ledges (anerkennen) or rejects (verwerfen) it. (Brentano 1874 II:
289 [182]. My translation. References to the English translation in
square brackets.)

1
2 Introduction

One can acknowledge or reject an object without predicating properties

to it, argued Brentano. Hence, judging is one thing, predicating
another. Since predication is one important form of synthesis, Brentano
strikes an important blow against the synthesis model of judgement.
Importantly, judging is not predicating the property of being true or of
being a fact to something:

If we say that every acknowledging judgement (anerkennende Urteil)

is an act of taking something to be true, and every rejecting judge-
ment an act of taking something to be false, this does not mean that
the former consists in predicating truth of what is taken to be true
and the latter in predicating falsity of what is taken to be false. […]
what the expressions denote is a particular kind of intentional recep-
tion of an object, a distinctive kind of mental reference to a content
of consciousness […]. (Brentano 1874 II: 89 [186–7]. In part my
translation.)1

Brentano’s view is a representative and influential example of a non-

synthetic view of judgement. I will now use it to introduce the main
questions raised by this new model of judgement.
Brentano took for granted that we know what acknowledging and
rejecting is. Adolf Reinach (1883–1917), a student of Husserl and Lipps,
targeted this assumption. (See Reinach 1911: 57 [316].) He distinguished
between three main senses of ‘acknowledegment’ (‘rejection’) (We will
soon see that there is a fourth):

(a) the evaluative sense of ‘acknowledgement’: when I approve or disap-

prove an action, I acknowledge or reject it in the evaluative sense.
(b) the assent sense of ‘acknowledgement’: when I assent to (concur with) a
statement or judgement, I acknowledge or reject it in the assent sense.
(c) the positing sense of ‘acknowledgement’: when I come to the view
that Socrates is wise, I assert or posit the wisdom of Socrates.

Different philosophers exploited different senses of ‘acknowledgement’

(‘rejection’) in their theories of judgement.
The Neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) opted
for (a) and gave the key term ‘to acknowledge’ an evaluative twist:

[T]he truth-value is a value to be coordinated with the other values,

according to which we approvingly embrace or disapprovingly
reject the content of an idea. The disjunction of true and false, the
 Mark Textor 3

alternative evaluative relation of the idea to the truth-value, is the

psychologically fundamental fact of logic. (Windelband 1884: 174.
My translation and emphasis.)

There are three ideas in this passage that are of importance for this
introduction:

(i) Truth is a value. (Rickert described, in turn, falsity as a un-value

(Unwert).)
(ii) Judgement is an evaluation with respect to the truth-value.
(iii) Judgement has an opposite: disapproving rejection.

Windelband’s (i) and (ii) were inspired by Lotze’s Logik. Lotze took
the distinction between truth and falsity to be a distinction in value
(Wertdifferenz). Logic is concerned with the question when ideas and
thought have these values, psychology with the laws of connection
between ideas. (See Lotze 1874 I (1912): 4f.)2
Brentano rejected the evaluative construal of ‘acknowledgement’. We
value true judgements, but that does not make judgements evaluations.
(See Brentano 1889: 39.) Hence, ‘acknowledgement’ should not be
understood in the evaluative sense. In which sense, then, should it be
understood? The term ‘acknowledgement’ is suggestive, but it needed
further elucidation to be useful in the theory of judgement. I will come
back to this demand for further elucidation in a moment.
Brentano’s view also gave rise to questions about the objects of judge-
ment. Reinach remarked:

According to them [Brentano and his disciples] any object can be

judged, that is, acknowledged or rejected, a tree or a tone or some-
thing else. (Reinach 1911: 78. My translation.)

But what could it mean to judge a tone or judge a tree? Reinach, in turn,
held that only states of affairs like the tree’s greenness (the tone’s clarity)
can be judged. Basic states of affairs are conceived of as complexes of
objects and properties. We will re-encounter them in Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
We can now use our outline of Brentano’s non-synthetic view of
judgement and its problems to introduce the contributions collected
in this book.
The German Logician Sigwart (1830–1904) asked Brentano a hard
question about negative judgement: ‘What is it that we reject when we
4 Introduction

reject something in judgement?’ If we reject an object, it must exist.

Hence, every rejection seems to be manifestly false. Arianna Betti’s
‘We owe it to Sigwart! A New Look at the Content/Object Distinction
in Early Phenomenological Theories of Judgement from Brentano to
Twardowski’ essay assesses the answers Brentano and his followers
Hillebrand, Marty and Twardowski gave. Developing these answers
made it necessary to distinguish between the content of a judgement
and its object. Betti’s essay gives the reader a new historical perspective
on this important and now widely accepted distinction.
Wayne Martin’s contribution ‘Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical
Theory of Judgement’ explores a concept of ‘acknowledgement’ that was
missing on our list from (a) to (c): if you have a justified legal demand
that concerns me, I ought to acknowledge it. Theodor Lipps (1851–1914)
used this legal notion of acknowledgement as his model of judgement.
An object (or better: a fact) makes a demand on me. If I acknowledge the
demand made, I judge that the object is a certain way. Lipps’s suggestion
seems to latch on to an essential feature of judgement: in judgement we
passively take in a fact. Martin’s essay carefully analyses Lipp’s view of
judgement and explores its philosophical potential.
The notion of acknowledgement is not only used by phenomenolo-
gists. It also figured prominently in early analytic philosophy. Gottlob
Frege (1848–1925), the ‘grandfather of analytic philosophy’ (Dummett),
takes judgement to be indefinable, but he elucidates this notion by
saying that judgement is acknowledgement of the truth of a thought.
How should one understand Frege’s use (of the German synonym) of
‘acknowledgement’?
Its negative import is clear. Kant distinguished between problematic
and assertoric judgements; a ‘problematic’ judgement is merely grasping
a thought with consideration of its truth suspended. (See Kant 1781/
87: A76/B 101.) Frege used ‘acknowledgement’ to make clear that he is
not talking about merely grasping a truth-evaluable representation. In
judgement we take a stand on the truth of such a representation; we
acknowledge its truth.
Can one characterise acknowledgement further? Gottfried Gabriel
argues in his ‘Truth, Value, and Truth Value. Frege’s Theory of Judgement
and its Historical Background’ that Frege’s use of acknowledgement is
inspired by Neo-Kantians like Windelband and Rickert. As we have just
seen, Windelband takes acknowledgement and hence judgement to be
an evaluation. In judgement we evaluate a proposition with respect
to the value True. Gabriel draws our attention to parallels between
Frege’s and the Neo-Kantians’ work on judgement. According to Gabriel,
 Mark Textor 5

Windelband goes beyond Frege and motivates the introduction of a

third truth-value.
Wolfgang Künne’s ‘Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and
Asserting. Notes on a Passage in Frege’s ‘The Thought’’ is also devoted to
Frege. The essay is an in-depth exegesis of a pregnant passage in Frege’s
late paper ‘Thoughts’ (1918). Systematically, the essay clarifies Frege’s
concepts of grasping, judging and asserting. Künne argues on the basis of
his exegesis that Frege’s text does not support an evaluative reading of
Frege’s acknowledgement theory of judgement.
Frege’s paper ‘Negation’ (1919) put forth arguments for the conclu-
sion that negation resides exclusively in the realm of thought and not in
the realm of our attitudes we have towards thoughts. Denying that p is
is the same act as asserting that not-p. Hence, one only needs the notion
of judgement (assertion) as a primitive in logic. Denial can be defined
in terms of assertion and is not ‘on all fours’ with it. These arguments
convinced many later analytic philosophers that the notion of negative
judgement was not needed in logic. In contrast, Brentano held that
just as one can love or hate an object, one can acknowledge or reject
it. He took rejection ‘to be on all fours’ with acknowledgement. Not all
of Brentano’s students followed him in this point and a fruitful debate
ensued. The Brentanians were primarily concerned with the psycho-
logical plausibility of a sui generis act of rejection, and not, like Frege,
with the question whether such an act is indispensable in logic. Kevin
Mulligan’s ‘Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement,
Assertion, Belief, Certainty, Conviction, Denial, Judgment, Refusal and
Rejection’ is organised around the question whether judgement has a
polar opposite. He devotes a section of his essay to the most comprehen-
sive discussion of this question in the Brentano school, Adolf Reinach’s
‘On the Theory of Negative Judgement’ (1911). Phenomenologists such
as Husserl, Reinach and Stein distinguished and described a wealth of
mental acts that are closely related to judgement. Mulligan surveys and
discusses these analyses.
We are now ready to cross the Channel to Britain. Maria van der
Schaar’s ‘G. F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement’ por-
trays G. F. Stout (1860–1944) as a link between Brentano and Russell.
Stout’s own work was inspired by Brentano, and Stout promoted the
Brentanian acknowledgement view of judgement in Cambridge. van
der Schaar’s essay adds to our understanding of Russell’s philosophical
development and sheds new light both on Russell and Stout.
Stout also influenced Moore. Stout, and indirectly Brentano, there-
fore figure both prominently in Preti’s ‘The Origin and Influence of
6 Introduction

G. E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’. Preti’s contribution is a detailed

historical and philosophical analysis of Moore’s shift from an idealistic
view of judgement to one which takes mind-independent propositions
to be the constituents of reality. It looks back at Moore’s philosophical
roots in British Idealism as well as forward to the influence of Moore’s
theory of judgement on Russell.
Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish’s ‘The Myth of the Coherence
Theory of Truth’ is, in part, concerned with Moore and Russell’s revolt
against British Idealism. However, they argue for the surprising conclu-
sion that this revolt missed in part its target. The coherence theory of
truth was allegedly part and parcel of the philosophy of British Idealists.
The standard history of analytic philosophy has it that Russell dismant-
led this theory and replaced it with a correspondence theory of truth.
According to Damnjanovic and Candlish, the coherence theory of
truth was a straw man. Idealists such as Bradley were committed to an
identity theory of truth, not to a coherence theory. Even upon further
investigation coherence theories of truth prove elusive. There seem to
be none.
As we have seen, early analytic philosophers and phenomenologists
disagreed about the nature of judgement. (Is it evaluative or not? Does
it have an opposite?) They also disagreed about the nature of the second
relatum. (Is it a thought, a state of affairs or a particular?) But that judge-
ment is a two-place relation between a thinker and one other object
was not questioned. Russell’s revolutionary contribution to the theory
of judgement was to propose that judgement is a multiple relation. For
example, my judgement that Romeo loves Juliet is a relation between
me, Romeo, Love and Juliet – very roughly, in making this judgement
I take Romeo, Love and Juliet to be related. If judgement is a multiple
relation, propositions or states of affairs are no longer needed as relata
of the judgement relation. Hence, Russell did not need an answer to the
puzzling question ‘What unifies Romeo, Love and Juliet to a proposi-
tion if Romeo does not love Juliet?’ However, Wittgenstein showed that
this move resulted in another problem: ‘What prevents a thinker from
judging nonsense (for example, that Love Romeo Juliet) if judgement
is a multiple relation?’ The debate between Russell and Wittgenstein
about the nature of judgement was one of the highlights of early
analytic philosophy. Two contributions in this book are devoted to it.
Fraser MacBride’s ‘The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New
Perspective’ provides a historical reconstruction of the debate between
Russell and Wittgenstein on judgement. He gives an in-depth account
of the development of Russell’s views on judgement. The engines of
 Mark Textor 7

this development are two problems, the problem of false judgements

outlined above and the problem of converse relations. Standardly,
Wittgenstein is taken to have won the argument against Russell by
providing a knock-down objection. MacBride argues that this is a false
account of the matter: it is not Wittgenstein’s objections, but inter-
nal problems, which make the multiple relation theory unattractive
for Russell.
The book’s final chapter is Glock’s ‘Judgement and Truth in the
Early Wittgenstein’. The esay is devoted to Wittgenstein’s response to
the problem of false judgement, the picture theory of propositional
representation. A proposition is a picture of a state of affairs. One can
make a false judgement by putting forth a proposition that pictures a
state of affairs that does not obtain. Implicit in this account of judge-
ment is a conception of truth that Glock unfolds. He defends and
develops the view that the Tractatus contains a correspondence theory
of truth.

Notes
1. See also Kremer 2000: 565.
2. See Gabriel 1984: 374.

References
Brentano, F. (1874) Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt (1874) (two volumes),
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1955). Trans. as Psychology from An Empirical Standpoint.
(London: Routledge 1995).
—— (1889) ‘Windelbands Irrtum hinsichtlich der Grundeinteilung der Psychischen
Phänomene’. In his Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. O. Kraus. (Leipzig: Meiner, 1930).
Trans. as The True and the Evident, ed. R.M. Chisholm. (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1966).
Frege, G. (1918) ‘Die Verneinung. Eine Logische Untersuchung’, Beiträge
zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, I, 143–57. Trans. as ‘Negation’ in
B. McGuiness (ed.), Gottlob Frege: Collected Papers. (Oxford: Blackwell 1984),
373–89.
Gabriel, G. (1984) Bedeutung, Value and Truth-Value. The Philosophical Quarterly,
34, 372–6.
Kant, I. (1781/7) Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. J. Timmermann. (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner Verlag, 1998).
—— (1800) Logik. Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen herausgegeben bei Gottlob Benjamin
Jäsche. In Kants gesammelte Schriften, Vol. IX. (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter De
Gruyter, 1923).
Kremer, M. (2000) ‘Judgment and Truth in Frege’, Journal of the History of
Philosophy, 38, 549–81.
8 Introduction

Lotze, R.H. (1874) Logik. Drei Bücher. Vom Denken, vom Untersuchen und vom
Erkennen. (Leipzig: Hirzel).
Reinach, A. (1911) Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils. In his Gesammelte Schriften,
ed. by his students. (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921). Trans. as ‘On the Theory of
Negative Judgement’, in B. Smith (ed.), Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and
Formal Ontology. (Munich: Philosophia Verlag), pp. 315–77.
Windelband, W. (1884) ‘Beiträge zur Theorie des negativen Urteils’. In Straßburger
Abhandlungen zur Philosophie. (Freiburg: Mohr), pp. 165–95.
2
Theodor Lipps and the
Psycho-Logical Theory of
Judgement
Wayne Martin
University of Essex

This essay is, in the first instance, an exercise in intellectual archaeology.

My aim is to bring back into view an idiosyncratic and largely forgotten
approach to the theory of judgement that was developed around 1900
by Theodor Lipps, a pioneering but now rather obscure figure from the
history of psychology. But I also hope to show that Lipps’ approach
to the phenomenon of judgement is not just of antiquarian interest.
Accordingly, my second aim is more narrowly philosophical: I propose
to assess the adequacy of Lipps’ approach to judgement by testing it
against two objections – one phenomenological and one logical.

1 A Controversial Psychological Innovator

Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) is now chiefly remembered – if he is remem-

bered at all – as the target of some famous refutations. In the long
Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations, Husserl treats Lipps as a para-
digmatic representative of the ‘psychologistic’ approach to logic, and
sets out to demonstrate the absurd consequences that follow.1 Heidegger,
in his doctoral dissertation, devotes a chapter to Lipps’ approach to the
theory of judgement, providing a generally sympathetic reconstruction
of his position before subjecting it to ruthless critique.2 Edith Stein’s dis-
sertation dealt with The Problem of Empathy; she also used Lipps (along
with Mill) as her foil.3 But not all contemporary assessments of Lipps
were negative – far from it. Freud studied Lipps’ works carefully and
repeatedly praised them, writing at one point to Fleiss, ‘I found the sub-
stance of my insights stated quite clearly in Lipps, perhaps rather more
than I would like.’4 In Munich, where he held a chair from 1894, Lipps
was a seminal figure, and contributed to the founding of the so-called
‘Munich School of Phenomenology’, a group which came to include
9
10 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

Alexander Pfänder, Adolf Reinach and Max Scheler. But his influence
was also felt more broadly. His books were translated into Spanish and
Russian, and were reviewed in leading philosophy journals both in
England and in the United States.5 In Principles of Psychology, William
James described Lipps’ work as ‘singularly acute’.6
Lipps’ corpus and range of accomplishments were staggeringly large.
The standard bibliography of his works runs to 160 items; at the peak
of his productivity he was publishing several book-length studies every
year. The topics of these works literally run the gamut from tragedy
to comedy, along with all manner of topics in between, including
hypnosis, spatial illusions and musical consonance.7 His approach to
all of these topics occupied a disputed intermediate territory between
philosophy and the emerging disciplines of empirical psychology
and phenomenology. Among his own influences the works of David
Hume loom particularly large; indeed he was partly responsible for
the first complete German translation of Hume’s Treatise. But he was
also influenced by the works of Johann Friedrich Herbart, who was
himself a student of Fichte’s. Lipps’ Inaugural Dissertation in Bonn
(prior to the move to Munich) dealt with Herbart’s ontology, and traces
of Fichte’s (indirect) influence can be detected in his approach to the
theory of judgement. In addition to his own research activities, Lipps
exercised considerable influence as an editor. He was the founder and
General Editor of an important monograph series in aesthetics;8 he also
founded, edited and contributed much of the content to a short-lived
journal, Psychologische Untersuchungen.
The centre of gravity in all these diverse undertakings was, for Lipps,
the idea of a scientific psychology. Lipps belonged to both the time
and the place of the birth of modern psychology. Wilhelm Wundt,
who is generally credited with the establishment of the first laboratory
for empirical psychology, was an older contemporary of Lipps, and
an admirer of his work. So also, as we have seen, was Sigmund Freud.
Like his contemporaries, Lipps was determined that psychology should
develop as a mature and autonomous science, and indeed as a foun-
dational discipline. All three editions of his Grundzüge der Logik began
with the provocative claim that ‘Logic is a psychological discipline.’9 He
made essentially the same claim about, inter alia, epistemology, aesthet-
ics, musicology, literary theory … . It was, of course, this set of claims
which attracted the epithet, ‘psychologism’.
We shall have occasion to return below to this notorious charge, but
what will be particularly important for our purposes is the position
that Lipps occupied within the psychologistic camp. For in a number
 Wayne Martin 11

of crucial respects, as we shall see, Lipps’ position was quite close to,
even aligned with, that of the phenomenological movement. Along
with Husserl, he conceived of conscious experience as the primary
locus of investigation for psychology, and he made use of a number of
central concepts that are now associated with the Husserlian school,
including a distinction between the content and object of conscious-
ness and an analog of the notion of intentionality. However in one
critical respect he was closer to Freud than he was to Husserl, particu-
larly in his conviction that psychology must go beyond description of
the facts of consciousness. Like Freud – and indeed before him – Lipps
was convinced that much of the action in our psychological life takes
place beneath the threshold of conscious attention, and that we must,
accordingly, be ready to postulate experiences that can be identified at
the level of conscious attention only indirectly, by way of their effects.
Much of Lipps’ experimental work was therefore focused on phenom-
ena such as visual illusions and laughter which might be expected to
shed light on underlying psychological forces and drives.

2 Judgement as Representational Necessity

With this general framing of Lipps’ larger project as context, we can

now turn our attention specifically to his approach in the theory of
judgement. Lipps’ first systematic treatment of judgement is found in
his main work of logic, the so-called Grundzüge der Logik, which first
appeared in 1893, with subsequent editions to follow in 1912 and 1923.10
From the outset two features of Lipps’ approach structure his account.
The first is what his critics would later refer to as his psychologism.
Already in his provocative and polemical 1880 essay, ‘Die Aufgabe der
Erkenntnistheorie und die Wundt’sche Logik’, Lipps had firmly asserted
his conviction that logic requires a scientific psychological grounding,
and indeed ultimately must be conceived as a branch of psychology.
Anyone who has dipped into the heated exchanges over psychologism
during this period will be familiar with Lipps’ rationale: logic is the
study of thinking correctly; thinking is itself a psychological process;
so logic is the study of which among the psychological processes lead
to correct thinking. Accordingly, its basic concepts and its domain of
investigation are essentially psychological.
It is in his attempt to carry out this agenda that the second distinc-
tive feature of Lipps’ approach comes into play. In order to execute the
psychologistic transformation of logic, one needs, among other things,
psychological characterisations of the basic logical concepts. Judgement
12 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

is one such concept. In the tradition between Kant and Frege, logic
texts as a rule followed the Kantian lead of dividing the treatment
of logical themes into the treatment of concepts, judgements and
inferences. Despite their otherwise radical agenda, the psychologistic
logicians characteristically operated within this traditional paradigm.
Accordingly, every logic textbook must include a division devoted to
the Urteilstheorie. Such a division characteristically begins with some
general definition, together with an account of the minimal structure
of judgements. Given Lipps’ psychologistic commitments, such a char-
acterisation must be given in psychological terms. He needs, in short, a
psycho-logical characterisation of judgement.
After various preliminaries, it is exactly this task that he takes up.
The crucial stretch of text for our purposes is Grundzüge §§32–9; what
we find there is a version of a thought that, in one way or another,
would occupy Lipps in all his subsequent thinking about the nature of
judgement: the idea that judgement is to be understood as a kind of
necessitation by objects. Here is Lipps’ initial formulation:

The judgement is the individual act of actual or purported cognition;

it is therefore any objective consciousness or consciousness (regard-
less of whether sound or unsound) that is genötigt in representing by
the represented object. (Lipps 1893: §32)

This is the first of many junctures where we confront issues about the
translation of Lipps’ technical vocabulary. It is clear that by nötigen and
its grammatical relative, Nötigung, Lipps means to indicate some kind
of necessitation [Notwendigkeit]. But just what kind of necessitation?
As we shall see, the Grundzüge unpacks the relevant notion of neces-
sity in terms of a limitation on the judge’s power of representation. To
be genötigt is in this sense to find oneself compelled, as it were, by the
object of representation. We can, accordingly, think of the Nötigung here
as a form of compulsion.11
In trying to get a grip on Lipps’ initial proposal, it is useful to think
of it as a variation on a Humean theme. As we have noted, Lipps was
greatly influenced by Hume, whom he described as ‘a master in the
art of psychological analysis’.12 Hume was, of course, the most important
historical proponent of what we might call ‘anti-voluntarism’ about
belief, and we can see Lipps as extending the same kind of position to
judgement. Whereas Cartesians and Kantians characteristically empha-
sise what I shall refer to as the ‘agentive character’ of judgement,
finding therein one or another kind of proto- or full-blown agency,
 Wayne Martin 13

Hume emphasises precisely our lack of control over what we believe.13

I can think about whatever I want, but believing those thoughts, or judging
them to be true is something that happens to me, something that is
beyond my direct willful control. In Lipps’ version of this idea, judging
is to be understood as a kind of compulsion by the object in my act of
representation.
I want to argue that we should see these formulations from Lipps’
psycho-logical theory as his first rather inadequate attempt to formulate
his Ur-thought about judgement. In making out the case for its
inadequacy, we could dispute it at the psychological or phenomeno-
logical level: don’t we, at least in some cases – particularly hard cases –
experience judging as something we do? Lipps does talk about judging
as an ‘act’ [Akt], but in his elaboration the sense of agency gets drained
away; judgement is something that happens to me, something deter-
mined in me by the object, something beyond the control of my will.
This might seem to be at odds with the experience we often have in
judging, where reaching a judgement comes with difficulty and only
with quite a willful exertion – the experience of ‘making up my mind’.
But this objection is not decisive – even though, as we shall see, it
raises issues that would continue to concern Lipps himself. For one
could reply that the experience of exertion here, and of willful control,
pertains not to the act of judgement per se, but to the process of delibe-
ration that precedes and prepares for it. I exert my will in thinking
things through, in turning my attention to the matter at hand, in
choosing to consider this-or-that evidence. But this would not of itself
contradict Lipps’ thesis that, when it comes to the act of judgement
itself, I am determined by the object (or by the objective evidence) to
reach one conclusion as opposed to another.
This objection and reply raise issues to which we shall have occa-
sion to return. But rather than pursuing them at this stage, we will
do better to focus on the details of Lipps’ logical elaboration of his
basic approach. For Lipps, it is not sufficient to explain judgement in
general terms as compulsion; there are, after all, many forms of psycho-
logical compulsion. An adequate psycho-logical account of judgement
must, accordingly, locate that necessitation more exactly. It is in this
elaboration that we find the finer texture of Lipps’ position, but also its
fundamental instability.
According to Lipps, our encounter with the necessitation of judgment
is best understood with reference to our encounter with certain kinds of
psychological impossibility. In judging, I represent an objective necessity
insofar as I find that I am not able to represent in a certain way. But what
14 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

is that inability exactly? Suppose that I judge that all men are mortal.
What is it, exactly, that I find myself unable to do? Lipps is insistent that
he does not mean to say that I simply cannot refrain from this judge-
ment. After all, I might choose to think about something else entirely,
carefully avoiding all thoughts of human mortality. Nor is it the case
that whenever I think ‘man’ I find myself compelled to add ‘is mortal’,
as if by some conditioned response. Indeed we should not even say
that I find it impossible to represent the contrary claim. I can represent
man as immortal if I want to. But when I do – and here we come to the
crucial point – I find that the character of the consciousness has changed.
It now involves what Lipps calls ‘the consciousness of the unreality of
this representational combination’. Lipps elaborates the point with an
example about the order of the publication of Kant’s works:

Whoever knows that Kant’s Prolegomena lies temporally between

the first and second editions of the Critique can represent the
Prolegomena and consider it as something objectively real, without
at the same time thinking about its temporal relation to the two
editions of the Critique. Moreover, in his representation he can place
the Prolegomena in thought in any other temporal position – for
example as following the two editions. But he cannot do this with-
out at the same time having the consciousness of the unreality of
this representational combination [das Bewusstsein der Unwirklichkeit
dieser Vorstellungsverbindung], or of the contradiction between it and
the representational combination which is pressed upon him [ihm
aufgenötigt] by the experience. (Lipps 1893: §35, emphasis added)

Now that seems right phenomenologically. I look at the table, and

I judge that it is brown, and that there is a cat sitting on it. I can, if
I wish, go on to represent the table as white, or as cat-less. But as I do so,
the experience takes on a different feel for me. It now feels like preten-
ding, in a way, or free imagining; it becomes quite a different form of
consciousness. This particular example involves sense perception, but
this is inessential. Suppose now, from another room, I judge that that
table is still brown, and that the cat is still sleeping on it. Once again,
I can now vary the representational content: I can represent the table as
having turned white and cat-less. But in doing so the representation takes
on a different quality in my experience. In Lipps’ jargon, it has lost that
characteristic ‘consciousness of the reality of an objective combination
of representations’. So the psychological impossibility that exhibits the
characteristic necessitation of judgement is not per se an inability to
 Wayne Martin 15

represent; it is an inability to vary representation while maintaining the

‘consciousness of reality’.
Here is Lipps’ general statement of his position, condensed into a
single, spectacularly complex sentence:

The objective necessity of which I am conscious in the material

judgement SP is not equivalent to the impossibility of representing
S for itself, without considering it as objectively real, but rather with
the impossibility of assigning to S a nonP instead of the P, without
thereby changing S for me into something objectively unreal, that
is, without there arising for me the consciousness that this represen-
tational combination SnonP is an act of my arbitrary will [Willkür],
by which I set myself in contradiction to the (objective) compulsion,
which lies in the representation of S, to combine it with a P. (Lipps
1893: §35)

Even this, as it happens, is not a complete statement of the theory,

since it is limited to the simplest case of a categorical, material (i.e., not
formal), subject-predicate judgement. But it should be enough to make
clear the nature of the foundation upon which Lipps proposes to build
the remainder of his logic.
Once we have come this far, however, the critical instability in Lipps’
position also comes into view. Recall that Lipps’ psychologistic agenda
in Grundzüge requires him to provide an account of logical notions in
psychological terms. We are now in a position to see that his elaboration
of this psychologistic programme with regard to the case of judgement
requires him to make appeal to this ‘consciousness of the reality or
unreality of a representational combination’. It is thus natural to ask
just what these psychological states themselves amount to. Within
the Grundzüge, Lipps has little to say about this. Having introduced
judgement in these terms, he goes on to the usual logical business of
classifying forms and tracking inferential relations – themselves under-
stood as a systematic set of psychological impossibilities. But when we
look at what little Lipps does have to say on this topic, we can see that
his whole position threatens to unravel.
In each of the two passages we have just cited – the grammatically
tortuous formal statement of the position, as well as the example
about Kant’s publications – Lipps concludes with a brief explanation of
what the ‘feeling of unreality’ amounts to. The two explanations are not
themselves entirely consistent, and in neither case are they adequate,
given Lipps larger commitments. Consider first the passage about Kant.
16 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

Lipps there claims that I can freely vary my representation, but I cannot
do so without becoming conscious ‘of the contradiction between it and
the representational combination which is forced upon [me] by the
experience’. It should be clear that this presents a difficulty for Lipps,
given his psychologistic programme. As we have seen, Lipps is commit-
ted to providing psychological characterisations of the basic concepts
of logic. But we here find him appealing to the notion of a contradic-
tion between two representational combinations. ‘Contradiction’ is,
of course, a logical rather than psychological notion. If Lipps’ fully
elaborated theory of judgement requires appeal to the ‘consciousness
of unreality’, and the account of the consciousness of unreality itself
appeals to the notion of a contradiction between two representations,
then the psychologistic reduction has not yet been carried out.
The explanation of the feeling of unreality in Lipps’ more general
statement accordingly takes a slightly different tack. Rather than
appealing to a consciousness of a contradiction between two represen-
tational contents, Lipps appeals there to an ‘act of my will’ [Akt meiner
Willkür] in which ‘I set myself in contradiction to the compulsion’ [ich
mich mit der … Nötigung… in Widerspruch setze]. We might understand
this formulation in psychological rather than logical terms. Although
Lipps still uses the language of Widerspruch here, his appeal is not to
a contradictory relation between two representations, but rather to a
certain willful act of a person in the face of the compulsion from the
object. But this accounting presents difficulties of its own. As we have
seen, the guiding thought of the Grundzüge is that judgement is neces-
sitation, and that the form of necessitation is Nötigung – a psychological
compulsion that generates an inability or impossibility. In trying to
specify just what that compulsion is, Lipps effectively analyses

(i) It is necessary that S is represented as P.

as equivalent to

(ii) I cannot transpose SP into SnotP without an accompanying

consciousness of unreality in representing SnotP.

But suppose that we now analyse

(iii) I have the consciousness of unreality in representing SnotP.

as equivalent to
 Wayne Martin 17

(iv) I am conscious that I am using my will to resist (or ‘set myself in

contradiction to’) the necessity that S is represented as P.

There are two fatal difficulties to notice here. The first problem is that
the analysis has become troublingly circular, since, of course, ‘the
necessity that S is represented as P’ that occurs in (iv) is precisely what
we set out to explain in (i). But the more important (and ultimately
more fruitful) problem is that with (iv) we have introduced the idea of
a necessity that can, after all, be resisted. If the psycho-logical account
of judgement rests in the end on an appeal to a necessitation that I
can ‘set myself in contradiction to’ as a matter of arbitrary will, then it
should be clear that the necessitation at work in judgement cannot be
characterised as Nötigung alone.

3 Necessitation as Demand

In the decade following the publication of his Logic, Lipps returned on

several occasions, and in a variety of contexts, to issues surrounding
psychological necessitation. For our purposes, the critical developments
are to be found in a pair of interrelated studies that were published in
1902. Neither of these works deals directly with the problem of judge-
ment (one is a study of the psychology of feelings, the other of the
consciousness of relations), but in them Lipps introduces concepts
and distinctions that would in due course fundamentally reshape his
approach to the theory of judgement. These works were characteristic
of Lipps’ literary productivity during his mature period. In each case he
takes up a domain of experiences and publishes what he refers to as a
‘sketch’ [Skizze], in which he sets out to chart the domain in question,
drawing distinctions and comparisons which allow the various forms of
consciousness to come into view both in their differences and in their
interrelations. As literary productions they belong to a distinctive genre
that was characteristic of the period: longer than an essay yet shorter
than a book, published under the auspices of one-or-another newly
founded psychological Gesellschaft, written with the confident tone of
someone who takes himself to be surveying a new scientific domain
that is being opened to proper investigation for the first time.
For present purposes I focus on the first of the two studies (Lipps
1902a). Lipps’ initial aim in this work is to provide a taxonomy of
feelings, a topic which he claims to have been badly neglected in psycho-
logy. Standard psychological discussions, Lipps alleges, mistakenly
reduce the varieties of feeling to various modifications of pleasure
18 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

and pain. In developing his taxonomy, Lipps begins by introducing

a trio of what he calls Grundgegensätze – fundamental contrasts – that
we find at work in consciousness. It is this foundational work of
psychological description that is of primary importance here. For in
these Grundgegensätze we see both the texture of Lipps’ psychological
approach and the emergence of his revised account of psychological
necessitation. Consider the three distinctions in turn:

3.1 Perception vrs Apperception

Lipps uses the term ‘perception’ [Perception] in a sense borrowed directly
from Hume: as a generic term to cover all ‘psychic occurrences’ – e.g.,
auditory sensations, recollections, visual representations, etc.14 In this
(technical) sense, my memory of the Eiffel Tower, my fantasies about
the Eiffel Tower, as well as my direct visual experience of the Eiffel
Tower all involve perception.15 But Lipps also holds that the content of
our experience is not always within the scope of our conscious atten-
tion. We perceive things that we do not notice. Accordingly, he uses
the term ‘apperception’ to mean, roughly, ‘attentive perception’. When
we are consciously and attentively aware, our experience has a ‘double
structure’: a perceptual aspect (a sensing of this or that, a representing
of some state of affairs, etc.) and an apperceptive attentiveness, either
to the object in question or to our own perception thereof. Lipps: ‘That
to which we attend … is like the crest of a wave within the broader
undulation of psychic life, or like a mountain range that rises steeply
out of the broader landscape from which it is separated but to which it
is at the same time connected’ (Lipps 1902a: 6–7).

3.2 Perceiving vrs Perceived

The second Grundgegensatz is Lipps’ version of the idea of intention-
ality. Like Brentano, he holds that in every perception (in his broad,
generic sense) there is some object – that which is perceived. We
must, accordingly, distinguish between what he calls the ‘subjective
experience’ of perceiving and its object. Lipps: ‘Every sensation, every
perception [Wahrnehmung], every representation, in short every percep-
tion [Perception] … is in the first instance perception [Perception] … of
something, or has an object [Gegenstand]. It is in addition the perception …
thereof’ (Lipps 1902a: 8).

3.3 Feeling of Freedom vrs Feeling of Constraint

The third Grundgegensatz is the one that proves to be of most direct
relevance for Lipps’ approach to judgement. In the first instance
 Wayne Martin 19

Lipps introduces the distinction by appealing to two different possible

‘positions’ or ‘relations’ of a perception with respect to the perceiver.
In the one case I experience the perception as ‘determined by me’; in
the other case I experience it as ‘determined by the object’. Lipps goes
on to offer a gaggle of different formulations for this distinction: it is
a distinction between the ‘feeling of freedom’ and the ‘feeling of con-
straint [Gebundenheit]’, a distinction between the feeling of determining
[Bestimmens] and being-determined [Bestimmtseins], of conditioning
[Bedingens] and being conditioned [Bedingtseins], etc.16 Strikingly, the
language of Nötigung, which figured so prominently in Grundzüge a
decade earlier, is not included in this list.

Once he has these three fundamental distinctions in hand, Lipps

makes a set of derived distinctions through a method of systematic
ramification, in the first instance by applying one Grundgegensatz
to the respective terms of the others. We can, for instance, ramify
by applying the second distinction to the first, obtaining thereby a
distinction between apperceiving (as a subjective experience) and what
is apperceived (its Gegenstand). But what matters for our purposes is
the ramification that results from applying the third distinction to the
second: our feeling of freedom or constraint can be associated either
with our perceiving or with what is perceived.
Consider an example. Suppose that I set out to reconstruct the terminal
state of the chess board at the end of our last match. With a bit of intel-
lectual exertion I manage to recall the array of pieces on the board. We
can here apply Lipps’ second distinction (the intentionality distinction)
by distinguishing between my act of recollection and its object or content
(what it is that I recall). But now notice that with regard to each of these I
can ask about the feeling of freedom and the feeling of constraint. In this
instance I feel quite free in having engaged in the act of recollection; that is
something that I experience as stemming from my will, determined by me,
etc. But with regard to what is remembered, Lipps claims, I have the feeling
of constraint or boundedness. For having set about the business of remem-
bering, it is not up to me to decide what it is that I remember. I experience
the objective content of my memory as stemming from (determined by,
conditioned by …) something else – the chessboard, as it were.
Contrast this to the case where I engage in an act of free fancy. Lipps
himself likes to imagine a dancing Eiffel Tower, as well as the customary
‘golden mountain’.17 Here both the perceiving (in Hume’s broad
sense) and the perceived (what it is that I imagine) are characterised
by the feeling of freedom; I experience both as a product of my will.
20 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

At the opposite extreme, consider the case of a compulsive memory.

I witness a terrible road accident, and afterwards I simply cannot shake
it off: the screeching tires, the crunch of metal, the broken glass –
I relive them over and over again. In this case both the remembering
and what is remembered are experienced by me as determined beyond
my control.
Having introduced his ramified distinctions, Lipps introduces a
technical vocabulary intended to capture these differences. We must
distinguish in the first instance between what he calls ‘active’ and ‘pas-
sive’ perceiving. In the former, my perceiving is accompanied by the
feeling of freedom, and is experienced as ‘my doing’; in the latter it is
accompanied by the feeling of constraint, as having its origin beyond
myself and my will. Applying his third distinction to the objective side
of perception, he distinguishes between what he rather confusingly
dubs subjektiven und objektiven Gegenständlichkeit (Lipps 1902a: 11). The
jargon is impossible to render adequately in English; literally it would
be the distinction between subjective and objective objectivity. Lipps’
thought is that with regard to the objective content of a perception
(its Gegenstand) we can either have the feeling of willful control (sub-
jektiven Gegenständlichkeit) or have the feeling of its being determined
outside of our control, or as stemming from beyond ourselves (objektiven
Gegenständlichkeit). In the case of objective objectivity he also intro-
duces a synonym: Wirklichkeitsgefühl – the feeling of reality. This was,
of course, precisely the concept upon which the theory of judgement in
Grundzüge der Logik came to rest – and to founder.
Before considering the significance of this development for Lipps’
approach to the theory of judgement, we must take notice of the way
that, in the paragraphs that follow, Lipps introduces a fundamental
modification to this initial formulation. To see the change we must
consider one final ramification in the Grundgegensätzen. So far we have
seen how Lipps applies both the active/passive distinction and the
subjective/objective distinction to the case of perception. But Lipps
also applies them to apperception – to the phenomenon of ‘turning to’
or ‘attending to’ something, or ‘raising it’ to self-conscious attention.
Here, again, Lipps finds that such attending can occur either actively or
passively, and in either a subjective or objective mode. My apperceiving
is active insofar as I experience it as something that is my own doing,
as an attending that derives from me. It is passive when I find that my
attention is grabbed by the object. In passive apperception, ‘the object
obtrudes or presses itself upon me [sich mir aufdrängt, oder aufnötigt]. It
draws my attention to itself’ (Lipps 1902a: 14).
 Wayne Martin 21

But then what about the subjective and objective character of

apperceiving? To introduce this distinction, Lipps asks us to consider
two distinct varieties of active apperception. In some cases I actively
turn my attention to some matter out of an interest or whim [aus
Laune], or because it fits my mood [Stimmung]. But in other cases, I turn
my attention to some object or state of affairs because of its impor-
tance or significance, whether in its own right or as a means to some
further end. In both of these cases, Lipps insists, my apperception is
active in the sense specified above. Lipps: ‘I have the feeling that I
freely, “of my own accord,” attend to the matter in question – not that
I am somehow compelled [genötigt] to do so’ (Lipps 1902a: 14). But
while the apperception is in both cases active, there is nonetheless a
critical difference between the two cases. For in the latter case there is
a sense in which I feel necessitated by the object to attend to it, even
though this necessitation is something less than – and indeed quite
different from – any form of compulsion or coercion. In an attempt
to name this distinctive mode of non-coercive necessitation, Lipps
appeals to an expression of ordinary language: ‘this is a matter that
demands my attention’.
With this Lipps has hit upon what would become the central concept
in his mature theory of judgement: the idea of a demand [Forderung] that
we experience as having its locus in the object of our (ap)perception.
In elaborating this thought, Lipps makes use of a range of striking
formulations that would figure with increasing prominence in all his
subsequent work. How can we best characterise the feeling that some
object or subject matter demands my attention? According to Lipps,
I experience the object as making a claim [Beanspruchung] upon my
attention, and indeed of its doing so with right [Recht]; the object
demands recognition [Anerkennung]. The quasi-juridical language is
carefully considered here, and Lipps intends it quite literally. It is not
the case that I have to attend to the matter in question; but I ought
to. [‘Ich ‘muss’ nicht – im Sinne des Zwanges … aber ich soll mich ihm
zuwenden’]. ‘I do not feel compelled [genötigt] or forced [gezwungen], but
called upon [aufgefordert]’ (Lipps 1902a: 15). We have here, in short, a
form of a practical necessitation – a non-coercive, normative necessita-
tion that manifests itself in consciousness as a feeling.
As we shall see, it would take some years for Lipps fully to accommo-
date this novel psychological concept within his broader psychological
theory, and to apply it specifically within the theory of judgement. But
straightaway in the 1902 study there is a clear indication of its subse-
quent import. For having introduced the concept in connection with
22 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

the varieties of apperception, Lipps immediately feels the need to refine

the doctrines he had introduced only a few pages earlier. Recall that
Lipps had introduced the ‘feeling of reality’ [Wirklichkeitsgefühl] as a
form of what he confusingly referred to as ‘objective objectivity’ [gegen-
ständliche Objektivität] – the feeling of being constrained [gebunden] in
connection with the perceptual object. Lipps now explicitly revisits his
characterisation of that feeling:

The feeling of objective objectivity is also a feeling of the demand

[Forderung] of the object – not in this case the demand of the object
to be apperceived, but the simple demand of the object to be there
for me. It is the feeling of the demand to be perceived; or the
feeling of the demand for simple recognition [Anerkennung]. (Lipps
1902a: 16)

If nothing else, it should be clear that Lipps has here hit upon a pos-
sible escape from the problem that beset his approach to judgement in
the Grundzüge. If the feeling of reality is understood with reference to
an experienced demand rather than as an experienced compulsion, then
there is scope for allowing that it is a feeling against which one might
‘set oneself in opposition’.

4 Elements of a Theory of Judgement

To find the fully developed version of Lipps’ theory of judgement we

must look to the successive editions of his widely influential psychology
textbook, Leitfaden der Psychologie. The first edition of Leitfaden appeared
in 1903, intended in the first instance as a handbook for Lipps’ own
students in Munich. Already the 1903 edition reflects the developments
we have been tracking from 1902, now applied specifically to the topic
of judgement. But the first edition was written in great haste,18 and
it was only in the various corrections and additions to the subsequent
editions (1906; 1909) that we find the fully articulated view. I shall not
here attempt to reconstruct all the details of Lipps’ mature position, and
shall resist the temptation to delve into the various local and interna-
tional controversies that led to its progressive refinement. For present
purposes the key thing is to understand the six main elements of the
fully developed theory.
We have already encountered the two most fundamental ideas:
(1) the construal of judgement as a form of necessitation, and (2) the
distinction between two forms of necessitation: compulsion [Nötigung]
 Wayne Martin 23

and demand [Forderung]. The initial definition in the 1903 chapter on

judgement clearly reflects the critical change in Lipps’ position:

A judgement is the consciousness of an object, or consciousness of

objectivity; it is the consciousness of the demand of an object. (Lipps
1903: 141, emphasis added)

This is in effect the definition we found in the Grundzüge, but with the
original appeal to compulsion by the object replaced by an appeal to
the consciousness of a demand of an object. For Lipps, to be a judge is
to experience and be responsive to the demands that are placed upon
us in our representation of objects.19

4.1 Demands of the Will vrs Demands of the Object

Normally when we think of being placed under some demand we think
of that demand as originating in or from some person or agent who
places the demand upon us. The landlord demands the rent; the neigh-
bours demand that I keep the noise down. Lipps calls these ‘demands
of the will’ [Willensforderung], and describes them as hypothetical or
conditional, since the demand depends upon the person in question. In
principle I can always appeal to the demander to withdraw or suspend a
demand of the will. The demands at work in judgement are by contrast
‘absolute’ or ‘categorical’ since in this case there can be no sense in
‘making an appeal’ for their suspension. This is because we experience
them as stemming from an object or objective state of affairs, rather
than from the will of another person. Lipps, accordingly, describes them
as Gegenstandsforderungen – ‘demands of the object’.20 This is no doubt
the most distinctive element in Lipps approach: the idea that in exercis-
ing judgement I act in ways that are demanded by things.

4.2 Demand and Recognition

But now what exactly is it that the object or state of affairs demands of
me? On this point Lipps tries out a number of different positions: the
object demands to be represented; it demands to ‘be there for me’; it
demands to be ‘perceived’ … . In Leitfaden he progressively settles on
the idea that what the object demands is acknowledgement or recog-
nition [Anerkennung]. But even with the introduction of this language,
there is still some residual unclarity about the exact relation between
judgement and recognition. In the definition from 1903 (quoted above)
the judgement is identified as the consciousness of the demand for rec-
ognition. Notice that on this framing, my judgement does not lie in
24 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

my recognition of the object, but in my consciousness of the object’s

demand for recognition. This construal once again seems to drain any
sense of agency from the construal of judgement. If the judgement is
simply the experience of the demand for recognition, then there does
not seem to be any sense in which the judgement is something I do
in response to the demand. But by the time of the later editions of
Leitfaden Lipps has revised this detail of his position, now identifying
the judgement with the ‘act of recognition’ [Akt der Anerkennung] in
response to the demand, rather than with the consciousness of the
demand itself. The following passage from the 1909 edition reflects the
crucial modification:

Now I can comport myself in two ways toward the demands of an

object; I can simply hear or experience them; and I can recognise
them. In the latter case I carry out a judgement. The judgement is the
act of recognition of an objective demand. (Lipps 1909: 32; emphasis
original)

In making this final adjustment to his theory, Lipps takes an important

step away from the broadly Humean, anti-voluntarist position that
informed his earlier approach. Judgement is no longer here being
treated as something that befalls me; it is an act [Akt] that I perform or
carry out [vollziehe]. Judgement is in this sense a manifestation of the
agency of the judge in response to normative promptings of the facts.
To emphasise this agentive dimension of judgement, Lipps enumerates
a range of adverbial ‘predicates’ that can be used to characterise a partic-
ular judgement. As an act of recognition, a judgement can be performed
‘unhappily, unwillingly, hesitatingly, or even not at all’ (ibid.). None of
these adverbial modifications apply to the demand for recognition
or to the consciousness thereof, since these are not themselves actions
of the judge.

4.3 Judgement as Comportment

The introduction of agentive language in the theory of judgement
can be seen as the final working out of Lipps’ appeal to the idea of a
demand. For to experience a demand is pro tanto to experience myself in
a certain way: as called upon to do something, to respond in a particular
way to the demand. In the late formulations of his theory Lipps begins
to use a distinctive terminology to capture this form of judgemental
response; he describes it as Verhalten – comportment. In judging, the
judge comports himself towards [sich verhaltet zu] the demands of the
 Wayne Martin 25

object. This judgemental comportment might in principle take many

different forms. It might be an overt utterance (‘I call a spade a spade’),
or a private mental event (I silently recognise my ace as a spade), or
a particular mode of behaving toward the object in question (I play
my ace on your spade). In each of these cases, comportment is both
intentional (it is ‘towards the object and its demands’) and normative
(an appropriate response to the experienced assertion of right). This
language of comportment was destined to have a significant afterlife,
starting with Heidegger’s pithy summary of Lipps’ theory of judgement:
‘The essence of judgement lies in the comportment [Verhalten] of the
psychological subject as demanded by the object.’21

4.4 The Game of Question and Answer

It is in trying to capture the texture of judgemental comportment that
Lipps introduces the sixth and final element of his mature position.
To be a judge, for Lipps, is to experience the world in a distinctive
way: as populated by objects and objective states of affairs that make
demands on upon me, mounting claims against my judgemental
activity. In trying to articulate this mode of interaction with things,
Lipps introduces an elaborate trope. The trope appears briefly in the
first edition of Leitfaden, where Lipps describes apperception as a Frage-
und Antwortspiel: ‘The apperception is the question of what the object
demands. The demand is the answer’ (Lipps 1903: 60). But it becomes
increasingly prominent in the later editions, where Lipps distinguishes
the various different questions we direct toward objects (e.g., concern-
ing their value, the features, their reality, etc.), going on to add ‘To such
question the objects give answers’ (Lipps 1909: 30). But the trope is at its
most prominent in the portion of the 1909 textbook that is specifically
devoted to the elaboration of Lipps’ theory of judgement:

When observing this or that object, or drawing it into view in my

mind’s eye, or focusing my attention on it, as a rule I at the same time
want something of the object. It is supposed to say something to me;
I am somehow aiming at a consciousness of what the object is, what
its features are, what belongs to it, whether it is pleasurable or valu-
able, whether it serves as an end or as a means to an end – in short,
what or whether this or that holds or is valid of it. Insofar as this is the
case, we designate the apperception as a questioning. … Now to my
questioning of the object there corresponds its answer. I have already
referred to this as the ‘demand’ or ‘claim’ or ‘claim of right’ of the
object. … The act of recognition is the judgement. (Lipps 1909: 189)
26 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

For Lipps, the comportment of judgement involves a kind of dialogue

with objects. The thought may well strike us as bizarre – as if judgement
involves living in a world of uncommonly assertive, animated things.
But for Lipps this odd vision serves to articulate something fundamental
about the character of judgemental comportment. To adopt the stance of
a judge is to take up a questioning comportment toward things, and then
to be accountable to the demands they make upon us in their replies.

5 Objections

With the main elements of Lipps’ considered theory of judgement in

hand, we can turn now to assess its resiliency in the face of two objec-
tions. The first is a phenomenological objection; the second concerns
the specific charge of psychologism. In considering these objections my
aim is not so much to defend Lipps’ theory down the line, but rather to
get a better sense for his position by surveying its resources for respond-
ing to criticism.
Start with the straightforwardly phenomenological objection. I reach
into my pocket and pull out the loose change that I find there. I look at
the coins; I count them; I add up their value. We have here a mundane
instance of judgement – or rather of a series of judgements. If Lipps is
right then each of these judgements involves a Gegenstandsforderung. For
it is, on his account, only in virtue of its relationship to the demand
from the object that my psychological state amounts to a judgement.
But is there any such consciousness? I try the exercise again, attend-
ing this time closely to my conscious state in doing so. I am aware of
the coins, of counting, of adding. But where is the experience of the
demand for recognition? Where is the sound of the objects answering
my queries with their Rechtsanspruch? Lipps’ theory of judgement seems
to run afoul of the phenomenological facts.
There are at least two different ways in which Lipps might reply to
such an objection. He could tackle it head on, trying to show that the
texture of consciousness does indeed exhibit the structures and con-
tents that his theory requires. Don’t we in effect have here an instance
of ‘the game of question and answer’? In looking at the coins I am in
effect asking a series of questions of them: How many are you? How
much are you worth? And the objects provide the answer. (Or perhaps
better: I provide the answer by allowing myself to be guided by them.)
There is no explicit saying on their part, of course, but my questions
are answered, and are answered by the objective facts of the situation.
And isn’t there also a way in which the facts in this situation demand
 Wayne Martin 27

recognition? The language may seem a bit extravagant, but doesn’t it

nonetheless capture something important about my interaction with
the coins? The facts are with them; to engage in judging (here in the
form of counting and calculating) is to be subject to the requirement
that my representation conform to them.
But to answer in this way is very much to address the objection on its
own terms, and as such runs the danger of ending in a kind of standoff –
a notorious danger (and unproductive outcome) in phenomenological
inquiries. But there is an alternative reply available to Lipps. It is true
that we are not always consciously aware of the demands of objects;
this much can be conceded to the phenomenologist. But we must also
remember that the proposed account is offered as a psychological theory
of judgement, not as a phenomenological description of the facts of
consciousness. The claim is that the demands of objects are operative in
our experience during the exercise of judgement – not that we are in
every instance aware of them.
Consider a variation in the case of the coins from my pockets. Suppose
I am desperate for a coffee, or a pack of cigarettes. My wallet is empty,
so I rummage through my trouser pockets, scouring for loose change.
I count the coins; I add up their value. I reluctantly conclude that their
total value falls considerably short of the amount I need for my pur-
chase. I count again to be sure, then glumly put down the coins. Here
again we have a series of judgements, once again of the accountancy
variety. What is different here, of course, is the way in which my wishful
thinking and inclination are pulling for one outcome in the exercise,
while the objective facts pull firmly in the other. Under circumstances
such as these, some version of Lipps’ Gegenstandsforderung does indeed
manifest itself in consciousness. It seems fair to say that the pecuni-
ary facts assert themselves in this situation; they categorically demand
recognition, and I am apperceptively aware of their demand. That is
exactly what leaves me feeling glum.
Lipps’ claim is, in effect, that the demands of which I am aware in the
second case are pre-apperceptively at work in my experience in the first
case. It is often the case that forces operate upon us without our being
explicitly aware of them. Swimming in the sea I am swept along by the
current; I only become aware of its force at the point where I try to swim
against it. And what is true of physical forces is true of their normative
cousins as well. The social demand to keep quiet in the concert hall may
only make itself felt when I feel the urge to cough – but it was operative
in my experience all along. So evidence for the presence of objective
demands need not come from direct phenomenological reports; it can
28 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

come indirectly, by the way in which they shape my behaviour. And

this is just what we find in the case of the demands of objects. On occa-
sion they make their presence explicitly felt, particularly where I judge
(as Lipps puts it) unhappily. But the evidence of their presence can be
found at work in every instance of judgement, in the ways in which our
judgemental comportment is subtly responsive to the demands of the
objective evidence.
Consider secondly the anti-psychologistic objection. Certainly this
was the objection that was made most noisily by Lipps’ contemporar-
ies; in the wake of Husserl’s Logical Investigations it even threatened to
split the nascent ‘Munich School’. The objection here can take a variety
of different forms, but the core allegation is that Lipps has conflated
the logical and the psychological. As we have seen, Lipps’ ambition
was to re-establish logic as a branch of psychology, firmly rooted in
the scientific study of thought and reasoning. The critics of this sort of
‘psychologism’ famously included Frege and Husserl, and less famously
the young Heidegger as well as several of Lipps’ own students.22
According to these critics, logic must be understood to be ‘pure’ (i.e.,
not empirical) and hence independent of psychological investigations.
The arguments adduced in support of this thesis were diverse, and very
robustly pressed. Since logic aspires to strict universality, it cannot find
its foundations in any merely inductive science; since logic aspires to
necessity, it cannot be based on the contingent and local facts of psy-
chology; since logic aspires to exactitude, it cannot be content with
essentially vague psychological concepts; since logic is presupposed
in natural scientific reasoning, it cannot, on pain of circularity, appeal
to natural science for its authority. It is on the basis of these sorts of
objections that Heidegger, in his PhD thesis, complains that Lipps’
introduction of feeling into the logic of judgement is ‘a contradiction no
less blatant than an appeal to wooden iron’.23
Certainly one safe option at this juncture would simply be to distin-
guish two disputed questions. One part of Lipps’ theoretical ambition
was to develop a psychological theory of judgement as it figures in the
course of our experience – distinguishing it from other psychological
episodes and articulating its distinctive psychological character. Lipps
himself also held the further ambition to use his psychological theory of
judgement as the foundation for a new approach in logic. But this was
in effect an application of the psychological theory, rather than a compo-
nent of the theory itself. By distinguishing these two questions (‘What
is judgement as a psychological episode?’ vrs ‘What is the relationship
between logic and psychology?’) we can insulate Lipps’ psychological
 Wayne Martin 29

theory from the outcome of the debate over psychologism. However the
latter dispute is settled, it does not have a direct bearing on the viability
of Lipps’ distinctive psychological analysis of judgement in terms of the
‘demands of objects’.
For better or for worse, Lipps did not see fit to adopt this safe option,
and his own response to the charge of psychologism was considerably
more complex. Some Husserlian commentators have claimed that Lipps
essentially became a convert to the anti-psychologistic movement,
much as Husserl himself had done in response to earlier criticisms.24 But
this is at best a partial truth. It is true that Lipps used the occasion of
a celebrated 1903 meeting of the Bavarian Academy to openly criticise
psychologism.25 But when we look carefully at how he defined his terms
on that occasion, it becomes clear that the view he is there criticising is
not exactly the position that Husserl found objectionable in Lipps’ own
published views.26 But while it is not true that Lipps folded to his anti-
psychologistic critics, neither did he dig in his heels in defence of his
boldest psychologistic doctrines. Instead, we find Lipps trying to effect
a subtle and strategic alignment with the position of his critics. The
details of this strategy are elaborate, and I cannot hope to do full justice
to them here. But we can appreciate the main thrust of Lipps’ position
(and at the same time see something more of the texture of his theory)
by attending to the subtle theoretical and rhetorical use he makes of the
notion of Geltung.
Geltung, along with its semantic variants (gelten, gültig, Gültigkeit, etc.),
can be a difficult term to capture exactly in English translation. It is, in
one sense, quite straightforward: Geltung is validity, and as such figures
as a central concept – arguably the central concept – in logic. But in order
to appreciate Lipps’ use of the concept, and also its place in the debate
over psychologism, it helps to start from a more mundane use of the
term. Think in the first instance of Geltung as a feature of train tickets, or
stamps, or licenses of one kind of another. In English we commonly talk
of ‘validity’ in this sense: this train ticket is valid for travel; that one is
not valid on this journey. My five pound note is valid as legal currency;
my deutsche marks are not. (The German word for money, Geld, is an
etymological variant on Geltung.) By approaching the notion of validity
from this angle, we can perhaps already begin to see an internal con-
nection between validity and a kind of claim or demand. A valid ticket
makes a certain kind of claim on the actions of train conductors or theatre
ushers; and it establishes certain rights for its bearer. Indeed we only
properly understand what the ticket’s validity consists in once we have an
accounting of what those claims and corresponding rights amount to.
30 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

The notion of Geltung occupied a central place in the turn-of-the-century

disputes over psychologism. Part of its role in the anti-psychologistic
arguments will sound familiar to modern ears: psychology may be
concerned with the causes of my beliefs; logic is concerned only with
the validity of my arguments. But the construal of Geltung had a much
broader reach than simply this. Following an approach made influential
by Hermann Lotze, a number of the figures in the anti-psychologistic
movement treated Geltung in quasi-ontological terms. In Lotze himself
this took the form of an outright defence of Platonism – a view which
found its most important echo in Frege’s notorious talk of a ‘third realm’
of abstracta, distinct from both mind and matter. The young Heidegger,
who was likewise influenced by Lotze’s example, treated Geltung as the
medium of complexity of judgements and arguments. Just as a triangle
is a complex whole in the medium of space, so an argument is a com-
plex whole in the medium of Gültigkeit. The distinction between being
and validity – between es gibt and es gilt – thus came to occupy a central
place in the rhetoric of the anti-psychologistic position.27
It is against this background that we can consider the strategic use
that Lipps came to make of the notion of Geltung. The concept came
to occupy an increasingly prominent place in his theory, particularly
in the wake of the controversy in Munich over the upshot of Husserl’s
criticisms. Already in the 1903 edition of Leitfaden we can see elements
of Lipps’ strategy coming into view. One striking feature of the 1903
position is Lipps’ readiness to distinguish Nötigung as a specifically psycho-
logical concept from Forderung as a logical concept. Lipps: ‘Here it is in
general to be noted: just as certainly as the demand [Forderung] that is
here under discussion is a logical concept, just so clearly is compulsion
[Nötigung] in general not a logical but a psychological concept’ (Lipps
1903: 59). A Grundzüge-style account of my representation and thought
as the outcome of compulsions, would, on this view, be a strictly psycho-
logical explanation. We enter the domain of logic, Lipps now claims,
precisely insofar as we understand my psychic activity as a response to
experienced objective (or as Lipps sometimes puts it: logical) demands.
In the 1903 chapter on judgement he goes so far as to offer a definition
of judgement (one of several offered there) as ‘consciousness of validity’
[Geltungsbewußtsein]. On the same page he alerts the readers of this psycho-
logy textbook that this whole chapter is concerned with ‘specifically
logical matters’ and as such can stand more-or-less alone.28 What we see
here, I suggest, is a careful strategy of concession-without-capitulation
to the anti-psychologistic critics. It is concessive insofar as it recognises
a set of sui generis logical concepts; it is not capitulation insofar as it
 Wayne Martin 31

relies on the notion of validity-consciousness, a monstrous hybrid from

the perspective of the purists.
Once again it is in the 1909 revisions to Leitfaden that we find the
most developed deployment of this theme, and at the same time Lipps’
most nuanced position as regards the agentive character of judgement.
Lipps there characterises our experience of the demands of objects
[Forderungserlebnis] as consciousness of validity [Giltigkeitsbewußtsein],
and even suggests a way in which his talk of demands can be translated
into an idiom of validity:

Instead of saying that I am conscious that the rose demands to be

thought of as red, I can just as well say that I am conscious that the
redness ‘holds’ [es gelte] of the rose, or that the act of thought, in
which I think of the rose as red … is valid [gelte]. (Lipps 1909: 31)

To describe a thought as is valid, Lipps claims, amounts to saying that

our acknowledgement of it is demanded by the object. By proposing
the interchangeability of his own preferred idiom of Forderungen and the
preferred logical language of Geltung, Lipps seeks to assert, as it were,
the logical credentials of his theory of judgement. But at the same time
we must notice that for Lipps it is an act of thought [Denkakt] that is
described as valid. Validity, for Lipps, is not some wholly abstract relation
among propositional contents; we understand the validity of judgements
only in terms of the claims they make on the thinking of judges.
One passage in particular from the 1909 text captures the nuance of
Lipps’ mature position. It is another passage of considerable grammatical
complexity, in this instance combined with an oddly poetic vision of our
relation to the objects of judgement. It comes in the context of Lipps’
description of the forms of psychological ‘striving’ [Streben] that have
their origins or ‘roots’ in our experience of objective demands. Lipps:

Every such striving is a letting-oneself-be-determined, and hence a

being-determined by the object. In my striving, I am determined by
the object, by the way in which it confronts me, by its claim upon
me. But the manner in which an object, in accordance with its nature,
confronts me with its claim upon me – the ‘Du sollst’ that it calls out
to me, the manner in which it brings itself to validity, – this is exactly
what I here and in general mean by Forderung. (Lipps 1909: 35)

We can find distilled in this passage two of Lipps’ mature insights into
the nature of judgement. The first can be seen in the principled middle
32 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

ground that Lipps here stakes out between the voluntarist or agentive
conception of judgement and the Humean, anti-voluntarist position that
had been his original point of departure. As we can see here, the Lipps of
1909 continues to emphasise that judgement involves a form of ‘being
determined by objects’; it is in this sense something that happens to me.
But this determination is at the same time a form of self-determination, a
Sichbestimmenlasssen, or ‘letting oneself be determined’ by the object. To
be a judge, as Lipps sees it, is to have our ears attuned to the ‘you should’
(or ‘thou shallt’ – Lipps here uses the verbal form familiar from Luther’s
translation of the Ten Commandments) that objects ‘call out to us’. To
heed that call is to allow oneself to be determined in one’s psychological
activity by the objective, normative claims that objects place upon me.
But what is particularly important in the context of the anti-
psychologistic challenge is the curious talk of the object ‘bringing itself to
validity’ [sich zur Geltung … bringen] in making its demand of the judge.
This represents the second key insight in this dense passage. This strange
formulation – as if the object could some how leverage itself into
the domain of validities – is echoed elsewhere in the 1909 text, for
instance in Lipps’ description of the Forderung as ‘the object’s way of
manifesting itself to me [mir kundzugeben] as such, or making itself valid
as an object’ (Lipps 1909: 189). Here it is useful to return to our example
of the validity of tickets and coins. A ticket in itself is simply a bit of paper.
It has geometric and physical features, it interacts causally with the objects
in its environment, etc. But its status as a ticket (or ‘as a validity’) lies not
in these physical or causal features, but rather in the claim it makes and
rights it creates. According to Lipps, it is precisely insofar as objects make
their claims upon us that they enter the domain of validity. In Lipps’ poetic
language: the object makes itself valid (or ‘procures validity for itself’ – the
verb form is sich Geltung … veschaffen) by ‘calling out’ its demand. None
of this can be expected to placate Lipps’ anti-psychologistic critics, for
whom validity is a feature that third realmish entities hold in splendidly
indifferent isolation from both subjects and objects. Nonetheless, it does
perhaps help us understand how Lipps thought that his psycho-logical
theory of judgement, acknowledgement and demand bore a special affi-
nity to logic, despite its reliance on psychological concepts.29

Notes
1. Husserl 1900/01. Husserl’s critique of Lipps is developed in Chapter III of the
Prolegomena.
2. Heidegger 1913; see in particular Abschnitt IV.
 Wayne Martin 33

3. Stein 1917.
4. Freud 1986: 325; quoted in Montag et al. 2008: 1261.
5. Mind published a review of Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, together with
a reply from Lipps himself (Whittaker 1885; Lipps 1886). Leitfaden der
Psychologie was reviewed in the first volume of the journal that would subse-
quently become The Journal of Philosophy (Fullerton 1904).
6. James 1890: II, 221n; quoted in Bokhove and Schuhmann 1991: 113.
7. Bokhove and Schuhmann 1991.
8. The series, Beiträge zur Aesthetik (Werner Verlag), published 14 books between
1890 and 1912.
9. Lipps 1893: 1.
10. Citations to the Grundzüge are given to the numbered paragraphs (§) of the
1893 edition.
11. There is one danger in this translation of Nötigung. In English, to speak of a
compulsion in a psychological context carries associations of pathology (e.g.,
‘obsessive compulsive disorder’). Lipps’ notion of Nötigung is not itself meant
to suggest anything pathological.
12. Cited in Heidegger 1913: 83. The quotation is taken from the front matter of
Lipps’ German edition of Hume’s Treatise, the first portion of which appeared
in 1895. Lipps’ translation, which was undertaken in collaboration with Else
Köttgen and J. Bona Meyer, still forms the basis of the standard edition of the
Treatise in German: Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, Philosophische Bibliothek 283.
13. In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume famously argues that belief ‘depends
not on our will’ (Hume 1739: 624).
14. See Hume’s Treatise, I.1.i (Hume 1739: 1–7).
15. Lipps uses Wahrnehmung in the narrower and more colloquial sense to refer
to one species of perception: the kind of conscious experience I enjoy in
specifically sensory experience of a present object.
16. Lipps 1902a: 9. Elsewhere he talks about the feeling of being ‘determined by
something alien’, or ‘by a not-I’. In all this language we can recognise the
legacy of Fichte’s philosophical vocabulary and approach. For Fichte’s appeal
to ‘the feeling of freedom’ and ‘the feeling of necessity’, see Fichte 1797: §1;
for a discussion see Martin 1997.
17. See, e.g., Lipps 1909: 32.
18. According to Fullerton’s review, the whole book (which runs to 350 pages in
the first edition), was written in the course of two or three months (Fullerton
1904: 382).
19. It is worth adding that Lipps still finds a place for psychological compulsion
[Nötigung] in his theory, even after the centre of his attention switches to a
concern with demand [Forderung]. He holds, for instance, that in the case of
sense perception, we can distinguish both Nötigung and Forderung: the object
both compels us to represent it, and demands to be recognised. In the case of
persistent illusion or hallucination the can two fall asunder: when we come
to recognise the illusory character of a certain experience, we may continue
to be subject to a perceptual compulsion, but the demand for recognition
dissipates. See Lipps 1902b: 19.
20. Lipps 1903: 58–9; see also Lipps 1909: 32ff.
21. Heidegger 1913: 67; for a discussion of Heidegger’s treatment of Lipps, see
Martin 2006: 136ff.
34 Theodor Lipps and the Psycho-Logical Theory of Judgement

22. For an account of the dispute among Lipps’ students and colleagues in
Munich, see Avé-Lallemant 1975.
23. Heidegger 1913: 97.
24. See in particular Spiegelberg 1960: 258n6.
25. Lipps 1905b.
26. In his Sitzungsbericht Lipps claims that the ‘Grundwesen’ of psychologism lies
in the treatment of objects as ‘complexes of sensations or representations’
(Lipps 1905b: 522). It is thus closer to what we might call phenomenalism
than to the specific thesis as regards the relation between psychology on the
one hand and logic or epistemology on the other.
27. For an eloquent statement of the ontology of the Third Realm see Lotze,
‘The World of Ideas’ (Lotze 1874: II, 200–222). For the young Heidegger’s
appropriation of Lotze’s ontology, see, e.g., Heidegger 1913: 111–12.
28. Lipps 1903:141n.
29. I am grateful to the organisers and participants at the 2009 Zurich work-
shop on judgement for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Mark Textor provided helpful suggestions on the challenges of translation,
and Fabian Freyenhagen helped me in thinking through the strengths and
weaknesses of Lipps’ position. Support for the preparation of this article
was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United
Kingdom (Project AH/H001301/1).

Bibliography
Bokhove, N. and Schumann, K. (1991) ‘Bibliographie der Schriften von Theodor
Lipps’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 45(1), 112–30.
Avé-Lallemant, E. (1975) Die Nachlässe der Münchener Phänomenologen in der
Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz).
Fichte, J.G. (1797) ‘Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre’; citations refer
to the English translation by Daniel Breazeale: ‘First Introduction to the
Wissenschaftslehre,’ in J.G. Fichte: Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and
Other Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994).
Freud, S. (1986) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887–1904,
translated and edited by J. Masson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
Fullerton, G. (1904) ‘Review of Lipps: Leitfaden der Psychologie’, The Journal
of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods [subsequently The Journal of
Philosophy], 1(14), 382–5.
Heidegger, M. (1913) Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus: Ein kritisch-positiver
Beitrag zur Logik; citations refer to the pagination of Martin Heidegger: Frühe
Schriften (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972), 1–129.
Hume, D. (1739) A Treatise of Human Nature (London: John Noon); citations
refer to the pagination of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, edited and with
an analytical index by L.A. Selby-Bigge, second edition revised by P. Nidditch
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
Husserl, E. (1900–01) Logische Untersuchungen. Citations refer to translation by
J.N. Findlay: Logical Investigations. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).
James, W. (1890) Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt).
 Wayne Martin 35

Kesserling, M. (1962) ‘Theodor Lipps (1851–1914): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Psychologie’, Psychologische Beiträge, 7, 73–100.
Lipps, T. (1880) ‘Die Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie und die Wundt’sche Logik’,
Philosophische Monatshefte, 16, 28–58, 198–226, 427–45.
—— (1883) Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens (Bonn: Cohen).
—— (1886) ‘Prof. Th. Lipps’s “Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens [reply to
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—— (1891) Die Streit über die Tragödie (Hamburg: Voss).
—— (1893, 19122nd, 19233rd) Grundzüge der Logik (Hamburg and Leipzig: Voss).
—— (1894) ‘Subjektive Kategorien in objektiven Urteilen’, Philosophische
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—— (1898) Komik und Humor: Eine Psychologisch-Ästhetische Untersuchung
(Hamburg: Voss).
—— (1902a) ‘Vom Fühlen, Wollen und Denken’, Schriften der Gesellschaft für
psychologische Forschung Heft 13&14 (Leipzig: Barth).
—— (1902b) Einheiten und Relationen: Eine Skizze zur Psychologie der Apperzeption
(Leipzig: Barth).
—— (1903, 19062nd, 19093rd) Leitfaden der Psychologie (Leipzig: Engelmann).
—— (1905a) ‘Bewußtsein und Gegenstände’, Psychologische Untersuchungen,
1, 1–203.
—— (1905b) ‘Inhalt und Gegenstand; Psychologie und Logik’. Separat-Abdruck aus
den Sitzungsberichten der Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-
Historische Klasse 4, 511–669.
—— (1906) ‘Über ‘Urteilsgefühle’, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 7, 1–32.
—— (1909) See Lipps (1903).
Lotze, H. (1874) Logik; drei Bücher, vom Denken, vom Untersuchen und vom Erkennen
(Leipzig: Hirzel); citations refer to the reprint of the translation by Bernard
Bosanquet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888; rpt. New York: Garland, 1980).
Martin, W. (1997) Idealism and Objectivity: Understanding Fichte’s Jena Project
(Stanford: Stanford University Press).
—— (2006) Theories of Judgement: Psychology, Logic, Phenomenology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
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Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 6, 22–58.
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Empathy: 1851–1914’, American Journal of Psychiatry 165, 1261–3.
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für philosophische Forschung, 37(4), 606–16.
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Stein: On the Problem of Empathy (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989).
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10(40), 605–9.
3
Truth, Value, and Truth Value.
Frege’s Theory of Judgement and
its Historical Background
Gottfried Gabriel
Friedrich Schiller University of Jena

In Frege’s theory of judgement, the concept of truth is closely connected

with the concept of assertoric force – a connection which justifies us in
speaking of a (truth) theory of acknowledgement (Anerkennung). Frege
is well aware of the paradoxical nature of his attempts to explicate his
views (i.e. to express them in language). The paradox arises because we
are concerned here with saying what cannot be (logically) said. Frege
thus anticipates Wittgenstein’s view that the categorial discourse in phi-
losophy does not consist of sentences with a truth value, but rather of
‘elucidations’. Two things are central to Frege’s theory of acknowledge-
ment: first, the distinction between the act of judging (pragmatically
expressed through the judgement stroke) and the content of judge-
ment; and second, the value-theoretic understanding of the notion
of truth values. It will be shown that in developing his own logic,
Frege was inspired by traditional logic, and by the Southwest School of
Neo-Kantianism in particular.
Although Frege, in line with the Aristotelian tradition of the proposi-
tional concept of truth, defines ‘thoughts’ as ‘something for which the
question of truth can arise at all’,1 he does not consider ‘true’ a genuine
predicate (or truth a property) of thoughts. This is because the use of
such a predicate is neither necessary nor sufficient for acknowledging
the truth of a thought. Rather, acknowledgement is expressed ‘in the
form of the assertoric sentence’. Thus Frege notes:

We do not need the word ‘true’ for this. And even when we do use
it the properly assertoric force does not lie in it, but in the assertoric
sentence-form; and where this form loses its assertoric force the
word ‘true’ cannot put it back again. This happens when we are not
speaking seriously.2
36
 Gottfried Gabriel 37

Although Frege holds that the use of the predicate ‘true’ is redundant,
this redundancy does not extend to the concept of truth itself. It may
therefore be misleading, in Frege’s case, to speak of a theory of redun-
dancy with regard to truth. It is not truth itself which is redundant, but
only the use of the word ‘true’.3 What Frege contests here is the view
that statements of the form ‘this thought is true’ – which look as though
they were attributing the predicate ‘true’ to the subject ‘this thought’ –
logically express that a thought is subsumed under the concept of truth.
Against this view, Frege argues: ‘But here we are misled by language. We
don’t have the relation of an object to a property, but that of the sense
of a sign to its meaning.’4 This may be the reason why Frege systemati-
cally avoids speaking of a concept of truth. Such a way of speaking could
further reinforce the (wrong) impression that truth was a property. Thus,
he says that the word (rather than the concept) ‘true’ ‘points the way’ for
logic, insofar as ‘it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth’.5
If we drop this terminological caution for brevity’s sake here, we can
put the point as follows: the difficulties in explicating the meaning of
the word ‘true’ are not to be taken as arguments against the relevance
of the concept of truth. Rather, what these difficulties show is that this
concept is ‘altogether sui generis’.6 Frege here emphasises the categorial
status of the concept of truth, which explains why the concept of truth
cannot be defined: it is indefinable not because it is hopelessly con-
fused, but because any attempt at definition ends either in a circle or
in an infinite regress. If we were to test the application of the defining
characterisation (the definiens) of the concept of truth to a particular
case, we would have to find out whether it is true that something is true.
Thus, when Frege emphasises that it ‘seems likely that the content of
the word “true” is sui generis and indefinable’,7 this uniqueness of the
concept of truth is due to the fact that it cannot be defined for catego-
rial reasons.
But why should it be so difficult to define categorial concepts?
According to Frege, this is because categorial concepts are logically
basic, and what is logically basic cannot be broken down into different
marks or properties.8 We therefore have to replace definitions with
categorial elucidations. Frege was one of the first to note the paradoxical
character of categorial discourse. One prominent example is his attempt
to capture the categorial peculiarity of concepts, which results from
their unsaturated nature. When we try to talk about concepts, they
are objectified through this very attempt.9 Explicating the concept of
the concept thus seems to destroy the categorical difference between
concepts and objects. In this way, categorial (metalinguistic) discourse
38 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

infringes upon a distinction which it tries to establish as binding for

scientific object language. Frege draws the conclusion that philosophical
language, which elucidates categorial distinctions, is not (or at least
not always) subject to the criteria of logical-syntactic well-formedness.
Philosophical language can therefore be seen as a form of improper
speech which has to rely on ‘figures of speech’ and ‘hints’;10 it is of a
propaedeutic nature and belongs more in the realm of rhetoric than
logic. Frege here anticipates Wittgenstein’s view that categorial insights
cannot be spoken of, but only be shown, although he does not draw as
radical consequences from it.11
Just as the impossibility of exact definition does not affect the rele-
vance of the concept of the concept, the same also holds for the concept
of truth. Here, too, we can only ‘elucidate’ what is meant. It seems a
paradox that the word ‘true’, which does not contribute anything to the
sense of a sentence, is for this very reason ‘fitted to indicate the essence
of logic’.12 Although the word ‘true’, we might say with Wittgenstein,
does not ‘speak of’ anything, it does ‘show’ something. In order to
emphasise the paradox, Frege makes use of formulations which are
themselves paradoxical:

So the word ‘true’ seems to make the impossible possible: it allows

what corresponds to the assertoric force to assume the form of a
contribution to the thought. And although this attempt miscarries,
or rather through the very fact that it miscarries, it indicates what is
characteristic of logic.13

The hint or categorial ‘cue’ which the use of the word ‘true’ provides
has to be clarified in categorial discourse: Frege calls this ‘logical work’.
Logical work does not mean work within logic, or drawing logical infer-
ences, but rather work at logic, or developing logic and its categories
from language. In an almost Wittgensteinian fashion, Frege character-
ises this process as a running against the boundaries of language with
the means of language:

Logical work just is, to a large extent, a struggle with the logical defects
of language, and yet language remains for us an indispensable tool.14

In contrast to the attempts at defining the concept of the concept, the

difficulties in analysing the concept of truth do not only lead to para-
dox. The concept of truth is indefinable not only because of the fact
that truth is a logically basic concept,15 but also because any attempt
 Gottfried Gabriel 39

at definition is inevitably circular. Because this circularity is inevitable,

it must be regarded, in the end, not as something negative, but as a
positive fact. It provides evidence that the concept of truth cannot be
eliminated and that we cannot go beyond it in discursive considerations
due to its transcendental nature. It needed a thoroughgoing logical
analysis before the distinction between the propositional content and
the assertoric force of a proposition became clear. This can be taken to
indicate that the concept of truth (in the sense of a theory of acknowl-
edgement) is so fundamental that it is normally taken for granted and
already implicitly contained in the linguistic form of a statement.
In Frege’s theory of acknowledgement, a thought is assigned the truth
value of the True through an act of acknowledging its truth. We must
keep in mind, however, that the thought itself is true independent of
this act of acknowledging it as true. The label ‘theory of acknowledge-
ment’, therefore, must not be misunderstood as analogous to ‘theory of
correspondence’, for then, truth would consist in being acknowledged
as true, which is categorial nonsense. The same holds true, by the way,
for the consensus theory of truth: consensus should not be made into a
criterion of truth itself, for a consensus is nothing but an acknowledge-
ment arrived at collectively (under ideal circumstances).
Nevertheless, the label ‘theory of acknowledgement’ is justified
because the elucidation of the indefinable concept of truth goes hand
in hand with the elucidation of the act of acknowledging truth, which
is performed through the act of judgement or assertion. Although truth
as such is independent of the act of acknowledging a statement as true,
Frege’s hermeneutic approach to elucidating the concept of truth seems
to be closely connected to an understanding of the role that is played
by the act of acknowledgement:

When we understand a sentence uttered with assertoric force, we add

our acknowledgement of its truth. If such a sentence which is uttered
with assertoric force expresses a false thought, then this sentence will
be logically defective and, strictly speaking, incomprehensible.16

It is not the semantic content or the sense of the sentence which is

incomprehensible, but its assertive use. Just as the elucidations of the
concept of the object and the concept of the concept are mutually
dependent on one another, so we cannot elucidate the concept of truth
without also elucidating the concept of the judgement or vice versa:
truth is that which is being acknowledged in judgement; and judge-
ment is that which acknowledges truth.
40 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

Because on Frege’s analysis, the acknowledgement of the truth of a

statement lies in the ‘assertoric force’ with which the corresponding
sentence is uttered, Frege can be considered the founder of the speech
act analysis of truth.17 However, we must keep in mind that Frege’s
view is not constructed as an alternative to the ordinary theories of
truth (such as the theory of correspondence, the coherence theory, or
the theory of verification). In fact, his account of truth is neutral with
respect to such theories. Frege is concerned with the question of how
the acknowledgement of truth is expressed, whereas the traditional
theories of truth try to answer the question what truth as such con-
sists in or how truth can be established. As becomes clear already from
the names of these theories, they are defined through the respective
criterion of truth which they identify. In this respect, it would be more
appropriate to call them ‘theories of identifying truth’ rather than simply
‘theories of truth’. Frege’s theory, by contrast, is of the same type as the
theory of redundancy (which in fact developed from it): it does not say
anything about criteria of truth, but rather about the use of the word
‘true’. Frege’s theory of acknowledgement is not really a theory of truth
but rather a theory of judgement or assertion, and is thus perfectly
compatible with the traditional ‘theories of truth’, particularly with
the theory of correspondence. In fact, Frege does not criticise the latter
as such, but only insofar as it attempts to define truth with the help of
correspondence.
The concept of acknowledgement refers us to a normative concept
of value. It is values themselves or the values of things that are the
objects of acknowledgement. This is especially relevant in relation to
Frege, whose talk of truth values is often seen merely as an analogy to
the mathematical value of a function. Indeed, the introduction of truth
values allowed Frege to transfer the notion of functions to logic and
thus to replace the subject-predicate-analysis of propositions by the
function-argument-analysis.18 But this is not the whole story.
It is often assumed that Frege developed his thoughts out of the blue,
independent of anything or anyone before him. In fact, however, his
views take up and bring together various developments whose begin-
nings can be traced back to the traditional logic of the nineteenth cen-
tury. This is especially true for Frege’s theory of acknowledgement: first,
for the distinction between the assertoric force and the propositional
content of an assertion; and second, for the value-theoretic interpreta-
tion of the assertoric force as that which assigns the value of the True to
a propositional content. I will reconstruct some of these developments
in the following.
 Gottfried Gabriel 41

Traditional logic separated the illocutionary act of assertion from

the propositional content through its distinction between the act of
judging and the content of judgement. In contrast to Frege, however,
philosophers mostly assumed that there are two opposed acts with an
equal status: affirmation and negation. Thus, when Frege notes that he
uses ‘the word “thought” more or less in the sense “judgement” has in
the writings of logicians’,19 he does not do justice to the actual discus-
sions of the nineteenth century. Already Bolzano emphasised that ‘a
judgement is something completely different from the mere idea of a
sentence’; only if we regard a sentence ‘as true’ do we actually judge.20
Lotze’s interpretation of the truth-untruth-distinction as a ‘distinction
of values’ between ‘complexes of ideas’ (Vorstellungsverbindungen)21 in
particular is of great consequence in this context. It was the starting
point for a theory of the validity of judgements on value-theoretic foun-
dations. Lotze defined ‘validity or invalidity … as objective predicates …
which apply to the content of a judgement as a whole (as their subject)’.
It is in this sense that he takes the affirmative judgement ‘S is P’ and the
negative judgement ‘S is not P’ to be a double-judgement: He speaks of
the ‘splitting of each of these judgements in two’. The subject is ‘the
same connection of S and P’ in both cases, and this connection is then
subjected to ‘two opposed subsidiary judgements’.22
Thus the course had been set for the distinction between the content
of a judgement and the act of judging. At the same time, the question
arises in what way affirmation and negation are to be distinguished:
does this distinction only apply to the level of the acts of affirmation
and negation, or moreover to the level of positive and negative contents?
Lotze, as well as Bergmann, draw such a distinction only on the level of
the acts of judgement. Underlying both acts, on this view, is a neutral
content which is ‘as yet free of affirmation and negation’, or ‘neither
affirmative nor negative’. The actual act (of judgement) then decides
positively or negatively about the validity of this neutral content.23
The view that judgement ‘lies in assertion itself’ was held particularly
emphatically by Sigwart, who contested the equal status of affirmative
and negative judgements.24 Negative judgements are not ‘as fundamen-
tal’25 as their affirmative counterparts; in fact, every negative judgement
presupposes a positive judgement against which it can be directed. The
object of negation, according to Sigwart, is always ‘a positive judgement
which has been performed or attempted’.26 A negative judgement is
thus considered a (negative) meta-judgement about a positive judge-
ment. What Sigwart is criticising is the view that, corresponding to the
connection in affirmative judgements, negative judgements include
42 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

a separation. His arguments were directed against the assumption that

negative judgements are based on a negative copula. Such a copula, as
‘a bond which separates’, does not seem to make any sense.27
Sigwart provides decisive arguments for a distinction between the act
of judging (Urteilsfunktion) and the content of a judgement, particularly
in his historical and systematic analyses on hypothetical judgements.
He argues that, in a hypothetical judgement, what is asserted is only the
(necessary) connection between two contents, but not these contents
themselves, which are ‘mere hypotheses’, i.e. they are to be thought of
as ‘problematic’. The assertion holds only if the condition is true: ‘If the
condition does not hold, I am not claiming anything.’28 Sigwart thus
points out that a hypothetical judgement does not connect judgements
themselves, but rather their contents. ‘When we use the term “judge-
ment” only for statements which aim at being valid, it is inaccurate
to consider a conditional sentence a connection of judgements.’
Conditional sentences contain ‘complexes of thoughts which are merely
considered as possible judgements but which are not themselves judge-
ments’.29 Only the assertion of the hypothetical connection of the two
contents is a judgement ‘in the proper sense’. Sigwart’s analysis demon-
strates that we cannot adequately understand hypothetical judgements
without the distinction between the act of judging and the content of
judgement. Frege’s later considerations yield similar results:

If someone says that in a hypothetical judgement two judgements are

set in relation to one another, he is using the word ‘judgement’ so as
not to include the recognition [Anerkennung, i.e., acknowledgement]
of the truth of anything. For even if the whole compound sentence
is uttered with assertoric force, one is still asserting neither the truth
of the thought in the antecedent nor that of the thought in the
consequent. The recognition [Anerkennung] of truth extends rather
over a thought that is expressed in the whole compound sentence.30

Sigwart, generalising his results, already comes to the same conclusions

as Frege and transforms the traditional forms of judgement into forms
of content: ‘What is commonly understood as a difference in forms of
judgement is really a difference in content.’31
A statement and the corresponding propositional question, according
to Frege, share the same propositional content but play different
illocutionary roles.32 This view, too, has its origins in traditional logic.33
In such questions, a content is only being considered, whereas a judge-
ment decides (positively or negatively) about the truth of a content.34
 Gottfried Gabriel 43

Thus, already Herbart defines judgement as ‘the decision of a question’.

Judgements are therefore necessarily either affirmative or negative.35
The quality of judgement is thereby credited a primacy over the other
forms of judgement. From here, it is but a small step to the view that
affirmation and negation constitute the essence of judgement as such.
Thus, Herbart notes: ‘This classification (according to what is called
quality) is the only one which concerns the essence of judgement; all
the others, as a random collection, have to be regarded as secondary.’36
Sigwart, too, holds that ‘every judgement is either the affirmation or the
negation of a question’. If the question remains undecided, we cannot
go beyond a problematic judgement, which is, for this reason, not a
judgement in the proper sense.37 Such cases correspond to what Frege
calls ‘mere supposition’.38
Windelband went one step further in giving the decision which lies
in judgement a practical dimension. With reference to Descartes’ and
Spinoza’s understanding of ‘affirmation’ and ‘negation’ as forms of ‘voli-
tion’, he renewed the interpretation of judgement as an act of the will.39
Already Bergmann had regarded the acts of accepting (in affirmative
judgements) and rejecting (in negative judgements) as kinds of practical
approval or disapproval involving the ‘faculty of desire’.40 Moreover,
Bergmann must be credited with having rendered more precisely the
concept of judgement by dividing it into three related acts: ‘the setting
of an object’, a ‘predication’ and a ‘decision concerning the validity
of this predication’.41 This anticipates Searle’s speech act analysis of
assertions, which distinguishes the acts of reference and predication
from the pragmatic (or illocutionary) act of acknowledging truth.42
Taking up Lotze’s value-theoretic interpretation of the distinction
between truth and untruth, Windelband draws an analogy between
logical judgement on the one hand and ethical and aesthetic judgement
on the other hand. What all these kinds of judgements share is that they
judge about a kind of value. Lotze himself, by contrast, was still commit-
ted to the distinction between the theoretical and the practical sphere.
Our ‘approval or disapproval’ in judging aesthetically or morally, as an
‘expression of a value or non-value’, is linked to ‘feelings’ and must
therefore be distinguished from the ‘merely theoretical judgement about
the truth or untruth of a sentence’.43 Lotze holds that affirmative and
negative judgements are ‘subsidiary judgements’ (Nebenurteile) about
the validity or invalidity of complexes of ideas. Windelband follows this
idea through when he regards the evaluation of the truth (of a content)
not as a subsidiary, but as the main element of judgement. It was in
this context that he introduced the term ‘truth value’ (Wahrheitswert)
44 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

as an analogy to the common values. In doing so, he emphasised

that the logical ‘truth value … has to be coordinated with the other
values.’44 Judgement itself is, for Windelband too, a double-judgement.
In addition to a theoretical judgement (in the sense of the propositional
content of judgement), there is a practical act of ‘judging’:

All sentences of cognition thus already contain a combination of

that which is judged (the theoretical judgement) with the (practical)
act of judging: they are complexes of ideas on whose truth value we
decide through ‘affirmation or negation’.45

This interpretation of the act of judging as a decision about the truth

value of a propositional content connects an act-theoretical aspect with
a value-theoretic one – a connection characteristic of the theory of
acknowledgement.
Windelband’s approach was further developed in value-theoretic
Neo-Kantianism, especially by Heinrich Rickert.46 Rickert transfers the
ethical diction to the ‘action’ (Thathandlung) of cognition: next to moral
conscience, he allows for an ‘intellectual conscience … which expresses
itself in our feeling the necessity to judge and which guides our cogni-
tion just as moral consciousness guides our action’.47 In contrast to
Nietzsche, who regards judgement as based on a ‘will to power’, Rickert
emphasises that the ‘acknowledgement of the truth value’ is the expres-
sion of a ‘will to truth’. With a critical allusion to Nietzsche, he notes:
‘A purely theoretical person may be “beyond good and evil,” but he can
never be beyond truth and falsehood.’48 Rickert thus highlights the tran-
scendental character of the distinction between truth and falsehood.
After this short overview of the developments within logic in the
nineteenth century, it should be clear that Frege forcefully brought to a
conclusion the many attempts to separate the act of judging from the
content of judgement. Above all, he reduced the two acts of judgement
(affirmation and negation) to a single one. Answering a propositional
question (or a ‘demand’ to judge, as Frege sees it)49 does not lead to one
of the two alternative acts, affirmation or negation. Already Sigwart
had contested the equal status of affirmative and negative judgements;
Frege admits for only a single act of judgement which is expressed in
the ‘assertoric force’ of a statement uttered with a claim to truth. The
negation of a statement, in turn, is reinterpreted as the assertion of a
negative propositional content (or thought).50 Accordingly, there is no
separate act of rejection for Frege. Rejection is explained in terms of the
acknowledgement of the truth of a negated thought. Acknowledging
 Gottfried Gabriel 45

is performed through judgements, which therefore can be regarded as

‘advances from a thought to a truth value’51 and whose ‘manifestation’
is an assertion.52
Judging itself becomes a mental act which is performed in time by
the subject as an ‘agent’.53 The act of judging is the result of a ‘choice’
between two opposed thoughts:

Rejecting the one and acknowledging the other is one and the same
act. Therefore there is no need of a special name, or special sign, for
rejecting a thought.54

With his distinction between ‘judgement stroke’ and ‘content stroke’,

Frege also found an expression for the separation of the act of judging
from the content of judgement in his logical notation.55 In stressing
the active character of the decision concerning the truth value of a
thought, he reveals the influence that value-theoretic Neo-Kantianism
(with its emphasis on the practical dimension of judgement) had on
him. In line with this, Frege assigns the judgement stroke a special
(‘pragmatic’) role as a sign expressing that something is being stated:
the judgement stroke does not denote anything, but instead indicates
that the content following it is being ‘asserted’.56 In this context, we
must disagree with an interpretation of the judgement stroke which
goes back to Wittgenstein: according to this view, the judgement stroke
merely indicates the propositional attitude of a speaker ‘hold as true the
propositions marked in this way’.57 While there is some truth to this,
it is not the whole picture and there is more to the judgement stroke:
it also symbolises the act of acknowledging truth.
Frege’s affinity to the value-theoretic approach is also revealed in his
emphasis on the ‘relatedness’ of logic to ethics and,58 more generally, in
his affirmative reference to the Neo-Kantian triad of values: ‘Just as the
word “beautiful” points the way for aesthetics and “good” for ethics,
so does “true” for logic.’59 The reduction of the two acts of judging to a
single act of assertion corresponds to the introduction of an additional
truth value. As we know, Frege views the two truth values – the true
and the false – as logical objects. For Rickert, by contrast, there is just
one truth value as the ‘object of cognition’, namely truth. He holds
that ‘every theoretical judgement contains the acknowledgement of the
truth value’.60 However, he eventually also recognised a connection
between the ‘object’, the ‘truth’ and the ‘theoretical significance’ of
judgements.61 Although he did not explicitly distinguish between two
different truth values, he introduced ‘the untrue or the false’ as an
46 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

independent, objective ‘negative theoretical value’.62 Frege’s theory of

acknowledgement can thus be regarded as a continuation of traditional
logic, and of insights to be found in value-theoretic Neo-Kantianism
in particular. The last step, however, Frege had to take alone: he did so
when he generalised the mathematical concept of a function so that
functions could take as their arguments any object and values, including
truth values. It is undoubtedly the introduction of truth fonctions which
accounts for the superiority of modern logic over traditional logic.
Still, we must not forget – when praising these functional aspects –
that ‘truth values’ also have a value-theoretic dimension. In particular,
Frege’s identification of the meaning (or reference) of a sentence with
its truth value shows that he deliberately plays on the connotation
of the German word Bedeutung as indicating ‘significance’ or ‘hav-
ing a value’. He thus specifically establishes the connection between
Bedeutung and value: ‘The thought loses value for us as soon as we
recognise that the Bedeutung of one of its parts is missing.’63 In the
Anglo-Saxon tradition, where Bedeutung has often been translated as
‘reference’, these important aspects have been lost (a translation of
Bedeutung as ‘significance’ may retain the relevant connotations better
here). But it is these very aspects – hence the value-theoretic, not the
functional interpretation of ‘truth values’ – that justify the talk of
‘truth values’ in the first place.
While Frege reduced the two qualities of judgement to a single one,
Windelband went the opposite way. He allows for an additional qual-
ity along with affirmation and negation when he notes the possibility
of different degrees of ‘judging’ which are distinguished by a greater or
lesser certainty or likelihood of the content judged.64 Hence, affirmation
and negation no longer stand in contradictory opposition. Rather, they
become polar-contrary opposites which, through ‘gradual weakening’,
converge upon a ‘point of indifference’ in between affirmation and
negation. This point, according to Windelband, may either be one of
‘total indifference’, or one of ‘critical indifference’.65 In the attitude of
total indifference, we merely conceive of a judgeable content, but our
(judging) will has not yet prepared to make a decision. This state cor-
responds to Frege’s ‘mere supposition’, ‘the putting of a case without
a simultaneous judgement as to its arising or not’.66 For both authors,
what we have here is – expressed in the language of speech act theory –
an illocutionarily neutral propositional content which underlies both
the speech act of a propositional question and that of an assertion.67 In
contrast to the attitude of total indifference, the will to truth has made
a decision in the case of critical indifference. The result of this decision,
 Gottfried Gabriel 47

however, is to not commit to a judgement concerning truth or falsehood,

hence neither to affirm nor to negate the statement in question. After
careful consideration of all arguments and counter-arguments and after
being convinced that there are no sufficient reasons for either affirming
or negating a statement, we may deliberately abstain from judging.
Such a ‘suspension of judgement’ may well be, as Windelband empha-
sises, ‘a real act of cognition’.68 Accordingly, he attributes a third quality
of judgement to critical indifference, which he identifies with Kant’s
modality of problematic judgements.69
The details of Windelband’s analysis may be contested. For example,
it could be asked if it would not be more consistent to assign a distinct
quality to every degree of certainty between the two poles of affirma-
tion and negation, as a kind of qualified assent. Now, the concept of
assent has traditionally been understood in different ways: on the one
hand, assent has been taken to mean a (propositional) mental state
(or disposition) in the sense of holding something as true, of a feeling
of truth (Wahrheitsgefühl). On the other hand, ‘assent’ may also denote
the mental act of acknowledging the validity of a statement. These
two meanings of ‘assent’ have not always been clearly distinguished.
If we understand assent in the sense of a mental state (or disposition),
it seems natural to distinguish different degrees of greater or lesser cer-
tainty. Windelband, despite his voluntaristic conception, assumes that
there are various degrees of judging (Beurteilung) due to the different
degrees of certainty of the feeling of being convinced. We can thus see
how, in his concept of assent, the distinction between mental act and
mental state becomes blurred.70 This problem for a theory of judgement
is expressed succinctly by the phenomenologist Reinach.71 He notes
for the corresponding speech act of assertion that, although there may
be different degrees of belief, there cannot be degrees of assertions.
‘Either something is being asserted or it is not being asserted.’ He thus
rightly insists on the categorial distinction between the state of ‘being
convinced’, which subsists through time, and the act of ‘assertion’,
which ‘so to speak, exists in a single point of time’.72
From Frege’s point of view, and taking into account Reinach’s argu-
ment, we can thus blame Windelband for contaminating the logic of
truth with epistemic modes of holding something as true. On the other
hand, from today’s point of view, we might also view things the other
way round. There is no place in Frege’s two-valued logic for critical
indifference as the indecision between truth and falsehood; epistemic
distinctions are not taken into account. In particular, the formalism of
Frege’s conceptual notation does not allow for judgements about the
48 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

judgeability of statements, nor therefore for the assertion of ‘a (temporary

or ultimate) undecidability’, as Windelband calls it.73 Introducing such
a concept of undecidability will have consequences for how we should
view the principle of the excluded middle. Like Frege, Windelband
acknowledges the validity ‘in itself’ (or the ‘objective validity’ of being
true) of this principle. However, he denies that we can turn it into a
norm, or derive a ‘validity for us’: ‘In our progress of knowledge, it often
happens that we cannot justify either affirmation or negation, hence
that logical conscience will disallow both.’74 Windelband has thus taken
an important step beyond Frege: he has shown us the way towards an
epistemologically motivated three-valued logic.

Translated by Franziska Tropschug

Notes
1. Frege 1918/19a: 60; translation in Frege 1997: 327f. In general, quotations
from Frege follow the English translations provided in the bibliography.
2. Frege 1918/19a: 63; translation in Frege 1997: 330.
3. Cf. Greimann 2004.
4. Frege 1983: 211; translation in Frege 1979: 194; cf. Frege 1892a: 34f.
5. Frege 1918/19a: 58; translation in Frege 1997: 325; cf. Frege 1983: 273.
In the latter, Frege notes that what is ‘distinctive’ about his view on logic is
that it ‘begin[s] by giving pride of place to the content of the word “true”’
(my emphasis) without talking of the content of the concept of truth.
6. Frege 1918/19a: 61; translation in Frege 1997: 328.
7. Ibid., 60; translation in Frege 1997: 327.
8. Cf. Frege 1892b: 193.
9. Cf. Frege 1983: 210.
10. Frege 1892b: 205; translation in Frege 1997: 193.
11. Cf. Gabriel 1991: especially 79–88.
12. Frege 1983: 272; translation in Frege 1979: 252; my emphasis.
13. Ibid.; translation in Frege 1979: 252.
14. Ibid.; translation in Frege 1979: 252; cf. Sluga 2002: 88f. and 93f.
15. Frege 1983: 140; translation in Frege 1979: 129: ‘Truth is obviously some-
thing so primitive and simple that it is not possible to reduce it to anything
still simpler.’ Frege emphasises that categorial discourse has to proceed via
elucidations: ‘Consequently we have no alternative but to bring out the
peculiarity of our predicate by comparing it with others. What, in the first
place, distinguishes it from all other predicates is that predicating it is always
included in predicating anything whatever.’
16. Frege 1976: 127.
17. Cf. Greimann 2002.
18. Cf. Frege 1893: i, X; translation in Frege 1997: 198: ‘How much simpler and
sharper everything becomes through the introduction of truth values only a
detailed study of this book can show.’
 Gottfried Gabriel 49

19. Frege 1918/19a: 61, footnote; translation in Frege 1997: 328; cf. Frege 1983:
201.
20. Bolzano 1929: § 290.
21. Lotze 1874: 4, introduction, II. The term ‘complex of ideas’ is also used by
Frege (in the same sense as with Lotze) in his early theory of judgement,
where he says that omitting the judgement stroke turns a judgement ‘into a
mere complex of ideas.’ (Frege 1879: 1f.; translation in Frege 1997: 52).
22. Lotze 1874: 61, § 40.
23. Ibid.; Bergmann 1895: 78f.
24. Sigwart 1904: i, 312.
25. Ibid., 155.
26. Ibid., 159.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 292ff.
29. Sigwart 1871: 37.
30. Frege 1983: 201; translation in Frege 1979: 185f. There is proof that Frege
read Sigwart’s Logik. His Nachlass contained a little notebook with passages
from and comments on volume i of the first edition from 1873. Cf. Veraart
1976: 103, N 119*.
31. Sigwart 1904: i, 313.
32. Cf. Frege 1918/19a: 62.
33. Cf. Windelband 1884: 187f.
34. Cf. Fries 1837: 118; further Lotze 1874: 61, § 40. Lotze even suggests intro-
ducing the question rather than the infinite judgement as the third quality
of judgements.
35. Herbart 1912: § 54.
36. Ibid.
37. Sigwart 1904: i, 238f.; cf. also 151–4.
38. Frege 1891: 21f.; translation in Frege 1997: 142.
39. Windelband 1884: 171.
40. Bergmann 1879: 46.
41. Bergmann 1895: 78f.; cf. Bergmann 1879: 46.
42. Cf. Searle 1969.
43. Lotze 1881: 46.
44. Windelband 1884: 173f.
45. Windelband 1915: 32.
46. Cf. in detail Goedeke 1928. Concerning Frege, Goedeke first notes that
he cannot ‘be considered a philosopher of value in the strict sense’ (p. 139),
but concludes: ‘The theory of acknowledgement, however, establishes a close
connection between Frege and the Baden philosophy of values’ (p. 140).
47. Rickert 1892: 89.
48. Ibid., 90.
49. Frege 1918/19b: 143; translation in Frege 1997: 346.
50. Ibid., 154.
51. Frege 1892a: 35; translation in Frege 1997: 159.
52. Frege 1918/19a: 62; translation in Frege 1997: 329.
53. Frege 1918/19b: 151, footnote; translation in Frege 1997: 354.
54. Frege 1983: 201; translation in Frege 1979: 185.
55. Cf. Frege 1879: § 2.
50 Frege’s Theory of Judgement and its Historical Background

56. Frege 1891: 22, footnote; translation in Frege 1997: 142.

57. Wittgenstein 2005: 4.442.
58. Frege 1983: 4.
59. Frege 1918/19a: 58 (the introductory sentence: translation in Frege 1997:
325).
60. Rickert 1892: 89; my emphasis.
61. Rickert 1921: 163f.
62. Ibid., 232.
63. Frege 1892a: 33. Angelelli 1982 was probably the first to note this aspect.
64. Windelband 1884: 186.
65. Ibid., 187.
66. Frege 1891: 21f.; translation in Frege 1997: 142.
67. Cf. Windelband 1884: 187f.; Frege 1918/19b: 143f.
68. Windelband 1884: 189.
69. Ibid., 190f.
70. Ibid., 186.
71. Windelband 1912: 23. Windelband takes the judgement as an assertion.
72. Reinach 1989: 99f.
73. Windelband 1912: 26.
74. Ibid.

Bibliography
Angelelli, I. (1982) ‘Frege’s Notion of “Bedeutung”’, in L.J. Cohen et al. (eds.),
Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, iv. (Amsterdam: North-Holland),
735–53.
Bergmann, J. (1879) Allgemeine Logik, i: Reine Logik. (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn).
—— (1895) Die Grundprobleme der Logik (1882). 2nd edn. (Berlin: Mittler und
Sohn).
Bolzano, B. (1929) Wissenschaftslehre, iv vols. (1837), ed. W. Schultz. 2nd edn.
(Leipzig: Meiner).
Frege, G. (1879) Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache
des reinen Denkens. Halle a.S.: L. Nebert; repr. in Begriffsschrift und andere
Aufsätze, ed. I. Angelelli. (Darmstadt/Hildesheim: Olms, 1964).
—— (1891) Function und Begriff. ( Jena: Pohle).
—— (1892a) ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philoso-
phische Kritik, 100, 25–50.
—— (1892b) ‘Ueber Begriff und Gegenstand’, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftli-
che Philosophie, 16, 192–205.
—— (1893) Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Begriffsschriftlich abgeleitet, i. ( Jena: Pohle).
—— (1918/19a) ‘Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung’, Beiträge zur
Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, 1, 58–77.
—— (1918/19b) ‘Die Verneinung. Eine logische Untersuchung’, Beiträge zur
Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, 1, 143–57.
—— (1976) Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, ed. G. Gabriel, H. Hermes, F. Kaulbach,
Ch. Thiel, and A. Veraart. (Hamburg: Meiner).
—— (1979) Posthumous Writings, ed. Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel, and
Friedrich Kaulbach. (Oxford: Blackwell).
 Gottfried Gabriel 51

—— (1983) Nachgelassene Schriften, ed. H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, and F. Kaulbach.

2nd edn. (Hamburg: Meiner).
—— (1997) The Frege Reader, ed. Michael Beaney. (Oxford: Blackwell).
Fries, J.F. (1837) System der Logik (1811). 3rd edn. (Heidelberg: C.F. Winter).
Gabriel, G. (1991) ‘Der Logiker als Metaphoriker. Freges philosophische Rhetorik’,
in G. Gabriel, Zwischen Logik und Literatur. Erkenntnisformen von Dichtung,
Philosophie und Wissenschaft. (Stuttgart: Metzler), 65–88.
Goedeke, P. (1928) Wahrheit und Wert. Eine logisch-erkenntnistheoretische
Untersuchung über die Beziehung zwischen Wahrheit und Wert in der Wertphilosophie
des Badischen Neukantianismus. (Köln: A. Weinrich & Komp).
Greimann, D. (2002) ‘Grundriss einer sprechaktanalytischen Theorie der
Wahrheit’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 56, 191–219.
—— (2004). ‘Frege’s Puzzle About the Cognitive Function of Truth’, Inquiry, 47,
425–42.
Herbart, J.F. (1912) Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie (1813); repr. ed.
K. Häntsch. (Leipzig: Meiner).
Lotze, H. (1874) System der Philosophie, i: Drei Bücher der Logik. (Leipzig: Hirzel).
—— (1881) Grundzüge der Psychologie. (Leipzig: Hirzel).
Reinach, A. (1989) ‘Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils’ (1911), in Sämtliche Werke,
i, ed. K. Schumann and B. Smith. (München: Philosophia), 95–140.
Rickert, H. (1892) Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. (Freiburg: J.C.B. Mohr).
—— (1921) Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 4th/5th edn. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr).
Searle, J.R. (1969) Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Sigwart, Ch. (1871) Beiträge zur Lehre vom hypothetischen Urtheile. (Tübingen:
Heinrich Laupp).
—— (1904) Logik, 2 vols. (1873/1878). 3rd edn. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr).
Sluga, H. (2002) ‘Frege on the Indefinability of Truth’, in E. Reck (ed.), From Frege
to Wittgenstein. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 75–95.
Veraart, A. (1976) ‘Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Nachlasses Gottlob Freges
und seiner Edition. Mit einem Katalog des ursprünglichen Bestands der
nachgelassenen Schriften’, in M. Schirn (ed.), Studien zu Frege. (Stuttgart-Bad
Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog), i, 49–106.
Windelband, W. (1884) ‘Beiträge zur Lehre vom negativen Urtheil’, in Strassburger
Abhandlungen zur Philosophie. Eduard Zeller zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstage.
(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr), 167–95; repr. 1921.
—— (1912) ‘Die Prinzipien der Logik’, in A. Ruge (ed.), Encyclopädie der philoso-
phischen Wissenschaften, i. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr), 1–60.
—— (1915) ‘Was ist Philosophie?’ (1882), in Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur
Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, i. 5th edn. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr), 1–54.
Wittgenstein, L. (2005) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. (London/New York:
Routledge).
4
Merely Entertaining a Thought,
Judging and Asserting
Notes on a Passage in Frege’s
‘The Thought’
Wolfgang Künne
Hamburg University

What are Frege’s views on the mental acts of merely entertaining a

thought and judging and on the illocutionary act of asserting, and to
what extent, if any, do they withstand critical scrutiny? In this paper
I want to contribute to the ongoing discussion of these questions by
commenting on a highly pertinent passage in Frege’s 1918 essay ‘Der
Gedanke’.1 Here is the first half of that passage. (The translation is my
own, and you will soon see why it had to be.)

|62|… [1] In order to bring out more precisely what I want to call
‘thought’, I shall distinguish various kinds of sentences.* [2] We
should not wish to deny sense to an imperative sentence (Befehlssatz),
but this sense is not such that the question of truth could arise for
it. [3] Therefore I shall not call the sense of an imperative sentence
a thought. [4] Optative and jussive sentences (Wunsch- und Bittsätze)
are also ruled out. [5] Only those sentences in which we communi-
cate (mitteilen) or assert (behaupten) something can come into ques-
tion. [6] But I do not count among them exclamations in which one
vents one’s feelings, groaning, sighing, laughing – unless it has been
decided in some special agreement that they are to communicate
something. [7] But how about interrogative sentences (Fragesätze)?
[8] In a word-question (Wortfrage) we utter an incomplete sentence,
which is meant to obtain a true sense by means of the completion
that we invite. [9] Word-questions are accordingly left out of consid-
eration here. [10] Sentence-questions (Satzfragen) are a different mat-
ter. [11] We expect to hear ‘yes’ or ‘no’. [12] The answer ‘yes’ means
(besagt) the same as an assertive sentence (Behauptungssatz), for in this
answer the very thought is put forward as true (als wahr hingestellt)
52
 Wolfgang Künne 53

that was already completely contained (enthalten) in the interrogative

sentence. [13] So a sentence-question can be formed from any
assertive sentence. [14] An exclamation is not to be regarded as
a communication just because no corresponding sentence-question
can be formed. [15] An interrogative sentence and an assertive one
contain the same thought, but the assertive sentence contains some-
thing else as well, namely the assertion (Behauptung). [16] The inter-
rogative sentence contains something more too, namely a request
(Aufforderung). [17] Therefore two things must be distinguished in an
assertive sentence: the content (Inhalt), which it has in common with
the corresponding sentence-question, and the assertion. [18] The
former is the thought, or at least contains the thought. [19] So it is
possible to express (ausdrücken) a thought without putting it forward
as true. [20] Both are so closely joined in an assertive sentence that
one easily overlooks their dissectability (Zerlegbarkeit).

*) [a] I am not using the word ‘sentence’ in quite the same sense as
grammar does, which also includes subordinate clauses (Nebensätze).
[b] An isolated subordinate clause does not always have a sense about
which the question of truth can arise, whereas the compound [of]
sentence[s] (Satzgefüge) to which it belongs has such a sense.

A thought, Frege had argued on the preceding pages, is a sense ‘for

which the question of truth can arise’ (60), and standardly the items
that have such a sense are sentences. When he mentions sentences for
the first time in his essay he takes them to be ‘audible things’ (59), and
he goes on to classify them as ‘series of sounds’ (60). Remembering this
can help to make sense of certain moves in our passage. (Of course, the
inventor of a Begriffsschrift does not want to exclude inscriptions. So the
general point is rather this: ‘a sentence can be perceived by the senses
(Der Satz ist sinnlich wahrnehmbar)’.2) When Frege distinguishes ‘various
kinds of sentences’ he uses traditional grammatical categories in [2]–[4]
and [7]–[10].3 His caveat in [a] confirms this. (My translation tries to
make this unmissable. Geach muddies the water when he translates
‘Befehlssatz’ as ‘command’.4)
Frege’s remarks on communication in [5], [6] and [14] are baffling.
I would have thought that (utterances of) imperative, optative and jussive
sentences do standardly serve the purpose of communication and that
very often the same holds for sighs etc. (no matter whether they were
preceded by an ‘agreement’ [6] as to what they are meant to convey).
Assertive5 sentences have a very close semantical relationship to
interrogative sentences of a certain type. Like Aristotle, Frege takes all
54 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

interrogative sentences to convey an aítësis, a ‘request (Aufforderung)’,6

and like Aristotle and the Stoics he distinguishes two kinds of interroga-
tives, ‘word-questions’ and ‘sentence-questions’.7 I prefer to call them
search interrogatives and yes-no interrogatives, respectively.8 (Geach
renders Frege’s ‘Satz’ not by ‘proposition’ but by ‘sentence’, which is fine,
so he should have translated Frege’s ‘Satzfrage’ by ‘sentence-question’
rather than ‘propositional question’.) Nowadays (English) search
interrogatives are often labelled wh-interrogatives. This label is not to
be recommended, for it gets the spelling of ‘how?’ wrong. When we use
a search interrogative to pose a question, Frege says in [8], ‘we utter an
incomplete sentence’. Certainly he does not want to deny that ‘When
was Caesar murdered?’, unlike ‘When was’ and ‘was Caesar’, is a syntac-
tically complete sentence. What he wants to maintain is that this search
interrogative, in virtue of its form, conveys the request to complete the
open sentence ‘Caesar was murdered ( )when’ in such a way that the result
expresses a truth. The interrogative pronoun ‘when’ indicates the sort
of completion that is wanted: completion by an adverbial specification
of a time. This characterisation of search interrogatives is very close
to one that Leibniz gave in a book Frege studied. In his Nouveaux Essais
Leibniz characterises them as interrogatives ‘in which something is to
be supplemented (où il y a quelque chose à suppléer)’, as ‘interrogatives
which leave part of the sentence empty (questions qui laissent une partie
de la proposition en blanc)’.9
Unlike search interrogatives, yes-no interrogatives express something
for which the question of truth does arise, for in seriously using them we
pose this very question. A yes-no interrogative conveys, in virtue of its
form, a request to determine the truth-value of the thought it expresses.
In the earliest piece in his Posthumous Writings Frege claims:10

The sense (Sinn) of the question [i.e. of the interrogative sen-

tence] remains the same when we append to it, ‘or not?’. [fn.] Of
course, what I am talking about here are sentence-questions, not
word-questions.

If we impose, somewhat anachronistically, his later conception of sense

on this remark, it is plainly false. The thought expressed by ‘Was Caesar
murdered, or was he not murdered?’ is a logical truth (in Frege’s system),
hence it is not the same thought as that expressed by ‘Was Caesar
murdered?’. The request conveyed by a disjunctive interrogative is not
to determine the truth-value of the thought it expresses, but rather to
determine which of the two disjuncts expresses a truth. In [10]–[11],
 Wolfgang Künne 55

Frege claims that in the case of a ‘sentence-question … we expect to

hear “yes” or “no”.’ In the case of a disjunctive sentence-question we
expect to hear a bit more, something like ‘Yes, he was’, or ‘No, he was
not.’ That’s why I have replaced Frege’s term ‘sentence-question’ by
‘yes-no interrogative’: this phrase immediately suggests that monosyl-
labic answers are expected.
Frege’s use of the verb ‘contain’ in [15]–[16]11 is rather unfortunate: it
is asked to do two very different jobs at once, and it is not suitable for
either. When he claims that an assertive sentence and the corresponding
yes-no interrogative ‘contain’ the same thought, the claim is that
they express the same thought.12 According to Frege, this is a relation
between a perceptible item and a sense. When he claims that both
also ‘contain’ something else, the former ‘an assertion’ and the latter
‘a request’, the claim is that assertive sentences have assertoric force (see
[26]) while interrogative sentences have – what he could have called but
actually didn’t – auffordernde Kraft, requestive (s.v.v.) force. This is a rela-
tion between a perceptible item and one of its properties.
In [17] Frege maintains that, with respect to any assertive sentence S,
we should distinguish

[I] the ‘content (Inhalt)’ of S, which either ‘is

or at least contains the thought’ it expresses, and
[II] the form of S in virtue of which it is an assertive sentence.

The clause in [I] contains (umm) a third use of ‘contain’, and in this
context it is up to the job. Immediately after our passage Frege explains
the second disjunct in the relative clause: he characterises the additional
element of the content as ‘colouration (Färbung)’.13 Formulation [II]
is provisional: he is about to show in the second half of our passage that
a caveat is required.
The form-aspect that distinguishes a yes–no interrogative from the
corresponding assertive sentence might be its word order or its intona-
tion. What sets them apart isn’t a separable piece that is contained in
one but not in the other, but, as Husserl would put it, a moment of the
sentence: it is something that is distinguishable but not detachable,
abstractable but not extractable.14 In Frege’s ‘logically perfect language
(Begriffsschrift)’15 the judgement-stroke is a piece of a Begriffsschriftsatz.
He wants his ideography not to be ‘misleading’ in the way our language
is, for ‘we have no particular part in the assertive sentence which cor-
responds to the assertion; that something is being asserted lies rather in
the form of the assertive sentence’ (from [d]–[e] below).
56 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

As the act of posing a yes-no question shows, ‘it is possible to

express a thought without putting it forward as true’ [19]. Since
putting something forward as true certainly is something language
users do, the phrase ‘expressing a thought’ here (and in [23]) also
stands for a speaker’s act (and not for something sentences ‘do’). And
if these acts are, as Frege puts it in [20], ‘closely joined in an asser-
tive sentence’, then presumably the latter also has to be conceived
of as an act. So I suggest that we take [20] to be a claim about acts
of uttering assertive sentences.16 Now uttering an assertive sentence
is (standardly) both an act of expressing a thought and an act of
putting a thought forward as true. Here ‘expressing a thought’ is just
a less demanding, hence less error-prone characterisation of the same
utterance-act as ‘putting a thought forward as true’. So Frege’s injunc-
tion not to overlook that in the case at hand two things which are
‘closely joined in’ one and the same other thing can be ‘dissected’ [20]
is not very felicitously phrased. What he wants to draw attention to is
that while some acts of uttering a sentence are both acts of expressing a
thought and acts of putting it forward as true, an act can be a case of the
former kind without being a case of the latter kind. (Since ‘Zerlegbarkeit
(dissectability)’ is a key term in Frege’s philosophy of logic and of lan-
guage, its odd use in [20] is deplorable.)
Let us now turn to the second half of our passage. At the point where
I interrupted him Frege continues:

[21] Consequently we distinguish

1. the apprehension[17] of the thought – thinking
das Fassen des Gedankens das Denken
2. the acknowledgement the truth of a thought – judging
die Anerkennung der Wahrheit eines Gedankens das Urteilen**
3. the manifestation of this judgement – asserting
die Kundgebung dieses Urteils das Behaupten.

[22] When we form a sentence-question we have already performed

the first act. [23] An advance in science usually takes place in this way:
first a thought is apprehended[18], and thus may perhaps be expressed
in a sentence-question; after appropriate investigations this thought is
finally recognized to be true (als wahr erkannt). [24] It is in |63| the form
of an assertive sentence that we enunciate (aussprechen) acknowledge-
ment of truth. [25] We do not need the word ‘true’ for this. [26] And
even if we do use it the really assertoric force (behauptende Kraft) does
not lie in it, but in the form of the assertive sentence; and where this
 Wolfgang Künne 57

form loses its assertoric force the word ‘true’ cannot restore it. [27] This
happens when we are not speaking seriously. [28] As stage-thunder
is only sham thunder and a stage fight only a sham fight, so stage
assertion is only sham assertion (Scheinbehauptung). [29] It is only play
(Spiel), only fiction (Dichtung). [30] When playing his part the actor is
not asserting anything; nor is he lying, even if he says something of
whose falsehood he is convinced. [31] In fiction we have the case of
thoughts being expressed without really being put forward as true, in
spite of the form of the assertive sentence; although it may be suggested
to the hearer that he himself should make an assenting judgement (ein
zustimmendes Urteil). [32] Therefore the question still arises, even about
what presents itself in the form of an assertive sentence, whether it
really contains an assertion. [33] And this question must be answered
in the negative if the requisite seriousness (Ernst) is lacking. [34] It is
unimportant whether the word ‘true’ is used here. [35] This explains
why it is that nothing seems to be added to a thought by attributing
to it the property of truth.

**) [c] It seems to me that thought and judgement have not

hitherto been adequately distinguished. [d] Perhaps language is
misleading. [e] For we have no particular part in the assertive sen-
tence which corresponds to the assertion; that something is being
asserted lies rather in the form of the assertive sentence. [f] We have
the advantage in German that main and subordinate clauses are
distinguished by the word-order. [g] However in this connection it
should be noticed that a subordinate clause may also contain an asser-
tion, and that often neither main nor subordinate clause expresses
a complete thought by itself but only the compound sentence
(Satzgefüge) does.

In [21] Frege commits himself at least to the following three one-way

conditionals:

1.a If one merely grasps the thought that p, one merely thinks the
thought that p.
2.a If one acknowledges the thought that p as true, one judges that p.
3.a If one makes one’s judgement that p manifest, one asserts that p.

Whether he would be ready, and right, to add in each case ‘and vice
versa’, we will have to examine. Certainly it is tempting to take the
dashes in Frege’s numbered entries to correspond to biconditionals.
58 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

My insertion of ‘the thought’ in the consequent of (1.a) is to forestall

the ‘believe’ reading of ‘think’, and the ‘merely’ riders are meant to
ensure that the kind of acts that belong to Frege’s second category do not
become a species of the kind of acts that belong to Frege’s first category. If
one judges that p one has got to think the thought that p, but one does
not merely think it. The acts that belong to Frege’s first category are cases
of what he calls ‘das bloße Fassen eines Gedankens (the mere apprehension
of a thought)’19 and what philosophers like W.E. Johnson, Braithwaite
and Price call acts of merely entertaining a thought, acts of thinking a
thought in a disengaged way, i.e. without commitment as to its truth.20
The notion of merely entertaining a thought should be carefully
distinguished from the generic notion of entertaining a thought. The
following principles hold for the generic notion: (1) for all p, who-
ever judges that not p entertains the thought that p. (Here ‘not’ can be
replaced salva veritate by any other one-place connective). Similarly, (2),
for all p, for all q, whoever judges that p or q entertains the thought that p.
(Here ‘or’ can be replaced salva veritate by any other two-place connec-
tive). But the analogues of (1) and (2) for non-committal thinking do
not hold. Nobody can judge that not p and at the same time merely
entertain the thought that p. And somebody who judges that p or q
might very well not merely entertain the thought that p: if you judge
that p and conclude (hence judge) that p or q, you do not merely enter-
tain the thought that p.
Here are some (schematically described) situations in which a person
merely entertains the thought that p. The first situation is the one Frege
focuses upon in our passage:

[i] she wonders whether p,

[ii] she reads, with understanding, a sentence that expresses the thought
that p, without taking a stance as regards its truth-value,21
[iii] she makes the ‘assumption (Annahme)’ that p for the sake of an argu-
ment, ‘without simultaneously taking it to be the case’ that p.22

As we just saw, the next two situations need not be but they can be such
that the thought that p is thought without commitment to its truth:

[iv] she judges that if p then q,23

[v] she judges that p or q.24

The converse of (1.a) is not a matter of course if one construes ‘grasping

a thought’ along the lines of seeing a tree (as Frege does) rather than,
 Wolfgang Künne 59

say, along the lines of dancing a waltz. But that is a story for another
occasion.25
Let us now turn to Frege’s second category and ponder on the
conditional:

2.a If one acknowledges the thought that p as true, one judges that p.

I would have remained closer to Frege’s own wording in [21] if I had

used the construction ‘acknowledges the truth of the thought that p’
in the antecedent of (2.a). But by Frege’s own lights, it seems to make
no difference whatsoever whether he says, ‘ich [verstehe] unter Urtheil
die Anerkennung der Wahrheit eines Gedankens (I take a judgement to
be the acknowledgement of the truth of a thought)’, as he does in
Grundgesetze I, § 5 and in [21], or whether he says, ‘einen Gedanken als
wahr anerkennen … nenne ich urtheilen (acknowledging a thought as true
is what I call judging)’, as he does in a letter to Russell26 and in ever so
many other places. (I shall soon return to this issue.)
Note that in the remarks just quoted Frege also commits himself
to the converse of (2.a). Now while the converse is correct, it is not
clear that (2.a) is. For many years each of us has acknowledged-as-true
the thought that the sun is larger than the moon, but it is not the case
that all through those years we performed acts of judging that this is so.
Under the ‘dispositional’ reading of the verb ‘acknowledge’ (2.a) is not
correct. What is correct is the belief-variant of (2.a), that is,

2.A If one acknowledges the thought that p as true, one believes that p.

As [22] makes clear, Frege wants to distinguish three kinds of acts (Taten).
So he must insist on an ‘occurrent’ reading of the verb ‘acknowledge’,
for he is certainly right in taking judging to be ‘an act (eine Tat) that is
performed by a particular person at a particular time’.27 As a matter of
fact, (2.A) is correct under both readings of the verb ‘acknowledge’.
Sometimes judging is acquiring a new belief, but not all judge-
ments inaugurate beliefs: sometimes judging is activating an old belief.
However short-lived one’s belief that things are thus and so may be: it is
not an act. Frege treats ‘acknowledging something as true’ and ‘holding
something to be true (etwas für wahr halten)’ as if they were extension-
ally equivalent,28 but clearly holding something to be true is not an
act. Augustine and Aquinas maintain: ‘credere est cum assensione cogitare
(believing is thinking with assent)’. Again this isn’t quite right, for cogitare
is an act while credere isn’t. Of course, while he is dreamlessly sleeping,
she might truly remark, with a sigh, ‘He thinks I am happy’, but in this
usage thinking is believing. Augustine’s and Aquinas’s employment
60 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

of the term ‘assensio’ in their characterisation of believing is based

on Cicero’s translation of the Stoic term ‘synkatáthesis’.29 Cicero also
used ‘approbatio (approval)’ as translation of that term, and this usage
was adopted by Kant when he characterised judging (affirmatively)
as seinen Beifall geben (acclaiming, applauding) and by Neo-Kantians
like Windelband when they described (affirmative) judging as billigen
(approving). Neither ‘assensio’ nor ‘approbatio’ are entirely appropriate
when one wants to elucidate the notion of judging. Taken literally, the
former term is infelicitous, because (as Husserl points out30) the habitat
of assent or Zustimmung is interpersonal: we assent to what somebody
else said. (In [31] Frege’s use of this verb respects Husserl’s constraint.)
The latter term is also misleading when taken literally, for you may
judge or believe that a certain country was invaded while strongly
disapproving of the invasion. So in both cases we are speaking meta-
phorically (which, in my mouth, is not a term of abuse).31
When one wants to clarify Frege’s understanding of the verb in the
antecedent of (2.a) or (2.A), one need not look into nineteenth-century
dictionaries of German, for there is nothing outdated in Frege’s usage
of ‘anerkennen’. One thing should be clear at the outset: this verb is not
factive. One can be as mistaken in acknowledging the thought that p as
true, as one can be mistaken in acknowledging a state as a democracy.
‘By a thought I understand not the subjective act of thinking’, Frege
tells us, ‘but its objective content which is capable of being the com-
mon property of many thinkers.’32 If a certain act of thinking is an act of
judging and its content is a false thought, then the thinker is wrong in
acknowledging that thought as true. Frege never denied that some acts
of judging have a false content, and we shall soon see that because of
his account of the relation between judgement and assertion he cannot
consistently deny this. (Nevertheless, by Frege’s lights there are no false
judgements. Strictly speaking no act is false, and none is true either: only
thoughts are true or false.)
As regards his use of ‘anerkennen’, translators have done some harm
to Frege’s anglophone readers. Thus in Geach’s translation of the paper
‘Die Verneinung’, the verb ‘anerkennen’ is rendered by ‘acknowledge’,
‘recognise’, ‘see’ and ‘admit’, and Geach uses ‘recognise’ also as a transla-
tion of ‘erkennen’. Certainly, ‘erkennen, dass p (realising that p, – acquiring
propositional knowledge)’ is factive, and if ‘recognise’ in English is
also factive then one should, once and for all, refrain from rendering
‘anerkennen’ by ‘recognise’.
Now if (2.a) is to throw any light on the sense of ‘judging’, then we
should not hear ‘acknowledging the thought that p as true’ as ‘judging
 Wolfgang Künne 61

that the thought that p is true’. (Frege would take the latter to come to
the same thing as ‘judging that p’.) Acknowledging a thought as true
is thinking that thought in a special way, namely with a commitment to
its truth. Thus understood, the biconditional corresponding to his entry
‘2.’ in [21] could be regarded as a definition in the same sense in which
‘whispering is speaking very softly’ is a definition of ‘whispering’. (Or
rather, it could be so regarded if there were not the problem concerning
the act-state difference.) Frege’s standards for something’s being a ‘dis-
secting definition (zerlegende Definition)’ must be more demanding, for
he denies in 1892 that the concept of judging can be defined, and he
comes close to repeating this denial in 1919.33
Since there has been some controversy about Frege’s conception of
acknowledgement as it occurs in [21] and [24], let me insert here a sur-
vey of the different constructions in which the verb ‘anerkennen’, or the
corresponding verbal noun, occur in Frege’s writings.34 (Hopefully, this
will help to settle this controversy.35) One can find five constructions.

(I) The as-construction:

acknowledging something as F / as an F / as the F.

This construction is more often used by Frege than the other four
together. Here are a few examples: acknowledging something as existent
(als vorhanden, als seiend),36 as different from itself / as a refutation, as an
axiom / as the Bedeutung of a sentence; most prominently: acknowledg-
ing a thought as true.

(II.a) The nominalising construction of the 1st type:

acknowledging the F-ness of something.

Examples: acknowledging the inadmissibility of something, the differ-

ence between this and that, and, in many places, acknowledging the
truth (die Wahrheit) of a thought.

(II.b) The nominalising construction of the 2nd type:

acknowledging the being F of something.

For this I have found just one example: acknowledging the being true
(das Wahrsein) of something.37

(III) The direct object construction:

acknowledging F’s / an F / the F.
62 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

Examples: acknowledging irrational numbers, logical laws, false thoughts /

acknowledging a third realm, a certain truth, a certain science / acknow-
ledging the actual infinite, the external world, the sense of a certain
sentence, and – this is a hápax legómenon – acknowledging the True and
the False. (I shall soon quote this passage.) The fact that Frege speaks of
acknowledging false thoughts should give pause to those who see him
sail in the water of the Neo-Kantian axiological use of ‘anerkennen’ in the
sense of ‘positively valuing’.

(IV) The clausal construction:

acknowledging that p.

I have found only two examples for this in Frege writings: acknowledg-
ing that a certain sentence expresses such-and-such a thought, and
acknowledging that the truth-value of a certain sentence is the true.38
As for the clumsy nominalising construction (II.b), in the first two
references I gave it is equivalent with the clausal construction (IV): at
both places Frege is not concerned with elucidating the concept of a
judgement. In the third reference he is concerned with it, and here
(II.b) is equivalent with (II.a) or (I). As far as ‘truth’ and ‘true’ are con-
cerned, Frege repeatedly uses the nominalising construction (II.a) and
the as-construction (I) in one and the same breath, clearly taking them to
be just stylistic variants of each other.39 This is strong evidence for
the following contentions: Firstly, since ‘acknowledging X as true’
can be modified by the adverb ‘falsely’ or ‘incorrectly’ and since Frege
never denied that the content of a judgement can be a false thought,
‘acknowledging the truth of X’ should not be read as factive either. (If
it suggests factivity, so much the worse for this construction.) Secondly,
Frege does not understand the accusative object in ‘acknowledging the
truth of X’ as designating an object. If you are mistaken in acknowledg-
ing the thought that p as true there is no such thing as the truth of
the thought that p. Actually, there never is: if there were such a thing
one should be able to understand, and to answer, the question whether
the truth of the thought that snow is white is identical with the truth
of the thought that blood is red. It is no accident that Frege never asks
this odd question: if acknowledging the truth of X is acknowledging X
as true, there is no need to inquire into the identity condition of the
pseudo-object allegedly designated by ‘the truth of X’. Thirdly, Frege
does not understand ‘acknowledging the truth of X’ along the lines
of ‘doubting / denying the truth of X’. For the latter cannot be para-
phrased by means of an as-construction, – they rather amount to the
 Wolfgang Künne 63

same thing as ‘doubting / denying that X is true’. But Frege never offers
a clausal paraphrase of ‘acknowledging the truth of X’ or of its as-true
counterpart.40 He seems to hold that acknowledging X as true is no
more a case of acknowledging that X is true, than seeing an ambiguous
drawing as representing a rabbit is a case of seeing that it represents a
rabbit. Finally, from the fact that Frege regards ‘acknowledging the truth
of X’ and ‘acknowledging X as true’ as interchangeable one can safely
conclude, I think, that he does not take ‘acknowledging the truth of X’
as opposed to ‘acknowledging X as true’ as the royal road to a proper
account of judgement.
How is the direct-object construction (III) to be understood? Does
Frege take it to be fundamental (somewhat in the way Brentano did),
or can it be elucidated in terms of the as-construction or the clausal
construction? I cannot see that apart from brevity anything would
have been lost if Frege had written ‘It has to be acknowledged that
there is such a thing as the sense of the yes-no interrogative X’ instead
of ‘The sense of the yes-no interrogative X has to be acknowledged.’41
Or if he had said ‘It has to be acknowledged that there is a third realm’
rather than ‘A third realm has to be acknowledged.’42 In ‘Über Sinn
und Bedeutung’ he maintains: ‘These two objects (sc. the True and the
False) are acknowledged, if only implicitly, by everybody who judges,
who holds something to be true – and so even by a sceptic’ (34). This
formulation – as I said, it occurs only once in Frege’s entire œuvre –
is not in the same line of business as [21] in our text. In the remark
I just quoted, Frege does not try to explain what judging is, – that is
something he does a few lines later in a footnote, and he does it in
the same way as usual: ‘A judgement for me is not the mere appre-
hension of a thought, but the acknowledgement of its truth.’ (Here
Black mistranslates ‘Anerkennung’ as ‘admission’.) In the ‘two objects’
remark he wants to point out which ontic commitment one incurs
whenever one judges or believes something. So one can paraphrase
that remark as follows: ‘Everybody who judges, who takes something
to be true – even a sceptic – acknowledges that there are these two
objects.’ Or ‘Everybody who makes a judgement or has a belief – even a
sceptic – acknowledges these two objects as existent (als vorhanden, als
seiend).’ One can hardly claim that Frege makes a convincing case for
this contention, especially in the case of the False. But that is not my
topic in this paper. In any case, if Frege had regarded the wording in
‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ as the Via Regia to a proper understanding of
the notion of a judgement, he would have repeated it again and again,
rather than use it only once.
64 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

Let us return to the paper that was published a quarter of a century

later. In [22]–[23] Frege describes the case of a scientist who moves
from merely entertaining the thought that p, perhaps after years of
laborious research, to recognising it as true. Here he uses ‘erkennen’
rather than ‘anerkennen’, because he wants to describe an ‘advance in
science (Fortschritt in der Wissenschaft)’. There is not much astronomical
progress if one moves from wondering whether the Morning Star and
the Evening Star are the same to judging that they are not.
Occasionally Frege characterises judging as ‘choosing between oppo-
site thoughts’.43 This is another way of saying that in judging that p we
answer, in foro interno, the question whether p or not p. Some decades
earlier, Herbart had maintained that judging is ‘deciding a question (die
Entscheidung einer Frage)’.44 Some decades after Frege, Geach is more
careful when he says: ‘a judgement occurs at least as often as a man is
confronted with a theoretical or practical problem and makes up his
mind – “This is how things are” or “This is what I must do”’.45 In such
cases the judgement that p is the culmination, as it were, of a process of
wondering whether p or of weighing the evidence for and against the
proposition that p. Like Herbart and Frege before him, Geach describes
such mental acts in the language of choice, and we all find that rather
natural: ‘After waiting for him for two hours, she decided that he had
missed the train.’ This way of talking lends no support to the Cartesian
idea that (with respect to some questions at least) we can decide to
judge that things are one way rather than the other. For deciding,
or making up one’s mind, that things are thus and so isn’t deciding, or
making up one’s mind, to do something.
Of course, not every judgement is the upshot of a period of reflecting.
This was Bolzano’s objection against Herbart’s over-generalisation.46
Often one makes the perceptual judgement that p, without ever hav-
ing contemplated the question whether p. So the acquisition of the
belief that p is not always preceded by an act of merely entertaining
the thought that p. And sometimes the act of judging that p cannot be
preceded by merely thinking that p, for some thoughts are such that
one cannot grasp them without immediately acknowledging them as
true.47 Some of these thoughts are contingently true: you express them
by saying, e.g. ‘I exist’, ‘I am conscious’, ‘There is at least one thinker.’
Others are trivial necessary truths, such as the thought that a week
is longer than a day. If axioms are what Frege takes them to be (sc.
thoughts that are neither capable of proof nor in need of one), they
belong to the set of thoughts one cannot grasp without eo ipso accept-
ing them as true.48
 Wolfgang Künne 65

Let us now turn to the illocutionary act in Frege’s trio, and again
begin by considering a one-way conditional:

3.a If one makes one’s judgement that p manifest, one asserts

that p.

In lieu of ‘kundgeben (making manifest, intimating)’ Frege occasionally

uses in the very same context ‘äußern (giving expression to)’.49 In this
usage what is made manifest, what is given expression to, is always a
mental act or state. So this notion is to be distinguished sharply from
that of ausdrücken (expressing): what is expressed (in Frege’s official use
of this verb) is always a truth-evaluable sense.
In Frege’s account of assertion there is no reference to a communica-
tive intention, and I don’t think that this is a shortcoming. Suppose
you are alone in the middle of the desert, and you mutter, ‘It is
extremely hot here’. Then you have asserted something even though
you do not intend to tell anyone anything (unless you are out of your
senses).
The vehicle of an assertion need not be a sentence. It might be a
pro-sentence, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, as Frege points out in [12]. It might not be
any linguistic item. Asked whether you are currently getting bored, you
might simply nod and thereby assert that you are. But it seems that
(3.a) needs some kind of restriction. Suppose the political activist tells
the crowd, ‘If anyone of you thinks that my proposal is unacceptable,
he or she should leave the room right now.’ Anne gets up and leaves the
room. She thereby makes her belief that the proposal is unacceptable
manifest, but does she assert this? If not, the antecedent of (3.a) does
not give us a sufficient condition for assertion.
Is the converse of (3.a), is

3.b If one asserts that p one makes one’s judgement (belief) that p
manifest

correct? You cannot make your judgement (belief) that p manifest unless
you actually judge (believe) that p. So manifesting one’s judgement
(belief) that p is not the same thing as: presenting oneself as a person
who judges (believes) that p. Furthermore, not only sincere assertions
are assertions. If all this is true then the phenomenon of lying shows
that (3.b), with ‘For all p’ prefixed, is false, and Frege is committed to
agree. In ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ he wrote: ‘In “A lied that he had seen
B” the subordinate clause designates a thought of which it is being said,
firstly, that A asserted it as true and secondly, that A was convinced of
its falsity’.50
66 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

The following biconditional incorporates an attempt to improve (3.b):

3.* One asserts that p iff one either makes one’s judgement
(belief) that p manifest or one only pretends to do so.

If we were to delete the second disjunct we would have to insert ‘sin-

cerely’ in the antecedent. The phrase ‘pretending to do such-and-such’
must be taken in the sense of ‘acting with deceptive intent as if one did
such-and-such’, for otherwise the actor on stage who says ‘Something is
rotten in the state of Denmark’ would assert that something is rotten in
the state of Denmark. In his case there is no deceptive intent. So far, so
good. But of course, (3.*) inherits the problem with Anne’s manifesta-
tion of her political belief.
In any case, Frege’s view that by (sincerely) asserting that p you make
your judgement that p manifest – a view he already held around 1885,
long before ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’51 – obviously allows for erroneous
judgements. Suppose the thought that p is false. Then the judgement
you make manifest in your assertion is the acknowledgement of a false
thought as true. So there are acts of judging, properly so called, that
have a false content.
In [12], [19] and [31] Frege uses a phrase he very often employs to
elucidate the notion of asserting: ‘etwas als wahr hinstellen (putting
something forward as true)’.52 (Geach makes this recurrence invisible by
translating each occurrence of the phrase differently.) This locution is
structurally parallel to ‘acknowledging something as true’, so in analogy
to (2.) we obtain

3.† One asserts that p iff one puts the thought that p forward
as true.

Since Frege wants to bring out a relation between illocutionary acts of

his third category and mental acts of his second category, he uses (3.)
rather that (3.†) at this point. Certainly acceptance of the latter does
not require rejection of the former. If (3.†) is to throw any light on the
sense of ‘asserting’, then we should not hear ‘putting the thought that
p forward as true’ as ‘asserting that the thought that p is true’. (Frege
takes the latter to come to the same thing as ‘asserting that p’.) Putting
a thought forward as true is expressing that thought in a special way,
namely with a commitment to its truth. Thus understood, Frege’s (3.†) can
be regarded as a definition in the same sense – to re-employ my earlier
example – in which ‘whispering is speaking very softly’ is a definition
of ‘whispering’.
 Wolfgang Künne 67

‘One can … express a thought without acknowledging it as true’.53

So we could add a fourth category to Frege’s list in [21], thereby
restoring the balance between mental and linguistic acts. An act of
merely entertaining a thought can be manifested by an act of expressing
that thought without assertoric force, by an act of ‘merely expressing it
(ihn bloß ausdrücken)’.54 One can merely express the thought that p, for
example, by

(i) asking, ‘Is it the case that p?’,

(ii) beginning an argument by saying, ‘Let us suppose p’,
(iii) asserting that if p then q,
(iv) asserting that p or q.55

In [22] Frege mentions type-(i) cases. We saw above that the analogous
claims for the mental counterparts of (iii) and (iv) requires a restriction.
Here no such restriction is called for. Even if your disjunctive assertion
was immediately preceded by your assertion that p, you do not assert
that p when asserting that p or q.
The notion of merely expressing a thought should be carefully dis-
tinguished from the generic notion of expressing a thought. For all p,
whoever asserts that not p expresses the thought that p. (Here ‘not’
can be replaced salva veritate by any other one-place connective). But
nobody can assert that not p and at the same time merely express the
thought that p.
In the absence of a counter-indication an assertive sentence, or rather,
a sentential utterance of a certain form, is an assertion. A counter-
indication can be provided by the linguistic context (the sentence is
embedded in a conditional or in a disjunction) or by the situational
context (the sentence is produced, say, by an actor on stage in the course
of a performance). In [27]–[33] Frege’s focus is on situationally induced
loss of assertoric force. On the whole, he tends to assimilate the theatre
case and its ilk to the embedding cases. He thereby blurs an important
difference. In cases of embedding the speaker withholds commitment
as to the truth of certain parts of what he says, whereas in the theatre
case he mimics an assertion (without deceptive intent), Mímësis is a far
more demanding activity than epochë. There are conceptually less com-
plex cases of situationally induced loss of assertoric force that would
have served Frege’s purpose at least as well: assertive sentences in the
mouth of a simultaneous-interpreter translating a politician’s speech,
for example, or ‘Every boy loves a certain girl’ in the mouth of a teacher
of elementary logic.
68 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

Frege would be prepared to say of the actor’s use of ‘Something is

rotten in the state of Denmark’ and of the novelist’s use of ‘Everything
was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house’ that they ‘lack serious-
ness’ [33].56 But of course, in saying this he would not want to suggest
that acting a part in a performance of Hamlet, let alone writing Anna
Karenina is not a serious endeavour. The point is only that such a use
of a sentence does not involve a commitment as to the truth of what
it expresses.57 (I would have thought that this goes without saying, but
since some poets, literary critics and French philosophers were really
incensed by echoes of Frege’s remarks in Austin’s writings,58 it may be
worth stressing.) An utterance or inscription may lack seriousness, in
the Fregean understanding of this phrase, and yet it may ‘suggest to the
hearer [or reader] that he himself should make an assenting judgement’
[31]. In contrast to the second sentence of Anna Karenina quoted above,
the first one may be a case in point: ‘All happy families resemble one
another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’
At the end of our excerpt Frege points out (what I propose to call) the
illocutionary redundancy of the prologue ‘It is true that’. Its presence does
not ensure that an utterance has assertoric force, nor does its absence
put assertoric force at risk. By prefixing the truth operator to a sentence
one does not ensure that an utterance of that sentence is an assertion.
The antecedent in (an utterance of) ‘If it is true that p then q’ has no
more assertoric force than has its truth-free counterpart, and if the actor
who plays Marcellus were to surprise the audience by saying, ‘It is true
that something is rotten in the state of Denmark’, his utterance would
be just as much an as-if assertion as the utterance of an actor who shows
more respect for Shakespeare’s words. Furthermore, an assertion that
actually begins with the truth-prologue could have been an assertion
even if the speaker had decided not to use that prologue.
Frege suggests that this observation justifies a contention that he had
made on the preceding pages: the truth-prologue is propositionally redun-
dant, that is, (an instance of ) ‘It is true that p’ expresses the very same
thought as (the corresponding instance of) ‘p’.59 He echoes the earlier
passage when he says: ‘nothing seems to be added to a thought’ when
truth is ascribed to it [35]. One may reasonably wonder whether we ever
add anything to an entity when we ascribe a property to it. The point
he wants to make gets into focus when we compare ‘It is well-known
that p’ and ‘It is true that p’: in the former case we express more than
the thought that p, whereas in the latter case we don’t (if Frege is right).
I cannot see that the illocutionary-redundancy claim lends any support
to the propositional-redundancy claim. One can coherently endorse
 Wolfgang Künne 69

Frege’s eminently plausible contention that presence or absence of the

truth-prologue has no effect on the illocutionary force of an utterance,
and reject his contention that (corresponding instances of) ‘It is true
that p’ and ‘p’ express the same thought. I would recommend that we
do just this: affirm illocutionary redundancy and deny propositional
redundancy. But of course, this is a large issue that cannot be settled by
a few remarks at the end of a paper.60
Let me close with a brief comment on Frege’s remarks on main and
subordinate clauses in [f] and [g] of the second footnote. As for [f], you
might be pleased to be told by a German that there is no reason for envy
here (or anywhere else, of course). There are plain counter-examples to
Frege’s ill-considered contention: in ‘Sie geht, wenn er kommt’ the clauses
are not ‘distinguished by the word-order’. As for the second conjunct in
[g], which repeats [b], an example like ‘Whoever says that is wrong’ suf-
fices to confirm it, and Frege has very often explained it.61 But I think he
never explained the first conjunct. In asserting that N.N. believes that
p or in asserting that if p then q one does not assert that p. What would
Frege take to be a case where the ‘subordinate clause’, as he puts it, does
‘contain an assertion’? Perhaps he is thinking of sentences that stand
in the scope of a factive operator:62 one asserts that p, he might want to
claim, if one asserts that N.N. knows that p, or that it is a well-known fact
that p. But then, the connective in ‘p and q’ is also a factive operator,
and yet Frege denies that in asserting that p and q one asserts that p.63
Whatever justifies this denial will presumably also justify rejection of
my two examples. But certainly Frege is committed to maintain that
in asserting that it is true that p one asserts that p. One can accept this
claim without endorsing Frege’s reason for it, that is, the propositional-
redundancy thesis. 64

Notes
1. Original pagination, pp. 62–3. In English translations the brief title has
shrunk from ‘The Thought’ (A. & M. Quinton 1956) first to ‘Thoughts’ (Geach
1977) and then to its non minus ultra, to ‘Thought’ (Geach in Beaney 1997).
2. NS 213 / PW 197.
3. Numerals between square brackets refer to sentences in my excerpt.
4. In ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ (39) Frege uses ‘command (Befehl)’ to refer to the
content of an imperative sentence.
5. I call them assertive rather than assertoric, because it rhymes with ‘inter-
rogative’ etc., and I don’t call them indicative (as the Quintons do in
their translation) because of the interrelation in Frege’s language between
‘Behauptungssatz’, ‘Behauptung’ and ‘behauptende Kraft’.
6. Aristotle, De Int. 20b22–3.
70 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

7. Aristotle, Top. 158a14–22; De Int. 20b22–30. (He calls the latter ‘dialectical
questions’.)
8. Henceforth I shall use ‘interrogative’ as short for ‘interrogative sentence’.
Similarly, Frege’s word- and sentence-questions are sentences.
9. Leibniz 1704: 368. Cp. my 2010: 166, 173.
10. NS 8 / PW 7–8.
11. See also [12] and (in the continuation of our passage soon to be quoted:) [g]
and [32], and the first sentence that follows our passage (‘Der Gedanke’ 63,
2nd paragraph).
12. As Frege puts it again and again in his post-1891 writings, – in ‘Der Gedanke’
see [g] below and pp. 64, 76.
13. ‘Der Gedanke’ 63–4.
14. Husserl 1901: 3rd Logical Investigation, § 17. Cf. Frege’s distinction betwen
unterscheiden and abscheiden in KS 270 n. 5 / CP 282.
15. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 41.
16. This suggestion is supported by a passage in ‘Die Verneinung’ where Frege says
in a similar context that two ‘acts … seem to merge into one act (Taten … in
eine Tat zusammenzuschmelzen scheinen)’ (151).
17. The technical sound of this term makes it less than felicitous. I follow at this
point the Quinton translation just to make the structural similarity between
the entries on the left visible. In my commentary I shall talk about grasping
a thought (as all Frege scholars and nearly all Frege translators do).
18. Please recall my confession of uneasiness in the previous note.
19. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 34 n. (my emphasis).
20. Johnson 1921: 4; Braithwaite 1932: 130f.; Price 1969: 189–203.
21. Frege never used this kind of example.
22. ‘Function und Begriff’ 21f. This aside was praised by Meinong, after Russell
had drawn his attention to it: Meinong 1910: 6 (transl. 12).
23. See e.g. ‘Die Verneinung’ 145. (I think it was Geach who nicknamed this
observation ‘the Frege point’. Actually, Kant and Bolzano were very well
aware of it.) Perhaps situation [iii] is situation [iv] in disguise, that is to say,
perhaps one makes the assumption that p just in case for some q, one judges
that if p then q. For some reflections on this see my 1995.
24. See e.g. ‘Gedankengefüge’ 42.
25. I go into it in some detail in my 2010: 514–31.
26. WB 245 / PMC 163.
27. ‘Die Verneinung’ n. 4.
28. Cp. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 34 and n.; ‘Der Gedanke’ 74.
29. There is a colloquial use of the corresponding verb in Plato’s Gorgias at 501C:
‘endorsing somebody’s opinion on something’.
30. Husserl 1901: 447.
31. For references to pertinent passages in Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant,
Brentano, Windelband and Rickert see my 2010: 431f.
32. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 32 n.
33. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 35; not as unequivocally in ‘Die Verneinung’ 150
and note.
34. What follows is a summary of the main results of my grammatical enquiry.
In my 2010: at 432–7, you will find the 49 examples and many more refer-
ences I have collected and botanised.
 Wolfgang Künne 71

35. Connoisseurs of the secondary literature on Frege will notice that in this
interlude I quarrel with Thomas Ricketts, Gottfried Gabriel and Mark Textor.
(Textor 2010 also contains a faithful rendering of Rickett’s and Gabriel’s
pertinent views.)
36. Grundgesetze I, xiii; ‘Die Verneinung’ 146.
37. Grundgesetze I, xvi; NS 183 (PW 168); ‘Die Verneinung’ 145. (The English transla-
tions of the passages referred to in this note and the next two seldom confirm
what I claim. Please, don’t take that to be evidence against my claims.)
38. ‘Die Verneinung’ 154; Grundgesetze I, x (to be quoted below).
39. NS 2 (PW 2); ‘Der Gedanke’ 74; ‘Die Verneinung’ 151, 153–4; NS 279 (PW 259),
286 (PW 267).
40. As registered above sub (IV), there is just one passage, in the Preface to
Grundgesetze, in which Frege characterises the judgement-stroke or vertical
in an ‘ideographic sentence (Begriffsschriftsatz)’ as signalising ‘the acknowl-
edgement that the truth-value [of what it is prefixed to] is the true (die
Anerkennung, dass der Wahrheitswerth das Wahre sei)’. This is no counter-
evidence to the above claim, for surely when you acknowledge the thought
that snow is white as true, you do not make a claim about a sentence.
41. ‘Die Verneinung’ 145.
42. ‘Der Gedanke’ 69.
43. NS 201 / PW 185; NS 214 / PW 198.
44. Herbart 1813: §§ 52, 54.
45. Geach 1976: 11 (my emphasis).
46. Bolzano 1837: III, 177.
47. For this reason, we should not be lulled by the liberating air of Meinong’s
‘Principle of Unlimited Freedom of Assumption (Prinzip unbeschränkter
Annahmefreiheit)’: see his 1910: 346 (transl. 246). Meinong introduced
‘Annahme’ as a ‘technical term’ (ibid. 6 (transl. 12)) that is meant to cover
all and only those (non-emotional and non-volitional) propositional acts
that are non-committal as regards truth. In this sense you cannot ‘assume’
that a rose is a rose. Perhaps Meinong was misled by the fact that you can say
‘Suppose p’ for any ‘p’ you like. For more on his views on merely entertaining
a thought see my 1995.
48. In my 2010: 647–75 I brood over Frege’s conception of self-evidence.
49. NS 2, 201, 214 / PW 2, 185, 198.
50. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 37 n. Cf. NS 252 / PW 234 and [30] in our text.
51. NS 2 (PW 2).
52. The construction ‘hinstellen als’ is similarly used in contexts like ‘jemanden
als Beispiel hinstellen (to hold sb. up as an example)’.
53. ‘Gedankengefüge’, n. 4, cf. 50.
54. NS 192 / PW 177.
55. In NS 214 / PW 198 he overlooks this option.
56. Geach renders ‘Spiel’ in [29] by ‘acting’. But ‘[play-]acting’ is just one form of
playing, and Frege uses the broader term.
57. Cervantes imagined a situation in which a theatregoer fails to recognise
the situationally induced loss of illocutionary force (Don Quixote, XI, 8–9).
Kierkegaard reports a real disaster that took place in Saint Petersburg when
theatregoers failed to realise that illocutionary force was restored (Either/Or,
Part I, 1st section).
72 Merely Entertaining a Thought, Judging and Asserting

58. Reported (and exculpated) by M. de Gaynesford in Ratio XXII, December

2009.
59. ‘Der Gedanke’ 61; cf. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 34.
60. In ch. 2 of my 2003 and in 2010: 393–423 I criticise Frege’s conception of
truth.
61. For references and discussion see my 2010: 685–8.
62. Cf. ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ 48.
63. ‘Gedankengefüge’ 37–9; cf. my 2010: 426, 601–17.
64. I have presented an earlier version of this paper to the conference ‘Days of
Judgement’ in Leiden that was organised by Marietje van der Schaar. I am
grateful for the feedback I received there, for it helped me to separate the
sheep from some of the goats in my arguments. I also profited from ques-
tions and objections of the participants in the symposium with the less
threatening title ‘Judgement and Truth in Early Analytic Philosophy and
Phenomenology’ that was organised by Mark Textor.

References
Beaney, M. (1997) ed. The Frege-Reader. (Blackwell: Oxford).
Bolzano, B. (1837) Wissenschaftslehre, 4 volumes. (Seidel: Sulzbach).
Braithwaite, R. (1932) ‘The Nature of Believing’, in: Proceedings. of the Aristotelian
Society, 33, 129–46.
Frege, G. (1891) ‘Function und Begriff’, original pagination, in: KS, transl. as
‘Function and Concept’, in: CP & Beaney 1997.
—— (1892) ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, original pagination, in: KS, transl. as
‘On Sense and [Bedeutung]’, in: CP & Beaney 1997.
—— (1893) Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. I, (Georg Olms: Hildesheim 1968);
Basic Laws of Arithmetic, selections transl. in Beaney 1997.
—— (1918) ‘Der Gedanke’, original pagination, in: Künne 2010, transl. (1), see
Quinton 1956; (2) in: Geach 1977 & CP & Beaney 1997.
—— (1919) ‘Die Verneinung’, original pagination, in: Künne 2010; transl. as
‘Negation’ in: Geach 1977 & CP & Beaney 1997.
—— (1923) ‘Gedankengefüge’, original pagination, in: Künne 2010; transl. as
‘Compound Thoughts’ in: CP & Geach 1977.
—— (1969) Nachgelassene Schriften (NS), (Hamburg: Meiner) transl. as: Posthumous
Writings (PW ). (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).
—— (1976) Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel (WB). (Meiner: Hamburg). partially
transl. as: Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence (PMC). (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1980).
—— (21990) Kleine Schriften (KS), (Hildesheim: Olms); transl. as: Collected Papers
(CP). (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
Geach, P.T. (1976) Reason and Argument. (Oxford: Blackwell).
—— (1977) ed. Gottlob Frege, Logical Investigations. (Oxford: Blackwell).
Herbart, J.F. (1813) Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 51837. (Hamburg:
Meiner 1993).
Husserl, E. (1901) Logische Untersuchungen, vol. II/1. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,
1968).
Johnson, W.E. (1921) Logic, Pt. I. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
 Wolfgang Künne 73

Künne, W. (1995) ‘Some Varieties of Thinking. Reflections on Meinong and

Fodor’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 50, 365–95.
—— (2003) Conceptions of Truth. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
—— (2010) Die Philosophische Logik Gottlob Freges. Ein Kommentar. (Frankfurt/M:
Klostermann).
Leibniz, G.W. (1704) Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain, Akad.-Ausg. VI.6.
(Berlin 1962); transl. as: New Essays on Human Understanding. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), with pagination of AA VI.6.
Meinong, A. (1910) Über Annahmen. (Graz. Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt,
1977); transl. as: On Assumptions, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
Price, H.H. (1969) Belief. (London: Allen and Unwin).
Quinton, A.M. (1956) transl. as: Gottlob Frege: The Thought, in: P.F. Strawson, (ed.),
Philosophical Logic. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).
Textor, M. (2010) ‘Frege on Judging as Acknowledging the Truth’, Mind, 119,
615–55.
5
We Owe It To Sigwart! A New Look
at the Content/Object Distinction
in Early Phenomenological
Theories of Judgment from
Brentano to Twardowski
Arianna Betti
VU University Amsterdam

1 Introduction

In a series of articles, Dale Jacquette has offered the following picture

of Twardowski’s contribution to Brentano’s theory of intentionality.
Brentano made no distinction between the content and the object
of mental acts: he ‘seems to place the real world beyond the reach of
thought’ ( Jacquette 1990: 181, Jacquette 2004: 107; see also Jacquette
2006: 12). By distinguishing sharply between content and object
instead, Twardowski went beyond Brentano (although, contrary to
what others claim, he was not the first Brentanian to do so).
This picture needs fine-tuning. I’ll consider two points. First, the
overall impression one has from Jacquette’s reconstruction is that
Twardowski’s main motivation for distinguishing between content and
object of mental acts was defeating the threat of idealism intrinsic in
Brentano’s intentionality thesis; or, to put it otherwise, Twardowski was
dissatisfied with the fact that Brentano’s position did not do justice to
a ‘naïve’ realist metaphysics accepting the commonsense existence of
objects outside the mind. To be sure, Jacquette does not describe
Twardowski’s motivation literally in this way, but this seems to be
the message insofar as he sets Twardowski’s work in the context of an
account in which the most problematic aspect of Brentano’s position is
the lack of access to the transcendent world leading to idealism.
Twardowski’s theory of intentionality, I submit, was not motivated by
a wish to overcome idealist menaces, or to do justice to a ‘naïve’ realist
metaphysics (it would be difficult, for one thing, to trade transcendent
74
 Arianna Betti 75

round squares on the market of commonsense metaphysicians). Brentano’s

theory of judgement was simply indefensible from a theoretical point of
view, for the theory suffered from internal problems that made it hardly
consistent. Twardowski wanted simply to set out a coherent theory of judge-
ment while staying as much as possible within the Brentanian framework.
Without distinguishing between the content and object of presentations
exactly as Twardowski did, this was simply not possible.
Second, although it is correct that, as Jacquette argues against
Grossmann, Twardowski was not the first Brentanian to have the con-
tent/object distinction in place, since it is found also in Höfler and
Meinong’s Logik (1890) (from which Twardowski quotes in his 1894
book), it is not the case that Brentano never distinguished between
content and object. On the basis of the logic manuscript EL 80 he
edited, Robin Rollinger has recently argued that Brentano himself has
the distinction in place (Rollinger 2009), and, given Rollinger’s dating of
EL80, this implies not only that Brentano acknowledged the distinction
before Twardowski, but also before Höfler and Meinong’s Logik.1
These two elements, Twardowski’s motivation for introducing the
content/object distinction and the circumstance that Brentano himself
acknowledged it before Twardowski, are related in an interesting way. It
is this relation that will occupy me mainly in this paper. Let me stress
right away that the question of exactly who among the Brentanians was
the first to introduce the content/object distinction (whether Brentano,
Twardowski or someone else) isn’t the most important one here.2 The
important question concerns the reason why that distinction was made, its
use, and its impact upon the theories in which it was accepted. This said, it
is of course relevant to know that Brentano himself had the distinction in
place first, and it is interesting to wonder: at which point in the develop-
ment of Brentano’s position did it appear? The content/object distinction,
some say, is already lurking in Brentano’s Psychology. However, in the
Psychology it isn’t clearly present, while in EL 80 it is clearly present (EL 80
is a layered text that Brentano used for years, while lecturing in Würzburg
and Vienna). One is thus led to think that Brentano must have introduced –
or stressed – this distinction only at some particular point, and for some
reason. Besides, Brentano (and others) might well have had the distinction
in place before Twardowski, but there are salient differences between what
Twardowski makes of that distinction and what others make of it. And it is
these differences that should interest us. The philosophical consequences
that Twardowski draws from introducing the content/object distinction
have a far more profound impact upon the architecture of the resulting
theory than they have in Brentano (and the same applies to Höfler and
76 We Owe It To Sigwart!

Meinong, and to the other Brentanians). Importantly, it can be shown

that only Twardowski’s position afforded a genuine solution to certain
problems raised by Brentano’s theory of judgment, problems for which
it was criticised at the time. I maintain that Twardowski wanted to save
Brentano’s theory of judgement from these problems, not, as mentioned
above, to do justice to ‘naïve’ realist metaphysics (if it seems he did, this is
a byproduct of the theory).
Why did Brentano himself introduce the content/object distinction at
a certain point, and at which ‘certain point’? Here’s the story as I’ll tell it
in this paper. It is, on the face of Rollinger’s dating of EL80, a (possibly)
controversial story. Brentano was forced to consider (or consider more
seriously) the content/object distinction at a certain point, I’d say not
before 1888–89, by attacks against his theory of judgement made by
critics such as Sigwart and Windelband. His pupils Marty, Höfler and
Meinong followed suit (maybe because they came to think under
Brentano’s influence that the distinction was needed, or maybe because
they were toying with it for the same reason at the same time). However,
the adjustments to the theory that were made by the Brentanians before
Twardowski’s Zur Lehre were too modest and, from a theoretical point
of view, ultimately inadequate to yield a coherent and convincing
intentionality-based theory of judgement. In 1894, Twardowski came
up with more radical adjustments that did provide such a theory. But
Twardowski’s solution had the price of pushing the theory in a direc-
tion which was quite far from Brentano’s original version. Twardowski’s
theory comprehended two strong and influential theses Brentano never
adhered to: (a) that there are no objectless presentations: objects of
contradictory presentations are genuinely contradictory, and objects
nonetheless;3 and (b) that there is a difference between complexes and
facts. Thesis (a) can be easily found in Twardowski 1894; for thesis
(b) one has to resort instead to Twardowski’s manuscript material, as
only feeble hints can be found in Twardowski 1894. Since the emer-
gence of (a) and (b) and their significance is covered elsewhere,4 in
the following I shall deal mostly with the content/object distinction
before Twardowski took it up. In my account I shall take the basics of
Brentano’s and Twardowski’s theory of judgement for granted.5

2 Brentano and the Content/Object Distinction

Brentano famously wrote

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of

the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an
 Arianna Betti 77

object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously,

reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to
be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity.
Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself.
(Brentano 1874: 124; Eng. Transl. 88, quoted from Rollinger 2009)

This passage forms the basis for the standard reading of Brentano’s
intentionality thesis, according to which the terms ‘content’ and
‘object’ are here used interchangeably (Bell 1990: 9 and n. 19, and many
others). I agree with this reading, however some find it controversial.
For instance, Rollinger 2009: 5–6 identifies the distinction between
content and object of a presentation at work already in the Psychology,
to wit in this passage:

We speak of indistinctness of a presentation in two senses, in a

proper one and in an improper one. When we say, ‘Objects that
we saw in the distance appeared indistinctly to us’, what we mean
is: ‘The visual presentations that they caused in us did not allow
for a judgment about how the objects would appear up close, and
did not allow us for this very reason to come to an assured con-
jecture regarding other peculiarities’. Which content they had may
be completely clear to us. Thus they are indistinct in an improper
sense. In the proper sense, by contrast, we call those presenta-
tions indistinct in which we are unable with assurance to give an
account of the content itself. (Brentano, Ps 53/53003, quoted from
Rollinger 2009)

We can agree with Rollinger that content and object in the passage
above can be read as the notions of content and object of a presenta-
tion more or less as we know them from Twardowski. But the question
is whether this passage, read in this way, would be enough to con-
clude that the distinction between the content and object of mental
acts is already in place in the Psychology. I don’t think so. The point is
that the distinction in question is not part of Brentano’s theoretical
setup in the Psychology. The passage above is evidence that Brentano
is aware that the material world is not in our mind; it is not evidence
that Brentano’s theory involves objects of a presentation distinct
from the corresponding contents of presentations in-existing in our
minds. Brentano’s theory of intentionality does not involve both the
technical notion of content and the technical notion of object, but
only the technical notion of content or object to which a mental
act is directed. That is an ambiguous notion. And that ambiguity is
78 We Owe It To Sigwart!

one of the elements that create the problems Twardowski sets out to
solve.
Yet the content/object distinction, as Rollinger has pointed out, is
present in the logic manuscript EL80. If one relies on the standard
dating of manuscripts of the logic courses given by Mayer-Hillebrand,
and on the list of courses in Werle 1989, the manuscript should be
dated to no earlier than 1884/5.6 This dating does not square with
Rollinger’s, which points to an earlier period, but it should be
said that the matter appears to be truly complicated. As Rollinger
says in his Editor’s Preface (Rollinger 2010), EL80 presents ‘enormous
difficulties’. EL80 is a multi-layered text contaminated by other sets
of notes, and composed in a handwriting at times difficult to deci-
pher. According to Rollinger, the text contains the lecture notes of
logic courses from various years, starting from the Würzburg course
in 1869/80 until 1877. But Rollinger also points out that it is pos-
sible that Brentano continued the revision also after 1877, which is
confirmed by additions on slips of paper with later dates. Because of
its layered nature, the manuscript presents the editor with ‘extreme
difficulties’. And this applies also to the dates of the manuscript
pages (which are again ‘extremely difficult’ to determine).7 What
is relevant for my story, and what makes it controversial in the
face of Rollinger’s earlier dating of EL80, is that in published works
by Brentano and his pupils, the distinction seems to be an issue
only from 1888–89 onward (or mostly in works from these period),
and, furthermore, it is only from around 1891 that the distinction
appears in texts by Brentanians such as Hillebrand and Marty in a
way similar to that in which it appears in EL80. A particularly rel-
evant case is a work by Brentano from 1889 containing a critical
exchange with Sigwart, in which Brentano seems not to accept the
content/object distinction at all in the way he does in EL80. This
calls for explanation. Either my dating of the content/object distinc-
tion to no earlier than 1888–89 is right, and so the distinction is one
of the later additions in EL80, or else my dating is wrong, though in
that case one would need to account for the discrepancy between
EL80 and the published texts. Such an account would also have to
explain why the distinction is absent as well from the Descriptive
Psychology lecture notes, which are from a later period: 1890–91.8 An
alternative option, and one that I wish to defend here as the most
plausible, is that, so far as the theory of judgement was concerned, the
distinction was in fact never firmly established before Twardowski’s
work, but was somewhat in flux, used ad hoc by Brentano and the
 Arianna Betti 79

Brentanians in an inconsistent and fluid way at various junctures

starting from 1888-89, and that because of external demands and
pressures from opponents.
One thing is clear in any case: there is a most striking difference
between Brentano’s position in EL80 and Twardowski’s. Brentano
accepts objectless presentations (Rollinger 2009: 7), while Twardowski’s
position is crucially the opposite. Evidence for this is the following.
Brentano says that the meaning of a name can’t be the external object
of a presentation, but only the (content of the) presentation: the reason
Brentano gives for this is that in case of empty presentations such as that
of Jupiter, ‘Jupiter’ would otherwise mean nothing (EL80 13.013[2]). The
same position – that there are empty presentations – we find in Höfler &
Meinong 1890. I shall maintain below that this crucial difference on
objectless presentations, namely Twardowski’s denial and Brentano’s
affirmation of them, enables Twardowski to elaborate a coherent theory
of judgement while it leaves Brentano (and Brentanians) with a prob-
lematic one. So, I maintain that even if the content/object distinction
was accepted in works by Brentanians before Twardowski, it was never
integrated in their theories of judgement in a way that could withstand
anti-Brentanian criticism. By contrast, in Twardowski that distinction
is put to work in such a way that it does yield a Brentanian theory of
judgement that is immune to that criticism.
As I shall argue, the problems Twardowski set out to solve come from
the combination of the following Brentanian theses, and from the
ambiguity of the notion of ‘immanent object’ which appears in them:

BR1: Every mental phenomenon has a content or object towards

which it is directed (Brentano 1874: Ch. 1 §5, 124 and ff.).
BR2: Mental acts are presentations or have presentations at their
basis (Brentano 1874: Book II, Ch. 1, §3, 112).
BR3: A judgement is not a combination of presentations, but a sui
generis mental act which accepts or rejects an object.
BR4: All judgements can be aptly expressed in the existential form
‘A is’ (positive judgment) or ‘A is not’ (negative judgment)
(alternatively, ‘A exists’ or ‘A does not exist’). In both cases,
the judgment has a so-called ‘immanent’ object, given by the
presentation, which is simply A. A judgement ‘A exists’ is true
iff A exists.

Before I turn to the problematic nature of this combination,

I am going to give some evidence that, starting from 1888–89,
80 We Owe It To Sigwart!

theorisations pointing towards the content/object distinction seem

indeed to surface in various printed works by Brentano and orthodox
Brentanians such as Hillebrand and Marty. That we find the distinc-
tion in Marty and Hillebrand might of course have been a result of
Brentano’s teaching from EL80 (as Rollinger 2009: 6 suggests). As
mentioned, however, I am less interested here in primacy matters
among the Brentanians than I am in exploring the reason why the
distinction was introduced at all with a technical role in their world.
And I say that the reason was Sigwart’s criticism of Brentano’s theory
of judgement. The nature of the criticism pushed Brentano and his
pupils towards introducing the content/object distinction; but only
in Twardowski’s more radical version of the theory was Sigwart’s criti-
cism fully met. Twardowski seems to have been the first to take the
distinction into account in the most serious way, and to work out its
far-reaching philosophical consequences.
Let’s have a look first at a work by Brentano which is important in
this context, On the Concept of Truth (Brentano 1889a). Two elements
are relevant for us here. First, Brentano acknowledges a distinction
between the existence of A and A itself as seemingly distinct entities
(which was to be sure already mentioned in the Psychology), and that we
find again both in Marty’s idea of judgment-content (Urteilsinhalt) and
in Twardowski’s Zur Lehre. This might suggest that Brentano takes A to
be the object of a judgement and the existence (or the non-existence) of
A to be instead the content of a judgement. Brentano says very little on
this issue here, however. Distinct notions of matter and content of judge-
ments are also found in Stumpf’s 1888 logic course. In the judgment
‘God is’, Stumpf distinguishes God as matter of the judgement and the
being of God as its content (which Stumpf calls Sachverhalt, Stumpf
1888: 2429): notice however that what Stumpf here calls ‘the matter of
the judgement’ is identified with the content of the presentation(s) at the
basis of the judgement.10 This means that although we might have here
a distinction between matter/object and content of a judgement, we can-
not assume that we necessarily have a distinction between the content
and object of a presentation. This harmonises with the second relevant
element of On the Concept of Truth: the mention of the content (Gehalt)
of the presentation at the basis of a judgement:

In a part of true judgements there is so to speak a direct reference of

their truth to something real; these are those in which the presenta-
tion at their basis has a real content (Gehalt).11
 Arianna Betti 81

This does not yet mean that a distinction between the content and the
object of a presentation is in place, and it definitely does not mean that
in presentations the mind has direct access to (in this case) real, i.e.
causally effective and non-immanent, transcendent external objects.
Note that when Brentano introduces the notion of intentionality, he
does not use the term Gehalt, he uses Inhalt. Here instead he only uses
Gehalt.12 And note also that these notions are not used, distinguished
or explained by Brentano in this text in a way which is technical and
satisfactorily precise.
In the years of On the Concept of Truth, Brentano’s theory was
attacked by the Kantians Wilhelm Windelband and Christoph Sigwart.13
The most interesting objections are raised by Sigwart. Sigwart’s attack
was rebutted at several junctures by Marty (1888), by Brentano him-
self (1889) and Hillebrand (1891), then again by Marty in 1894. In
Brentano’s writings of 1889 Sigwart’s name appears more frequently
than it does in earlier writings: Brentano quotes often the Impersonalien
(Sigwart 1888) and the second edition of the Logik (Sigwart 1889).
In those years Sigwart was a very popular philosopher, which meant
that his ideas and criticism were something one had to engage with.14
Brentano replied to Sigwart in a very long note of Brentano 1889b.15
In keeps with claim BR4 above, which fixes the existential theory of
judgement, in this work Brentano takes the right and left side of the
following sentences

(8) ‘A man is learned’ is true iff a learned man exists

(9) ‘No stone is living’ is true iff a living stone does not exist

to be ‘indivisibly just one thing’. He compares these pairs to the two

statements ‘A > B’ and ‘B < A’ or ‘A causes B’ and ‘B is caused by A’,16
and claims that

Everything concerning which affirmative judgments are true belongs

to the existing. (Brentano 1930: 46)

Sigwart’s position was instead that ‘being’ (or ‘existing’) is a relation, the

correspondence (Übereinstimmung) – ibid: ‘identity’ – of the presented

thing with a possible perception (ibid.: with a ‘perceptible’, with
‘something that can be perceived by me’). (Sigwart as reported in
Brentano 1930: 46)
82 We Owe It To Sigwart!

To this Brentano opposes two things. According to Sigwart, says

Brentano, the knowledge of the existence of something would consist
in the knowledge of

the correspondence of a content of a presentation with – since I do

not understand exactly what, let’s say – NN. (Brentano 1930: 48)

But to know that the content on the one hand is, and that this NN.
on the other hand also is, says Brentano, and to know that the two are
identical, as Sigwart wants, I need to know already ‘some existence’;
therefore according to Brentano Sigwart’s position is ‘contradictory’.
Brentano’s second objection is that there are many things that are
not perceivable and yet exist: Sigwart confuses reality and existence,
for entities like atoms, empty spaces, and God are existents which are
unperceivable. Also, Brentano says, Sigwart confuses the existence of
real objects and presented objects:

How wrongly is the concept of existence analysed by Sigwart can

be seen in a really simply way from the following statement: a real
centaur does not exist, but a presented centaur exists, and indeed
as long as I present it. For someone to whom is not clear here
the difference between ν ς λθθ ς [being as true, ab] namely
in the sense of the existent, from the ν [being, ab] in the sense
of the (substantial) thing, not even the richest illustrations with
other examples, I am afraid, would be of much help to its under-
standing. (Brentano 1930: 48)

It does not matter much for what I want to argue whether Brentano’s
objections against Sigwart are strictly speaking correct or not. What
is most important for us is that these controversies, especially those
raised in the second point, were exactly the kind of controversies from
which Twardowski wanted to save Brentano’s theory of judgement.
Brentano did not seem to understand that, if one applied charity to
their words, his critics did, in fact, have a point, and that his theory
thus needed improvement, no matter how literally inaccurate criti-
cisms like Sigwart’s were. As we shall see better shortly, Sigwart was in
fact insisting in his own manner that there was no way that an exis-
tential theory of judgement like Brentano’s would work if no link is
established in the theory between the immanent content of a presenta-
tion and the object presented in (or better: through) it, what Brentano
mockingly but unsurprisingly calls ‘NN.’. From the above we can
 Arianna Betti 83

already start to see what the most pressing theoretical need here was:
a clear analysis of what the expression ‘the presented’ in this debate
meant, of what was actually ‘accepted’ or ‘rejected’ in a Brentano-like
existential theory of judgement. And that analysis was exactly what
Twardowski set out to do.
What Twardowski was to propose, of course, was not the only
possible solution: Brentano himself was ultimately to solve the
problem of the content/object ambiguity in another way, namely by
abandoning the theory of truth as correspondence for a theory of
truth as evidence in his mature period.17 In this earlier period, how-
ever, Brentano is hanging on to a correspondentist theory of truth (in
his version). It is from this perspective that his pupils Hillebrand and
Marty would defend his doctrine from Sigwart’s attacks, and from this
perspective that they were to be, to say it with Meinong, ‘päpstlicher
als der Papst’.18

3 The Brentanians against Sigwart: Hillebrand

Franz Hillebrand’s Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse (1891)

is the most extensive publication on Brentano’s theory of judgement
from this period. There is no doubt as to the Brentanian orthodoxy
of this treatise: Meinong, in his review a year later, treats it more or
less as if it were signed by Brentano under some sort of pseudonym.19
Hillebrand’s rebuttal of Sigwart is quite different from that of Brentano
which we just saw. It is also interesting to note that Hillebrand makes
no mocking mention of a mysterious ‘NN.’ with which the matter of
a judgement, as he says, would have to ‘correspond’: on the contrary,
he speaks flat-out of objects to which the matter of a judgement may be
said to correspond. A judgement of the form ‘A is B’ has AB as matter,
and the matter of a judgement, says Hillebrand, can correspond to one
of more objects. Note that although this idea is not something one
finds in Brentano’s published writings, it is present in Brentano’s EL80
(Rollinger 2009: 7).
But let’s see Sigwart’s objections and Hillebrand’s defence. Hillebrand
quotes the following passage from Sigwart’s Logik:

If I present an ‘object’ A, it is in my consciousness first of all as

presented, as thought; it stands to me in the relation of being object of
my presenting. As such I cannot reject it, because I do actually present
it; and if I wanted to accept it, I could indeed only accept that I actu-
ally present it; but this ‘acceptance‘ would not be the affirmation that
84 We Owe It To Sigwart!

it exists; because that is now exactly the point: if, beside the fact that
I present it, it also has the meaning that it constitutes part of the real
world which is around me, whether it can be perceived, whether it
can have an effect on me or on something else. I must link the latter
thoughts with the mere presenting, if I want to affirm its existence.
(Sigwart 1889: 89–90 n.; quoted in Hillebrand 1891: 35–6)

Similar is the objection from Sigwart’s Impersonalien:

the concept as such does not require any acceptance or position;

as soon as it is really thought, it has happened all it is possible to
happen as far as this particular concept is concerned; it is impossible
to tell what the acceptance refers to, or how, when it is really thought,
acceptance must be denied to it, and in what sense it could be possibly
rejected; it is impossible to tell what it should mean that I accept the
concept of circle or reject the concept of square. […] <Object of accept-
ance or rejection can only be> the meaning which the content of the
concept can still have next to now being thought by me; in particular,
the thought that another object given to me in the intuition corre-
sponds or is identical to the concept; but then it is not the concept
itself, but this relation in which the object of acceptance or rejection
stands. (Sigwart 1888: 62; quoted in Hillebrand 1891: 36)

Now, Sigwart’s terminology might not be the most felicitous; and

I don’t want to say that he defends a theory which is necessarily bet-
ter than Brentano’s (or, for what it’s worth, Hillebrand’s). But, at least
read in a certain way, Sigwart is right. He is touching a clear weak
point in Brentano’s theory, one that Twardowski saw. Now, of course,
there are profound differences between what Sigwart says here and
what Twardowski was to say. While the Kantian Sigwart distinguishes
the concept A (which is not what is accepted or rejected in a judgement)
from the relation between the concept A and another object given in the
intuition (and this relation is for Sigwart what is accepted and rejected
in a judgement), Twardowski distinguishes the content of (the pres-
entation of A) and the object of the (presentation of A). But Sigwart’s
criticism can be read as follows (and this is, I submit, how Twardowski
must have read it): What do we reject when we reject A in a judgement?
It can’t be the concept/content A, for that is simply given in a presen-
tation always as the A as presented: it’s what I have in my mind. That
can’t be rejected (what would it mean that I reject a concept I have?).
It must be something else which is in fact accepted or rejected. The
difference between Sigwart and Twardowski here regards that something
 Arianna Betti 85

else: Sigwart is taking a relation of falling under between concept and

object given in intuition to be what is judged (accepted and rejected)
in a judgement, while Twardowski, ignoring Sigwart’s Kantian way of
handling concepts and intuitions, takes the object as distinct from the
content to be what is judged (accepted and rejected) in a judgement.
So for Sigwart we do not accept or reject a content (in his terminology
a concept) but a relation between a content and what is outside that
content and to which that content corresponds.
Sigwart’s objection is that if one follows what Brentano’s theory
implies, it is indeed never A itself we accept or reject, but only A pre-
sented. Now, as we shall see, Hillebrand’s defence purports to counter
exactly this point – articulating further the defence that Brentano
himself had offered against Sigwart. However, it is not difficult to show
that the setup of Brentano’s theory does not allow a convincing defence
if content and object of a mental act are not distinguished (or, to
be more precise, if that distinction is not put to work in the right way,
as we shall see in section 5 below). Let’s have a look at Hillebrand’s
defence. According to Hillebrand, Sigwart is guilty of confusing object
and presented object. Hillebrand writes:

Everybody knows what it means: I present a thaler. [...] What remains

the same […] whether I present a thaler, a horse or a triangle, is the
act of presentation; what distinguished these three cases is generally
designated as content or object [Inhalt, Gegenstand oder Object] of a
presentation. (The word presentation is ambiguously used for act and
content.) In our […] example the object of presentation is thus: thaler,
and not: presented thaler. The act of presentation is specified through
its content and builds together with it a single mental reality. This
mental reality can in turn again be object (content) of a presenting
activity, for we perceive internally also our presenting together with
its content. I therefore present that I have a presentation of a thaler.
The object of this second act of presentation is not the thaler, but the
presented thaler. […] (Hillebrand 1891: 37–8)

Now let’s call the first act, Hillebrand says, the one that presents the
thaler, primary and the second act, the one that presents the presented
thaler, secondary (this is not very faithful to Brentano’s original position,
but never mind that here). He continues then:

As the thaler itself (not the presented one!) can be the object of a
merely presenting attitude, the very same thaler (again, not the pre-
sented one!) can be some other time the object of a judging attitude,
86 We Owe It To Sigwart!

i.e. of acceptance or rejection, what is expressed in the sentences‚

‘there is a thaler’ and ‘there is no thaler’.
Now, […] the primary presenting and judging can be in turn be
object of a secondary presenting and judging […]. The thaler is
the object of our primary judging, the presented thaler that of our
secondary judging. Since the primary judging has a different object,
it can of course be negative, while the second is affirmative. […]
I can […] be convinced that there is no real thaler, while there is a
presented thaler. Because the latter is there as long as I present it; and
I have to present it, if I want to reject it. (Hillebrand 1891: 37–8)

It is not difficult to see that this defence is a failure. The problem Sigwart
is pointing at, again, is the following: if when I present an object A,
A is immanent to consciousness, and the object of my judging is this
very A, then at most I reject an A which is immanent to consciousness,
not a real A which should be outside it. Hillebrand’s position does not
solve this problem at all. This can be seen from the last sentence of the
passage just quoted: what does the ‘it’ refer to in ‘I have to present it, if
I want to reject it’? This was exactly the weak point of the theory Sigwart
spotted. The solution does not lie in distinguishing two judging acts
with different contents/objects, a real thaler and a presented thaler, as
Hillebrand does, for the problem arises within one single act and can be
reformulated for each of the two acts that Hillebrand is considering. The
solution can only lie in distinguishing two elements involved in one and
the same judging (existential) act – which in Twardowski’s case required
distinguishing first of all the content and object of presentations.
It is also clear from the above in what sense the sharp analysis of ‘the
presented’ offered by Twardowski in Content and Object was crucial to a
solution. For the last sentence of the passage above: ‘I have to present
it, if I want to reject it’ is only correct if ‘it’ refers to the object of a nega-
tive existential judgement, not to the content – and we can interpret
Hillebrand as saying the opposite. For consider this sentence again:

Because the latter is there as long as I present it; and I have to present
it, if I want to reject it.

The three ‘it’s’ here all refer to the presented thaler in the sense of
Twardowski’s content. But this can’t work. We need to distinguish two
things: the content and the object of a mental act, which both must
be presented, though not in the same sense. One sense, Twardowski will
observe, is the modified sense of ‘painted’ in ‘painted landscape’, which
 Arianna Betti 87

does not denote a landscape, but a painting; the other is the determining
sense of ‘painted’ in ‘painted landscape’, which denotes a landscape –
one that happens to be painted by someone.
The upshot of the above is the following. Sigwart did not defend
the position on content and object that was to be Twardowski’s, for if
he had he would have been Twardowski, not Sigwart. But the exchange
between Sigwart and Brentano – and even more so, as we saw,
the exchanges between Sigwart and Hillebrand – makes clear in what
sense and to what extent Twardowski’s work fulfilled a genuine need,
namely improving on Brentano’s theory of presentations in order for
it to sustain criticism of his theory of judgements. Let’s have a look at
some more evidence for this: Marty’s defence.

4 Brentanians against Sigwart: Marty

A controversy exploded between Marty and Sigwart in 1884, ignited by

Marty’s criticism of Sigwart’s ideas on impersonal statements contained in
the first edition of Sigwart’s Logik from 1873 (see the first article of Marty’s
series ‘Über subjectlose Sätze und das Verhältniß der Grammatik zu Logik
und Psychologie’, 1884–1895).20 The controversy continued with a ‘Reply’
(‘Entgegnung’, 1888) by Marty against Sigwart’s rebuttal to Marty in the
Impersonalien from 1888,21 and was followed in 1894 by further criticism
by Marty against the positions of Sigwart’s Impersonalien and of the Logik
from 1889.22 The most interesting point for us is contained in the fifth arti-
cle of Marty’s series (1894). In the latter we find a section titled ‘Sigwart’s
Anschauung von der Natur des Existentialsatzes’ (Sigwart’s opinion on
the nature of existential statements).23 After having reminded Sigwart
of Brentano’s opposition between existence and reality, Marty refers to
Hillebrand’s defence against Sigwart on the point that interests us (namely:
what exactly is the A which is accepted in a judgement of the form
‘A exists’). What is most interesting for us here is that Marty does not seem
merely to repeat Hillebrand’s objections, but to go further. Marty writes:

The whole difficulty that Sigwart finds here rests on the fact that
he does not distinguish the immanent object of our consciousness
and the object simpliciter [schlechtweg] (that is, what more or
less corresponds in reality to my presentation). The distinction is
indispensable. (Marty 1894 (article 5, 1894): 443)

The important question here is whether Marty is supposing that

these two elements, immanent object and object simpliciter, should be
88 We Owe It To Sigwart!

distinguished within one and the same act of presentation or not. It is

not completely clear that it is so, but the passage is suggestive enough. If
we have to believe the suggestion, then this passage shows an important
step further in the direction that Twardowski was to take (and that we
also find in EL80). Note that Marty does not signal any deviation from
Brentanian orthodoxy. This makes even more surprising to see that
what for Brentano in 1889 was identified (immanent and transcendent
object), for Marty in 1894 is indispensably distinct, if we keep in mind
that both Brentano and Marty have the same aim, that of defending
Brentano’s theory of judgement against Sigwart’s attacks. Brentano’s
‘NN.’ is now Marty’s (and EL80’s) transcendent object which corre-
sponds ‘more or less’ to the immanent object, and is well-determined
and distinct from it.
From the above we see that Sigwart is thus attacked by Brentano,
Hillebrand and Marty with arguments that contrast with each other to
a considerable extent, but that are such to show (if read as an evolution
of a common path of thought), in an increasingly clear way that a seri-
ously worked out distinction between object and content in Brentano’s
theory of judgement was really needed. One is thus easily brought to
think that Sigwart’s criticism had hit the target, and that solutions
were attempted from different sides among the Brentanians to respond
to that criticism. In 1889 Brentano seems faithful to the position that
judgements on the external world are blind, and to think that the
transcendent object, NN., is irrelevant to his logic and descriptive
psychology; Hillebrand in 1891 attempts a reinterpretation of Brentano’s
original distinction between primary and secondary object, turning the
former into the transcendent object and the latter into the immanent
object of a presentation but still keeping the ambiguity between content
and object of mental acts. Finally, in 1894 Marty takes up a position
which at least superficially seems in fact to come quite near to the one
Twardowski was to take up. Here is what Marty says (as an immediate
continuation of the passage above):

The immanent object exists as long as the corresponding act of

consciousness is real. For there is no consciousness without an
object immanent in it; that is a correlate of the other. By contrast,
the object simpliciter, for instance the presented simpliciter may or
may not exist. If my presentation is for instance the concept of
horse, the object exists. If my presentation is for instance that of
a centaur, the presented does not exist; although as presented it
is to be accepted also in this case – otherwise we would not have
 Arianna Betti 89

‘the presentation of centaur’, by which nothing else is meant

than that the centaur as presented is in us. (Marty 1894 (article 5,
1894): 443–4)

Let us again assume that Marty is suggesting that, at least for some
acts, one and the same act can have both an immanent object and an
object simpliciter. Although the passage is not entirely crisp in all
aspects, which reveals that Marty could not count on a worked out
theory like Twardowski was to develop, it is evident from this pas-
sage that the times for Twardowski’s book were ripe. (Indeed, against
the background we just saw, it is understandable why Twardowski
wrote that he was sincerely surprised by the success of his treatise.)24
For in Marty’s passage one finds one of the arguments that Twardowski
uses against Bolzano to defend the thesis that all presentations have
an object (or at least the suggestion of such an argument). On the
other hand, the passage above hardly expounds a theory: we could
try to imagine reading this passage without knowing Twardowski’s
work. Would the difference between the object as presented and the
object simpliciter be as sharp, as clear and as helpful as it is after one
has read On the Content and Object of Presentations? I say it would not.
Twardowski’s development of this position shows that his taking up
the content/object distinction was by no means an innocuous gloss to
Brentano’s original position: it brought with itself a deep rethinking
of Brentanian theories of judgement.25 That rethinking was to be
expected if one took the content/object distinction as seriously as
Twardowski did. Indeed, we can conclude that no matter how fre-
quently the content/object distinction appears in various writings of
Brentanian inspiration during this period, it seems to be a still rather
unstable and not very well integrated addition to Brentanian theories
of the intentionality of mental acts. This means that one should be
careful in attributing a heavy significance to the object/concept dis-
tinction as accepted by Brentano himself in EL80, and to consider it as
understood all its implications, especially if the dating of the relevant
passages in EL80 is taken to be an early one. For if we had to believe
that by 1891 or even before that distinction was well entrenched,
and indispensable as Marty says, why would Hillebrand still write the
following?

a thaler, a horse or a triangle […] what distinguishes these three cases

is generally designated as content or object [Inhalt, Gegenstand oder
Object] of a presentation. (Hillebrand 1891: 35)
90 We Owe It To Sigwart!

5 Twardowski: From EL80 to the Round Square

As I mentioned above, it was the joint acceptance of a number of

theses which created the difficulties at the roots of Sigwart’s criticism
and which were, I argue, the main reasons why Brentano’s pupils were
forced to explore other options, a task they took up with variable suc-
cess and thoroughness. The theses are these:

BR1: Every mental phenomenon has a content or object towards

which it is directed.
BR2: Mental acts are presentations or have presentations at their
basis.
BR3: A judgement is not a combination of presentations, but a sui
generis mental act which accepts or rejects an object.
BR4: All judgements can be aptly expressed in the existential form
‘A is’ (positive judgment) or ‘A is not’ (negative judgment)
(alternatively, ‘A exists’ or ‘A does not exist’). In both cases, the
judgment has a so-called ‘immanent’ object, given by the pres-
entation, which is simply A. A judgement ‘A exists’ is true iff
A exists.

Suppose I utter the following (true) judgement:

(1) A centaur does not exist.

According to the theses above, my judgement that the centaur does

not exist (BR4) is based on my presentation of the centaur (BR2). The
latter is the object towards which the presentation at the basis of the
judgement is directed (for every mental act has a content or object
towards which it is directed, BR1). That the presentation is at the basis
of the judgement means that the object, the centaur, is given to the
judgement by a presentation. So when I judge that it does not exist, the
object, the centaur, is in my mind in a double way: it is presented, and
it is judged – namely rejected (BR3) as non-existing. But if so, then we
must say that the centaur exists in my mind as long as I present it, for
it is immanent to my mind (to be precise, it’s an unreal existing object)
and yet at the same time say that it does not exist, for judgment (1) is
true. But now we have a contradiction: the same thing – the centaur –
both exists and does not exist. (Of course, as we know, the problem here
is the ‘it’ – which in fact can’t possibly pick out to the same thing.)
Now suppose that we, as a first step, accept a difference between the
 Arianna Betti 91

immanent object and the object simpliciter (as Marty puts it), and we
call the first content and the second object. Then we have a simple option
to solve the problem: as a second step, we now say that we present a
non-existing transcendent object through a content (which is itself exist-
ing) and we say that that transcendent object is what is rejected in
judgement (1). We say that there is no one thing which is both existing
and non-existing: there are two things, both involved in the same judg-
ment, and one exists while the other does not. And in fact, since the
thing that does not exist is the centaur, judgement (1) is true. So far so
good? Yes – as long as we take both steps as Twardowski did. For note
that this version of the theory is captured by a cluster in which, in B4,
both content and object are mentioned, and the first thesis, BR1, is
changed to read:

TW1 Every mental phenomenon has a content and an object, and it is

directed towards its object, not towards its content.

For the cluster TW1, BR2, BR3 and BR4 to work, we have to admit that
some transcendent objects are non-existing, that is, that our ontology
now coherently comprises not only existing unreal objects like absences
and lacks and so on (as Brentano claimed), but also non-existing ones,
including most improbable, even contradictory ones such as the round
square. As the latter are transcendent, they do not have a mental status,
but an extramental one, which makes it legitimate to say that they and
not the contents through which they are presented, bear contradic-
tory properties. This also means that there is no structural difference
between a presentation of a snake and one of Nessie, the Loch Ness
Monster: they both have a content and an object and they present the
latter through the former; only, the former presentation (snake) has an
existing object, whereas the latter (Nessie) has a non-existing one.
All this, however, is extraneous to Brentano, no matter how close he
was to the first step I highlighted above, and note the circumstance that
even in the most explicit text that mentions the content/object distinc-
tion, EL80, Brentano accepts objectless presentations, which Twardowski
rejects. It is important to stress that the denial of objectless presenta-
tions is a direct consequence of TW1, and that TW1 comprises both the
steps I highlighted above. For consider instead this option:

BR1* Every mental phenomenon has a content and an object, and is

directed towards its content, not towards its object.
92 We Owe It To Sigwart!

If one accepts BR1*, then there are no contentless presentations, while

there might be objectless ones: for instance, the presentation at the
basis of (1) would be objectless, though not contentless. Now, it is easy
to realise that accepting objectless presentation would mean leaving
the contradiction I mentioned above (the one that, so to speak, Sigwart
signalled) in Brentano’s theory of judgement unresolved. For if all
presentations are directed to contents, and we acknowledge (as in EL80)
that to some contents objects correspond, and to some other contents no
object corresponds, then BR4 can’t be held. For in a negative existential
judgement – A, again – it cannot be A as the content of the underly-
ing presentation which is rejected, it has to be its object. However, BR4
is fundamental to Brentano’s theory. So, it can’t be the content towards
which a presentation is directed. Therefore, the only theoretically coher-
ent way out that both meets Sigwart’s criticism and is at the same time
in touch with Brentano’s fundamentals is to substitute TW1 for BR1 in
the fourfold cluster above. This is what Twardowski did.
At this point, let’s consider two things. First, according to Chrudzimski
2001, BR1* was exactly Brentano’s position in EL80. Second, as I have
mentioned at several junctures above, it is not the adoption of that dis-
tinction, nor the primacy of having introduced it that is most relevant
when one discusses the development of the content/object distinction
in the context of Brentanian theories of judgement (which would come
down just to taking the first step). What is most relevant is the fact that
only Twardowski reworked that distinction into a Brentanian theory of
judgement thoroughly enough to meet successfully Sigwart’s objections
(taking the second step), and that this reworking had a great impact
on the resulting theory – an impact that brought the theory far from
Brentano’s original positions.
As I mentioned in my introduction, the distance between Twardowski
and Brentano’s original positions can be summed up in two theses:
(a) that there are no objectless presentations:26 objects of contradictory
presentations are genuinely contradictory, and objects nonetheless;
and (b) that there is a difference between complexes and facts. The first
thesis we have discussed. The second thesis I will treat briefly in the
conclusion.

6 Conclusion: Twardowski and the Old Problem of

Complex and Fact

It can be shown that Twardowski’s move with TW1 not only made it
crucial to widen ontology in such as way to accommodate a box of
 Arianna Betti 93

transcendental non-existents, but also made it crucial, once transcen-

dental non-existents were accepted, to assume a distinction between
complexes and facts. This distinction between complexes and facts is
very important to understanding the subsequent development of philo-
sophy of Brentanian inspiration. This, in turn, is of crucial relevance
to a thorough understanding of both the Russell/Meinong controversy
and Russell’s early theory theory of truth – as well as the notion of fact
from the systematic point of view. But what has the difference between
complex and fact has to do with the above? Very roughly, the following
(for more on this see Betti & Schaar 2004; Betti 2011).
Suppose we judge (truly)

(2) The round square is a geometrical figure.

According to BR4, what I do in this judgement is accept a round-square-

which-is-a-geometrical-figure. This is a complex object whose existence
I accept. Now, according to Brentano’s mereology, whenever a complex
is accepted (exists), each part of the complex is accepted (exists). But it
is a consequence of TW1 that the complex I allegedly accept in (2) has a
non-existing part: the round square. This means that we are faced again
with a contradiction to resolve. The way it can be solved is by assuming
complex (relational) objects which are non-mereologically structured,
and which can exist even when some or all of their constituents do not.
These are facts (though this is not Twardowski’s terminology).
I mention this further implication of Twardowski’s work to show that
the two steps he took by assuming TW1 were indeed far-reaching. Here’s
the upshot. Brentano did acknowledge the content/object distinction
(witness EL80) as did too some of his more orthodox pupils (at least
Marty) before Twardowski (Meinong and Höfler do not normally count
as very orthodox Brentanians). However, the distinction as it is accepted
before Twardowski did not play a significant role, nor was it integrated
stably within the setup of Brentanian theories of intentionality, and not
within the theory of judgement in particular. In published writings by
Brentano and other orthodox pupils like Hillebrand and Marty, the
content/object distinction starts to appear from 1888–89 (which is
possibly a problem for the claim that the relevant passage from EL80
date to an earlier period). I maintain that the reason for the attention
paid to the distinction in these published writings is Sigwart’s criticism
of Brentano’s theory of judgement, which pointed to crucial incon-
sistencies in the theory. The criticism exerted a remarkable pressure
upon Brentanian orthodoxy, without however leading to a solution.
94 We Owe It To Sigwart!

A successful rebuttal of Sigwart’s point involved a thorough reworking

of the content/object distinction in Brentano’s theory of judgement, at
the price of a change in the structure of the theory of intentionality and
of the abandonment of some of Brentano’s ontological and mereologi-
cal convictions. The only pupil of Brentano that understood this in full
and provided a coherent, though unorthodox and far-reaching solution
to the problem was Twardowski.

Notes
1. For an earlier discussion of the issue, see Chrudzimski 2001: 33 and ff.
2. I say, crucially, ‘among the Brentanians’, because, as is known, the distinc-
tion is crisply present in Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre, which Twardowski
quotes frequently.
3. This is quick and needs qualification. For in a sense one can say that
Brentano did not accept objectless presentations either. See section 5 below
for an account.
4. Cf. Betti & Schaar 2004; Betti 2010; 2011.
5. On Brentano’s theory see Brandl 2010; for Twardowski and Brentano’s basic
ideas relevant to Twardowski’s position, see Betti 2010.
6. According to Mayer-Hillebrand (Brentano 1956), Brentano left lecture notes
from logic courses given in 1877, 1878/79 (integrated in 1884/85), earlier
and shorter drafts, and a course from mid-1880, which she identifies with
EL80. The list of Brentano’s logic courses seems at least to have included:
in Würzburg, Deductive und inductive Logik (W(inter)S(emester) 1869/70, WS
1870/71); Deductive und inductive Logik mit Anwendungen auf die Geschichte der
Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften (S(ummer)S(emester) 1873); in Vienna, Alte
und Neue Logik. Darlegung ihrer Gesetze auf Grund einer neuen Auffassung des
Urteils und der Kritik der hergebrachten Regeln (SS 1875); Alte und Neue Logik (SS
1877); Logik (WS 1878/79); Alte und Neue Logik (SS 1882); Die elementare Logik
und die in ihr nötigen Reformen (1884/5).
7. Rollinger 2010 points out that from 1878 onwards Brentano started using
another set of notes, which he used also for Die elementare Logik und die in ihr
nötigen Reformen (1884/5). These notes are contained in a manuscript called
EL72, which will be edited separately.
8. See also Chrudzimski 2001: 34.
9. I will not discuss the notion of Sachverhalt, Urteilsinhalt and similar notions
here.
10. Cf. also Hillebrand 1891: 50.
11. See Brentano 1889b: 25–6.
12. See also Brentano 1889a: 45n; Brentano 1889b: 60–61.
13. See Hillebrand 1891: 29–35. On Sigwart, Windelband and Brentano, see
Schaar 2002.
14. On Sigwart, see Picardi 1997.
15. This note is not to be found in the reprint of this work from 1955, but in
Brentano 1930 where Oskar Kraus had republished it thinking that the
context was more appropriate.
 Arianna Betti 95

16. Cf. Brentano 1930: 45 n.

17. See again Schaar 2002.
18. ‘More Catholic than the Pope’, Meinong 1892: 447.
19. Meinong 1892: 443. See also Simons 2004: 48. The fundamentals of
Brentano’s theory of judgement I mentioned above (BR1–4) as we find it in
the Psychology are in any case repeated here.
20. Cf. Marty 1894 (article 1, 1884): 81 and ff.
21. Cf. Marty 1888; Sigwart 1888.
22. Cf. Marty 1894 (article 4, 1894): 322 and ff.
23. Cf. Marty 1894 (article 5, 1894): 440–50.
24. Cf. Twardowski 1926: 11–12.
25. Another element that may testify to the fact that among Brentanians a
pressing need was felt to include the content/object distinction in the
theory, and again one influenced by Sigwart, could be the introduction
of the puzzling and apparently useless double judgements (Doppelurteile)
(although the main reason to introduce them for Brentano was that the
syllogistic could not be reconstructed in his terms without accepting at least
some of them). A double judgement is a composed judgement, expressed
by an apparently simple statement. In the Psychology there is no trace of
Doppelurteile, but they can be found in Brentano 1889b and in a note from
the same year added to the review to work by Miklosich, where Brentano
says that judgements like ‘This is a woman’ are Doppelurteile because (1) they
affirm the existence of something and they say that (2) this something is a
woman.
26. It might seem strange to say as I do that Brentano accepted objectless
presentations, for this seems to clash with the fundamental idea of inten-
tionality that every mental act is directed to a content or object (BR1; see the
very first quotations from Brentano’s Psychology above). However, in BR1* it
is still the case that every mental act is directed towards something, namely
the content. The important thing to justice to the intentionality thesis is the
presence of something, an entity, towards which a mental act is directed.

References
Bell, D.A. (1990) Husserl. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Betti, A. (2010) ‘Kazimierz Twardowski’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
(Fall). Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL: <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
sum2011/entries/twardowski/>.
—— (2011) On the History of Facts [draft, ms.], ca. 50.000 words.
Betti, A., & Schaar, M. van der (2004) ‘The Road from Vienna to Lvov Twardowski’s
Theory of Judgement between 1894 and 1897’, Grazer Philosophische Studien
67, 1–20.
Brandl, J. (2010) ‘Brentano’s Theory of Judgement’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, (Summer). Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL: <http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/sum2010/entries/brentano-judgement/>.
Brentano, F. (1874) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. (Leipzig: Duncker &
Humblot). In: Brentano (1930); 3–29.
—— (1889a) ‘Über den Begriff der Wahrheit’.
—— (1889b) Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot).
96 We Owe It To Sigwart!

—— (1889c) ‘Zur Kritik von Sigwarts Theories vom existentialen und negativen
Urteil’, reprinted in Brentano 1930, 44–60.
—— (1930) Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. by O. Kraus. (Leipzig: F. Meiner).
—— (1956) Die Lehre vom richtigen Urtell, ed. by Franziska Mayer-Hillerbrand.
(Bern: Francke).
Chrudzimski, A. (2001) Intentionalitatstheorie Beim Frühen Brentano/Intentionality
Theory, the Early Brentano. (Dordrecht: Kluwer).
Hillebrand, F. (1891) Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse. (Wien: Hölder).
Höfler, A. and A. Meinong (1890) Philosophische Propädeutik. Erster Theil: Logik.
(Vienna: F. Tempsky / G. Freytag).
Jacquette, D. (1990) ‘The Origins of Gegenstandstheorie: Immanent and
Transcendent Intentional Objects in Brentano, Twardowski and Meinong’,
Brentano-Studien 3, 177–202.
—— (2004) ‘Brentano’s concept of intentionality’, In D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Brentano, 98–130. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
—— (2006) ‘Twardowski, Brentano’s Dilemma, and the Content-Object
Distinction’, in A. Chrudzimski & D. Łukasiewicz (eds.), Actions, Products and
Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, 9–33. (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag).
Marty, A. (1888) ‘Entgegnung’, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie
XII, 241–51.
—— (1894) ‘Über subjectlose Sätze und das Verhältnis der Grammatik zu Logik
und Psychologie’, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, (8) 56–94,
161–92, 292–340; (18) 320–56; (19) 421–71.
Meinong, A. (1892) ‘Franz Hillebrand, Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen
Schlüsse – Eine logische Untersuchung’, (Wien, Hölder, 1891). Now in
Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe VII, 1978, 199–222. (Graz: Akademische Druck-
u. Verlagsanstalt).
Picardi, E. (1997) ‘Sigwart, Husserl, and Frege on Truth and Logic, or is
Psychologism still a Threat? ’, European Journal of Philosophy 5, 162–82.
Rollinger, R.D. (2009) ‘Brentano’s Psychology and Logic And The Basis Of
Twardowski’s Theory Of Presentations’, The Baltic International Yearbook of
Cognition, Logic and Communication 4, 1–23.
—— (2010) ‘Editor’s preface’, Franz Brentano, Logik (EL 80), URL: <http://gandalf.
vib.no/Brentano/texts/el/logik>.
Schaar, M. van der. (2002) ‘Brentano on Logic, Truth and Evidence’, Brentano-
Studien, X(3), 119–50.
Sigwart, C. (1888) Die Impersonalien. Eine logische Untersuchung. (Freiburg i.B.:
J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck)).
—— (1889) Logik. (Freiburg i.B.: J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck)).
Simons, P.M. (2004) ‘Judging correctly: Brentano and the reform of elementary
logic’, The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, 45–65. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Stumpf, C. (1888) ‘Syllabus for logic’. In: Rollinger, Robin, Husserl’s Position
in the School of Brentano, PhD Thesis, Department of Philosophy, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, 1996. 241–60.
Twardowski, K. (1894) Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, eine
psychologische Untersuchung. (Wien: A. Hölder).
—— (1926) ‘Selbstdarstellung’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 39, 1–24.
Werle, J.M. (1989) Franz Brentano und die Zukunft der Philosophie – Studien
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(Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi).
6
Acceptance, Acknowledgment,
Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion,
Belief, Certainty, Conviction,
Denial, Judgment, Refusal and
Rejection
Kevin Mulligan
University of Geneva

1 Introduction

The large, largely doxastic family,

acceptance, affirmation, agreement, assertion, belief in, belief that,

certainty, conviction, denial, disbelief in, disbelief that, judgment,
refusal, rejection and uncertainty,

has occasionally been investigated in an impressionistic way by analytic

philosophers. It was also explored in some detail by Brentano and his
heirs, in particular by the earliest, ‘realist’ phenomenologists. A philo-
sophy of the family should provide answers to at least the following
questions. How do the members of the family differ from one another?
How do they relate to one another? Does each member of the family
have a polar opposite? What is a polar opposite? How do the members
of the family stand with respect to such ontological categories as
episode, process, event, state, tendency and disposition and to such mental
or psychological categories and features as act, action, activity, attitude,
experience, spontaneity and passivity? Does each member of the family
enjoy the property of intentionality? What is the relation between
members of the family, on the one hand, and the epistemic family,

acquaintance, making the acquaintance of something, coming

to know that p (Erkennen, cognizing, apprehending), knowing for
97
98 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

certain, knowing for a fact, knowledge about something (Wissen um)

and knowledge that p.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Husserl argued at some

length in his Logical Investigations that judging is not something which
comes in two polarly opposed kinds: to deny that S is P is just to judge
that S is not P. He thus arguably joined a then quite small club, the most
recent and distinguished members of which were Bolzano and Frege.1
He summarises his view in 1903 thus:

We do not regard the matter [of a judgement, a token content] as

a presentation, as it may have existed before the predicative articu-
lation, nor is it any nominally expressible presentation. Nor do
we regard the quality [of a judgement] as any sort of accepting or
rejecting related to such a presentation ... .[N]ot only the matter in
the traditional sense (S, P) but also all categorial forms, such as ‘a’,
‘some’, ‘if’ and ‘then’, and in particular ‘is’ and ‘not’ belong to the
‘matter’. The ‘is’ is not by any means an expression of ‘belief’, nor
is ‘is not’ the expression of a coordinated ‘disbelief’. Rather, the char-
acter of positing or certainty belongs to the whole matter, whatever
the articulation of the matter into different parts looks like. The usual
expressions for this character: ‘take to be true’, ‘belief’ ... suggest the
false view that what we have is a predication of the truth, validity or
correctness of the matter, and in addition that here two coordinated
qualities, a taking to be true and a taking to be false are to be dis-
tinguished. This last view, too, appears to me to be doubtful. Every
(normal) proposition (Aussage, statement) expresses a judgement,
but every judgement also finds expression in a possible proposi-
tion. Now of course there are propositions that express a disbelief,
a rejection .... but only in the manner of predications that either
say (aussagen) about the judging subject and his act ‘I or someone
else does not believe that, rejects it’, or that say objectively about
the relevant matter or sentence (proposition, Satz) that it is untrue,
incorrect. In every case the expression of rejection, of disbelief or
untruth belongs to the matter of these propositions, and what makes
them propositions is not the predicated disbelief but the character
of conviction or ‘belief’ that so to speak informs this matter. Every
putting forward of a proposition (Aussagens) is a ‘belief’. Whether or
not this view to which (after long hesitation) I incline, is definitive,
it is in any case rooted in facts that require attention and clarifying
investigation.2
 Kevin Mulligan 99

Most of the claims Husserl makes here are argued for in his Investigations.
In what follows we shall look at the different ways in which they are
defended and developed by Husserl and his followers after 1901. In parti-
cular, we shall look at some developments of Husserl’s claim here and
earlier that to judge is not to accept or reject. On this matter Husserl
disagrees with neo-Kantians such as Frege, who famously writes: ‘judg-
ing is ... recognizing (accepting, anerkennen) something as true. What
is recognised as true can only be a thought.’3
In his numerous discussions of judging, Husserl makes a number of
claims which are still discussed today. Thus he tries hard to understand
what it means to say that every judgment makes a claim to truth.4 In
1899 in the ‘Prolegomena’ to his Investigations he says that there is a
sense in which

every judgement certainly ‘claims’ [a logical right] to judge (though

there are objections to saying that the right is ‘implicitly asserted’).5

In 1918 he writes:

Every judging is an ‘intending of truth’ (Wahrheit vermeinen), makes

a ‘claim to be correct” (Rechtsanspruch). This is already a remarkable,
hence problematic matter.6

But, he also claims, if we say that ‘every judgement claims to be true’

this does not mean that every judgement really contains the thought
of truth, hence that it says that what it states is true...Otherwise we
would have an infinite regress.7

Similarly, to judge is not to predicate of some state of affairs that it

obtains:

We note […] that a nominal meaning by itself says nothing to the

effect that its object exists, that it does not predicate this, just as
little as a proposition [Satz] predicates that its state of affairs is
a really obtaining state of affairs. This would lead to an infinite
regress. If we say ‘S is P’, then we say about S that it is P, but we do
not say that the state of affairs that S is P really obtains; otherwise
the last statement would in turn state that the state of affairs that
the state of affairs that S is P really obtains really obtains, and so
on in infinitum.8
100 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

In 1929 Husserl rejects the view that it belongs to the proper essence of
judgments to claim to be true:

Let us now go back to the first principles, the ones that, so to speak,
define truth and falsity and thus stand first. According to these
principles truth and falsity signify predicates of judgments but not
predicates belonging to the proper essence (eigenwesentliche) of judge-
ments, in traditional terms, they are not ‘consitutive marks’ of
judgments. One cannot “read off” these predicates from a judgment
without more ado. A judgment can itself be given without it being
the case that one of these predicates is given.
It cannot even be said that, in the proper sense of the word, a claim
to truth belongs to the proper essence of judgements, and it is there-
fore wrong to count this concept of a claim as belonging from the
start to the concept of judgement. Subjectively speaking, it is
not necessary for a judger to also have a presentation of truth,
whether an intuitive or an empty presentation. One must guard
here against the double sense of the word assertion (Behauptung),
which people like to use in explaining judgments. The usual and,
so to speak, emphatic sense of assertion is to the effect: I vouch for
that, it is true, it can be verified at any time through adequation.
But the judgment that can at any time enter into an adequation
precedes the possibility of this adequation ... In their own proper
essence, then, judgments have no claim to truth and falsity; but
any judgment can take up into itself the practical intention aimed
at verification....9

He adds:

In itself every judgment is decided; its predicate truth, or its predicate

falsity ‘belongs’ to its essence – though...it is no constitutive mark of
a judgment as such. This is very remarkable.10

It is not clear what Husserl has in mind when he distinguishes between

the essence and the proper essence of an object. His view seems to be that
every judgment is true or false in virtue not of the proper or constitu-
tive essence of judging or judgment alone but in virtue of of the proper
essences of judgments and of truth and falsity. A theory of true proposi-
tions or judgments and a theory of false propositions or judgments, he
seems to think, is not eo ipso a theory of propositions or judgments. True
judgments and false judgments are not species of the genus judgment.
 Kevin Mulligan 101

And this in turn, he seems to think, is justified by an observation made

already in the Investigations which he formulates in 1929 as follows:

Every judging is directed to something objective. Not only does the

judger always have his ‘objects-about-which … he is also, in a second
sense, directed to the determination (Bestimmung, property); and he
is directed, in an improper sense, to the state of affairs – “improper”
because though he has already constituted the state of affairs with
these substrate objects and determinations it is only only thanks to a
redirection of his thematising regard that he is directed…to the state
of affairs.’11

It is because judging that p is only ‘directed’ in an improper sense to the

state of affairs that p that to judge that p is not to predicate of some state
of affairs that it obtains. Similarly, judging that p is presumably only
‘directed’ in an improper sense to the proposition that p. As Reinach
had put it in 1911: ‘the obtaining [Bestand] of a state of affairs does
not by any means lie in the concept of a state of affairs as an essential
moment thereof’; ‘predication of the obtaining [Bestand] of a state
of affairs’ should not be confused with the relation between an assertion
and ‘its’ state of affairs: asserting ‘puts forward’ the asserted state of
affairs, positive or negative, it ‘fixes this obtaining’.12
As we have seen, Husserl talks of judgings, the judgment that p and
the proposition that p. Sometimes he claims that judgings that p are
correct or right (richtig) if, and only if, the proposition that p is true. In
such moods he also claims that if a judging that p is correct, then it is
correct because the proposition that p is true. Sometimes he formulates
these claims by substituting for ‘the proposition that p’ ‘the judgment
that p’. His view that the rightness of judgings is to explained in terms
of the truth of propositions or judgments is part of a larger account of
the rightness or correctness of intentional ‘acts’. Fear of x, for example,
is correct because x is dangerous. A surmise that p is correct because it
is probable that p etc.
Husserl’s rejection of the view that judging comes in two polarly
opposed kinds, positive judging and denying or rejecting, is presented
by him as a rejection of a view held by Brentano and some of his heirs
and by many other philosophers. When a long-standing view is over-
turned in this way it is sometimes the case that there is a misunderstood
grain of truth in (or at the back of or in the neighbourhood of ) the
long-standing view. Reinach, Husserl, Scheler and Stein came to think
that this is indeed the case as far as the traditional view of judgment
102 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

is concerned. In what follows I set out and evaluate some versions of

the view that although judging itself (like assertion) comes in only one
kind there are nevertheless two polarly opposed ‘acts’, accepting and
rejecting, two polarly opposed attitudinal states, positive conviction or
belief and negative conviction or belief, and two polarly opposed types
of episode which constitute the beginnings of such states. It will be
necessary, here and there, to touch on many of the questions raised in
my first paragraph.

2 Attitudes vs Judging - à la Reinach and Husserl

Belief and conviction, Reinach argues in 1911, fall under the category
of Stellungnahmen13 or attitudes, a category he seems to have introduced
into philosophy of mind in German. The category comprehends ‘intel-
lectual attitudes’ such as conviction, belief, disbelief, surmise, doubt,
expectation and ‘critical indifference’; ‘emotional attitudes’ such as joy,
love and hate and conative or ‘practical’ attitudes such as striving14:

There is an opposition running through this ... class [conviction,

striving, expecting] between positivity and negativity. We not only
strive positively after something but may also struggle against it.
In both cases [Streben and Widerstreben] we have a striving, but the
two are, so to speak, of opposite sign. Now we find exactly the same
in the case of conviction. So far we have naturally concentrated
upon positive conviction; there is however, standing in opposition
to this, a negative conviction, having a fully equal status .... Both
positive and negative convictions ... are … attitudes. The moment of
conviction is common to the two, just as the moment of striving is
common to positive striving for and to striving against something).
It is this moment which separates the two types of conviction from
other intellectual position-takings, e.g. from conjecture or doubt.15

What holds of conviction, holds true of belief, there is belief that p and
disbelief that p.16 Convictions and beliefs are states or state-like; they last
or endure, unlike judging, which occurs. There are degrees of conviction:

Intellectual attitudes, … like conviction or conjecture, are not anything

the subject does (kein Tun) but state-like entities (Zuständlichkeiten)
which grow in the subject but are not accomplished or carried out
by the subject» in contrast to «the practical attitude of forming a
resolution».17
 Kevin Mulligan 103

I have translated ‘Stellungnahme’ by ‘attitude’. But in order to understand

the term it is important to bear in mind the following. An in many
ways preferable translation is the unlovely expression ‘position-taking’
(cf. ‘prise de position’). A Stellungnahme, as Reinach uses the term, is a posi-
tion one comes to adopt or finds oneself to have grown into. In analytic
philosophy of mind ‘attitude’ is often short-hand for ‘propositional atti-
tude’. But not all of Reinach’s Stellungnahmen are forms of propositional
intentionality (joy, love, hate). Indeed as the phenomenologists develop
Reinach’s account they assign more and more non-propositional cases
to the category of attitudes. And, as we shall see, neither Reinach nor
his successors within realist phenomenology think that every ascription
of the form

x ⫹ psychological/mental verb ⫹ that ⫹ p

ascribes what they call an attitude.18

Reinach contrasts attitudes with a number of other mental and
psychological categories: presentations, meaning something with an
expression, judging, asserting, coming to be acquainted with something,
acquaintance, coming to know that p and knowledge that p. There is
‘no opposition of positivity and negativity’ in the case of presenta-
tions and meaning something with an expression.19 The same is true of
knowledge in all its shapes and sizes. Indeed Reinach thinks, in contrast
to Husserl, that conviction and belief are typically reactions to some-
thing, to what is known or seems to be known. Coming to know that p
is not, then, to be understood in terms of judgment or belief. Assertings
and judgings display no degrees, unlike conviction.20 Judging depends
one-sidedly on conviction. Reinach also agrees with Husserl that judg-
ing does not come in two opposed kinds: ‘it is the moment of assertion
which makes the negative judgment, just as much as the positive judg-
ment, into a judgment at all’.21 Reinach formulates the view he rejects
as follows:

Traditional logical theory tends to oppose rejecting (Verwerfen) to

accepting (Anerkennen), denying (Leugnen) to affirming (Behaupten),
or otherwise make appeal to some opposition of this sort...[It claims
that] denying is on an equal footing with asserting.22

This is ‘the old logical dualism’ which ‘would like to split up the uniform
assertion into two quite different acts’.23 But Reinach goes on to identify
what might be called three grains of truth in the old view. These have to
104 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

do with a type of episodic rejection, the episodes in which convictions

and beliefs come into being and enduring beliefs and convictions.

Consider, he says, the difference between the two judgments

The King was not energetic

and

The King was not energetic

where the emphasis in the second case indicates that the speaker is
reacting to the assertion that the King is energetic24:

If I turn against someone who has asserted the being B of a with the
words: ‘(No). a is not B`, then it hardly seems possible to deny that
here a rejecting or denying plays an essential role. And indeed we do
not wish to deny this at all. But we have to insist that the various
factors involved here be kept strictly apart.25

The ‘polemic negative judgment’

is distinguished in two respects from the simple negative judgment:

it presupposes some contradictory positive judgment (or contradic-
tory positive proposition), against which the polemically judging
subject turns, which he rejects; and – connected closely with this –
an emphasis... The rejection is directed against the alien judgment,
the emphasis relates to the negative state of affairs posited by the
subject himself...

But ‘the polemic negative judgment must indubitably be characterised

as an asserting; this is not affected at all by’ the presence of an emphasis.
In a polemic negative judgment or assertion, we might say, there are
three ‘factors’ – a judging or asserting, an emphasis and a rejecting. The
factors are related as follows: the subject rejects something by judging
or asserting something, what he rejects is not what he judges and what
he emphasises is part of what he judges or asserts: ‘even in the case of
polemical judgments it is the moment of assertion which makes up the
judgment-character as such’.26
The second misunderstood grain of truth in the ‘old logical dualism’
concerns the episodes in which convictions and beliefs come into
 Kevin Mulligan 105

existence. There are ‘experiences...in which we take or adopt a position

with respect to something’ – the beginnings of convictions and strivings:

Let us suppose that someone asserts that a flower is red, and that
in order to convince ourselves of this we go to the place where
the flower is to be found, and see that it is yellow. Thus we have
approached the flower with the question whether it is truly red.
Now with respect to this state of affairs there grows in us a negative
conviction, a ‘disbelief` that the flower is red. Both positive and
negative convictions may relate to one and the same state of affairs;
if we search for expressions which would distinguish the two we
could say that the first is a conviction which is a turning towards
(Überzeugungszuwendung) and the second a conviction which
is a turning away (Überzeugungszuwendung). Both are however
‘convinced’ position-takings. The moment of conviction is com-
mon to the two (just as the moment of striving is common to
positive striving for and to striving against something).27

The third misunderstood grain of truth in old dualisms, if Reinach is

to be believed, is that polarly opposed attitudes, once they have come
about, may endure or last for long periods of times. If this is correct,
then one who is prepared to call both judgings and beliefs and convic-
tions ‘judgments’ may well arrive at the conclusion that judgments
come in two polarly opposed kinds.
Are Reinach and other heirs of Brentano right to think that there are
polarly opposed attitudes, intellectual, affective and conative? Outside
the philosophy of emotions such claims have not been widely endorsed
in recent philosophy. Reinach’s claims are best understood by consider-
ing what linguists call the class of predicates which are ‘Neg Raisers’.28
It is widely accepted that instances of

x doesn’t believe that p

x isn’t convinced that p

admit of two readings:

Not (x believes that p)

x believes that not-p

Not (x is convinced that p)

x is convinced that not-p
106 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

The verb ‘believe’ and the adjective ‘convinced’ are Neg-Raisers,

unlike ‘judge’, ‘see that’ and ‘know that’. Consider now a distinct
but analogous phenomenon in the area of non- propositional
intentionality.

x doesn’t like y

admits of two readings

Not (x likes y)
x dislikes y

Similarly,

x doesn’t believe y

allows the two readings:

Not (x believes y)
x disbelieves (doesn’t-believe) y,

something which is not true of ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘knows’, and ‘is acquainted
with’. Reinach’s view seems to be that

x doesn’t believe that p

x isn’t convinced that p

admit of not two but three readings:

Not (x believes that p)

x believes that not-p
x disbelieves that p

Not (x is convinced that p)

x is convinced that not-p
x is not-convinced (unconvinced) that p
 Kevin Mulligan 107

In other words, many propositional and non-propositional attitudes

have opposites. There is some linguistic evidence in favour of this claim
about propositional attitudes: ‘nolle vs velle’, ‘disbelief’, ‘unconvinced’,
‘widerstreben’, ‘unwilling’ and Dante’s verb ‘disvoglio’. Incredulous stares
and eyes express disbelief and some stares and eyes express unwilling-
ness. Inspection – phenomenology, if you like – seems to show that there
polarly opposed affective, conative and intellectual episodes. But it does
not follow that, as Reinach claims, there are long-lasting intellectual
states such as belief and conviction which come in two polarly opposed
kinds. It is not obvious that there is any mental or psychological differ-
ence between believing that not-p for 10 years and disbelieving that p for
10 years.29 It is, on the other hand, not implausible to think that there are
long-lasting polarly opposed conative and affective attitudes.
Reinach’s anatomy of attitudes was to be very influential within early
phenomenology and was taken up not only by Stein but also, for exam-
ple, by Moritz Geiger and Dietrich von Hildebrand. In particular, the
claim that episodic emotions are attitudes (Reinach’s only example, we
have seen, is joy) was frequently endorsed. Von Hildebrand writes:

If we consider joy (Freude) about something, enthusiasm, longing

(Sehnsucht)...then all these experiences (Erlebnisse) display a com-
mon character. In spite of their qualitative differences they are all
Stellungnahmen of mine towards the world of objects.30

The idea that episodic emotions are responses or reactions:

Indignation (Empörung)..is a response (Antwort) to certain qualities,

an attitude (Stellungnahme).31

and the further claim that all attitudes are responses or answers, in con-
trast to perception and knowledge, was also widely endorsed. Thus von
Hildebrand develops and defends Reinach’s claim that convictions and
beliefs are based on coming to know.32 Reinach’s influence perhaps
extended beyond Göttingen and Munich. Thus Wittgenstein writes:

directed emotions might also be called “attitudes” (“Stellungnahmen”).

Surprise and fright are attitudes, and so are admiration and
enjoyment.33

Already in the Notebooks Wittgenstein had called the will an attitude

(Stellungnahme).34 A few years later Stein argues that willing typically
108 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

involves both a Stellungnahme, which is a reaction, and a Vorsatz – an

intention or resolution, which is not a reaction or attitude.35 There is
positive and negative willing that p (Sachverhaltswollen) and a positive
and negative Tunwollen – she wants to tango, he doesn’t – but a Vorsatz,
an intention or resolution has no opposite.
In 1912 Husserl notes that in simple perceiving – seeing a table –
there is no ‘attitude-taking’, no ‘Stellungnehmen’.36 In Experience and
Judgment, which was first published in 1938, he gives what is perhaps
his most detailed account of the relation between judging and atti-
tudes, an account which has much in common with Reinach’s account
of judging and of positive and negative conviction and belief.37 He
maintains the claim he argued for at the turn of the century – judging
does not come in two kinds, positive judging and negative judging. He
thinks he has found an illuminating gloss for judging: to judge is to
ascertain or establish (feststellen).38 The attractions of the gloss are obvi-
ous. Ascertaining and establishing have no polar opposites, ‘ascertain’ is
not a Neg Raiser. (But, as Mark Textor has pointed out to me, ’feststel-
len’, unlike ‘urteilen’, is factive.) Husserl writes:

In fact logic and science reduce everything to ascertaining judg-

ments (feststellende Urteile) and have a good right to do so. However
much denying goes on, in theoretical statements (Aussagen) there
is no denial (Leugnung) [in such statements], rather they ascertain,
sometimes a being-so, sometimes not-being-so etc. Accordingly the
preferred concept of judgment is that which knows only one ‘quality’,
ascertainment as valid (Feststellung als gültig).39

By the ‘quality’ or ‘mode’ of an ‘act’ Husserl, like Brentano and Searle,

refers to what distinguishes remembering that p and regretting that p.
These two mental episodes have the same content but different modes or
qualities. The ‘positing’ to be found in judging – on which more later –
does not have a ‘double “quality” as traditional logic has it’.40 There is
nevertheless a grain of truth in the traditional doctrine. And Husserl’s
account of Urteilsstellungnahmen or, to put a wretched word to good or
better use, judgmental attitudes, is his attempt to bring to light this grain
of truth.
Husserl distinguishes two basic ‘opposed’ judgmental attitudes, the
first is glossed as follows:

acknowledgment (Anerkennung), agreement (Zustimmung), affirma-

tion (Bejahung), « yes », deciding for
 Kevin Mulligan 109

and the second as:

refusal (Ablehnen), rejection (Verwerfung), denial (Verneinung),

„no“, deciding against

Judgmental attitudes are ‘spontaneous’, in contrast to perception.41

There is a slight difference of emphasis between Reinach’s account
of the attitudes of conviction and belief, positive and negative, and
Husserl’s account of judgmental attitudes. The convictions and beliefs
described by Reinach are enduring states or ‘state-like’. Reinach, as we
have seen, also describes the episodes in which such enduring attitudes
come into being as a subject’s finding himself taking up a certain posi-
tion but does not mark the latter category in any special terminological
way. Husserl’s ‘judgmental attitudes’ are first and foremost episodes,
episodes the content of which in some cases become an enduring ‘pos-
session’ of and for the subject.42
What are the objects of judgmental attitudes? Husserl’s answer is
unclear. Sometimes he seems to claim that they are ‘reflexive’ or meta-
acts, attitudes towards one’s own acts and their objects. Sometimes he
seems to claim that their objects are not so restricted and that they
have the same sorts of objects as judgings. Thus in his phenomenology
of doxastic and epistemic agency he talks of a ‘refusal’ in which there
is a ‘turning against an attitude or against a tendency to [form] an atti-
tude and against its final result, an ascertaining’.43 But he also gives the
impression that he thinks that just as one may judge that Erna is sad,
so too one may decide that she is sad, acknowledge or accept that she
is sad, in other words, that the possible objects of judging are also the
possible objects of judgmental attitudes. But this is wrong. Contrast

*Sam rejected that Erna is sad

*Sam refused that Erna is sad
*Sam decided against that Erna is sad

and

Sam rejected the claim that Erna is sad

Sam refused the belief that Erna is sad
Sam decided against the view that Erna is sad

The most plausible candidate for the role of a negative judgmental

attitude which can have the same object as a judging is denial: ‘Sam
110 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

denied that Erna is sad.’ But this is either a case of judging that Erna is
not sad or an example of what Reinach calls a polemic judgment.
Acknowledgment and rejection, Husserl says, are not ‘qualities’ on
the same level, like red and blue; rejection has a ‘secondary intentional
character’. For this reason, says Husserl somewhat surprisingly, ‘talk of
quality here is not at all appropriate’.44 Surprisingly, since the impli-
cation seems to be that Husserl thinks that his distinction between
act-qualities or modes, on the one, hand, and contents, on the other
hand, does not apply in the case of judgmental attitudes.
Acknowledgment and rejection are only the ‘simplest cases of
judging attitudes’. Two other cases, Husserl thinks, are existential judg-
ments and truth-judgments or judgments of predicative truth, which
might more accurately be called attitudinal judgings that something
exists and attitudinal judgings that something is true. And Husserl
does indeed talk of ‘original existential judging’45 in this connection.
Such attitudinal judgings come about, in the most basic cases, Husserl
thinks, when there is reason to reflect on and be critical about judg-
ings the content of which is not dominated by the predicates of truth
or existence. It is presumably because they involve an ascent from
and reactions to ordinary judgings that they are attitudinal judgings.
To judge attitudinally and existentially is, among other things, to
predicate, to predicate of some sense (Sinn) ‘being’ (das ‘Sein’), or
to say of some sense that it ‘corresponds to an object’.46 Husserl’s two
formulations are utterly unsatisfactory. First, on his own view of sense,
at least some senses are ideal objects and exist necessarily. Secondly,
Husserl could not possibly give an account of the indefinite article
in ‘corresponds to an object’ consistent with his own theory. A far
better formulation is that given by Bolzano in the first version of the
theory Husserl – or his editor – is here clumsily reproducing. Consider
some individual concept or objective idea, say, [Sam]. To say that
Sam exists, argues Bolzano, is to say of [Sam] that it has objectivity
(Gegenständlichkeit). The Bolzano–Husserl view has much to recom-
mend it especially if the only alternative is the Fregean view that
existence is predicated of properties or of what Frege calls concepts.47
Both the Bolzano–Husserl view and the Frege view seem to be com-
patible with Husserl’s claim that thinking about existence involves an
attitude and grows out of non-attitudes.
Attitudinal judgings to the effect that something is true, argues Husserl
in an entirely parallel fashion, predicate truth of those senses which
are propositions or ‘ideal judgments’.48 One may wonder whether the
most fundamental occurrence of truth is as a predicate. A rival view,
 Kevin Mulligan 111

formulated in Husserl’s own terminology, is that truth occurs first

and foremost in the form of a connective (Verknüpfung) or operator as
when ‘It is true that’ takes a sentence to make a sentence.49 On this view,
connection is more basic than ascent or nominalisation or reflection,
a view sometimes accepted by Husserl.
Attitudinal judgings about existence and truth, then, are «judgmental
attitudes of a higher-level about such formal aspects as concepts and
propositions».50

3 Accepting vs Refusing – à la Stein

L. Jonathan Cohen says: ‘Sometimes belief has been discussed ad nauseam

without any mention at all of acceptance.’51 In 1922 Edith Stein consi-
ders in some detail the relations between accepting, refusing and belief.
She might well have found puzzling that so many analytic philosophers
discuss acceptance ad nauseam without any mention of refusal. For one
of her most important claims is that there is an accepting (annehmen)
which has a counterpart, refusing (ablehnen), and that these have as
their objects one’s own Stellungnahmen or attitudes. In order to under-
stand her account it will be useful to consider Reinach’s taxonomy of
some of the different meanings of Annahme, some of which translate as
‘acceptance’.
Reinach notes in 1913 that there is a ‘social act’ of accepting a
promise. His category of ‘social acts’, a term which goes back to Reid,
comprises such events as promising, ordering, requesting, waiving a
claim, asking and answering a question and enacting (declaring), the
events which have unfortunately (because more vaguely) come to be
called ‘speech acts’ as a result of the much later investigations of Austin
and Searle. They are social acts because, as Reid, Reinach and Austin put
it, they require uptake. And also because – a handful of exceptions such
as enacting apart – they are addressed to other people (‘I order you to
go’). If Sam responds to a promise made to him by Erna with the help
of what Reinach calls ‘the peculiar function of “hereby”’, what has been
called ‘the performative formula’, that is, by saying

I hereby accept your promise

and if there is uptake by Erna, then Sam has performed the social act
of accepting her promise. This social act is not to be confused what
Reinach calls ‘a purely inner accepting (Annehmen, Akzeptieren,
Zustimmen)’ which may either be expressed in the form of a linguistic
112 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

act which is no social act or by the social act of informing someone

(Mitteilen) – ‘I hereby inform you that I accept....’.52 Yet another mean-
ing of ‘annehmen’, also noted by Reinach, is the mental act of assuming
or supposing that p, of make-believedly judging that p, which Husserl
and Meinong took themselves to have discovered and which, thanks to
Russell and Broad, is now a not unfamiliar category.53
Stein’s account of acceptance and accepting, of ‘annehmen’, uses the
verb to ascribe not a social act, such as the act of accepting a promise,
nor the quasi-judging that p at the heart of the Husserl-Meinong
account of assumptions but a different kind of mental ‘act’. The main
claims she makes are: accepting has a polar opposite, rejecting (ableh-
nen). The object of accepting and rejecting is an attitude of the acceptor
or rejector and the object of his attitude. Attitudes are positive, negative
or indifferent.54 Accepting and refusing are not themselves attitudes.
(According to her teacher, Husserl, as we have seen, a judgmental atti-
tude about an attitude and the latter attitude are both attitudes in the
very same sense.)
If we use the terminology of many phenomenologists, who are happy
to call attitudes, whether these are taken to be events or states, ‘acts’,
we may formulate her view as the view that accepting and rejecting
are ‘reflexive acts’ or meta-acts. The type of intentionality displayed
by accepting and rejecting is non-propositional but it is not the simple
non-propositional intentionality characteristic of simple seeing or
admiration: one accepts or rejects one of one’s own attitudes, an atti-
tude which itself displays either propositional or non-propositional
intentionality. There is thus a similarity between the social or ‘speech
act’ of acceptance and acceptance à la Stein. For the former is also
non-propositional:

I hereby accept your promise to F/that you will F

in contrast to

I hereby promise to F/that I will F

Attitudes or position-takings, Stein says, include belief in the existence

of something, conviction, admiration,55 liking or affection for someone
(Zuneigung),56 inclinations (Neigung), love, hate, trust, gratitude, mis-
trust, antipathy, belief in a person,57 wishes (55) and, since Stein, like
Reinach, seems to identify belief that and conviction (46), belief that.
What exactly are Stellungnahmen? Stein says that, like coming to know
that p (Erkennen), they are the sort of thing that falls to one’s share or
 Kevin Mulligan 113

lot (‘werden einem zuteil’ (42). They are not the sort of thing we can
decide for or against (42). Perhaps the following means that they are,
further, not exercises of the will:

I cannot carry out attitudes in the same way as a free turning towards
(Zuwendung) (42)

An attitude is not ‘free’ (43). Stein gives two reasons for thinking that
attitudes cannot be decided on. First, an attitude fits or is appropriate to
(gebührt) its object, its object requires it. Thus it is not merely triggered
but also grounded (begründet). If I could decide not to adopt a certain
position then I would infringe evident (einsichtige) norms, something
which ‘in the case of failing to turn towards something is not in general
the case’ (42). The claim that an attitude fits its object is either false –
fear of what is not dangerous is not appropriate – or elliptic for: a posi-
tion taking fits or seems to fit its object.
Secondly, as we have already noted, an attitude ‘takes possession of
one’; one finds oneself adopting a position with respect to what one
knows or seems to know.
To accept, then, is to accept one’s own belief in or belief that or trust
or admiration etc. To refuse is to refuse one’s own belief in, belief that,
trust, admiration etc. Only attitudes can be accepted or refused. (There
is, as we shall see, one exception to this rule.) No type of knowledge can
be accepted or refused. To accept or refuse an attitude is, Stein says, to
take up a position with respect to some attitude – but ‘in a new sense’
(43). What this new sense is she never clearly explains. But it is doubtless
connected with the fact that accepting and refusing, unlike attitudes,
are ‘free acts’ (46), like a turning towards some object (42), the acknow-
ledgment and rejection (Anerkennung, Verwerfung) of states of affairs
(48) (a category to which we shall return), assertion, assuring
(Versichern), lying (48) and social acts (52) such as promising and
ordering. Acceptance and refusal might then be called ‘free attitudes’.
She also makes the plausible claim that unlike many other mental and
psychological acts and states, the acts of accepting and refusing cannot
belong to the background (46) of a person’s mental and psychological
world.
Amongst the glosses she provides for accepting an attitude are:

adopting (aufnehmen) it, planting my feet on it (mich auf ihren

Boden stellen), allowing it to become effective (sie wirksam werden
114 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

lassen), surrendering oneself joyfully without resistance, giving one’s

assent (Zustimmung) and avowal (bekennen)

Refusal of an attitude is also described as not-acknowledging, making

ineffective (43). To refuse a belief is not to eliminate it. Stein gives two
examples:

[To eliminate a belief] is not in my power. Only new motives which

defeat the motives I had for a belief will lead to a ‘cancellation’
of that belief ... But ... I can behave as though the belief were not
present, I can make it ineffective. Suppose I am waiting for a piece
of news which will lead me to make a journey. I hear from a quarter
which is not competent that the event in question has taken place,
the belief that this is the case forms itself. But I do not ´want` to
believe that this is the case until I have confirmation. I behave just
as I would if the belief were not present.

[A] mother hears from the comrades of her son that he has fallen in
battle. She is convinced that he is dead. But she does not ‘want’ to
believe that this is the case in the absence of official confirmation.
As long as she withholds her agreement (Zustimmung) from the
belief the sadness which immediately grows out of the unchecked
belief will not be awoken in her. (To thwart sadness in this way is not
of course to be confused with struggling against a sadness which has
formed itself.) (43)

‘An attitude’, she adds, ‘owes its character of full vivacity (Lebendigkeit)
and effectiveness or neutrality to acceptance or refusal’ (44).58 She
also claims en passant that ‘the refusal of an attitude is...equivalent
to the acceptance of an opposed attitude’ (44). Just as I can refuse a
belief or hatred I actually have, I can also accept beliefs and hates I
do not have. “I can place myself on the foundation of a belief which
I do not have ...”. Although I am convinced that I shall not be able
to go on a certain journey I act as though I were convinced of the
opposite (44).
To say that one’s acceptance and refusal have one’s own attitudes as
their objects is to claim that that they are, in the jargon of the phenom-
enologists, intentional acts. But a further central claim of Steins’ account
of acceptance and refusal is that they may occur either as independent
 Kevin Mulligan 115

acts, the objects of which are attitudes, or as what she calls ‘characters’
of attitudes (44, 47). In the latter case one believes or admires or trusts
in an accepting or refusing sort of way. The category of ‘characters’ of
attitudes is one we shall return to below in the discussion of certainty
and uncertainty.
Attitudes have motives and grounds (reasons). So do the acceptance
and refusal of attitudes. According to Stein and other phenomenolo-
gists, a reason or ground is something which speaks in favour of or
against accepting, refusing, believing, emoting, desiring or acting.
A motive is a reason on the basis of which someone accepts, refuses,
believes, emotes, desires or acts. ‘Motives and grounds (reasons) can...
coincide, but they can also diverge’ (45). Suppose I refuse to believe a
piece of news because the messenger is not credible or trustworthy. ‘His
unreliability or my knowledge thereof simultaneously motivates and
justifies (grounds) my epochè’ (45). Suppose now I do not believe the
piece of news because it is unpleasant:

The unpleasantness is here my motive, the ground may be the same

as before; but it is also possible that my behaviour lacks entirely
an objective ground (reason). Where motive and reason coincide
the motivation is reasonable (vernünftig). Where they diverge
or a reason is completely lacking an attitude or free behaviour
[acceptance, refusal] with respect to it unreasonable and perhaps
unintelligible.59

Motives for coming to know (Kenntnisnahmen) and attitudes always

have something to do with reason, a motive ‘never lies beyond reason
and unreason’ unlike experiences which are merely triggered by some
stimulus (45).
Although Stein occasionally uses ‘acknowledgment’ or ‘recognition’
(Anerkennung) as a gloss for ‘acceptance’, her considered view is that
acknowledgment and its opposite, rejection (Verwerfung), differ from
the couple acceptance–refusal and that to assert is not to acknowledge.
Acknowledgment, assertion and conviction are three different types
of intentional relations to states of affairs. To acknowledge is to posit
the obtaining of a state of affairs (46). She does not give any reason
for distinguishing between acknowledging and asserting (or judging)
but presumably accepts the reason given, as we have seen, by Husserl
for the view that to assert or to judge that p is not to assert or judge of
the state of affairs that p that it obtains. The act of acknowledging or
rejecting is, like the act of accepting or refusing an attitude, a free act.
116 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

But acknowledging and rejecting may, like accepting and refusing, occur
as characters of other acts, such as belief or conviction (47).

4 Acceptance à la Cohen

Some seventy years after Stein’s account of the relation between accept-
ance and belief L. Jonathan Cohen60 put forward a quite different
account. According to Cohen, acceptance ‘is not the same as supposi-
tion, assumption, presumption or hypothesising’, it is ‘a mental act, or
a pattern, system, or policy of mental action, rather than a speech act’.

Acceptance, in contrast with belief, occurs at will, whether by an

immediate decision or through a gradually formed intention. This is
because at bottom it executes a choice...61

So far, so Steinian. But the type of acceptance at the heart of Cohen’s

account is that ascribed by reports of the form ‘x accepts that p’; to ‘accept
that p is to have or adopt a policy of deeming, positing, or postulat-
ing, that p’.62 Its intentionality is propositional. Further, ‘what is under
consideration’ in an acceptance must be ‘tied to some type of linguistic
formulation even if this formulation is never uttered aloud’. This require-
ment is a priori and conceptual.63 Cohen says next to nothing about
judging, merely noting that what he says ‘about acceptance echoes a lot
of what used to be said about what was often called “judgment”’.64 One
echo of the accounts of judgment of Bolzano, Frege and Husserl is that
Cohen’s acceptance has, it seems, no negative counterpart. Cohen’s claim
that acceptance is tied to some type of linguistic formulation echoes
Reinach’s curious claim that judging and asserting are the very same
thing, a claim he seems to accept because he thinks that to judge that p
and to assert that p are to mean that p and because, like Wittgenstein, he
thinks that meaning that p must be linguistically clothed.65
At one point Cohen says that belief and acceptance, as so far charac-
terised, are ‘mental states’ and ‘attitudes’. Reasons for accepting that p
may be prudential as well as evidential. Having a belief that p may be a
prima facie reason for accepting that p. But acceptance that p can never
be taken as a reason for believing that p.66
Thus the two most important differences between acceptance à la
Cohen and acceptance à la Stein are (1) what is accepted according to
Cohen is just the same wide range of things which can be believed or
judged whereas according to his predecessor what one accepts are one’s
own attitudes; (2) accepting according to Stein is opposed to refusal;
 Kevin Mulligan 117

acceptance à la Cohen has, it seems, no opposite. The two differences are

not unconnected. As we have seen, although one may very well accept
that p, one cannot reject or refuse that p. One relation between the two
types of acceptance may be this:

Typically, if x accepts (a meta-act à la Stein) his own belief that p,

then x accepts (à la Cohen) that p

‘Typically’ because there are doubtless worlds in which a subject’s

acceptance à la Stein module works perfectly well but his acceptance
à la Cohen module is defective. And also because of possible problems
with the identification of one’s own beliefs. Another relation between
the two types of acceptance is this:

If x believes in an accepting way that p (acceptance as a character à

la Stein), then x accepts (à la Cohen) that p.

Cohen’s acceptance has, he thinks, a conative analogue:

while desires are intrinsically about as passive and involuntary as

beliefs, they do have counterpart pro-attitudes that are as active
and voluntary as acceptances. Among such active and voluntary
counterparts of desires are the mental attitudes that consist in
having such-or-such goals, aims, ends, objectives, plans, intentions,
or policies.67

His view about ‘pursuing a goal, following a policy, or having an inten-

tion’, he adds in true Oxford style, ‘echoes a lot of what used to be said
about what was called “willing”’.68 Perhaps because – without the ben-
efit of an Oxford education – she has not learnt to stop talking about
‘willing’ Stein would, as we have seen, doubtless respond as follows. An
intention or project or resolution, the sort of thing one forms (Vorsatz)
is not an attitude, it is not any sort of reaction and is neither a ‘pro-
attitude’ nor a ‘contra-attitude’. Desire, willing that p, like aversion and
negative willing that p are attitudes. Strivings and inclinations, Stein
says, have many of the properties of attitudes but she does not call them
attitudes. Attitudes and strivings or inclinations can be accepted or
refused and only they can be accepted or refused. There is a clash within
a person between his desire to F and his resolution not to F only if the
person accepts his desire to F: ‘we can allow a striving or inclination to
become operative within us or to renounce it’, says Stein.69
118 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

Cohen says of goals, aims and intentions

these are the very attitudes in virtue of which we indulge or suppress

our desires at will, just as we select beliefs at will to be the accepted
premises for our proofs, argumentations, inferences, and delibera-
tions or reject them as unsuitable for the purpose.70

But this is perhaps to overlook an important difference between our

relation to our beliefs and out relations to our desires and inclinations,
which is pointed out by Stein:

If I do not adopt a belief, I make it inoperative but I do not make it

disappear. A striving or inclination is something I can not only make
ineffective but also destroy if I withdraw myself from it (entziehe).71

Stein notes that her distinction between acceptance/refusal and the atti-
tudes which are their objects and her account of motives and reasons
yields an account of illusions and errors.72 But her own most worked
out account of self-deception and illusions about oneself is in fact a
variant of Scheler’s theory of the illusions of inner perception rather an
account in terms of her distinction between acceptance or refusal and
their objects.73 Cohen, on the other hand, provides a full account of self-
deception in terms of his distinction between acceptance and belief.74
In order to better understand the accounts of attitudes and non-
attitudes given by Brentano’s heirs it will be useful to look at four more
items in our doxastic family: certainty and uncertainty, belief in and
disbelief in.

5 Certainties vs Uncertainties

Certainty and uncertainty seem to enjoy the property of intentional-

ity, of propositional intentionality. One is certain that p or uncertain
whether p. Since certainty is opposed to uncertainty and since they vary
in degree it is tempting to think that they are attitudes. But to be certain
that p is to believe that p in a certain way, with certainty. Certainty is
a character or feature of something else, here of belief, rather than a
fully-fledged attitude. It is a character or feature of attitudes such as
belief or of non-attitudes, such as knowledge – ‘Sam knows for certain
that the Belgian Empire is a catastrophe.’ That certainty and uncertainty
are features of intentional acts and states is a claim frequently advanced
by Husserl. And, as we have noted, according to Stein, acceptance and
 Kevin Mulligan 119

refusal, as well as acknowledgment and rejection, may be either ‘acts’ or

‘characters’ of attitudes.
Certainty, Husserl thinks, as well as doubt and acts, are ‘modes of
position-taking’ (Modi der Stellungnahme), ways in which we find our-
selves adopting attitudes. They are not therefore themselves attitudes.
Husserl often calls them ‘modalisations’.75 Strictly speaking, not all
certainty is a modalisation. The fundamental type of certainty is what
Husserl calls ‘naïve’ or ‘primitive’ certainty, the type of certainty enjoyed
by many but by no means all of our doxastic attitudes or reactions to
what we perceive in the absence of all doubt and critical attitudes.
Critical certainty and, for example surmise and doubt, the result of epis-
temic activity such as verification and falsification, are modalisations of
‘unmodalised’ primitive certainty. It is then, he says, completely wrong
to think that there is ‘a genus “belief” (or “judgment”) which merely
differentiates itself into certainty, surmise etc.’.76
Certainty, doubt and uncertainty, then, are features of intentional
phenomena and not themselves intentional ‘acts’. They may be features
of judgmental attitudes, of belief, disbelief and acceptance. Must they be
features of such doxastic phenomena? Husserl’s intriguing and surpris-
ing answer to this question in §117 and §127 of his Ideen is negative.
Certainty and doubt may colour not only doxastic but also all affec-
tive and conative attitudes. Just as, according to Stein, I may accept or
refuse any one of my attitudes, intellectual, affective or conative, just
as any one of these attitudes may occur in an accepting or refusing sort
of way, so too, according to Husserl, each of my attitudes – intellectual,
affective or conative – may display a feature in the series naive certainty,
critical certainty, doubt, surmise, uncertainty.
Are there affective and conative certainties and uncertainties? If so,
the category seems to have escaped the attention of most philosophers
of mind. In favour of Husserl’s claim there is the undoubted fact that
we frequently ascribe doubting admiration and uncertain feelings such
as uncertain good-will, regret, shame and hope as well as, for example,
hesitant nostalgia, hesitant, emphatic and definite preferences. A scep-
tic might reply that when we talk of uncertain regret it is the memory or
belief about the past which is constitutive of regret which is uncertain.
But a quite certain belief about the past can, I suggest, constitute a regret
which is itself hesitant.
The question then arises whether certainty and uncertainty are them-
selves affective, intellectual or conative phenomena. One answer to this
question, mentioned by Scheler, is that certainty, uncertainty and doubt
are themselves affective phenomena. If this is the case, it is perhaps the
120 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

grain of truth in the venerable and popular but false view that belief is
an affective phenomenon. Cohen, for example, assimilates the doxastic
to the affective. Belief, he says, is ‘normally a disposition to feel that
things are thus-or-so’.77 He distinguishes three types of feeling that p
corresponding to the cases where the content is a matter of fact, deontic
or axiological.
One reason sometimes given for thinking that propositional belief is
an affective phenomenon is that, like emotions, it comes in different
degrees. But, as Scheler and, for example, Hacker point out, proposi-
tional belief does not itself admit of degrees:

*x believes that p more than y believes that p

As they also point out, there are two phenomena associated with proposi-
tional beliefs which do admit of degrees. One of these is certainty:

I cannot believe that p more than you do, although I may be more
certain than you that p78

...these feelings [certainty and uncertainty] exhibit degrees, quite

unlike believing and not-believing (nichtglauben)79

The other is the depth or strength of one’s attachment to a belief:

[O]ne may strongly or firmly believe that p..., but this does not
indicate a degree of belief. It signifies the strength or firmness with
which one cleaves to the belief one has. It is the ease or difficulty
of shaking the belief in question, and not the belief itself, that has
degrees.80

...there are beliefs of different depth (Glaubenstiefe)81

Many theories of the mind since Ramsey accord an important place to

what are held to be interdependencies between degrees of belief, of desire
and behaviour (in particular, betting behaviour). If the above claims are
correct, the reference here to degrees of belief should be replaced by
reference to degrees of certainty and of attachment to beliefs.
We saw above that both Reinach and Stein seem to treat propositional
belief and conviction as the same thing. But although I cannot believe
that p more than you do, I can be more convinced that p than you
are. One attractive way of accounting for this difference is to say like
Russell, that conviction just is certain belief.
 Kevin Mulligan 121

Are certainties and uncertainties affective phenomena? Do they admit

of degrees because they are affective phenomena? Anglophones like
speakers of Arabic say that one feels certain that or uncertain whether
p. This idiom, which has few if any counterparts in German, French or
Italian (but cf. ‘Mi sento in dubbio se p’) – and belongs to the language
in which so many philosophers, from Hume to James and Cohen, have
argued that belief is an affective phenomenon - suggests that certainty
is an affective phenomenon:

x feels uncertain whether/convinced/sure/certain that...

it is raining/she is dumpy/she ought to lose weight/he is really
making progress/.....

Hacker notes:

[T]here are degrees of feeling. One can feel a little depressed or very
cheerful,... So, too, one can feel a little suspicious, or very doubtful,
less sure or more convinced. But there are no degrees of belief, so
belief cannot be a feeling. I cannot believe that p more than you do,
although I may be more certain than you that p.

One can believe that p without being or feeling certain that p (for one
may neither be nor feel either certain or doubtful), but one cannot be
or feel convinced that p without believing that p.82

There are, Hacker says, doxastic feelings ‘such as feeling that p, feeling
convinced, certain, or sure that p...i.e. an “intentional” feeling...’.83 As
Scheler puts it:

Believing something and not-believing (nichtglauben) something

have nothing to do with the so called feeling of certainty and the
feelings which accompany them. For certainty stands opposed only
to uncertainty (and both certainty and uncertainty are opposed
to the oscillation between these and its accompanying feeling, the
feeling of doubt) and believing to the equally positive not-believing,
which in turn can be certain or uncertain. Furthermore, these feelings
exhibit degrees, quite unlike believing and not-believing.84

Similarly, just as one may be filled with joy or dread or deeply unhappy
so too one may be filled with certainty or full of doubt or deeply con-
vinced. White notes:

Certainty, but not knowledge, is something one can feel, something

one can induce in oneself or another, something one can discover in
122 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

oneself introspectively or in another behaviouristically. We can ask

how somebody knows that p, but not how he is certain that p; and,
conversely, why he is certain, but not why he knows.85

Certainty and uncertainty have many other properties of affective phe-

nomena. As White says, ‘one can sound or look certain, but there is
no physical expression of knowledge’.86 There is also an expression of
uncertainty. Certainty has a positive and uncertainty a negative
‘valence’, like pleasure and displeasure or sadness and joy. (Not all
affective phenomena have valence, cf. the ‘neutral’ emotion of sur-
prise and preference.) Affective phenomena, for example emotions, are
contagious. And convictions, that is to say, as already suggested, beliefs
which are certain, are also contagious.87 If certainty and uncertainty
are affective reactions, it must be possible to specify what they are reac-
tions to. The most promising answer is that they are reactions to the
(apparent) goodness and badness of the motives and reasons for and
against whatever attitude they are bound up with.88
Husserl’s claim that certainty is a feature or mode of intentional
attitudes rules out the possibility that certainty is an emotion. An
emotion is an attitude which has the property of intentionality. It is not
a feature of any attitude (although it is based on attitudes such as belief
or non-attitudes such as seeing or knowledge). And if certainty were
an emotion, then there would, it seems, be at least one emotion which
cannot be more or less certain, certainty itself. Perhaps, then, certainty,
uncertainty and doubt are affective phenomena but not fully-fledged
emotions. Perhaps they are affective features of attitudes. On the other
hand, two ways of talking about certainty may be thought to suggest
it is an emotion. We say, as we have seen, that someone feels uncertain
whether or certain that p. And also that someone is uncertain whether p.
These are the two main forms of subjective certainty (as opposed to
objective certainty – ‘It is certain that p’, cf. ascriptions of objective doubt-
fulness: ‘It is doubtful whether p’).89 White says the following about
their relations:

I don’t know exactly how a person’s being certain and his feeling cer-
tain are related except that it is in the same way in which, e.g. being
confident and feeling confident, being hopeful and feeling hopeful,
or being afraid and feeling afraid are related and different from the
way in which, e.g. being well and feeling well, being safe and feel-
ing safe or being free and feeling free are related. There is nothing at
all strange in someone’s feeling well, safe or free and not being so.
 Kevin Mulligan 123

It seems, however, difficult, to be certain, confident, hopeful or afraid

without feeling so or to feel so without being so; though it is not
impossible to be in one of these states without feeling that one is in
it or to feel that one is in it without being in it.90

Locutions such as ‘x feels certain/afraid’ do not by themselves ascribe

emotions. Feeling certain or afraid is a way of feeling, not something
which is felt. But there is a familiar type of ascent from such locutions as
‘x felt completely certain/happy’ to ‘the complete certainty x felt’, ‘the
happiness x felt’ which do ascribe emotions.
Certainty and uncertainty, it may seem, colour only propositional acts
and states. One consequence of this would be that the concept of certainty
cannot help us to understand the nature of non-propositional modes and
intentionality. Another consequence is that it seems to be wrong to claim,
like Husserl, that certainty, naive certainty, characterises much simple see-
ing. But perhaps Husserl would reply that although to simply see a table
is not to be certain that there is a table it is a seeing which is certain. An
admiration which is quite certain is not any sort of certainty that. There
is, after all, non-propositional certainty and uncertainty.

6 Belief in

Suppose Sam judges that Erna is sad and Hans sees Erna. If we use the
distinction already introduced between mode or ‘act quality’, on the
one hand, and content, on the other hand, we may say that Sam is
the bearer of the intentional mode of judging, a propositional mode, and
that Hans is the bearer of the intentional mode of seeing, (here) a non-
propositional mode. In judging that Erna is sad Sam employs perhaps the
proper name ‘Erna’ or some mental equivalent thereof with the help of
which he means Erna. Sam’s meaning Erna is also informed by a mode.
These are all claims made by Husserl in his Investigations. He there also
claims that each of these modes has the feature [+ positing], is a posit-
ing (setztend) mode. Positing modes contrast with ‘non-positing’ modes
such as the mode in which one visualises or make-believedly sees some-
thing or make-believedly judges that p. The positing and non-positing
modes of ‘objectifying acts’ – seeing something, judging, remembering,
visual imagining – contrast with the modes of ‘non-objectifying acts’,
affective and conative. Non-objectifying acts presuppose objectifying
acts – fear of a dog presupposes e.g. seeing it.91
The modes of simple seeing and judging are, we might say, species of
the genus positing mode. But what is the mode which informs Sam’s
124 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

meaning Erna in the context of his judging that Erna is sad? Husserl
never gives a satisfactory positive answer to this question. As we have
seen, he knows, like many other philosophers, that for Sam to mean
Erna in a positing way is not for him to judge that she exists.92
Husserl’s discussions of this question are responses to questions raised
(and answered by) by Brentano. Related questions, often formulated
without the baggage of modes and contents, have been raised and discus-
sed from Frege and Strawson to the present. According to Brentano’s very
curious and ingenious analysis of judging, to judge that Erna exists is to
accept or acknowledge or endorse what a presenting of Erna – or, rather,
a presenting-of-Erna – presents. Should we perhaps maintain part of
Brentano’s theory (even if we give up his non-propositional theory of
judging)? Should we say that Sam’s intentional relation to Erna in the
context of his judging that she is sad is some sort of acknowledgment
or acceptance of her, or even a belief in her? That belief in is a non-
propositional, personal or psychological ontological commitment quite
distinct from the impersonal ontological commitment of truth-bearers
such as sentences or propositions? Gendler Szabó has recently put for-
ward an interesting affirmative answer to this last question. His strategy
is to distinguish between two standard meanings or uses of ‘believe in’
and to introduce a term of art which generalises from one of these uses.93
Belief in displays simple non-propositional intentionality. Consider

x believes in freedom/the American Way/the White Man’s Burden/

science/space-travel/this medicine/homeopathy

The best attempt to describe belief in I have come across is that given
by the realist phenomenologist, Max Scheler. He writes of ‘the mental
act ... which we call “belief in something” in contrast to the “belief that
something is the case or occurs”’ that it is

a sui generis act which cannot be assigned either to the sphere of acts
of the will or to that of intellectual acts. If I have to describe it, then
it is necessary to distinguish in it the act which gives it a content and
the act directed to this content which is an unconditional holding
on to (Festhalten), adherence (Aufrechthalten) to a doxastic good ....
The second act is best described if we think of what we call ‘identify-
ing oneself with something’.94

He also says that consent or agreement (Zustimmung) belongs to all

belief in95 and that belief in is a response (Antwortreaktion) to the
 Kevin Mulligan 125

apparent values – from the pleasant and usefulness to the sacred – and
disvalues of objects.96 In favour of the claim that belief in, unlike belief
that, involves identification is the following observation:

Whereas ‘I believe the weather is fine today’ in contrast to ‘The

weather is fine today’ indicates a lesser degree of certainty, if not
a slight degree of uncertainty, ‘I believe in God’ expresses (at least
as far its intention is concerned) an unshakeable and non-gradual
certainty, indeed a certainty to which no possible correlative uncer-
tainty exists (but only disbelief).97

There is, he also claims, belief that with a hypothetical content but no
belief in of this type.98
Scheler’s account of the most common meaning of ‘belief in’, what
might be called ‘axiological belief in’, is not implausible.99 But it is
obvious that the mode informing Sam’s meaning Erna is not any type
of axiological belief in. The latter is a response or reaction to (apparent)
value and the mode we are interested in is not any reaction of this type.
There is, however, a small group of cases to which Scheler’s account fails
to apply. Consider the type of example given by Gendler Szabó:

x believes in atoms/numbers/transcendent universals/green aliens/

ghosts.

Mach famously did not believe in atoms until presented with an early
version of the cloud-chamber late in life. His disbelief then gave way to
belief in atoms. In this and similar cases there is no intentional relation
to any sort of value or value-properties. Belief in here seems to be a purely
intellectual phenomenon. It is perhaps that component of axiological
belief in which Scheler calls in the quotation above ‘the act which gives it
a content’. Let us call it ‘intellectual belief in’. Intellectual ‘believe in’ takes
not only plural noun phrases and singular terms but also mass terms:

x believes in phlogiston/gunk/transcendental subjectivity

In the mouths of the faithful ‘I believe in God’ and what it expresses

have just the properties ascribed to axiological belief in by Scheler. But
when philosophers argue about the existence of God they typically
have in mind intellectual belief in and belief that. They argue about the
second order property enjoyed by the property of being a god or – if they
follow Bolzano – about whether the concept of a god has objectivity.
126 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

May we extend the concept of what I have called intellectual belief in

so as to allow us to say that when Sam judges that Erna is sad the mode
which informs his meaning Erna with e.g. the help of the expression
‘Erna’ is that of belief in? There is a price to pay for such an extension.
Axiological belief in may be positive, as in the examples already given,
or negative:

x doesn’t-believe (glaubt nicht an, disbelieves in) in the Belgian

Empire/socialism/capitalism/those idols/that invention/the American
Way/Thomas Mann

And the same is true of intellectual belief in:

x doesn’t believe in atoms/phlogiston/transcendental subjectivity/

gunk/gender/God

If that is right, then either the extended concept of intellectual belief

in comprises two cases, positive and negative belief in, or the negative
case has to be explicitly excluded. The former option is implausible. The
mode informing Sam’s meaning Erna has no polar opposite. The latter
option, it may be felt, departs too far from our starting point. We are
left with the option often adopted by Husserl, of saying that the mode
informing Sam’s meaning Erna is a type of occurrent ‘belief’ – he often
uses the English word – although not any type of belief that nor pre-
sumably any type of belief in. Apart from being hopelessly vague, this
option is also open to the objection that occurrent belief itself comes in
two kinds, positive and negative.
As we have noted, Husserl thinks that if Hans sees Erna, Hans is the
bearer of the intentional mode of seeing, a non-propositional positing
mode. The mode of simple seeing is, I suggested, a species of the genus
positing mode. Can this mode also be understood as a type of intellectual
belief in?100 The objection to this suggestion resembles the objection
to the view that Sam’s meaning Erna in the context of a judgment is
informed by intellectual belief in: belief in has a polar opposite, disbelief
in. But this is not true of seeing.

7 Rejection, Reinach and Rumfitt

Old ideas never die. Husserl, as we have seen, thinks that ‘logic and
science reduce everything to judgments. However much denying goes
on, in theoretical statements (Aussagen) there is no denial (Leugnung)
 Kevin Mulligan 127

[in such statements]…’. Reinach and other phenomenologists agree.

But the old idea Husserl – after Bolzano and Frege – thought he had
killed off has recently been vigorously revived by Rumfitt. According
to Rumfitt, the sense of a sentential connective lies in rules governing
deductions which are arguments involving answers to yes-no questions
containing the connective. One of his targets is Dummett’s view that ‘a
sentence’s free-standing sense [is] its assertoric content’, what Rumfitt
calls the unilateral conception of how sense is to specified. According to
his alternative bilateral conception

mastering the sense of an atomic sentence A will involve learning

methods whose deployment might entitle one either to affirm it or
to reject it. Successful application of these methods, one might say,
will put one in a position to answer the question whether A either
by ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ as appropriate. Affirmative answers, however, enjoy
no priority over negative ones. The acts of answering a proposi-
tional question affirmatively and of answering it negatively – the
acts of accepting its content and rejecting it – are conceived to be
on all fours.101

One question one may pose about this account is this: what is the
relation between accepting or affirming, on the one hand, and assert-
ing, on the other hand? Are they the very same thing? If not, what
is their relation? In order to answer these questions it is necessary to
understand the acts of answering yes-no questions.
‘Yes’ and ‘No’ can occur as reactions to assertions. They can also occur
as answers to one type of question. In 1911 Reinach writes about the
first case as follows:

There is an acceptance (Anerkennung)...which can more precisely

be characterised as agreement (Zustimmung). I hear, say, the judg-
ment ‘a is P’ expressed; I understand it, reflect upon it, and then
I say in agreement (zustimmend) ‘Yes’. In this ‘Yes’ lies an agreeing
(Zustimmen), an accepting (Anerkennen); but here too the accepting
is not a judgment. For which judgment should it be? The judgment
‘a is P’? Certainly not. For this judgment evidently relates to the
being P of a, to this state of affairs (Sachverhalt), but the acceptance
which we now have before us relates rather to the judgment ‘a is P’.
And that the state of affairs is not the same as the judgment which
posits it requires no special emphasis. I can even bring in the origi-
nal judgment alongside, and say: ‘Yes; a is indeed P’. Here we have
128 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

agreeing acceptance (Zustimmungsanerkennung) and judgment next

to each other, as evidently different. I first of all agree, with my ‘Yes’,
to the original judgment, and then I judge in turn that a is P.102

Reinach’s claim that ‘Yes’ here expresses agreement is supported by the

fact that ‘I agree’ would do the same job. What is the object of agree-
ment? Reinach says:

Agreement relates to (bezieht sich auf) the judgment not only in the
sense of the act of judgement (Urteilsakt) but also in the sense of
the judgment-object (Urteilsgehaltes). But it is not necessary to carry
through this somewhat difficult distinction here.103

The use of ‘bezieht sich auf’ here, as so often in phenomenology, is

vague. But it seems that Reinach’s point is that I do not merely agree
that p but agree with your judgment that p, with its content, and so – we
may add – with you.104
Reinach argues from the distinction between the object of judging
and the object of agreeing to the conclusion that to judge is not
to agree. He also distinguishes provisionally between the acceptance of
agreement and judging (judgmental) acceptance:

This judgment [‘a is P’] can also be called an acceptance, that is, the
acceptance of the state of affairs which is the being P of a. And it is
precisely here that there lies the danger of the confusion mentioned
above. For the acceptance of agreement (Zustimmungsanerkennung)
and judging acceptance (urteilende Anerkennung) are fundamen-
tally different, both as acts and in regard to their objectual correlates.
If one wanted to make use of the equivocation it might be said that
what the acceptance of agreement accepts is a judging acceptance.
Many confusions in the theory of judgment are thus to be explained
as arising through the substitution of the acceptance of agreement for
genuine judgment. It is to a large extent the term acceptance which
leads us astray here....and the same considerations can be carried out,
of course, with respect to the expression ‘reject’ (verwerfen)...105

He then goes on to drop altogether the term ‘acceptance’ for genuine

judgment and assertion.106
‘Yes’ and ‘No’ also occur as parts of what, as we saw in section 3, Reid
and Reinach call ‘social acts’, in particular the social acts of answering
as a response to the social act of asking.107 The points Reinach makes
 Kevin Mulligan 129

about acceptance and rejection in the context of reactions to assertions

can also be made about the acceptance and rejection which constitute
answers to questions. Sam’s question to Maria: ‘Is it raining?’ can also be
carried out with the help of the performative formula as follows:

Sam: I hereby ask you whether it is raining

Sam: Par la présente je te demande s’il pleut

And among Maria’s possible answers are:

Maria: Yes
Maria: Par la présente je te réponds que oui
(to which the closest English equivalent seems to be: ‘I hereby reply
to you positively (or affirmatively)’)

Maria: No
Maria: Par la présente je te réponds que non
(‘I hereby reply to you negatively’)

Maria’s positive answer is no assertion. Nor is her negative answer any

assertion. If her positive answer is what Rumfitt calls ‘an act of accept-
ing a propositional content’ and her negative answer ‘an act of rejecting
a propositional content’, these are not assertions. Her answers are just
that: social acts. And no social act is an assertion. It is easy to confuse
asserting and informing, which is indeed a social act – ‘I hereby inform
(mitteilen) you that p’. The terminology of ‘speech acts’ encourages this
confusion. The difference between social acts, such as affirming and
rejecting, and the non-social act of asserting is apparent if, following
Reinach’s lead, we consider

Sam: Is it raining?
Maria: Yes. It is raining
Maria: No. It is not raining

‘Yes’ (‘No’) in Maria’s mouth amounts to an answer to Sam and to his

question. ‘It is raining’ in her mouth, on the other hand, is an assertion
that it is raining, an assertion which expresses the judgment, belief or
knowledge that it is raining. Assertions, like judgments and knowledge,
are not any sort of acceptance or rejection.
There is indeed the polarly opposed pair, agreement and disagree-
ment with what someone asserts. There are also polarly opposed
130 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

answers to yes–no questions which, at a pinch, one may call acceptance

or affirmation (bejahen) and rejection. But there are also judgment and
assertion, neither of which comes in two kinds. A mastery of acceptance
or affirmation and rejection perhaps suffices to make possible mastery
of the senses of the connectives. But is it necessary? We can imagine a
world containing creatures who assert and judge but to whom agree-
ment, disagreement, acceptance and rejection and perhaps all social
acts – ordering, promising, declaring... – are foreign. Would creatures in
this world not be able to reason and infer?108

Notes
1. Rumfitt 2000: 812 disagrees. Husserl’s argument, at 75 pages his longest
argument, and, some would say, his last or best argument, is to be found at
§§20–43 in the fifth of his Investigations (Husserl 1984: 425–519). Bolzano,
Frege and Husserl have different views about the make-up of truth-bearers
and about different types of negation.
2. Husserl 1979: 187–8. On this passage, Husserl’s account of judging in his
Investigations and the accounts of Brentano and other pupils of Brentano, see
Mulligan 1989.
3. Frege 1966: 63 footnote.
4. In 1900 Rickert (in the course of reconstructing the views of Fichte) writes: ‘Every
judgement which claims to be true (das auf Wahrheit Anspruch erhebt) there-
fore presupposes the will to truth as the final ground of certainty’ (Rickert 1900:
145). In 1903 yet another neo-Kantian, Wittgenstein’s hero, Otto Weininger,
puts forward the stronger claim: ‘In every judgment there lies this claim to
truth, every judgment makes implicitly...the claim of its objective validity in the
restricted form its author gives it...[I]n the judging function there lies the claim to
knowledge, to the truth of what is judged’ (Weininger 1921: 241). On Pfänder’s
1921 account of the relation between assertions and their claim to truth, cf.
Mulligan 2009.
5. Husserl 1973: I, 153 (Prolegemona §39); I have modified Findlay’s transla-
tion. cf. “To assert is to state that this or that content in truth” (ibid. p.144:
Prolegemona §37).
6. Husserl 1996: 320.
7. Husserl 2001: 166f.
8. Husserl 2001: 96, cf. 91, 166.
9. Husserl 1974: FTL §79 204, cf. tr. 196. The view of assertion set out here is
to be found also in Husserl 2005: 446–9. It is a view, he says (Husserl 2005:
447), which he had overlooked in his Investigations.
10. Husserl 1974: FTL §79 205, cf. tr. 197. The first part of this claim is even more
remarkable.
11. Husserl 1974: §48, cf. tr. 131. Emphases mine.
12. Reinach 1989: 132 and footnote 1.
13. The term had been employed earlier by the psychologist Münsterberg. And
James calls belief an ‘attitude’ in his Psychology.
14. Reinach 1989: 280, 109, 280, 355, 116, 109.
15. Reinach 1989: 109.
 Kevin Mulligan 131

16. Reinach 1989: 109.

17. Reinach 1989: 294.
18. The German term Einstellung as used by psychologists has often been trans-
lated into English as ‘set’. Another translation is: ‘attitude’.
19. Reinach 1989: 109.
20. Reinach 1989: 99. For Reinach’s account of the grounds of conviction and
the motives of assertion cf. Reinach 1989: 355, 404, 475. Among Reinach’s
least plausible claims and terminological choices are his habit of calling
both judgings and convictions ‘acts’ and ‘judgments’ (cf. e.g. Reinach
1989: 109). It should also be noted that Reinach identifies judging and
asserting.
21. Reinach 1989: 131, tr. 362. Cf. Scheler 1957: 242.
22. Reinach 1989: 126–7, cf. tr. 356.
23. Reinach 1989: 134, cf. tr. 365.
24. Reinach 1989: 127, tr. 357.
25. Reinach 1989: 133, tr. 363.
26. Reinach 1989: 133–4, cf. tr. 364–5. Cf. Scheler 1957: 241.
27. Reinach 1989: 109, cf. tr. 332.
28. Horn 1989.
29. In my first reference to the relation between Neg Raising and Reinach’s
account of polar oppositions I accepted Reinach’s account of enduring belief
and disbelief (Mulligan 1987:. 55 note 28; cf. also Mulligan 2003). I now
think that Reinach’s view, which was shared by many realist phenomenolo-
gists, is only plausible if one countenances non-natural, enduring mental
states which are not identical with any dispositions.
30. von Hildebrand 1930 (1916): 134.
31. von Hildebrand 1930: 137.
32. Cf. eg. Reinach 1989: 125.
33. Wittgenstein 1980: RPP I §836. Wittgenstein, then, did not take all attitudes
to be propositional.
34. 4 November 1916. Cf. Messer (1914) 1922: ch. 20 on conative phenomena
as attitudes.
35. Stein 1970: 311.
36. Husserl 1980 Nr. 15j: 401, cf. 403–4.
37. The account is briefly anticipated in Husserl 1950 §106, which refers to
Reinach’s views.
38. The gloss goes back at least to Scheler 1955: 249.
39. Husserl 1954: §72 353–5. The qualification „as valid“ seems to be superflu-
ous, wrong and incompatible with Husserl’s completely justified general
prohibition against going in for any kind of ascent in explaining what it is
to judge.
40. Husserl 1954: §71 349.
41. Husserl 1954: §71 347–9, §72 352.
42. Husserl 1954: §71 350.
43. Husserl 1954: §72 352.
44. Husserl 1954: §72 352.
45. Husserl 1954: §73 356.
46. Husserl 1954: §73 354–6.
47. Cf. McGinn 2000. Bolzano’s view of what I have called existence is to be
found at Wissenschaftslehre §137, cf. §66.
132 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

48. Husserl 1954: §73 358–9. §74 gives an interesting and analogous account of
predications of reality (Wirklichkeit) and unreality or fictionality which is in
many ways simpler than later accounts such as that given by Evans.
49. Cf. Mulligan 2010a.
50. Husserl 1954: §73 355.
51. Cohen 1992: 2.
52. Reinach 1989: 169–71.
53. Reinach 1989: 131.
54. Stein 1970: 189–90.
55. Stein 1970: 42.
56. Stein 1970: 44.
57. Stein 1970: 189. All emotions (‘Gemütsakte’), she says, at one point are
attitudes (Stein 1970: 142). Subsequent page references in this section are to
Stein 1970.
58. Refusal, making ineffective, Stein declares, is just Husserl’s neutralisation
(Stein 1970: 43). On this claim cf. Mulligan 2013. Since, as we have seen,
Stein says that cognisings cannot be accepted or rejected, it follows on her
view that knowledge cannot be neutralised. Stein does not seem to allow
that in addition to accepting or refusing a belief one may adopt a stance
of indifference or suspend belief. Although, as we have seen, she thinks
that attitudes themselves are positive, negative or indifferent. For the view
that suspending judgment is an attitude of belief about one’s epistemic or
doxastic status with respect to p, cf. Friedman forthcoming.
59. Stein 1970: 45. Near relatives of Stein’s rejection are what Freud from 1924
calls Verleugnung (disavowal) and denial – ‘I know that we all die but
nevertheless...’ – phenomena which fascinate Lacanian psychoanalysts and
Parisian philosophers.
60. Cf. also Dennett 1978 on belief vs opinion; de Sousa 1971 on assent vs belief;
on acceptance, cf. Bratman 1992, Lehrer 1999, Engel (ed.) 2000, Engel forth-
coming, Frankish 2004; on the relations between judgment and acceptance,
cf. van der Schaar 2009; on judgment and conviction, cf. Hedenius 1943.
61. Cohen 1992: 22.
62. Cohen 1992: 4.
63. Cohen 1992: 12.
64. Cohen 1992: 46, cf. 6, 18, 54, 79.
65. Cf. Mulligan 2011.
66. Cohen 1992: 16–17, 12, 17–18.
67. Cohen 1992: 44. Cf. ‘The positive evaluation of belief, I have called acceptance,
and the positive evaluation of desire, I have called preference’ (Lehrer 1999: 3).
68. Cohen 1992 47.
69. Stein 1970: 55.
70. Cohen 1992: 44.
71. Stein 1970: 55.
72. Stein 1970: 45.
73. Stein 1980: 34–9.
74. Cohen 1992: ch. 5.
75. Husserl 1954 : §71 348. On phenomenological and Wittgensteinian accounts
of certainty, cf. Mulligan 2006.
76. Husserl 1950 §104.
77. Cohen 1992: 8.
 Kevin Mulligan 133

78. Hacker 2004: 192.

79. Scheler 1957: 241. Scheler also argues that belief in, as opposed to the cer-
tainty which attaches to it, admits of no degrees. If he is right in thinking that
belief in is an identification of the whole person (a view we consider in the
next section), then one would expect belief in to admit no degrees. I cannot
believe in the nation state more than you believe in the Belgian Empire but I
can believe in the former more strongly than you believe in the latter. There
are, however, he thinks, different depths of belief in (Scheler 1957: 247).
80. Hacker 2004: 192.
81. Scheler 1957: 247.
82. Hacker 2004: 190.
83. Hacker 2004: 193.
84. Scheler 1957: 241. There is a view of emotions, discussed by Husserl, accord-
ing to which, like belief and unlike associated sensations and feelings, these
do not come in degrees; cf. Mulligan 2010b.
85. White 1983: 76.
86. White 1975: 80.
87. Cf. Stein 1970: 158–75. The affective contagion of convictions is not, of
course, to be confused with the non-affective varieties of contagion of
beliefs and representations. Cf. Sperber 1996.
88. Cf. ‘The evidence I have in favour of its being the case that p may increase,
but my belief that p does not therefore increase, although my conviction,
confidence or certainty that p will’ (Hacker 2004: 193). If certainty is an
affective reaction, one may wonder whether, like emotions, it has correctness
conditions. On these cf. Mulligan 2010b. The view that certainty and
uncertainty are affective responses to the apparent goodness or badness of
reasons and motives suggests that they are what is now often called ‘noetic’
or ‘epistemic’ feelings; cf. Proust 2012 especially ch. 8.
89. Cf. Mulligan 2006.
90. White 1975 77.
91. Cf. the fifth of Husserl’s Logical Investigations, §§22–43, Husserl 1984:
441–519. For the claim that the positing mode is not any sort of attitude,
cf. Husserl 1950 §103.
92. Cf. the long quotation from Husserl in §1 above and §34 of his fifth
Investigation (Husserl 1984: 462–6, esp. 464.
93. Gendler Szabó 2003, cf. Crane 2009, Textor 2007.
94. Scheler 1954: 262–3.
95. Scheler 1973: 97.
96. Scheler 1966: 126, 1957: 243.
97. Scheler 1957: 244.
98. Scheler 1954: 147.
99. Cf. Gendler Szabó 2003: 585–6, Mulligan 2003: 29–30.
100. Cf. Textor 2007.
101. Rumfitt 2000: 797. Cf. Bendall 1979, Smiley 1996.
102. Reinach 1989: 96; cf. tr. 316.
103. Reinach 1989: 96; cf. tr. 373.
104. For discussion and developments of Reinach’s view see Textor (forthcoming).
105. Reinach 1989: 96–7; cf. tr. 316–17.
106. Reinach 1989: 99. Cf Husserl’s early account of agreement, rejection, ques-
tions and answers at §29 of his fifth Investigation (Husserl 1984: 446–52),
134 Acceptance, Acknowledgment, Affirmation, Agreement, Assertion

which concludes as follows: ‘a theory...which identifies the peculiar quality

of judging with the agreeing to or accepting of a presented state of affairs...or
with the refusing or rejecting of such a state of affairs is on the wrong track’
(450). On all this cf. the excellent Stepanians 1998.
107. Reinach 1989: 160, 162, 282.
108. Thanks for their comments, criticisms and improvements to the Editor,
Olivier Massin and Marietje van der Schaar.

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7
G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest
Account of Judgement
Maria van der Schaar
Leiden University

1 Introduction

Although both Frege and early Russell adhere to the thesis that
propositions are logical entities independent of acts of thought and
language, each defends a different variant of logical realism. For
Frege, the Gedanke is on the level of sense (Sinn), and insofar as we are
allowed to speak of parts of the Gedanke, these parts are all on the level
of sense, too. Mont Blanc with all its snow-fields is not a part of the
Gedanke that Mont Blanc is more than 4000 metres high (Frege 1904).
For Russell, propositions are objective complexes, and Mont Blanc,
notwithstanding all its snow-fields, is part of the corresponding propo-
sition (Russell 1904a). If the object about which we judge could not
be a constituent of the proposition, we would never know something
about the object, Russell adds as an explanation. Russell’s propositions
are not only constituted in a different way, they also partly fulfill dif-
ferent functions, as will be shown in this paper. For Frege, the Gedanke
functions as:

(1) judgemental content, and may also function as the content of a

yes/no question, so that judgements and questions may share their
content; the Gedanke does not function, though, as the content of
open questions, wishes, and orders.
(2) bearer of truth or falsity: it is precisely the objectivity of the Gedanke
that guarantees the objectivity of its truth-value;
(3) meaning of the declarative sentence;
(4) because of (1), Fregean propositions also function as epistemic
contents. The Gedanke is an epistemic notion: the proposition that
the morningstar is the morningstar differs from the proposition that the
137
138 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

morningstar is the eveningstar, because knowing the one to be true

does not imply knowing the other to be true.
(5) Another important difference with Russell’s proposition consists in
the fact that the Gedanke allows for different analyses by means of
the saturated/unsaturated distinction. The unity of the proposition is
for Frege an ultimate fact, and therefore not in need of explanation.

In what sense does Russell’s notion differ from the Fregean notion of
Gedanke? Russell’s notion of proposition seems to be an ontological
rather than an epistemic notion: what the judgement is about forms
part of the proposition. Further to this, what are the functions of the
Russellian proposition? We come then, finally, to the central question
of the paper: is there a historical explanation for the difference between
the form of logical realism defended by Frege and the one propounded
by Russell?
It is generally believed that Russell was an adept of Bradley’s idealism
in his early years, and that he turned away from idealism in 1899 under
the influence of G.E. Moore. Nick Griffin, in his 1993 paper, has already
shown that Russell’s pluralism dates from an earlier time. I show here that
in his earliest writings, from 1894 on, Russell had already departed from
Bradley’s monistic idealism in his account of meaning and judgement.
This means that Russell departed from Bradley’s theory before he had read
Moore’s dissertation in November 1898. Russell’s early departure from
Bradley’s theory of judgement and meaning is made possible through
the influence of James Ward’s pluralistic idealism, and through the
influence of G.F. Stout, as I will argue.1 Ward and Stout were among
Russell’s teachers in Cambridge, and these philosophers were engaged in
psychological research and its philosophical implications. In this paper
I focus on Stout and the early Russell. I will show in what sense Stout’s
early account of meaning and judgement, and his views on wholes,
parts, and analysis, may have shaped, together with other influences,
the typical variant of logical realism that one can find in Russell.
In section 1, I give a short presentation of Bradley’s theory of mean-
ing and judgement in his Principles of Logic insofar as this is relevant for
Russell’s account of judgement. In section 2 and 3, Russell’s theory of
meaning and judgement until 1900 will be presented; it will be shown
in what sense Russell’s theory differs from Bradley’s, and how Stout’s
theories may have been of influence on Russell’s early departure from
Bradley. In section 4, I give a brief analysis of Stout’s theory of mean-
ing, judgement, and wholes and parts until 1896. In section 5, I show
how Russell’s earliest account of judgement and meaning, and Stout’s
 Maria van der Schaar 139

theories, may have influenced Russell’s more well known account of

judgement and proposition in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). In
the concluding section, the question needs to be raised in what sense
Russell’s notion of proposition differs from Frege’s Gedanke, and what
the historical and philosophical significance is of this difference.

2 Bradley’s Theory of Judgement in The Principles of Logic

In his Principles of Logic from 1883, Bradley criticises the ‘psychological

attitude’ with respect to ideas, so prominent in British empiricism
(Bradley 1883: 2). Ideas insofar as they are relevant to logic are not
merely mental phenomena or psychical facts. Ideas as mental phenom-
ena are distinguished from other facts, because they have meaning.
A two-fold distinction holds for all facts, for everything that is, one may
distinguish the what from the that. What it is, the content, is the com-
plex of qualities and relations of a fact or thing. Besides, we recognise
that it is: its existence (Bradley 1883: 3). Regarding an idea as mental
phenomenon, one can make a three-fold distinction:

(1) its existence;

(2) its content, the qualities of the existent fact;
(3) its meaning, which ‘consists of a part of the content (…), cut off,
fixed by the mind, and considered apart from the existence of the
sign.’ (Bradley 1883: 4).

For example, the horse-image I have may function as a sign of the idea
of a horse, the idea as meaning. The horse-image, which is a psychic
phenomenon or fact, has thus three sides: it exists as psychological idea
or fact; it has certain qualities; and it may have a meaning on the basis
of these qualities. The term ‘idea’ may be used for the idea as psychic
phenomenon, as sign, and for the meaning as well, but it is the mean-
ing that is most properly called an idea.
The meaning (or ideal content or logical idea) is the result of a process
of abstraction, and does not have any independent existence: ‘all meaning
must be adjectival’. It is crucial for Bradley that meanings do not have
an independent existence, for if that would be so, the act of judgement
would have to function as a relation between two independent entities,
the logical idea and the world, which would lead to the famous regress.
Analysis of a whole into independent parts is nothing but falsifica-
tion, because all parts are dependent upon the one whole. Because all
logical ideas are dependent entities, Bradley’s anti-psychologism does
140 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

not involve a form of logical realism. And because Bradley does not
distinguish between act and object regarding mental phenomena, his
variant of anti-psychologism essentially differs from the variant pre-
sented by Frege and Russell.
Judgement, for Bradley, does not consist in a synthesis of ideas.
Judgement is rather an act in which we refer an ideal content to a reality
beyond the act (Bradley 1883: 10, 56). Judgement is thus not a special
kind of idea. In the judgement ‘The sea-serpent exists’ we have qualified
the real world by the adjective of the sea-serpent (Bradley 1883: 10).
The real world is thus the logical subject of all our judgements. All
judgements seem to be existential, on this account.2 The question ‘Are
the angles of a triangle equal to two right angles?’ and the affirmation
‘The angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.’ have the same
logical idea. The affirmation consists in ‘saying’ that this idea is a quality
of the real (Bradley 1883: 11).
Bradley’s position may be characterised as logical monism: not in the
sense that there is only one logical idea, but in the sense that reality as a
whole is the subject of all our judgements; and that the one true judge-
ment would describe all the right adjectives to reality as a whole. Insofar
as for Bradley the subject of one’s judgement is not an abstract idea, but
reality, and insofar as he makes a distinction between the logical and
the psychological idea, he is departing from the empiricist tradition,
and its psychologistic account of judgement. Because Bradley’s notion
of logical ideas is not free from psychological elements – the logical idea
is the result of an act of abstraction – there is also a sense in which he
gives a psychologistic account of judgement.

3 Russell’s Earliest Account of Meaning

In his paper ‘On the Distinction between the Psychological and the
Metaphysical Point of View’, written as a student in Cambridge in 1894,
Russell asserts that our mental states, such as ideas and judgements,
have (1) existence; (2) a certain nature; and (3) a meaning (Russell
1894: 197). This three-fold division seems to be Bradleian at first sight,
and indeed Russell read Bradley’s Principles of Logic in September 1893
(cf. Russell 1902: 352). There is an important difference, though, regarding
(3) between Russell and Bradley. For Russell, the meaning of an idea is
not an ideal content obtained by means of an act of abstraction, as it
is for Bradley. The meaning of an idea, Russell says in this paper, is its
‘objective reference’ (Russell 1894: 196): its reference to something
beyond the idea, such as a table or an apple. Psychology is concerned
 Maria van der Schaar 141

with the subjective idea and its content, whereas logic is concerned
with the logical grounds for any belief, which have reference to its
meaning, that is, its objective reference (Rusell 1894: 197). The term
‘objective reference’ is not Bradley’s. For Bradley, reference to something
that is not an idea only happens when we judge, and then we refer our
idea to reality as a whole, not to a part of reality such as an apple. ‘Idea’
in Russell’s paper stands exclusively for the psychical phenomenon,
not for the Bradleian idea as meaning. For Russell, the meaning of a
psychological idea is not a logical, adjectival idea, as it is for Bradley,
but something beyond the mental in the world of physics. For Russell,
logic is distinguished from psychology insofar as it is concerned with
meaning as objective reference, not because it is concerned with mean-
ing as ideal content. Bradley’s ideal content is dependent upon an act
of abstraction, and thereby unable to account for the objectivity of
logic, Russell may well have thought, but he is not explicitly criticis-
ing Bradley on this point. Russell is thus able to make a distinction
between psychology, which asks for the causes of our ideas and beliefs,
and their subjective content, and logic, which is concerned with the
logical ground for any belief, which has reference to the objects of our
beliefs. Russell’s anti-psychologism differs from Bradley’s because, for
Russell, logic is concerned with the objective reference of our ideas. On
such a variant of anti-psychologism, the central question becomes: How
are we to apprehend these logical entities? Russell’s answer is that we
intuitively and immediately know the objective reference of our ideas
(Russell 1894: 198). Although he has not developed the terminology of
‘knowledge by acquaintance’ yet, we see here that the concept already
plays a role in this early paper.
Nicholas Griffin suggests that the paper was written for Ward’s course
on metaphysics, Spring 1894. This might be true, given the topic of the
paper, but the idea of meaning as objective reference cannot be found
in Ward. For Ward, the objects of consciousness are presentations (See
his Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Psychology (9th edn, 1875–89),
which was read by Russell in August 1894.) The term ‘objective refer-
ence’ can be found, though, in G.F. Stout’s writings of that time, and
Stout was Russell’s tutor in the year 1893–4. Stout was not an impres-
sive teacher like Bradley or Ward, and he was also much younger, being
only 12 years older than Russell. He was a man with a small voice, but
a sharp mind, who preferred to discuss philosophical problems with
his students sitting around a table. Being a pluralist himself, he was the
right man to have stimulated Moore and Russell in developing a critical
attitude towards monistic idealism. And because Stout was familiar with
142 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

the theories on judgement, intentionality, and wholes and parts on the

continent (Brentano, Ehrenfels, Stumpf, Meinong), he could easily have
introduced Moore and Russell to those ideas. Stout himself has devel-
oped his views on these matters in his Analytic Psychology, published in
1896, read by Russell the very same year (cf. Russell 1902: 357). Before
1896, Stout had already developed important elements of his philoso-
phy in earlier papers.
In a paper published in 1893, Stout acknowledges two aspects of a
cognitive consciousness or idea:

(1) ‘a though-reference’, or ‘objective reference’, to something which is

not a present modification of consciousness, that is, to an object of
thought, such as a tree;
(2) a content of consciousness which determines the direction of
thought to this specific object. (Stout 1893: 112)

Stout makes here a distinction between the content and object of

thought (fully argued for in Stout 1896: 43–8).3 For Bradley, the con-
cept of judgement plays a crucial role in human consciousness: it
functions as a bridge between our world of ideas and reality. For Stout
and Russell, a mere idea or act of presentation may already refer to
something beyond the idea. A detailed comparison between Russell’s
and Stout’s ideas needs to be made, and will be done below. Here,
I hope to have drawn attention to an agreement in terminology between
Stout and Russell, and the way their terminology differs from Bradley’s.
For now, the conclusion seems to be justified that Russell understands
the Bradleian account of meaning to be too psychologistic already in
his earliest writings. If the logical content of our acts were the result of
an act of abstraction, logic would deal with nothing but psychological
entities. Such a logical content is not able to fulfill the role of meaning;
it is rather the objects of our acts of thought and judgements, what our
judgements are about, that is to function as meaning, and as logically
relevant.

4 Russell’s Account of Judgement in 1898

In the manuscript ‘An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning’ written

in 1898, Russell is departing from the Kantian conception of mathe-
matics in an important sense. Here he understands mathematics to be
a Euclidian project with axioms and primitive, indefinable notions –
ideas which form an important step toward the logicist project of later
 Maria van der Schaar 143

years. These primitive, fundamental concepts, Russell says, are not the
result of abstraction; they are ‘immediately given’ (Russell 1898: 164).
And the truth of the axioms ‘must … be intuitively apprehended; but
it must not be supposed that their truth depends upon such apprehen-
sion.’ (Russell 1898: 163). The first chapter of the manuscript is called
‘The Elements of Judgments’. What emerges from analysis are ‘the
irreducible types of elements, out of which I conceive judgements to be
compounded’ (Russell 1898: 167). Russell distinguishes different types
of judgement (judgement of number, of order, of causality, etc.): ‘In
all such judgments, we shall find some special type of connection or
relation, affirmed to hold between terms which may form elements in
non-mathematical judgments.’ (Rusell 1898: 167).
Whatever can be a logical subject, Russell calls a term: a term is a unity,
which can be counted, and has ‘Being’, where the latter term refers to
the diversity of being from other terms. Russell commits himself to a plurality
of terms. Everything that can be thought of, and does not involve a
contradiction, is a term (Russell 1898: 168). Some terms are existents,
for example, an actual part of space or time. Redness in this place, and
redness in that place form two other existents. An actual particular
such as this redness Russell calls an attribute; the corresponding, repeat-
able predicates are called qualities. The attributes are materially diverse
(Russell 1898: 171). Relations, like attributes, are particular existents,
too: a distance between actual points is an existent, and a particular case
of causation exists (Russell 1898: 172). Regarding the logical subject,
Russell is far apart from the Bradleian idea that the subject of all judge-
ment is reality as a whole. There is an important Bradleian element,
though, in his account of judgement. The predicate that results from
analysing a judgement cannot be a term, according to Russell, for that
would lead to an endless regress. The idea that there is a plurality of
logical subjects already makes Russell’s account of judgement in 1898
essentially different from Bradley’s. Russell puts forward a first version
here of his double aspect theory: ‘The distinction between subject and
predicate must … be only a distinction of aspect’ (Russell 1898: 174).
Many terms may occur both as subject and as predicate; we may say
‘Socrates is human’ and ‘Human is different from animal.’ As subject,
such a term is one, and different from other terms; as predicate it is a
meaning that is destitute of being and incapable of plurality.
Crucial to any form of logical realism is the acknowledgement of a
plurality of independent bearers of truth and falsehood. We know that
G.E. Moore introduced the term ‘proposition’ for such bearers of truth
and falsehood in ‘The Nature of Judgement’ (1899). Did Stout or Russell
144 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

acknowledge the notion in any of their writings before the publication of

Moore’s paper? In the manuscript ‘Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning’,
Russell acknowledges terms as elements of our judgments. There is not
one logical subject, reality as a whole, as Bradley claims, there are many
logical subjects or terms, according to Russell in 1898. In the manu-
script, Russell does not make a clear distinction between judgement as
act and judgement as proposition. Still, some elements can be found
that make the transition to a form of logical realism more gradual than
is generally assumed. The typical British variant of logical realism is
already present in nuce:

(1) The introduction of a plurality of logical subjects or terms is an

important step towards logical pluralism, and these terms are said
to have being, that is, they have a certain unity that makes them
countable.
(2) These terms are what our judgements are about, while at the same
time forming part of our judgements.
(3) Analysis of the bearers of truth and falsity plays a central role, and
need not be a form of falsification.

5 Stout’s Theory of Judgement in Analytic Psychology (1896)

In Stout’s early writings the distinction between act and object plays
an important role. In his 1888 he had written extensively on Herbart.
By distinguishing act and object Herbart was able to defend a variant
of logical realism early in the nineteenth century. For Herbart, logical
concepts are neither real, physical objects, nor acts of thought;4 they
are not multiplied when apprehended by different subjects; and they
are timeless. Propositions in science are built from these concepts, and
the truth of these propositions is timeless, too.5 Stout was thus familiar
with an early variant of logical realism. Besides, in his Analytic Psychology,
Stout acknowledges his debt to Franz Brentano, to his method of
descriptive psychology, and to his account of judgement and inten-
tionality. For Brentano, all mental phenomena are characterised by their
being directed to an object (or content) of consciousness, for example
to the red one sees or the sound one hears. Stout, like the members
of the Brentano school, improves upon Brentano by making a distinc-
tion between the object and content of a mental act. For Stout, as we
have seen in section 2, the content is that part of consciousness that
directs the act to this rather than that object. Intentionality makes
 Maria van der Schaar 145

it possible to think of something out there in the world, although it

does not guarantee that the object of thought has being independent
of the act. In thinking of a chimera, for example, the act of thinking
has an object, but the object has no being independent of one’s act of
thought. Even in the case of the chimera, the object differs from the
content of the act, for the content exists whereas the chimera does not
exist. Intentionality is precisely what is lacking in Bradley’s writings. For
Bradley, the distinction between psychological and logical ideas is not
a distinction between act and object; the logical idea is rather obtained
by abstraction from the psychological idea. According to Bradley, it is
only by an act of judgement that one may refer to something beyond
the act, and all judgements refer to the same object, reality as a whole,
as we have seen above.
For Brentano, judgement is not differentiated from simple apprehen-
sion by having a special object, such as a proposition. Simple apprehension
and judgement are rather two fundamental ways in which conscious-
ness may be directed to an object. In all judgements, an object is
apprehended, and is affirmed or denied to exist. Object is to be taken
in a broad sense; for example, one may apprehend a connection of char-
acteristics (‘Verbindung der Merkmalen’, Brentano 1874 II, 49), such as
learned man, and judge that a learned man exists. Brentano thus defends
a non-propositional account of judgement, and the object of judgement
does not have a structure comparable to the grammatical structure of
the declarative sentence, such as a subject-predicate structure, or the
structure of a that-clause. For Brentano, grammatical analysis is not a
guide to logical analysis.
For Stout, as for Brentano, judgement is characterised by a special
mode of consciousness, a ‘yes-no consciousness’ (Stout 1896 I, 97),
dependent upon an act of apprehension (Stout 1896 I, 99), but Stout is
not defending the thesis that all judgements are existential, as we will
see below. The term ‘judgement’, according to Stout, is ambiguous. It
may mean:

(1) the faculty of judgement;

(2) the psychical act of affirming or denying, or
(3) ‘the objective state of things which is expressed by an affirmation or
denial’ (Stout 1896 I, 98).

In most cases, Stout uses the term ‘proposition’ for the linguistic entity
together with its meaning, whereas the term ‘judgement’ is given an
objective meaning, when used in the third sense just mentioned. There
146 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

are also passages, though, where the term ‘proposition’ is used for the
object of judgement, namely where Stout calls the object of belief a
proposition (Stout 1896 I, 99), thus occasionally predating Moore’s use
of that term in 1899.
In contrast to Brentano, Stout considers the grammatical structure of
the declarative to be a key to the structure of the object of judgement.
‘The subject of the grammarian or logician is the unifying centre of
a multiplicity of acts, states, or relations, and the predicate is the act,
state, or relation ascribed to the subject in any sentence’ (Stout 1896 II,
212–13). ‘In the proposition, The bird flies the special act of flying is dis-
tinguished as a particular phase in the continuous existence of the bir.’
(Stout 1896 II, 200). ‘The whole object is thus analysed into two parts –
the sparrow and its flight. At the same time these two parts are appre-
hended as constituents of a whole, so that the analysis is accompanied
by a synthesis’ (Stout 1896 II, 198). The objective state of things that
is the object of judgement, can be analysed into material and formal
constituents: ‘The material constituents of the objects of conceptual
thinking consist in special things, activities, qualities, etc., as expressed
by specific verbs and substantives. The formal constituents consist in
such relations as that of agent and action, object and activity, thing and
quality’ (Stout 1896 II, 219–20). Logical subject and predicate form the
material constituents, while the relation between subject and predicate
is the formal constituent of the objective state of things. Stout makes
a distinction between mere psychological categories, such as the dis-
tinction between what we now call topic and comment, and objective
categories of grammar or logic. These logical categories express relations
inherent in the object of thought (Stout 1896 II, 214). ‘They are general
modes of connection constitutive of the objective unity’ (Stout 1896
II, 219). The unity of the objective state of things that is the object
of judgement, is not constituted by the act of judgement; we can also
understand a proposition without making a judgement (Stout 1896 I,
111). Qualities and relations are, for Stout, not repeatable universals,
but abstract particulars, and we have seen that Russell acknowledges
such particulars under the name of ‘attributes’ in 1898.
Stout not only takes grammar to be a guide to logical analysis,
psychological analysis also plays an important role. The term ‘analytic
psychology’ is meant to express Brentano’s idea of descriptive psycho-
logy, which is contrasted with genetic psychology.6 Whereas genetic
psychology asks for the causes of our mental phenomena, the aim of
analytic psychology is ‘to discover the ultimate and irreducible constitu-
ents of consciousness in general’ (Stout 1896 I: 36). Stout develops in
 Maria van der Schaar 147

his Analytic Psychology a theory of wholes and parts, based upon results
obtained in laboratories. For example, we may hear the same melody,
although all the notes have changed. Apprehending a melody is a sep-
arate act of consciousness; apprehending the melody is apprehending
the form of combination or form of unity of a whole (Stout 1896 I: 56).
Stout’s form of unity is, like Ehrenfels’ Gestaltqualität, a character of the
whole to which it belongs. The form of unity of a whole is therefore
a dependent particular, according to Stout. By analysis one does not
merely obtain independent parts, such as individual things, but also
dependent parts, such as qualities, states, relations, and the form of
unity of the whole. These are all particulars dependent upon an indi-
vidual thing or a whole. The form of unity is, for Stout, a separate object
of apprehension; the unity of a complex is not the result of an intellect
that relates the elements to each other by an act of synthesis or an act
of judgement.
The atomistic empiricist tradition and association psychology held
that the mind apprehends objects such as redness and roundness, and
connects these objects with each other by relations of association,
obtaining thus, for example, the idea of a thing, a red ball. In the same
way, the idea of the ball and the idea of redness are related to each
other by an act of judgement, thus obtaining a judgemental product
The ball is red, called ‘proposition’.7 The unity of the proposition is thus
constituted by an act of the intellect. Stout’s position is not atomistic:
we apprehend a particular redness already as part of the ball, and we
apprehend wholes together with their form of unity; the whole and the
form of unity that we apprehend are not the result of an intellectual act
of synthesis.
If we apply this theory of wholes and parts to the act of judgement
and its object, one may say that, for Stout, the object of judgement, the
complex whole or objective state of things, has a unity independent
of the act of judgement. We may conclude that, for Stout, the objec-
tive state of things, the object of an act of judgement, is a complex
whole consisting of objects, acts, and qualities as material constituents,
together with a form of unity or formal constituent that constitutes the
unity of that whole. Although Stout does not want to make any onto-
logical commitments concerning the objects of thought in his Analytic
Psychology, it is clear that the unity of the objective state of things is not
constituted by the act of judgement. When we understand a declara-
tive sentence, we apprehend a whole that already has a certain form of
unity. After 1900 Stout will develop his own variant of logical realism,
but his position in 1896 cannot be characterized that way. In 1896 Stout
148 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

does already acknowledge a special object of judgement. The object of

judgement is a complex object with a unity independent of the act of
judgement, whose independent and dependent parts can be obtained
by analysis. And the parts obtained by analysis are things and their
particular qualities and relations.

6 Russell’s Account of Judgement and Proposition:

Toward the Principles of Mathematics

By the time Russell presented his paper on the classification of relations

in January 1899, he had read Moore’s dissertation (Russell 1902: 361), and
considers relations to be ‘concepts just as ultimate and fundamental as
predicates’ (Russell 1899: 140). The quotation shows that predicates are
no longer considered to be dependent meanings as he understood them
in 1898. Predicates, like subjects, are terms with an independent being of
their own: ‘the predicate is no more dependent on the subject than the
subject on the predicate’ (Russell 1899: 141). In the judgement ‘This chair is
red’, a relation is asserted between the existent chair and the independent
concept red. And, to be an existent is to be a term with a peculiar relation
to the concept of existence (Russell 1899: 142; cf. Moore 1899: 181). The
relation asserted to hold between the subject and predicate is independ-
ent of the judging act, and is, on Russell’s account, an independent entity.
This creates a problem for the unity of complex objects, especially for the
unity of the proposition. If the predicate is an independent entity, the
relating relation that is asserted to hold of the chair and redness cannot
be an entity independent of its two terms, for that would create a mere
collection of terms the chair, redness, and the relation of inherence: ‘When
two terms have a relation, is the relation related to each?’, or ‘When
a subject has a predicate, is the predicability of the predicate a new predi-
cate of the subject?’ (Russell 1899: 146). To put it simply: what makes
a whole with a unity of its own more than the sum of its constituents?
‘To solve this difficulty – if indeed it be soluble – would, I conceive, be the
most valuable contribution which a modern philosopher could possibly
make to philosophy.’ (Rusell 1899: 146). If the unity of a proposition is
not constituted by an act of judgement, and if the proposition is consid-
ered to be a complex unity with self-subsisting terms as constituents, the
question becomes: what constitutes the unity of the proposition? And can
this unity be accounted for on the basis of the atomistic metaphysics that
Russell is defending under the influence of Moore?
A two aspect theory is developed in the draft manuscript for the
Principles of Mathematics (Russell 1900). In the manuscript Russell uses
 Maria van der Schaar 149

the term ‘proposition’ in the meaning introduced by Moore (1899), that

is, for the complex object of judgement that has being independent of
the act of judging. There are two types of wholes: aggregates, which are
specified by the enumeration of their parts, and propositions, which
are not thus specified. Every proposition contains at least one predicate
or relation that occurs not simply as term in a collection, but as relat-
ing or qualifying (Russell 1900: 37). Relations and predicates have two
aspects: they may occur as terms, or as relating or qualifying. The terms
A, greater than, and B may form three kinds of wholes: an aggregate
consisting of the three elements alone; the proposition A is greater than B;
and the proposition B is greater than A. Analysing the propositions
gives us only the three constituents, which means that something is
missing. This does not mean that analysis is falsification, as Bradley
thought; it merely shows that analysis does not give us the whole truth
(Rusell 1900: 41). The double aspect theory in 1898 could account for
the unity of a complex whole, because Russell considered predicates
there to be meanings that do not have an independent existence (see
section 3). In the manuscript for the Principles, Russell seems to adhere
to a metaphysics that acknowledges nothing but independent entities,
on the one hand; yet on the other hand, he seems to allow for relating
relations, and for relations to relate, they cannot be self-subsisting enti-
ties. How is he to solve this dilemma in the Principles?
In The Principles of Mathematics, Russell considers all terms to be
‘immutable and indestructible’ (Russell 1903: 44). Russell distinguishes
two kinds of terms, things and concepts: ‘The former are the terms
indicated by proper names, the latter those indicated by all other words’
(Russell 1903: 44). A grammatical distinction is thus a guide for a logi-
cal and a metaphysical distinction. Russell calls his method of analysis
philosophical grammar: although logical and grammatical analysis may
fall apart, a grammatical distinction is prima facie evidence for a philo-
sophical distinction. ‘[G]rammar seems to me to bring us much nearer
to a correct logic than the current opinions of philosophers’ (Russell
1903: 42). Russell is soon going to change his method, but that is of no
concern to us here. Terms that are things can function only as the logi-
cal subject of a proposition. Terms that are concepts can function both
as logical subject and as qualifying predicate or relating relation. If one
analyses the proposition A differs from B, one obtains the three terms A,
difference, and B. The grammatical distinction between the verb ‘differs
from’ and the verbal noun ‘difference’ corresponds to the distinction
between a relating relation and a relation in itself. The relating relation
is to constitute the unity of the proposition, and the analysis of the
150 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

proposition destroys this unity. Russell admits that he does not know
how to give an account of the distinction between the verb or concept
used as predicate and the verb or concept used as term (Russell 1903: 50).
Because Russell also gives a different variant as answer to the problem,
the above answer may be called proposal I – the relating relation is to
constitute the unity of the proposition.
The grammatical difference between the use of the word ‘one’ in
‘This is one’ and ‘One is a number’ does not correspond to a difference
in respect of self-subsistence, Russell says. According to proposal II,
the grammatical difference corresponds to a difference in the way the
independent concept one is related to other terms in the two proposi-
tions. This difference does not constitute a difference in the nature of
the concept, for these relations between the terms are external to the
concept one (Russell 1903: 46).
The problem of both proposals is that qualifying predicates and relat-
ing relations can simply not be the same self-subsistent kind of entities
as other terms. Ontological atomism, and a logical atomism that acknow-
ledges nothing but self-subsisting terms, cannot account for the unity
of the proposition, because the proposition is more than the sum of its
constituents, as Russell admits.
Russell saw the problem, and in 1904, in a collection of notes called
‘On Functions’, he proposes a new solution to the problem of the unity
of a complex whole such as a proposition: ‘A complex is determined
by its constituents together with their mode of combination’ (Russell
1904b: 98). ‘The mode of combination of the constituents of a complex
is not itself one of the constituents of the complex’ (Rusell 1904b: 98).
The mode of combination also contains the ‘sense or order’ of a complex
unity as part of its essence, so that it can account for the difference
between the complexes A is greater than B and B is greater than A.
The mode of combination of the proposition A is greater than B is not
a constituent of the proposition, but it may become a constituent of
another proposition, namely of a proposition about the mode of com-
bination. On such an account of the unity of the proposition, relations
may indeed be understood as self-subsisting entities; the unity of the
proposition is not constituted by one of its constituting parts, but by
their mode of combination. Russell does not seem to identify the mode
of combination with the external relations that were supposed to do the
unifying work in the Principles on proposal II, so the account of the unity
of the proposition proposed here is a new one.
This account has a strong similarity with Stout’s theory of wholes and
parts. For Stout, a relation is between the terms, and like these terms it
 Maria van der Schaar 151

is a constituent of the complex whole to which it belongs (Stout 1896 I,

72). Something else is needed to bring terms and relation in connection
with each other: ‘My hat, my head, and the relation of on and under
taken collectively do not suffice to constitute the fact of my hat being
on my head’ (Stout 1902: 7). Besides these three elements something
else is needed. The objective state of things of my hat being on my head
is a whole with a form of combination that unifies the elements in a
certain manner, and orders them in a special way. ‘Every whole involves
(1) component parts, and (2) the form of combination in which these
parts are united. The nature of the components varies in different cases,
and so does their mode of grouping’ (Stout 1896 I: 65). There are also
some differences between Russell’s mode of combination and Stout’s
form of combination. For Stout, it is a separate object of apprehension,
besides the apprehension of the terms and the relation, and the terms
and relation cannot be apprehended without the apprehension of the
whole, of which the form of unity is a dependent particular. For Russell,
the form of combination is not a separate constituent of the proposi-
tion; it is rather the way the different elements are combined, and the
unity of the proposition is determined uniquely by the form of unity;
Russell does not acknowledge a whole besides the constituents and the
form of combination. The discussion between Stout and Russell about
the unity of the proposition will be taken up again around 1914, but
this continuation of the topic falls outside the scope of this paper.

7 Conclusion

In opposition to Bradley, and under the influence of Ward and Stout,

Russell defended a form of logical pluralism before the time he com-
mitted himself to a logical realism in the Principles of Mathematics.
The young Russell acknowledged a plurality of beings that function as
logical subjects in our judgements. Because predicates and relations can
become the subject of our judgements they seem to be able to function
as self-subsisting constituents, too. If relations are self-subsistent, they
cannot account for the fact that the terms are related, and that they
form a complex whole together with their relation. This means that
Russell had to find a solution for the problem what makes a complex
whole more than the sum of its constituents, and because he considers
such wholes to be propositions, he is searching for an explanation of the
unity of the proposition. Russell was familiar with G.F. Stout’s theory
of wholes and parts, which was developed in the context of empirical
psychological research, but was already by Stout himself understood
152 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

as a possibility to solve the problems that Bradley’s theory had created

for philosophers. For Bradley, there is only one self-subsisting whole,
and all analysis is falsification. For Stout, there is a plurality of wholes,
and these wholes can be analysed without falsification. One of the ele-
ments that is obtained through analysis is the form of combination of
the whole. Psychological research has shown that we apprehend the
form of combination as a separate constituent. An example of such a
constituent is the melody of a song, and because we can hear the same
melody with completely different notes, the melody is independent of
the particular constituents, the notes, that make up the song. Russell
introduced the idea of a form of combination in one of his unpublished
papers, and this shows that Stout’s psychological theory of wholes and
parts may have been of some influence when he addressed the topic
of the unity of propositions. The idea of the form of combination of
the proposition seems to have played a role some years later in the
manuscript on the theory of knowledge from 1913: the logical form is
to explain how the different objects are united into a proposition, and
such a logical form is an object independent of the act by which it is
apprehended (Russell 1913: 99f. and 129f.). Russell’s decompositional
analysis of the proposition, as Michael Beaney calls it,8 has at least partly
its origin in psychological theories of wholes and parts, as put forward
by Stout at the end of the century. Until 1905, Russell supports this
form of analysis by grammatical analysis of the sentence that has the
proposition as a meaning.
Because Stout was not explicit about the ontological status of the
objects of thought and the objective state of things that functions
as object of the act of judgement, and because Stout did not develop an
unambiguous terminology for what we now call a proposition or state
of affairs, Stout’s theory in 1896 is not a fully developed forerunner of
the theory of judgement and proposition in Moore and Russell’s writ-
ings from 1899 on. Still, there are enough elements in Stout’s writings
that must have stimulated Russell, and Moore, too, to overcome their
idealistic position. Bradley’s thesis that a logical idea is a part of the psycho-
logical idea abstracted by a mental act convinced Stout that Bradley’s
theory of meaning was infected by psychologism, and convinced Russell
that the meaning of an expression that is to be relevant for logic consists
in the objective reference of that expression, which leads to the thesis in
the Principles of Mathematics that ‘a proposition … contains the entities
indicated by words’ (Russell 1903: 47). And when Russell understood
propositions to be complex objects that are constituted by immutable
constituents, the special variant of British logical realism was a fact.
 Maria van der Schaar 153

Propositions, containing the objects about which the judgement is

made, seem to have more in common with states of affairs than with
the Fregean Gedanke. They are, for Russell, not only the bearers of truth
and falsity, but also those complexes in the world that make these
propositions true. It is for this reason that Russell has to say that some
propositions are true and some false, just as some roses are red and
some are white (Russell 1904c: 75): there is not something outside the
proposition that makes it true or false. Russell’s notion of proposition is
at the same time a logical-semantic notion and an ontological notion,
precisely because meanings are on the level of objects about which we
make our judgements. This does not mean that the proposition is not
an epistemic notion: the constituents of the proposition can be appre-
hended by a direct intuitive epistemic act, later to be called knowledge by
acquaintance; how the proposition is known to be true is not explained,
on Russell’s account, and one may conclude that Russell’s propositions
do not function primarily as what we know when we make a correct
judgement. To summarise, Russell’s proposition functions as:

(1) object of judgement; the content of judgement being merely some-

thing psychological; later, the proposition is to function as objects
of all propositional attitudes;
(2) truth-maker and truth-bearer at the same time;
(3) meaning in the sense of reference; meanings are thus not something
between the mind and the world.
(4) The notion of proposition is primarily an ontological and a logical
notion; it is not primarily an epistemic notion.
(5) Analysis of the proposition is whole-part analysis, together with
grammatical analysis as a guide.

Is philosophy in need of both notions: Russell’s proposition and

the Fregean Gedanke? Whether we take Russell’s propositions to be
complexes whose parts are individuals and particular properties or
whose parts are immutable terms, philosophy is in need of a cognitive
notion, too, by means of which these complexes are apprehended, for
we cannot simply assume, as Russell does, that there is an unproblematic
direct cognitive relation to each of the constituents of the proposi-
tional complex, and that we have the same cognitive relation to the
form of combination of such a complex. This cognitive notion may be
understood as the Fregean Gedanke, which may also have the function
of bearer of truth and falsity, of the meaning of a declarative sentence,
and of the content of judgement. Such a notion is not to be understood
154 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

as being independent of language and thought, as Frege thought they

were, for the Gedanke is pre-eminently the notion that is related to our
ways of thinking and knowing. Russell’s proposition, which seems to
function as truth-maker in the first place, has more similarities with
states of affairs than with the Fregean Gedanke. On Russell’s account,
though, the distinction between obtaining and non-obtaining states of
affairs does not correspond to an ontological distinction, which should
be the case if Russell’s propositions are to function as truth-makers. One
may therefore conclude that Russell’s proposition can be considered as
a non-epistemic notion, and that it primarily functions as the object of
judgement and other propositional acts and attitudes. How the differ-
ent functions are to be divided, we are in need of more than one notion
to fulfil the different roles that Gedanke and propositions fulfill in the
writings of Frege and Russell.

Notes
1. In 1991 I defended my dissertation on G.F. Stout, showing how Stout’s
Brentanian and Herbartian ideas could have influenced Russell and Moore.
David Bell’s 1999 paper also showed the importance of Stout for the devel-
opment of early analytic philosophy, focusing especially on the impact on
Moore. Stout’s influence on Moore is worked out in Preti 2008.
2. The case of negative judgements is not essentially different: ‘in all negative
judgment, the ultimate subject is the reality that comes to us in presentation.
We affirm in all alike that the quality of the real excludes an ideal content
that is offered. And so every judgment, positive or negative, is in the end
existential’ (Bradley 1883: 120).
3. Stout is thus predating Twardowski’s distinction between content and object
of thought, made in 1894. See my 1996.
4. ‘Begriffe [sind] weder reale Gegenstände, noch wirkliche Acte des Denkens’
Herbart 1813: §35,78.
5. ‘die Begriffe [in logischer Bedeutung] sind etwas völlig Unzeitliches; welches
von ihnen in allen ihren logischen Verhältnissen wahr ist, daher auch die aus
ihnen gebildeten wissenschaftlichen Sätze und Schlüsse für die Alten wie für
uns, – und am Himmel wie auf Erden, – wahr sind und bleiben.’ (Herbart 1824
(Zweiter Analytischer Theil), §120, 161).
6. Brentano says about the idea of descriptive psychology: ‘Ich verstehe darunter
eine analysierende Beschreibung unserer Phänomene’ (Brentano 1982: 129).
On the topic of analytic or descriptive psychology, Stout says: ‘The only
modern writer who appears to have fully realized the importance of this
preliminary inquiry is Brentano’ (Stout 1896 I: 36).
7. This is a rather simplified picture. The Cartesian Arnauld used the term
‘proposition’ in this sense in the Port Royal logic, whereas for Locke the
proposition is the product of an act of the mind, not necessarily of an act of
judgement. See my 2008.
 Maria van der Schaar 155

8. Beaney 2003: 155. Although it is true that Russell takes over this conception
of analysis from Bradley and the British empiricist tradition, the story can be
completed by adding the influence of psychological theories of wholes and
parts, which themselves are formed by these traditions.

References
Beaney, M. (2003) ‘Russell and Frege’. In The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand
Russell, N. Griffin (ed.). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 128–70.
Bell, D. (1999) ‘The Revolution of Moore and Russell: A Very British Coup?’.
In German Philosophy since Kant, A. O’Hear (ed.). (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press). 193–208.
Bradley, F.H. (1883) The Principles of Logic, 2 volumes (London: Oxford University
Press, 2nd edn, 1922).
Brentano, F. (1874) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, volume 2. (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1971).
—— (1982) Deskriptive Psychologie, R. Chisholm and W. Baumgartner (eds.).
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner).
Frege, G. (WB) Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, G. Gabriel, et al. (eds.). (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1976).
—— (1904) Letter from Frege to Russell, 13 November 1904. In Frege (WB).
243–8.
Griffin, N. (1993). ‘Terms, Relations, Complexes’. In Russell and Analytic
Philosophy, A.D. Irvine and G.A. Wedeking (eds.). (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press). 159–92.
Herbart, J.F. (1813) Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie. In Sämmtliche Werke,
volume I, G. Hartenstein (ed.). (Leipzig: Voss, 1850).
—— (1824) Psychologie als Wissenschaft. In Sämmtliche Werke, volume VI,
G. Hartenstein (ed.). (Leipzig: Voss, 1850).
Hylton, P. (1984) ‘The Nature of the Proposition and the Revolt against
Idealism’. In Philosophy in History, R. Rorty, J.B. Schneewind, Q. Skinner (eds.).
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 375–97.
Moore, G.E. (1899) ‘The Nature of Judgement’, Mind, 8, 176–93.
Preti, C. (2008) ‘On the Origins of the Contemporary Notion of Propositional
Content: Anti-Psychologism in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy and G.E. Moore’s
Early Theory of Judgment’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 39,
176–85.
Russell, B. (1894) ‘On the Distinction between the Psychological and the
Metaphysical Point of View’. In Cambridge Essays: 1888–99; The Collected
Papers of Bertrand Russell, volume 1, K. Blackwell et al. (eds.). (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1983). (CP1). 196–8.
—— (1898) ‘An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning’. Manuscript. In Philosophical
Papers: 1896–99; The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, volume 2, N. Griffin,
A.C. Lewis (eds.). (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990). 163–222.
—— (1899) ‘The Classification of Relations’. In (CP1). 138–46.
—— (1900) ‘The Principles of Mathematics. Draft of 1899–1900’. In Toward the
“Principles of Mathematics”: 1900–1902; The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell,
volume 3, G.H. Moore (ed.). (London: Routledge, 1993). 13–180.
156 G.F. Stout and Russell’s Earliest Account of Judgement

—— (1902) ‘What shall I read?’. Appendix II to (CP1). 345–65.

—— (1903) The Principles of Mathematics. (London: Routledge, 1992).
—— (1904a) Letter from Russell to Frege, 12 December 1904. In Frege (WB).
248–51.
—— (1904b) ‘On Functions’. In Foundations of Logic: 1903–1905; The Collected
Papers of Bertrand Russell volume 4, A. Urquhart (ed.). (London: Routledge,
1994). 96–110.
—— (1904c) ‘Meinong’s Theory of Complexes and Assumptions’. In Essays in
Analysis, D. Lackey (ed.). (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973). 21–76.
—— (1913). Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript; The Collected Papers of
Bertrand Russell, volume 7, E.R. Eames and K. Blackwell (eds.). (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1984).
Schaar, M. van der (1996) ‘From Analytic Psychology to Analytic Philosophy’,
Axiomathes, 7, 295–324.
—— (2008) ‘Locke and Arnauld on Judgment and Proposition’, History and
Philosophy of Logic, 29, 327–41.
Stout, G.F. (1888) ‘The Herbartian Psychology’, I and II, Mind, 13, 321–38, and
473–98.
—— (1893) ‘The Philosophy of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson’, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 2, 107–20.
—— (1896) Analytic Psychology, 2 volumes (London: Sonnenschein).
—— (1902) ‘Alleged Self-Contradictions in the Concept of Relation’, Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, 2, 1901–2, 1–24.
8
The Myth of the Coherence Theory
of Truth
Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish
University of Western Australia

Under all the circumstances, this supposition recalls to me

a vulgar story current in my youth, of a doctor who, finding
himself unequal to treating the patient’s actual ailment,
proposed to inoculate him with a quite different malady,
‘for’, he said, ‘I’m death on that.’
Bernard Bosanquet, on the misrepresentation of
his theory of truth (1911: 263)

1 Introduction

Although its use is not universal, there is a map of the logical space of
theories of truth that is widely applied. According to this map, the most
foundational divide amongst theories of truth is that between defla-
tionary and inflationary theories, where, roughly, the former hold that
truth is an insubstantial, logical property of little philosophical interest
and the latter that it is a substantial property suitable for philosophical
attention. Amongst the inflationary theories, there are other fundamen-
tal divisions. For example, on the one hand, correspondence theorists
hold that the truth of a proposition is a matter of the proposition’s
standing in a relation to something else which is not a proposition,
such as a fact. On the other hand, coherence theorists hold that the
truth of a proposition is a matter of its relations to other propositions.
And again, pragmatists hold that the truth of a proposition is a matter
of its being useful to believe.
Throughout the twentieth century, philosophers used one or other
version of this map to orient themselves and their students in the often
complex and confusing debates about truth, even while acknowledging
157
158 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

that the map may be incomplete in crucial respects (it does not include
functionalist and pluralist views, for example). Our objection to the
map is not that it is incomplete – although it obviously is – but that
it needs to be radically redrawn. In particular, the familiar division
between coherence theories and correspondence theories needs to be
rethought.
The coherence theory is so often glibly dismissed as absurd that label-
ling someone as a coherence theorist is often seen as reason enough
to ignore them.1 While none of the philosophers usually so labelled
should be ignored, we shall argue (§3) that none of them actually held
this view anyway. The difficulty – perhaps impossibility – of finding
a genuine coherence theorist of truth strikes us as more than just an
indication that this is a rare animal. Rather, it suggests the possibility of
something significant, namely, that the only occupant of this position
in historical space is a set of slogans; this would give us some reason to
suppose that the logical space of theories is just as empty at this point.
More importantly, however, there is a good reason that it is hard to find
a real coherence theorist. As we argue (§4), under pressure the theory
turns into something much stranger. Moreover, how the theory mutates
under pressure reveals how we should redraw the map of possible theo-
ries of truth, which will include dropping the coherence theory from
the standard set of theories. These claims will surprise many readers.
They will look less surprising after we have traced the origins of the
coherence theory as it is commonly understood.

2 The Emergence and Consolidation of ‘The Coherence

Theory’

2.1 Emergence
The difficulty of finding coherence theorists might tempt one to say
that the coherence theory of truth is a creature of the textbooks and
undergraduate lectures. But this would not be quite fair. For a start, the
distinction between textbooks and what we now designate as research
monographs was formerly less clear in philosophy than it is today.
Further, talk of creation suggests that the textbooks are leaders rather
than followers. In fact, although Harold Joachim’s role is crucial, the
principal figure in the emergence of the coherence theory as a subject
of debate was Bertrand Russell, whose seminal article, ‘On the Nature of
Truth’ (Russell 1907a) criticised the views expressed in Joachim’s 1906
book, The Nature of Truth. Russell at first used Joachim’s overall meta-
physical position to designate the book’s account of truth, that is, the
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 159

‘monistic theory’.2 But, within a very few pages, he took over Joachim’s
own language (1906: 65),3 referring to the account as a ‘coherence-
theory’ (sic).4
Something worthy of remark in the present context is that this talk
of a coherence theory of truth appears in the same paper as the first –
outlined but not yet endorsed – version of Russell’s multiple relation
theory of judgment. (We may call this the 1907 version, to distinguish it
from the second, this time endorsed, version of 1910, and from Russell’s
1912 and 1913 versions, both of them modifications of the 1910 theory
in response to objections.) That this pairing of the two theories is not
mere happenstance is revealed by an examination of the dialectic of
Russell’s argument in his 1907 paper.
That paper is divided into three sections. In §I, Russell first expounded,
then argued against, the coherence theory. In §II, he criticised what
he took to be the Absolute Idealist view of relations, namely ‘that rela-
tions are always grounded in the nature of their terms’ (1907a: 28), and
alleged that for the Idealists this view is held as ‘an axiom’. This he
called ‘the axiom of internal relations’; he maintained further that it
is the foundation of the metaphysics in which the coherence theory is
embedded. In §III, he outlined ‘the kind of theory, as to the nature of
truth, which results from rejection of the axiom’ (ibid.). The historical
influence of this tripartite claim is hard to overestimate.5
Moreover, Russell introduced this rival, non-coherence, theory of
truth in a way that is also historically significant. The axiom of internal
relations, he argued, must be rejected; in consequence, the idealist view
that ‘experiencing makes a difference to the facts’ must be rejected too
(ibid.: 44). He continued by drawing out the significance of this latter
point (ibid.: 45):

But from the point of view of the theory of truth, it is a very impor-
tant consequence, since it sets facts and our knowledge of them in
two different spheres, and leaves the facts completely independent
of our knowledge.

The new theory of truth, he assumed, requires a theory of judgment –

indeed, he often treated the two topics side-by-side at this stage – and
he began with the sketchy account of judgment that he had embraced
in The Principles of Mathematics, according to which judgment is a
binary relation between one object, a mind, and one other, a proposi-
tion, understood as a unified entity whose existence is independent of
any mind. That work also contained a sketchy theory of truth, one now
160 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

often called ‘primitivism’: truth is an unanalysable property which true

propositions just possess and false ones just lack. In the new context,
though, he adds to that theory of judgment a variant of this primitivism,
in which the primitive property of truth is moved from facts, where it
had resided in 1903, to beliefs (ibid.: 45):6

Truth, then, we might suppose, is the quality of beliefs which have

facts for their objects, and falsehood is the quality of other beliefs.

Although we have described this account of truth as a form of primitiv-

ism, Russell himself thought of it, strangely enough, as ‘a form of the
correspondence theory’ (ibid.: 45). But he was uneasy about it, as the
phrase ‘we might suppose’ indicates. His unease arose from a worry
he had explored previously in his discussion of Meinong (Russell 1904:
473): that it is hard to prevent falsehood from spreading from beliefs
into facts themselves. The variant account thus risks collapsing into
the original 1903 form, with which he is no longer content (Russell
1907a: 45):

But this simple view is rather difficult to defend against objections

of various kinds, tending to show that there are not only mistaken
beliefs, but also non-facts, which are the objectively false objects of
mistaken beliefs.

As a provisional solution, he tentatively proposed the initial version

of the multiple relation theory of judgment, which he thought might
enable him to retain the correspondence theory of truth without having
to admit the existence of so-called objective falsehoods. But he remained
doubtful: ‘As between the above two views of truth, I do not at present
see how to decide’ (ibid.: 49).
What we have seen so far is this: in a single paper of 1907, Russell
brought to the attention of successive generations of philosophers
both the following three formative ideas and their characteristic mode
of presentation. (1) The coherence theory of truth: a readily refutable
theory attributed to the British Idealists. (2) The correspondence theory of
truth: essential for the counter-idealist claim that ‘facts (are) completely
independent of our knowledge’ (ibid.: 45). (3) The multiple relation
theory of judgment: at this stage a way of preserving the correspond-
ence theory of truth from problems about falsehood.7 Russell, then,
thought there to be an intimate connection between the theory of truth
and the theory of judgment; they are mutually constraining.
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 161

2.2 Consolidation
G.F. Stout, in Mind 1908, also used the term ‘coherence’ of monistic
idealistic views of truth. Given that they were in contact with each
other, it is plausible to suppose that it is Russell’s language of 1907 that
Stout is deploying a year later. In 1909, also in the pages of Mind, the
idealist camp made a crucial strategic error by admitting the Trojan
Horse of what in Russell’s hands had become enemy nomenclature:
F.H. Bradley, responding to Stout, dropped his own word for this
aspect of his discussion, that is, ‘system’, and adopted Stout’s – that is,
Russell’s, that is, originally, Joachim’s – now-poisoned term ‘coherence’.
By 1911, Bosanquet, ignoring pragmatism, could say that the ‘main
current doctrines on this matter have been conveniently designated
in recent discussion as the theory of Coherence and the theory
of Correspondence respectively’ (1911: 263). The terminology had
become established.
In the 1930s, talk of the coherence theory reappears in two sig-
nificant contexts. The first is A.C. Ewing’s monumental book of 1934,
Idealism: A Critical Survey, which contains a long chapter entitled
‘The Coherence Theory’; it is obvious that Ewing takes the term to be
commonplace. Interestingly, he begins by referring to ‘the so-called
coherence theory’ (emphasis ours); and his discussion is focused not on
a theory in the abstract, but almost entirely on the views of Bradley. He
pays very careful attention to the details and manoeuvrings in Bradley’s
discussions of truth, and in doing so makes clear that this label is only
doubtfully appropriate. But this distancing does not dissuade him from
sticking with it as his chapter heading. At roughly the same time, the
label is also used by Moritz Schlick to describe the views of his positiv-
ist friends Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. Shortly after, Carl Hempel,
summarising what he takes to be the evolution of the logical positivists’
theory of truth, adopts ‘the well-known crude classification which divides
the different theories of truth into two main groups – that is, the
correspondence theories and the coherence theories of truth’ (1935: 9,
our emphasis).
That, briefly, is the story, as far as we can recover it, of how the label
emerged. More interesting is the story of how the doctrines associated
with the label have changed over time. We sketch this in the next sec-
tion. For the moment, though, it will help to have before us a statement
of what is now standardly taken to be the coherence theory of truth.8 As
we noted above, the theory is generically described as the view that the
truth of a proposition is a matter of the relations it stands in to other
propositions. The opening clauses of the entry in Simon Blackburn’s
162 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (1994) give us a statement that is more

precise but still sufficiently inclusive for working purposes:

The view that the truth of a proposition consists in its being a mem-
ber of some suitably defined body of other propositions: a body that
is consistent, coherent, and possibly endowed with other virtues,
provided these are not defined in terms of truth.9

If that is the theory, then who has held it? Some of the reference books,
such as Blackburn’s, skilfully avoid attributing the coherence theory at
all. But a representative sample of the fuller ones and the textbooks gives
the following stock set of putative coherence theorists. Amongst the
idealists: Blanshard, Bradley, Joachim. Amongst the positivists: Carnap,
Hempel, Neurath. Then there is a fringe group of those occasionally
named, including Dummett, Putnam and Davidson. As we shall argue
in the next section, all of these attributions are mistaken. We should,
in passing, note that sometimes the coherence theory is retrospectively
attributed to earlier philosophers such as Spinoza and Hegel.10 We lack
space to consider these attributions here, but would say only that they
are at least highly controversial.11
It is important to recognise in advance, though, that the label ‘the
coherence theory of truth’ is often used in ways importantly differ-
ent from the one we have just mentioned. Since its introduction, the
expression has repeatedly been used to refer to coherence theories of
knowledge or justification (often termed coherence theories of the test or
criterion of truth).12 Sometimes this usage is due to a confusion between
truth and justification – as we will argue was the case for Hempel.
At other times, however, the label has been used to refer to a theory
of justification even after a clear distinction has been made between
theories about the test for truth and theories about the nature of
truth. Nicholas Rescher’s book, The Coherence Theory of Truth (1973),
is an excellent example.13 Since theories of justification are not, on
their own, theories of truth, we think applying the label to coherence
theories of justification is highly misleading. Anyway, we shall not be
concerned with such theories or their attribution here, except in so far
as they have been confused with theories of truth.

3 The Alleged Coherence Theorists

3.1 The British Idealists: Monist Stream

In recent discussions of the coherence theory, it is often not attributed
to any real philosopher, but instead considered in the abstract. When
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 163

it is attributed, however, this is almost always to the British Idealists

F.H. Bradley and Harold Joachim, and their American follower Brand
Blanshard.14 Yet, despite the regularity of attribution, and their use
of coherentist terminology and rhetoric, none of these philosophers
actually held a coherence theory of truth.
Although the views of the British Idealists differed in significant
respects, their views on truth were close enough for us to treat them as
having defended a common position. This position is not a coherence
theory, but one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise after a cursory
look at their writings. As we have seen, Bradley himself adopted the
‘coherence’ label, apparently from Russell and Stout. More explicitly
(as we have already observed), Joachim talked of ‘the coherence-theory’
(1906: 65), and said that in its essence truth is coherence (1906: 68),
while Blanshard dedicated an entire chapter of The Nature of Thought to
arguing that the nature of truth is coherence. Nevertheless, strange as
it may sound, these claims do not commit them to the coherence
theory of truth as we have come to think of it (and to ascribe it to these
philosophers). We can see this by retracing their arguments for this
position.15
We may take Bradley as an example, since his views are the fons et
origo of Joachim’s and Blanshard’s. His thoughts on truth originate in
his metaphysics. Perhaps the easiest way to think of this metaphysics is
in terms of what it denies. Often it was Hume that he had in mind. But
perhaps the most succinct expression of everything he opposed is this
pair of adjacent remarks which we may anachronistically quote from
the Tractatus:

1.2 The world divides into facts.

1.21 Each can be the case or not the case while everything else remains
the same.

Bradley’s metaphysics is the opposite extreme: reality itself is, in some

admittedly obscure sense, a coherent system: the label ‘coherence’ is
just a way of marking the refusal to give even everyday common-sense
pluralism any metaphysical significance while admitting diversity,
rejecting a Parmenidean conception of the world as an undifferentiated
whole. He associated the correspondence theory with pluralism, arguing
that the theory’s view of facts as real and mutually independent entities
is unsustainable: the impression of their independent existence is the
outcome of the illegitimate projection on to the world of the divisions
with which thought must work. This projection creates the illusion
that a judgment, which abstracts part of a wider situation, can be true
164 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

by corresponding to that part: as, for example, the remark ‘There are
some green olives in the pantry’ might appear to be true even though
the judgment (by omission) abstracts the olives from their container
and the pantry from the rest of the house, while olives and pantry are
treated in the sentence as independent existents whose relations to each
other are external. In other words, the correspondence theory rests on
a false pluralist ontology which seems like common sense because it is
embedded in the machinery of thought and its expression. This embed-
ding distorts our impression of experience itself, so that to question the
ontology seems insane. But what for him is at stake is the justifiability
of the grammatically-based categories in which the appeal to common
sense, so often made by advocates of pluralism and external relations,
is unhesitatingly conducted. Of course this advocacy implicitly relies
on those categories, such as term, subject, predicate, relation, attribute
and so on, so that its points, which are in effect points about how those
categories work, will appear so obviously true as to make scepticism
concerning their applicability ludicrous. But for this very reason the
pluralist victory is hollow, the result of question-begging.
We do not defend a monist ontology;16 rather, we are trying to make
it intelligible that someone might subscribe to it; and we want to point
out its consequences. One such consequence is this: Bradley’s hostility
to the abstraction involved in everyday thought is far-reaching enough
to ensure that, according to his philosophical logic, at most one judg-
ment can be true – that which encapsulates reality in its entirety. He
can account for falsehood as a falling short of this vast judgment and
hence as an abstraction of part of reality from the whole. Truth comes
in degrees, and that judgment is the least true which is furthest from
capturing the entirety of reality.
But while in philosophical logic we might be able to make sense of
truth’s being a matter of degree, the metaphysical consequences of his
ontology are more extreme even than this. The one comprehensive
judgment, even if posited only as an ideal from which all real judg-
ments fall short, would still itself fall short. It has so far been conceived
on the model of our olive example, as describing reality, with its truth as
consisting in correspondence with that reality. But, on Bradley’s view,
all judgments distort reality: because they rely on the predicative and
relational machinery of thought, they divide reality into illusory pieces,
just as our remark about the olives took them out of the pantry that it
asserted them to be in, and separated the colour from the fruit, thus
repeatedly tearing apart in its expression that which in experience is
a unified whole. Accordingly, even this one gigantic all-encompassing
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 165

judgment, for the very reason that it remains at the level of description,
will be infected by falsehood unless it ceases altogether to be a judg-
ment, abandoning the mechanisms of thought. The only way in which
it can be adequate in its expression is by taking on the very nature of the
reality it is meant to be about; and the only way to do that is by becoming
that reality, committing what Bradley refers to as thought’s ‘happy
suicide’. This claim, seemingly bizarre, becomes intelligible if seen as
both the most extreme expression of Bradley’s hostility to abstraction
and a conclusion drawn from the most fundamental of his objections to
the correspondence theory, which is, oddly enough, the same as Frege’s
(1918: 3): that for there to be correspondence rather than identity
between judgment and reality, the judgment must differ from reality and
in so far as it does differ, to that extent must distort and so falsify it.
Further: in a consistent monism, thought itself cannot be supposed to
stand outside the all-encompassing whole.
What this comes to is that the metaphysics of the British Idealists
required them to hold an identity theory of truth, according to which a
truth-bearer can be true only by being identical with the reality it is sup-
posedly about. This theory is incompatible with the coherence theory of
truth in the standard acceptation of that phrase. For the latter theory,
as now understood, maintains that truth is a certain sort of relation
that holds among truth-bearers (instead of between a truth-bearer and
reality) and that a truth-bearer is true if and only if it belongs to some
(to be specified) coherent set of truth-bearers. This whole pluralist appa-
ratus of terms in relation was anathema to the monistic idealists: even
in the final coherent system we cannot talk of individual truth-bearers
as composing the system and each bearer as being individually true or
false. But a form of the identity theory, concerning the relation between
an individual proposition and its truth-making fact, is available to plu-
ralists, who do not hold that reality is a coherent whole in the monistic
sense of embracing diversity without division. So it is only natural for
the monistic idealists to stress the role of coherence in their thinking
about truth. But for them, truth is only derivatively a matter of coher-
ence: coherence is part of the nature of truth because full coherence
guarantees identity with reality. It is for this reason that Joachim and
Blanshard slip into saying that the nature of truth is coherence. But, as
we have just seen, this is slogan, not theory.17
How, then, did the British Idealist position come to be identified with
what we now think of as the coherence theory of truth? There seem to
be two important factors. First is Bertrand Russell’s influential attack on
the British Idealists’ theory of truth in ‘The Monistic Theory of Truth’.18
166 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

Perhaps the most influential argument of the paper is Russell’s now

famous ‘Bishop Stubbs’ objection, which points out that ‘it may be
perfectly possible to construct a coherent whole of false propositions
in which “Bishop Stubbs was hanged for murder” would find a place’
(1907a: 32; 1907b: 136) and so, as far as the coherence theory tells us,
this proposition would be true; it would of course have been well known
to Russell’s London audience that Bishop Stubbs was an Anglican divine
of unimpeachable respectability. In proposing this as a reductio, Russell
assumes that the British Idealists’ theory is simply that truth is a matter
of coherence amongst a set of propositions, i.e. the coherence theory
as we now understand it. Not uncharacteristically, rather than treat the
subtleties of their real views, Russell inoculated the British Idealists with
a malady he found easier to banish.
The other source of the misattribution is surely the fact that the
Idealists were committed to the view that the criterion of truth is coher-
ence, or that the nature of justification is coherence.19 As we pointed out
above, the confusion of these with a theory of the nature of truth has
often led to misattributions of the coherence theory of truth, and such
a confusion has probably played a role in this case too. Moreover, even
when the distinction is made, it is still often said either that a coherence
theory of justification must be combined with a coherence theory of
truth if it is not to lead to an intolerable scepticism, or merely that the
British Idealists thought this. Indeed, this is frequently taken as one of
the standard arguments for the coherence theory of truth.
This line of thought is particularly often attributed to Blanshard.20 So
it is worth pointing out that he did not in fact argue in this way. It is
true that Blanshard argues that the criterion of truth is coherence. And it
is true that the threat of scepticism is one important factor that led him
to say that the nature of truth is coherence. However, his argument has
an important intermediate step. Blanshard argued that, once we accept
that coherence is the criterion of truth, the only view that saves us
from scepticism is the view that ‘reality is a system, completely ordered
and fully intelligible, with which thought in its advance is more and
more identifying itself’ (1939, vol. II: 264, our emphasis). So, Blanshard’s
view is that true thought is identical with reality, and it is only because
reality is coherent that he can say that the nature of truth is coherence.
The British Idealists, then, held a coherence theory of justification
and a metaphysics which committed them to an identity theory of
truth. While this position also allowed them to say that truth is coher-
ence, the resulting position bears little resemblance to what these days
is called the coherence theory of truth.
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 167

3.2 Logical Positivism

Even after Russell’s introduction of the ‘coherence theory’ label and
his Bishop Stubbs objection, much of the discussion and criticism of
the British Idealists’ view of truth remained relatively faithful to their
position.21 However, when the language of coherence re-emerged with
the logical positivists, its reference had changed dramatically, to
something much more like the coherence theory as now understood.
The label is first used by Schlick to describe and reject what he takes
to be Neurath’s view, that ‘the truth of a proposition . . . consists in its
agreement with the system of all other propositions’ (Schlick 1934: 375).
Neurath immediately fired back, pointing out that Schlick was mistaken
in classing his view ‘with the “general” coherence theory and mak(ing)
“short shrift” of both together’ since ‘(y)ears ago Schlick himself (1910)
showed how the view that truth consists of the “conformity of think-
ing with itself” has its place within idealistic metaphysics’, and Neurath
held such metaphysics to be meaningless (Neurath 1934: 101).22 But
the damage had been done. Hempel, in his well-known paper ‘On The
Logical Positivists’ Theory of Truth’ (1935), also attributed the coher-
ence theory to Neurath and Carnap, as well as endorsing it himself.
He said the logical positivists held a coherence theory of truth, where
‘according to the coherence theories truth is a possible property of a
whole system of statements (i.e., a certain conformity of statements
with each other)’ (1935: 9).
As Schlick and Hempel correctly point out, Neurath and Carnap
rejected talk of a correspondence between what we believe and reality,
as they thought that talk of a reality beyond what we believe involves
a ‘redoubling’ metaphysics. That is, they thought that positing such a
reality was unnecessary and led only to pseudo-problems and philo-
sophical confusions. But the idea that, repelled by this conception of
reality, they adopted a coherence theory of truth is extremely odd.
Neurath and Carnap made it very clear that they thought all theories
about the nature of truth (indeed all philosophical theories) were
attempts to solve metaphysical pseudo-problems. In The Unity of Science,
Carnap lists those questions that logical positivists think can be mean-
ingfully considered – that is, problems of ‘logical analysis’ – and lists
those ‘philosophical’ problems which are to be excluded from discus-
sion. This is what he says about truth (1934: 25):

In all empirical sciences, finally, Logical Analysis involves the problem of

verification (not as a question concerning the essence of Truth, or the
metaphysical basis of the validity of true statements, but as a question
168 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

concerning the logical inferential relations between statements in

general and so called protocol or observation statements).

More radically, Neurath (1941: 217–18) put ‘truth’ on his list of forbid-
den terms:

I avoid in empiricist discussions (some of the terms may be used in

discussions of models and schemes after limiting definitions) terms
such as: ‘mental world’, ‘true’, ‘meaning’, ‘verification’, ‘progress’,
‘pathological’, ‘motive’, ‘value’, ‘thing in itself’, ‘observation’ . . .
‘perception’, ‘reality’, ‘existence’, ‘thing’, ‘experience’, ‘theory of
knowledge’.

For both Neurath and Carnap (at this time), talk of truth and falsity
was not to be tolerated in strict discussions. What could be discussed
were questions about the logical relations amongst statements and which
statements we accept at a particular time. Sometimes Neurath, for
example, allowed us to call ‘true’ any statements we accept, but
he thought that, strictly speaking, such uses involved redefinitions
of the truth predicate. Moreover, he did not recommend revising
the concept of truth in this way, since we already have the antiseptic
concept of ‘acceptance’. Instead, he thought that it would be better if
we eliminated the concept of truth altogether because it was inescap-
ably metaphysical.
Carnap and Neurath never held a coherence theory of truth, then.23
What they held instead was a coherence theory of justification (or
‘acceptance’ if justification was an unacceptable concept) combined
with an eliminativist attitude towards truth. And it is clear that Schlick
and Hempel confused the theory of confirmation with the theory of
truth.24 Admittedly, Carnap and Neurath themselves were not always
clear about this. However, Carnap became more so after the translation
of Tarski’s work into German. Tarski convinced Carnap that there was a
respectable notion of truth that could be defined and which had noth-
ing to do with the notion of confirmation. As a result, Carnap quickly
began to enforce the distinction between truth and confirmation.25
Hempel also came to see that his earlier way of speaking muddled truth
and confirmation and that his (and Neurath’s) real position was that
truth is irrelevant to science, and that confirmation and coherence are
the real goals of scientific inquiry.26 The position Carnap, Hempel and
Neurath expounded was in fact a coherentist account of confirmation
combined with an eliminativist attitude to truth.
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 169

3.3 Anti-Realism and Semantics

Another group of philosophers who have sometimes been labelled
coherence theorists are those who have argued against metaphysical
realism on the basis of claims about the nature of meaning. We have in
mind at least Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson.
Each of these philosophers has used verificationist principles to argue
against metaphysical realism. But none of them held the coherence
theory of truth.
In thinking about verificationism and truth, it is important not
to conflate all theories that conflict with the correspondence theory
of truth. In particular, epistemic theories of truth – theories that identify
truth with some epistemic property – are not one and all coherence
theories of truth. For one thing, a coherence theory may or may not be
an epistemic theory of truth; it depends on what the relation of coher-
ence is taken to be. If it is mere logical consistency, for example, the
theory is obviously not an epistemic one. On the other hand, not all
epistemic theories are coherence theories. For example, to identify truth
with justification or verification is not itself enough to commit one to
the coherence theory of truth. That commitment follows only if we
add a coherence theory of justification or verification. So we should be
careful to distinguish the coherence theory of truth from other, perhaps
superficially similar, epistemic theories.
With this in mind, consider the anti-realist position adopted by
Dummett and called a coherence theory of truth by Ralph Walker.
Famously, Dummett argues that truth is not ‘verification transcendent’,
or does not outrun what we can ascertain or verify as true. As is also
well known, Dummett argues for this position on the basis of a theory
of meaning and understanding. Roughly speaking, he thinks that a
theory of meaning is a theory that specifies for each sentence the con-
ditions under which the understanding of the sentence counts as being
manifested. Moreover, the meanings of sentences are the conditions
under which they are true. Now, if the obtaining of truth-conditions
of a sentence is beyond our recognitional capacity, he claims, we could
never manifest our understanding of these sentences. Moreover, we
could never be taught the meaning of these sentences to begin with.
Dummett concludes that we should adopt instead a notion of truth that
is relative to our epistemic powers. The right notion of truth-conditions
to use for a theory of meaning is therefore a verificationist notion.27
So Dummett is committed to a conception of truth that does not
outrun verification or is not ‘evidence transcendent’. Walker claims that
Dummett therefore holds a coherence theory of truth. But this seems
170 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

not to follow. First, as Crispin Wright has suggested, it is far from clear
that denying that truth is evidence transcendent amounts to a theory
of truth at all. Instead, a better way to understand the position may be
as a restriction on the class of statements that can have representational
content or be truth-apt – namely, a restriction to statements that can
be verified. According to Wright, Dummett’s theory is simply that for a
sentence to be truth-apt it must be such that ‘it is a priori that their being
true, if they are, assures the availability of grounds for affirming that they
are true’ (1995: 289). Second, even if Dummett did mean to identify truth
with verification, such an identification amounts to a coherence theory
only in combination with a coherence theory of verification. The ques-
tion, then, is whether Dummett held a coherence theory of verification.28
Walker provides no textual evidence to suggest that he does, and we are
aware of none. If anything, Dummett’s arguments for his brand of verifi-
cationism seem to require the rejection of all forms of epistemic holism.29
Earlier in his book, however, Walker does offer a brief argument to
suggest that all anti-realists must hold a coherence theory of justifica-
tion. If Walker’s argument is persuasive, then presumably it also shows
that anti-realists must hold coherence theories of verification. Moreover,
it would justify Walker’s move from attributing to Dummett a verifica-
tionist theory of truth to attributing to him a coherence theory. Since
something like Walker’s argument may be motivating others who call
all anti-realists ‘coherence theorists’, it is worth briefly pointing out
why the argument is unpersuasive.
Here is the relevant passage in full (1989: 35–6):

What does it mean to say that a belief is warranted in its context?

The context may consist of other beliefs which support it, or of
perceptual circumstances, or both. With many beliefs, like the belief
that it is cold or that there is a table before me, it is natural to
feel that it is the perceptual circumstances that warrant them. But
for the anti-realist the fact that such-and-such perceptual circum-
stances obtain cannot itself be independent of our recognition of it,
any more than any other fact can be independent of our recognition.
Hence even where a belief is warranted by something perceptual,
it is still in effect another belief that warrants it; and this means
that we have on our hands a pure form of the coherence theory
of truth. Beliefs must fit in appropriately with other beliefs which are
themselves warranted in the same fashion, through coherence; and
so far as it makes sense to talk of truth at all, truth is a matter of what
we can in this fashion recognize as true.
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 171

Walker’s argument in this passage comes in two stages. The first is an

argument that anti-realists are committed to coherence theories of
justification. The second, comprising only the last sentence, is that anti-
realists are committed to the identification of truth and what we can
recognise as true. Only the first stage is of interest here.
In trying to convince us that anti-realists are committed to coherence
theories of justification, Walker relies on the idea that since anti-realists
hold that all facts are recognition dependent, facts about how things per-
ceptually seem to us must be recognition dependent. He then draws from
this the conclusion that any beliefs warranted by how things perceptually
seem to us are warranted by our beliefs about how things perceptually seem
to us. And since he thinks that all beliefs are warranted either by other
beliefs or how things perceptually seem to us, this latter claim is meant to
establish what he takes to be the hallmark of coherence theories of justifi-
cation, namely that all beliefs are warranted only by other beliefs.
The crucial move in this argument is from the claim that things can
perceptually seem to us a certain way only if we can be aware that they
seem that way, to the conclusion that beliefs warranted by how things
perceptually seem to us are warranted by our beliefs about how things per-
ceptually seem to us. Yet this move is clearly illegitimate. There is nothing
inconsistent about holding that our beliefs about how things seem to us
are justified directly by how things perceptually seem (where our percep-
tual state is not a belief state) and also that things can only perceptually
seem to us a certain way if we can be aware that they seem that way.30 So
Walker’s argument is unpersuasive.
For many of the same reasons we think Walker is wrong about
Dummett, we also reject his assertion that Putnam, at one point, held
a coherence theory of truth. But Putnam is a slightly different case to
Dummett, since while his ‘internal realism’ didn’t commit him to a
coherence theory of truth, he came very close to committing himself
anyway. For Putnam appeared to commit himself to a coherence theory
of justification or ‘rational acceptability’ (1983: 54–5):

What makes a statement, or a whole system of statements – a theory

or conceptual scheme – rationally acceptable is, in large part, its
coherence and fit; coherence of ‘theoretical’ or less experiential
beliefs with one another and with more experiential beliefs, and also
coherence of experiential beliefs with theoretical beliefs . . .

And Putnam combines this view with the further claim that truth
is a matter of idealised rational acceptability. Taken together, these
172 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

two appear to commit Putnam to a coherence theory of truth. More

explicitly, Putnam (1983: 49–50) says:

‘Truth’, in an internalist view, is some sort of (idealized) rational

acceptability – some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each
other and with our experiences as those experiences are themselves
represented in our belief system – and not correspondence with some
mind-independent or discourse-independent ‘states-of-affairs’ . . .

Again, this looks very much as though he wishes to adopt a coherence

theory of truth.
We need to proceed with caution, however. First, Putnam’s language
is extremely slippery throughout his discussion. He says that rational
acceptability is ‘largely a matter of coherence’, that truth is idealised
rational acceptability, and that he is not offering a formal definition
of truth, but merely an informal elucidation of it. With so much hedg-
ing, it is hard to know what Putnam meant to commit himself to, if
anything.
Furthermore, he says other things that imply that he did not hold a
coherence theory of truth. Hot on the heels of the last quoted passage,
Putnam explains that he isn’t happy with calling his position a coher-
ence theory (1983: 50):

(‘Coherence theory of truth’; ‘Non-realism’; ‘Verificationism’; ‘Pluralism’;

‘Pragmatism’; are all terms that have been applied to the internalist
perspective; but every one of these terms has connotations that are
unacceptable because of their historic applications.)

Since the labels Putnam lists all refer to very different theories of truth,
it is clear that he does not reject these labels merely because he disagrees
with the branding. Rather, he thinks a number of previous philosophers
have held versions of the internalist position, but none has got things quite
right. More specifically, while he clearly endorsed some epistemic theory
of truth he did not specify which type of epistemic theory he wanted
to adopt.31 Before he settled on a specific version, he made his second
major philosophical turn – to ‘common-sense’ realism.
While neither Dummett nor Putnam labelled themselves coherence
theorists, Donald Davidson did refer to himself in this way at one
time. He began a paper entitled ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and
Knowledge’ by saying that he would defend ‘what may as well be called
a coherence theory of truth and knowledge’. But (as will be well known
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 173

to many readers), it is in fact much easier to show Davidson not to be a

coherence theorist than any of our other alleged coherentists. For a page
later he explains that the position he will defend is one according to
which most of the beliefs in a coherent total set of beliefs are true. This
theory simply cannot be identified with the position that coherence
gives us the nature of truth. Indeed, Davidson says the same himself
(1986: 308):

It should be clear that I do not hope to define truth in terms of coher-

ence and belief. Truth is beautifully transparent compared to belief
and coherence, and I take it as primitive.

A few years later, after he had accepted the ‘coherence’ label was
misleading, he is even more explicit (1990: 309):

We should not say that truth is correspondence, coherence, warran-

ted assertability, ideally justified assertability, what is accepted in the
conversation of the right people, what science will end up maintain-
ing, what explains the convergence of single theories in science, or
the success of our ordinary beliefs.

According to Davidson, the nature of truth is not a matter of coherence

amongst beliefs. He thought that it is ‘folly’ to try either to define truth
or to give some short elucidation of the nature of truth (as Putnam did).
Instead, he clearly takes truth to be an indefinable primitive the nature
of which can at best be elucidated by displaying its connections with a
wide range of other properties, including all of the intentional attitude
properties. In short, Davidson is a primitivist about truth.
Thus, none of our semantical anti-realists held a coherence theory
of truth. Dummett held a verificationist theory (where verification was
not coherence), and Putnam an indeterminate epistemic theory, while
Davidson was a primitivist.

4 Conclusions

We have seen that it is hard to find someone who unequivocally held

the coherence theory of truth. One reaction to that might be, ‘Well, if
you were putting experimental results into a graph, you’d expect few, if
any, to be exactly on the idealised line drawn through them. Perhaps it’s
the same with philosophical theories: the views of actual philosophers
are dotted about them, in the near vicinity.’ But it isn’t like that here.
174 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

This is not a case where different people clearly hold approximately

similar views, none of which is quite the textbook theory. Rather, the
obvious question is, why does none of even the most likely candidates
make a clear and firm commitment to any version of the coherence
theory? We have seen part of the answer to this question: the ‘coher-
ence theory’ label was used by Russell in responding to the British
Idealists, and Russell’s labelling and redescription of their position
helped contribute to the construction of the coherence theory straw
man which came to take on a life of its own: a theory which, as we saw
(n. 18) Ramsey observing, ‘is very easy to reduce to absurdity’. But more
needs to be said.
It has often been suggested that the coherence theory leads to ideal-
ism.32 We shall also argue that it easily leads to monism. But neither of
these views, idealism and monism, is the real problem, for two reasons.
First, part of our goal in offering the argument to come is to uncover
a largely implicit or even subterranean influence that has kept philo-
sophers from endorsing the coherence theory. Since some would-be
coherence theorists have been idealists, and even monists, the conse-
quences of the coherence theory must be stranger than these. Second,
our larger point is that the coherence theory should not be thought
of as a main rival to the title of the correct theory of truth, and even
were it to commit proponents to monistic idealism, this would at worst
be enough to condemn the theory as unfashionable; it would not be
enough to require redrawing the map of logical space for the theory of
truth. Instead, we will argue that the coherence theory, even in a pluralist
version, leads inevitably to the identity theory of truth, and is in fact
merely a species of that genus.33
Consider what coherentists should say about the relations between
the truth of propositions and reality. In particular, consider what they
should say about one of the intuitions often used to motivate the
correspondence theory of truth, and which is usually called, cunningly,
the correspondence intuition (sometimes, the correspondence platitude).

Correspondence Intuition: If something is true, it’s true because of the

way the world is.34

What are would-be coherence theorists to say about this deeply embed-
ded intuition? Should they accept or reject it? While it may seem odd to
suppose that anyone opposed to the correspondence theory would
accept the correspondence intuition, historically it has been quite
common. In fact, it is because they accepted the correspondence intuition
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 175

that Bradley and Bosanquet have been mistaken for correspondence

theorists – this is what Bosanquet is complaining about in our epigraph.35
But in fact each answer poses awkward consequences for coherence
theorists: accepting it seems to lead them directly to a form of idealism,
for the theory will require that the world can consist only of other
truth-bearers; while rejecting it can look like a reductio, since it seems to
be the rejection of an obvious truth. This on its own may explain why
those who have employed coherentist rhetoric have often taken evasive
action rather than convert the rhetoric into a full-blown theory: mere
contemplation of the correspondence intuition has been enough to
frighten them off. Yet there is something deeper at work.
The correspondence intuition reveals an underlying binary picture –
in the sense discussed by (the later) Wittgenstein – which governs much
of the discussion of truth. If we put on one side complicating considera-
tions arising from epistemic concerns, this picture involves a distinction
between what we talk about and what we say about it. The distinction
appears time and again in different guises: the realm of reference and the
realm of sense; facts and propositions; truth-makers and truth-bearers;
and so on. This picture sits naturally with the correspondence theory
of truth, but influences even those who have employed coherentist
rhetoric. And that is hardly surprising, for the correspondence intuition,
unlike the coherence theory, seems to survive a form of Moore’s Open
Question argument, which might be put like this: ‘I know that what you
say corresponds to the facts, but is it true?’ – as opposed to, say, ‘I know
that what you say belongs to the preferred set of judgments, but is it (or
any of them) true?’36 Another way of putting this would be to say that
the coherence theory seems not to capture the content of the ordinary
judgment that something is true.
The idea behind much discussion of the coherence theory seems to
be that, for the coherentist, there is something beyond the realm of
sense that we should like to talk about, but (perhaps because of epis-
temic problems), we can’t manage it, or at least can’t get it to function
in a truth-making role, so we’ll ignore it and instead confine ourselves
to the realm of sense, or of what we say. McDowell expresses this idea
succinctly (1994: 15):

(Coherence) theories express precisely the unnerving idea that

the spontaneity of conceptual thinking is not subject to rational
constraint from outside. Coherentist rhetoric suggests images of con-
finement within the sphere of thinking, as opposed to being in touch
with something outside it.
176 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

But this coherentist rhetoric betrays a double-mindedness, an attempt

to have one’s cake and eat it, since it wants to both keep the world
beyond the realm of sense and ignore it as irrelevant to truth. That is,
coherentists seem to want to adopt what Putnam has called the inter-
nalist perspective, and yet the images of confinement suggest that there
is, after all, a world beyond the coherent set of propositions. It is this
that explains the fundamental acuteness underlying Russell’s original
observation (Russell 1910a: 136), however unfair it was to its intended
targets, Joachim and Bradley:

And the objection to the coherence-theory lies in this, that it presup-

poses a more usual meaning of truth and falsehood in constructing
its coherent whole, and that this more usual meaning, though indis-
pensable to the theory, cannot be explained by means of the theory.

And, of course, once one exposes this kind of double-mindedness, and

instead takes the coherence theory completely seriously by insisting
that what we are talking about itself belongs in the realm of sense, then
the other side of the binary divide really does drop out as irrelevant. It
is some preferred set in the world of judgments that we are really talking
about, and which constitutes reality.37 Similarly acute, even though
Russell himself underestimates its significance, is his observation from
earlier in the same paper:

The view that truth is one may be called ‘logical monism’; it is, of
course, closely connected with ontological monism, i.e., the doctrine
that Reality is one. (Russell 1907a: 28; 1910b: 131)

And now it is clear that coherence is neither here nor there. For a judg-
ment to be true is just for it to belong to the set. And that is an identity
theory of truth. Identity theories of truth do not need to hold that
reality is coherent, nor, without further argument, which would
inevitably have to tangle with those elusive opponents the dialetheists,
must it even match that minimal requirement of coherence, namely
consistency. So, when thought through, the coherence theory is but one
special case of the identity theory of truth.38 It is for this reason that we
would redraw the usual map of the non-deflationary theories of truth.
The divide between coherence and correspondence theories cannot be
fundamental, if coherence theories are merely one species of a broader
conception of truth. The real argument is between identity theories and
non-identity theories.
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 177

Notes
1. This is an aspect of a more general phenomenon in philosophy: labelling
tends to be reserved for the views of others (who may well be not actual
individuals but notional types), and to be preparatory to presenting them as
ripe for refutation.
2. Indeed, the cut-down version of the paper (Russell 1907b) he (re-)published
in 1910 in his much-reprinted collection, Philosophical Essays is freshly titled
‘The Monistic Theory of Truth’. He chose to reproduce a large slab of this
essay in his widely read book of 1959, My Philosophical Development.
3. In a brief pilot study for this paper (Candlish and Damnjanovic 2010), we
claimed that Joachim ‘did not . . . use the label “coherence theory”.’ We now
withdraw this claim, for it is only trivially true; Joachim simply hyphenated
the phrase. We now give him his fair share of responsibility in the emergence
of the coherence theory.
4. Although in getting the vocabulary ‘coherence theory of truth’ into the
public arena, the roles of Joachim and Russell are primary, we do not mean
to suggest that there may not have been others talking in similar ways
around that time. Talk of the coherence theory appears in another paper of
the period (Hodgson 1906–07), but again in discussion of Joachim’s views.
Hodgson (138–9) says of Joachim that he ‘warmly advocates’ a coherence
theory but responds by claiming that coherence can be only a necessary
condition of truth, not its nature.
5. For this influence, see Candlish 2007, passim.
6. This variant involves the same device as Russell’s 1912 defence of the multi-
ple relation theory of judgment against an objection from Stout: in response,
Russell moved the property of relations he called ‘sense’ (that is, the direction
of a non-symmetrical relation) from the judged relation – for example, that
of love, in ‘Desdemona loved Cassio’ – to the relation of judging.
7. We are careful to say ‘At this stage’. As we can see from §III of Chapter II of
the Introduction to the first edition of Principia Mathematica, by 1910 the
multiple relation theory had taken on another crucial role, namely that of a
device intended to avoid paradox by enabling Russell to deny that proposi-
tions are entities, and to achieve this without having to assume the baroque
ontology associated with the ramified theory of types and its hierarchy of
orders. It is this fact which explains Russell’s dismay when he encountered
Wittgenstein’s famous objection of 1913 to the multiple relation theory. This
objection, which at once he could not quite understand yet nevertheless at
the time thought conclusive, had undermined his latest attempt to save logi-
cism from paradox.
8. In his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on truth (Glanzberg 2006),
Michael Glanzberg describes it as the neo-classical coherence theory.
9. The fact that Blackburn’s statement is couched in terms of propositions may
lead some to think that it excludes theorists who reject propositions. But, of
course, the statement quoted does not also define ‘proposition’, while those
who reject propositions typically have some contestable notion of them in
mind. Here the term may be regarded as a place-holder for whatever truth-
bearer is favoured by any particular theorist.
10. For example by Walker 1985; 1989.
178 The Myth of the Coherence Theory of Truth

11. See Curley 1994 on whether Spinoza held a coherence theory or a

correspondence theory (or something stranger). On Hegel, see Baldwin 1991
and Stern 1993.
12. This is the subject matter of Gähde and Hartmann 2005, for example.
13. Rescher 1985 also provides another, different example. He argues there that
ideal coherence guarantees truth and so is essentially connected to it. But
this is still not a theory of the nature of truth – even a correspondence theo-
rist can admit that ideal coherence guarantees truth. Compare also Dauer
1974, who argues that truth is essentially that property of statements whose
normal manifestation is coherence.
14. Bosanquet is also sometimes mentioned, and seems to have held a similar
position to Bradley, Joachim and Blanshard. For reasons of space we will not
discuss his views here. We ignore non-monist idealists such as McTaggart.
15. It has already been argued by Stewart Candlish 1989 that Bradley was no
coherentist; the case is pressed home in detail in Candlish 2007. Ayer 1952
also argued that the British Idealists did not hold a coherence theory of
truth. Instead, he claimed, the ‘coherence’ label was actually applied to them
in virtue of their theory of meaning.
16. Others have begun to do that. See, for example, Schaffer 2007; 2010a; and
2010b.
17. The same moral applies to Cohen 1978. After wrongly classifying the British
Idealist position on truth as a coherence theory, Cohen defends it from the
Bishop Stubbs objection described in our next paragraph.
18. The influence of Russell’s paper can be seen 20 years later in Ramsey’s discus-
sion of the coherence theory, in which he says of it that ‘it is very easy to reduce
to absurdity and after Mr Russell’s amusing essay on “The Monistic Theory of
Truth” it is difficult to see how anyone can still cling to it’ (Ramsey 1927: 25).
19. For the case of Bradley, see the extensive citations in Candlish 2007: ch. 4.
20. See Schmitt 1995: 107–10; and also Glanzberg 2006.
21. That said, there remained a continuing indecision (less charitably, confu-
sion) about whether the label applied to theories of the nature or of the
criterion of truth.
22. For a discussion of Neurath’s letters to Carnap, Kokoszynska and others in
which he (Neurath) rails against the ‘coherence’ label, see Mancosu 2008.
23. Uebel 1991: 631–3 also argues, but in more depth, that Neurath did not hold
the coherence theory. See, in addition, Mancosu 2008.
24. Notice, for example, Schlick’s slide from the ‘criterion’ of truth to the nature
of truth: ‘But then what do we have left as a criterion of truth? Since we are
not to have it that all statements of science are to accord with a specific set of
protocol propositions, but rather that all propositions are to accord with all
others, where each is regarded as in principle corrigible, truth can consist only
in the mutual agreement of the propositions with one another’ (1934: 374).
25. See Carnap 1949.
26. See Hempel 1983: 191. According to Jeffrey 2000: 7, in 1955 Hempel ‘still
found it excruciating to recall’ his early papers on truth.
27. See, for example, Dummett 1976 and the preface to his 1978.
28. Regardless of whether Dummett holds a coherence theory of verification,
however, Young 1995 does and combines it with Dummett-style anti-
realism. However, the first reason we gave for doubting that Dummett’s view
 Nic Damnjanovic and Stewart Candlish 179

is a coherence theory of truth applies equally to Young and so gives some

reason to doubt that Young’s self-attribution of the coherence theory of
truth is correct. It is no part of our claim here that philosophers have never
believed themselves to deserve the epithet ‘coherence theorist’.
29. Dummett relies on the assumption that if we understand a sentence we must
be able to manifest this understanding and this requires that we can recog-
nise when the sentence is conclusively verified. See Devitt 1997: 275–83 for
discussion of this point.
30. Wright 1995: 289–92 seems to us to make this point too.
31. Here we agree with Alston 1996: 191, who gives a much fuller account of
Putnam’s theory of truth at this period.
32. Alcoff 2001 argues that the coherence theory she defends is consistent with
‘immanent realism’. But her position is not the coherence theory as commonly
understood: she treats coherence as a relation not just between beliefs and
propositions, but amongst those things and elements of the real world itself.
33. Strictly speaking, our overall historical argument in this paper does not
require that the coherence theory leads inevitably to the identity theory
(although we believe it does). All the historical argument requires is that the
coherence theory very quickly looks as if it does, and that this look is con-
vincing enough to explain why those philosophers tempted by coherentist
ideas end up either as identity theorists or as . . . (and here we can fill in a
variety of epithets, ranging from ‘eliminativist’ to ‘evasive’).
34. Here is the Correspondence Intuition given full metaphysical weight by
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra 2005: 21:

If a certain proposition is true, then it owes its truth to something else:

its truth is not a primitive, brute, ultimate fact. The truth of a proposition
thus depends on what reality . . . is like. What reality is like is anterior to
the truth of the proposition, it gives rise to the truth of the proposition
and thereby accounts for it.

35. Deflationists, too, sometimes accept the correspondence intuition – see

Horwich 1998: 104–5, for example.
36. The Open Question Argument has not had a good press in recent decades.
For reasons to think it has been too harshly judged, see Pigden 2007
(and some of the papers cited in Nuccetelli and Seay’s essay in the same
volume).
37. A preferred set (such as the set of beliefs rather than propositions in general)
because, as Walker (1989: passim) makes clear, without such a proviso the
coherence theory is susceptible to Russell’s Bishop Stubbs objection.
38. Indeed one can see this at work in McDowell, who is sympathetic to the
internalist perspective but wary of the double-mindedness we have spoken
of. As a result, he too comes to rest with an identity theory of truth.

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9
The Origin and Influence of G.E.
Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’1
Consuelo Preti
Department of Philosophy
The College of New Jersey

1 Introduction

G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell began their philosophical careers as

undergraduates at Trinity College Cambridge in the late nineteenth
century; but not as undergraduates studying Moral Science (as
philosophy was then known). Moore went up to Trinity in 1892 to
study Classics, and Russell, by then in his second year, was studying
Mathematics. However both young men, recruited as desirable members
by the select Cambridge Conversazione Society, were exposed to philo-
sophical discussion and debate through the Society’s weekly meetings. At
their undergraduate tutorials, as well as at Society meetings, they were
introduced to various formulations of the British neo-Hegelianism that
was dominant in the established philosophy of the period in the work,
among others, of T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley, and B. Bosanquet. The familiar
version of the story of the rise of twentieth-century analytic philosophy
in the early work of Russell and Moore is that their early incursions into
philosophy were cultivated in this redoubtable neo-Hegelian atmosphere.
Just before the turn of the century, however, Moore published ‘The Nature
of Judgment’,2 whose metaphysical doctrines had the unexpected effect
of up-ending the established supremacy of nineteenth-century British
idealism, and introduced what we now refer to as analytic philosophy.
Russell over his long lifetime lauded not only the nature of Moore’s
views, but their influence on him, and on the history of philosophy,
with a notable fervor:

On fundamental questions of philosophy, my position, in all its chief

features, is derived from Mr G.E. Moore. I have accepted from him
the non-existential nature of propositions (except such as happen to
183
184 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

assert existence) and their independence of any knowing mind; also

the pluralism which regards the world, both that of existents and that
of entities, as composed of an infinite number of mutually independ-
ent entities, with relations which are ultimate, and not reducible to
adjectives of their terms or of the whole which these compose. Before
learning these views from him, I found myself completely unable to
construct any philosophy of arithmetic, whereas their acceptance
brought about an immediate liberation from a large number of dif-
ficulties which I believe to be otherwise insuperable. (1903)

…with Moore, British philosophy returned to the kind of work in

which it had been pre-eminent in former centuries. Those that are
too young to remember the academic reign of German Idealism in
English philosophy after T.H. Green can hardly appreciate what
Moore achieved in the way of liberation from intellectual fetters. All
honor and gratitude are due to him for this achievement. (1959b)

An account of the origin and influence of Moore’s doctrines in ‘The

Nature of Judgment’ gives rise to a curious scholarly puzzle, however.
Moore was no mathematician; still less a logician. Yet Russell credited to
him not only a ‘liberation’ from the dead weight of British Hegelianism
that re-oriented philosophy onto a more intellectually respectable
track, but also the foundational concepts of his own logicist program.3
Further, the surviving record does not make it entirely plain just how
exactly Moore came by the realist doctrine of the nature of propositions
and their constituents that he underscored in 1899.4 What is plain,
however, is that Moore does not appear to have absorbed them from
Russell. In what follows, I will give an account of the development of
Moore’s views, and of this critical turning point in the history of early
twentieth century philosophy.

2 The Development of Moore’s Account of Judgment

We begin with some brief background to Moore’s (and Russell’s) work

circa 1897–98. Russell had by this time conceived of the so-called
‘Tiergarten Programme’5 projected as a sweepingly inclusive dialectical
account of the sciences, Bradleian and McTaggartian in spirit. Between
1896 and 1899, Russell produced a large variety of notes, drafts, and
published papers6 to make good on his Programme, including his
1895 Trinity Prize Fellowship Dissertation, An Essay in the Foundations
of Geometry (EFG).7 By the summer of 1897, Russell was rethinking
 Consuelo Preti 185

some of the aspects of his views in EFG (characteristically, right after

he published it); reading Bradley’s Appearance and Reality; and thinking
about, among other things, dynamics.8
The influence of Bradleian Idealism in Moore’s case, however, is more
nuanced.9 In 1897, Moore was preparing to begin work on a disserta-
tion on Kant’s ethics to submit for a Trinity Prize Fellowship, and the
surviving record supports the case that there were competing motiva-
tions in his work at this time. For instance, at an Aristotelian Society
symposium on the nature of Time, Moore defends a position that looks
indistinguishable from the unadulterated neo-Hegelianism of Bernard
Bosanquet, one of his co-presenters (Moore 1897, 240):10

Time must be rejected wholly, its continuity, as well as its discreteness,

if we are to form an adequate notion of reality… If I need, then…to
give a direct answer to our question, I would say that neither Past,
Present, nor Future exists, if by existence we are to mean the ascrip-
tion of full Reality and not merely existence as Appearance.

By contrast, however, in an Apostles paper delivered on January 23,

1897,11 Moore takes what looks like a fairly different metaphysical
approach. Moore wrote to his friend Desmond MacCarthy the week
before to tell him of the topic:12

Dickinson and McT[aggart] joined in choosing subjects here on Sat.

night, and they carried ‘Can we mean anything, when we don’t know
what we mean?’ against Trevy’s single vote for English superiority.
The question chose is meant to bear on ‘abstractions’ (the one I told
you I cared most for) and will be illustrated by love and goodness.

And the Apostles paper itself even gestures toward themes that were to
emerge a few years later in Principia Ethica:

My hope, in choosing this subject, was to have made myself clear

on certain points of a chiefly philosophic interest, namely what
sense ‘abstracts’ were real, what was the difference between the
particular and the universal, and whether the universal might not
be distinguishable from the general…I had better pretend to an
orderly arrangement: which will be as follows: first to point out the
difference between two sorts of abstracts, and then to examine what
bearing the results so obtained have upon the meaning of two such
simple propositions as ‘I love Susan’ and ‘Port wine is good’.
186 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

As 1897 progressed, Moore began to work out a criticism of Kant on

free will, one that ultimately rejected Kant’s account of the will and
its objects. Part of the problem, as Moore initially grappled with it, was
his growing conviction that an apparently ineluctable feature of Kant’s
conception of freedom was a bothersome form of subjectivism, incon-
sistent with the conception of ethics Moore was determined to defend.13
Moore and Russell saw each other at the end of June14 where one topic
seems to have been a paper of Russell’s on plenal theory.15
This meeting is worth pausing over in the attempt to explain the
‘revolution’ effected upon Russell’s thought by Moore’s in the next
few years. The significance rests on Russell’s continuing attempts, at this
period, to make good on the Tiergarten Programme. The dialectical tran-
sition, now that geometry was accounted for, was set to move toward
physics (dynamics). But emerging contradictions in accounts of motion,
matter, and space had begun to set up obstacles in Russell’s work – his
account of geometry, for example, had required that space be relative; but
theories of matter that underpinned his account of geometry required
that it be absolute. His discussion of plenal theories in 1897 was an
attempt to address some tensions.16 Although no archival material that
survives refers directly to the topics under discussion at this meeting,
Moore’s later review of EFG (Moore 1899b) may contain a clue about the
direction that their discussions were taking in June, 1897. In the review,
Moore describes Russell’s project as working to determine ‘the logical
relations of the most elementary constituents of space’ while attempting
to distinguish ‘more clearly than [Kant] had done, between the a priori
and the subjective’. Thus it is plausible that ‘talk’ between them in June
was in the early stages of crystallising their thought on the Kantian
framework, as both of them prepared to address issues raised by Kant’s
formulation of reason and the a priori (among other things).
Moore’s dissertation for the 1897 Prize Fellowship competition was
titled The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics.17 Moore’s main argument was that
Kant did not succeed in coherently defending a notion of freedom of the
will, because he was unable to formulate a convincing argument for the
normative autonomy of the objects of Practical Reason from the will.18
Moore’s examiners, however, were nonplussed by his arguments,19 and
Moore failed to win a Fellowship. Moore occupied himself throughout
1897 by fashioning his first paper, ‘Freedom’, from part of his disserta-
tion;20 it appeared in Mind in 1898. Moore’s later view (1942: 21) was
that the paper ‘was absolutely worthless’ but as part of the evidence
of Moore’s philosophical evolution, it stands in intriguing contrast to
‘The Nature of Judgment’, which appeared a year later.21 In ‘The Nature
 Consuelo Preti 187

of Judgment’ an explicit and novel philosophical logic made its entry

onto the English-language philosophical scene, as Moore defends a
metaphysics of the objects of judgment – and constituents of reality – as
logically structured, mind-independent propositions. In ‘Freedom’,
by contrast, Moore argues in more conventional nineteenth-century
Idealist style, that Kant’s views on freedom of the will are inconsistent
with his determinism, in spite of Kant’s own insistence that they are
not. This stage in the evolution in Moore’s work is one of the clearest
pictures we have of the historical shift in philosophical perspective in
the early twentieth century at Cambridge.
The shift began to gather speed through 1898. Moore and Russell
both attended McTaggart’s lectures on Lotze in Lent Term, taking exten-
sive and verbatim notes.22 In March 1898 they argued about ‘whether
existence means anything or not’ at an Apostles Society meeting.23 They
met and discussed their work in May and June.24 Moore complained to
MacCarthy ( June 19, 1898) that he had written ‘6 [sic] pages dissertation
and done less work than ever’. But by August 14 Moore wrote again to
MacCarthy to say:

I have some 60 new pages finished, but it can hardly be that I shall
be able to write on all the points that I intended. You may judge from
the fact that all I have written so far is Metaphysics – not a word of
Ethics. I have arrived at a perfectly staggering doctrine: I had never
seen where my principles would lead me. An existent is nothing but
a proposition: nothing is but concepts. There is my philosophy…
I am pleased to believe this is the most Platonic system of modern
times; though it is also not so far from Kant, as you might think at
first…it had never occurred to me…that reality is in fact independent
of existence.

The turning-point seems to have taken place during meetings between

Moore and Russell on May 10, 1898 and June 28, 1898.25 By July 20,
Russell, who had been deep in the effort of drafting An Analysis of
Mathematical Reasoning26 wrote to Moore that he had finished Book
I ‘by skating over the difficulties and leaving them to be discussed later.
I am having a typed copy sent to you’. Again, few letters or other
material that survives describe the topics under discussion at these
meetings, so we know very little directly except that they took place.27
But given the shift in perspective in their work shortly thereafter, we
must surmise that a significant feature of Moore and Russell’s talks was
the recognition that their views on the metaphysical basis of ethics and
188 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

the nature of foundational mathematical concepts and would require a

precise formulation of reasoning in mathematics and ethics – a formu-
lation, that is, of the nature of judgment. By August 1898, Moore had
refined and reformulated his thinking away from judgment as an act of
mind and onto the nature, instead, of the object of judgment. Moore’s
revisions to his 1897 dissertation (two new chapters and a reworking of
the whole) were submitted to the examiners in August 1898. This time,
Moore was awarded a Fellowship that would last until 1904.
Russell was, by late 1898, crediting Moore with an intellectual
breakthrough of the premier order – lauding it in letters to Moore as
‘your logic’ and as ‘to be on the level of the best philosophy I know’;
describing ‘a new logic’ when writing to Couturat, praising Moore as
‘the most subtle in pure logic’28 – and anxious to discuss it, as well as
his own evolving exertions (soon to include his book on Leibniz) in
detail. The ‘revolt’ from Idealism was at full speed. And the key to an
account of how Moore distanced himself from what looks like an early
(if tepid) embrace of neo-Hegelianism for the logical realism at the core
of his 1898 dissertation, as I argue below, is to be found in the inter-
section of a number of critical claims that play a role not only in the
neo-Hegelianism of Green and Bradley, but also in the newly emerging
field of scientific psychology.

3 British Philosophy in the Late Nineteenth Century:

Neo-Hegelianism

As noted above, the intellectual climate in British philosophy in the

late nineteenth century was dominated – at least on the face of it – by
the various forms of neo-Hegelianism propounded by philosophers at
Oxford and Cambridge. The emergence of analytic philosophy from
Idealist roots has been examined by scholars in detail.29 A question that
lingers, however, is just how much, or how deeply, Moore’s early theory
of judgment can be attributed to the influence of neo-Hegelianism,
Bradleian or otherwise.
For all its dominance, British neo-Hegelianism made a speedy exit
from the philosophical scene once the century turned. In retrospect,
however, we may argue that this was all but inevitable given the
anti-psychologism that had begun to characterise developments in late-
nineteenth-century logic, mathematics and psychology itself, effectively
extinguishing intellectual support for neo-Hegelianism. This anti-
psychologistic strain quickly developed into various forms of scientific
naturalism which, among other things, became a hallmark of various
 Consuelo Preti 189

sub-disciplines in twentieth-century philosophy. As a representative of

a form of metaphysical mentalism, British nineteenth-century Idealism
could not hope to withstand the pressures of the rise of empirical psycho-
logy (with its scientific naturalism about the nature and objects of
thought), let alone the consequences for the nature of logic itself soon
to come from the logicism of Frege and Russell.
We can thus critically examine the evolution of Moore’s theory
of judgment by considering the most important claims of the Neo-
Hegelianism of the period: (i) the inadequacy of classical empiricism
to account for the nature of knowledge and reality; (ii) the nature of
judgment as a unifying act of consciousness; (iii) the logical and meta-
physical status of relations. What is important to note, however, is that
philosophical disputes on these issues were not the exclusive territory
of neo-Hegelianism. They also appear substantively in the developing
views of the empirically-minded philosopher/psychologists on the
continent – and at Cambridge.
T.H. Green’s criticism of classical empiricism was the cornerstone
of British neo-Hegelianism.30 Green’s views, formulated in reaction to
the prevailing characterisation of the origins of knowledge in classical
empiricism, were mainly Kantian in spirit: that human knowledge,
constructed out of even the simplest experiential elements, presupposes
non-experiential and non-passive elements (‘formal conceptions’). For
Green, experience is formulated as conscious experience, but not a pas-
sive reception of ideas. The key issue is the unity that consciousness
imposes on its objects – the mind takes the disparate elements of experi-
ence and fashions them into a whole that is known or grasped. This by
itself, however, will not imply Idealism, which enters the arena by way
of Bradley’s arguments concerning the nature of relations.
Bradley’s main works in the period of his ascendancy were The
Principles of Logic (1883) and Appearance and Reality (1893). Notably,
however, Moore mostly credits Bradley’s metaphysics in the preface to
his 1897 dissertation as having had the effect of preventing him from
sympathising wholly with Caird’s interpretation of Kant.31 So I would
claim that that the dissertation shows that the role that Bradleianism
plays in Moore’s evolving metaphysics is to blunt the force of the
subjectivist Idealism that featured in interpretations of Kant from
British (Idealist) Kant scholars like Caird. Bradley’s Absolute – which
is independent of our own mental states and that to which they are
directed – offered to Moore a way out of the subjective psychologism
that he progressively began to argue infected Kant’s metaphysics, his
epistemology, and, more gravely, his ethics – but not for long.
190 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

Bradley’s Absolutism begins with an argument against relations,

mounted to avoid assuming them as irreducibly subjective. Bradley’s
metaphysics requires that Reality, though a form of consciousness, is
not an individual subjective or psychological finite state. His main
argument against relations is that they involve a regress: the unified
character of a relation requires explanation by way of a second order
relation, one that relates the relation to its relata, which will in turn
need explanation by way of another relation, and so on. Instead,
Bradley argues that our experiences are continuous with experiences
that we do not have; which offers one way of understanding his view
of relations, such as they are, as internal – a relation between a and b
is reducible to properties held by a or b, or an aspect or attribute of a
unified whole.32
Bradley derives his metaphysics from his logic, conceived more or less
as a method of understanding reality. Logic, for Bradley, like Green – and
Kant – meant ‘unifying’ or ‘synthesising’. We have no cognitive or
experiential access to anything save through our grasp of it; an act of
mind. Logic takes as its object everything that can be grasped or known,
and everything that can be grasped or known is an object of a state of
mind; so logic is the study of states of mind (a recognisable vein of the
psychologism in logic then prevalent; felled by Frege and Russell). That
it does not follow from this that objects of mind need necessarily be
themselves mental entities is something Bradley of course rejects. For
Bradley, the role of mind in understanding and knowledge is a tendency
toward the Absolute, a transcendent, unifying, conscious entity; and
logical principles are the principles of that tendency toward unification
in or with the Absolute.
For Bradley there was only one object, of thought and of reality – the
Absolute. But this generates problems of the logical form of what seem
like assertions about reality. In his Principles of Logic, Bradley provides
an analysis of the logical form of judgment. Traditional subject/predi-
cate categorical judgment purports to relate a predicate to the subject;
but (i) the Absolute is non-relational in its essential nature; and (ii) it is
not an idea, the kind of thing that can be a constituent of a judgment.
For Bradley to claim that all judgments are categorical in logical form
would be to make Reality into an idea (occupying the subject-place in
a judgment); but even the most universal idea is not universal enough
to be predicated of the Absolute. Worse, however, it would be to sur-
render to a conception of truth-value as separate from judgment.33
Categorical judgments assert that the predicate term does or does not
apply to the subject term, implying, at least on the face of it, that
 Consuelo Preti 191

truth-value is a relation of the constituents of judgments, independent

of the constituents themselves. Bradley’s well-known strategy to oppose
this is to argue that the notion of a relation between distinct entities is
incoherent.34 For Bradley, nothing can condition the Absolute, the only
legitimate subject of a judgment. So Bradley argues that the logical form
of any judgment is not (genuinely) categorical. At best, our judgments
are hypothetical proposals about reality under tacit, limiting, condi-
tions. Given the claim that the Absolute ‘transmutes’ the universal ideas
that constitute our judgments into a harmonious whole, our judgments
about it are always incomplete. And this view supports Bradley’s main
metaphysical contentions that the only relations there are are ‘internal’;
and that the Absolute is independent of our subjective states of con-
sciousness, even if it is a form of consciousness itself.
Bradley’s contemporary, Bosanquet, does not seem to have played
a significant role in the development of Moore’s philosophical views;
though he seems to have played a not insignificant role in the develop-
ment of Moore’s career as a philosopher. His comments as examiner to
Moore’s 1898 dissertation were hostile.35 But Bosanquet did agree to
have Moore teach his first set of lectures at the London School of Ethics
in 1898, stressing in a letter inviting Moore to lunch that his opposition
to Moore’s position in the 1898 dissertation was purely philosophical.36
Yet we know that Moore came to have reason to believe that Bosanquet
was instrumental in his failure to secure a research fellowship in 1904.37
It is possible that Bosanquet may have had a glimpse of the writing on
the wall when he read Moore’s dissertation and fought his corner as
best he could. After all, there were, as Bosanquet was well aware, other
philosophical influences very strongly at work in nineteenth-century
British philosophy.

4 The Mental Sciences and the Moral Sciences in the

Late Nineteenth Century

As it happens, neo-Hegelianism was not the monolithic presence at

Cambridge that uncritical surveys of the period may have made it
seem.38 Though McTaggart was a steadfast neo-Hegelian, his star, at the
turn of the century, was only just rising. The Cambridge moral sciences
curriculum included lectures by Sidgwick on ethics and by Stout on
the history of philosophy. Ward took charge, in 1896, of Moore’s early
incursions into philosophy, setting him assignments out of Lotze to
read and to discuss every week.39 None of these philosophers could be
characterised as outright Absolute Idealists.40 Other intellectual forces
192 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

at work on the young Moore, therefore, can explain why his initial
attraction to a form of neo-Hegelianism did not entirely stick.
Something to underscore in the account of Moore’s intellectual
development – and which may have been largely obscured in the
historical record, perhaps because his early work remained unpublished
for so long41 – is that (even) Moore’s early views were driven by robustly
realist intuitions about the nature of ethics. We can therefore argue that
his intellectual development at this period can be seen as a path toward
the discovery, formulation, and application of a metaphysics that would
help to support those intuitions. Moore was ready and willing enough
to adopt aspects of the views dominant in his orbit at Cambridge – so
long as he thought these would contribute substantively to his steadily
sharpening convictions. Bradleian Absolutism appears to have played a
brief role in providing a metaphysical foundation for an early version of
Moore’s ethical objectivism, by providing a non-subjective formulation
of the Absolute as an object of thought. But it failed to live up to its
promise, and was implacably discarded, as there were other influences
that helped to give form to Moore’s developing intuitions. An account
of why and how Moore took the nature of judgment to be so metaphysi-
cally central at this time is thus only partly explained by his grappling
with Kantian/Bradleian accounts of judgment on Idealist terms.42
In fact, a major line of influence was that coming from the quickly
evolving shift in views about the nature of judgment in the discipline
then known as mental science. Moore’s 1942 acknowledgment to his
teachers at Cambridge cites, of course, the influence of McTaggart and
Russell, but also that of Stout, whose role in Moore’s intellectual devel-
opment has been somewhat obscured. Stout, though all but unread
now, was a figure of some intellectual authority both at Cambridge
and in British philosophy at this period, not least as editor of Mind,
a position he held from 1892 (just before Moore arrived at Cambridge)
to 1920.43
A key influential text was Stout’s two-volume Analytic Psychology
(AP)44 in which Stout delineates what he calls ‘The Scope and Method
of Psychology’ (1896: I, 1–37). Psychology, as Stout formulates it,
‘investigates the history of individual consciousness, and this coin-
cides with the history of the process through which the world comes
to be presented in consciousness’ (7). By ‘consciousness’ Stout, like
others, meant to include ‘every possible kind of experience’ (19),
nevertheless distinguishing a variety of states and processes within
consciousness along the same lines as contemporary cognitive scientists
do, including chapters on apperception, attention, belief, comparison
 Consuelo Preti 193

and conception, imagination, pleasure, and pain. Stout is sometimes

held to have espoused an undiluted Brentaniansm in AP, but it is worth
noting that he does not rely merely on Brentano to supply the criteria
for the study of consciousness that he takes to be central in psychology.
Stout cites various figures as influences: primarily Ward and Herbart,
as well as Hodgson (a defender of the physiological process for psycho-
logy); and Kant, Bain, Sully, and Bradley (every one of whom, he claims,
mainly had it all wrong).
We can thus make the case that an important element in the influ-
ence on Moore was the evolving mental science literature on the nature
of consciousness, introduced by Stout (and others) as a part of the devel-
oping criticism of associationism (the ‘relations of ideas’ propounded
by the classical empiricists). The key features in the literature that Stout
takes as central concerning the nature of consciousness center on the
nature and structure of the object of mental states like judgment and
perception. Disputes on the nature of the object of judgment came
in for a variety of treatments, as theorists struggled to formulate an
account of what today we would call the representational properties of
propositional attitude and perceptual content in a scientifically repu-
table way. Brentano, according to Stout, had proposed that the object
of judgment is a form of representation (an ‘intentional inexistence’),
a formulation that all the same appeared, at least to Stout, to render
the object of judgment (still too) psychological in nature.45 Stout (and
others) modified this view46 by giving a complex analysis of judgment,
on grounds that (i) the object may have properties that the content of
my judgment about it will not have and (ii) my judgment always has
content (is about something), even if what it is about does not exist.47
Judgment, as Stout argues (1896: I, 52), is a tripartite relation between
the act, its content, and its object, not to be accounted for on the
Idealist model of synthesis or unifying act.48 But Moore, significantly,
does not take this tripartite distinction over in 1898. Instead, he reduces
Stout’s tripartite analysis of judgment down to a simple act/object dis-
tinction, but one that entirely defangs the role of the act of judgment.49
Moore’s formulation of the nature of judgment thus evolves into one
whose basis is stronger than merely anti-psychologistic, in that it must
support an objectivist account of the nature of ethical judgment. This
is the logical realism of the nature of judgment and its constituents that
we see in ‘The Nature of Judgment’.
What Stout’s work clearly shows is that a formulation of the nature
of judgment, directly opposed to the Idealist formulation of judgment
as an act of ‘unity’ or ‘synthesis’, had taken root in the mental science
194 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

literature of the day as an especially useful way for descriptive psycholo-

gists to highlight and distinguish their accounts of the nature of mind
and consciousness from those of the Idealists.50 The decisive moment
in Moore’s work comes in the 1898 dissertation, in the material from
Chapters I and II that was used to compose ‘The Nature of Judgment’.
Moore’s criticism of Bradley on the nature of judgment introduces his
own substantive account of judgment as an extra-mental entity; even
the word ‘judgment’ itself is now jettisoned as connoting a deplorable
mentalism. The metaphysical nature of judgment is accounted for
entirely by way of the object of judgment. This is a proposition,
a mind-and-language independent complex of constituents Moore calls
‘concepts’, which bear necessary relations to one another, and which
themselves constitute reality (‘Nothing is but concepts’). The evidence
suggests that Moore adopted the formulation of objects of judgment in
terms of ‘propositions’ from Stout; further, the evidence suggests that
the influence of Bradley on Moore was as likely to have been distilled by
way of Stout just as much as by McTaggart or Russell.51 Thus, although
the formulation of an object of thought as a ‘proposition’ was not with-
out precedent in the mathematical and logical literature of the period,
what is clear is that Moore did not get the formulation from where we
might have expected him to – namely from Russell.
On reflection, however, this may not be so surprising. On June 3, 1898,
in a letter to Couturat, Russell writes that he is ‘preparing a work of which
this question [“Wie ist reine Mathematik moglich?”52] could be the title,
and the results will be, I think, purely Kantian’. The work, as we noted
above, was An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning. In what survives of a
manuscript of AMR, we have the evidence Russell is targeting with more
clarity the importance of the nature of relations for mathematics through
a detailed analysis of types of mathematical judgment; but he does not
adopt the expression ‘proposition’ in his analysis. At this (pre-Peano)
period Russell had still not entirely shed his Tiergartian attachment to
neo-Hegelian formulations of the nature of reasoning. An Analysis of
Mathematical Reasoning was Russell’s last attempt to (among other things)
formulate an account of the nature of mathematical judgments and of
foundational concepts of mathematics consistent with a framework that
demanded that all relations be internal, and that the nature of judgment
is to bring synthesis or unity (identity) to diversity.53 This was precisely
the conception of judgment that Moore was about to reject.
Moore’s resolve on the metaphysical basis of ethics and the con-
comitant logico-realist nature of judgment solidified in the period
between their talk on June 28, 1898 and August (when he finished the
 Consuelo Preti 195

dissertation); but Russell was not entirely aware of the details. It wasn’t
until the dissertation was finished and delivered that Moore wrote to
Russell and summarised the main new points:54

…My chief discovery, which shocked me a good deal when I made

it, is expressed in the form that an existent is a proposition. I see
now that I might have put this more mildly. Of course by an exist-
ent must be understood an existent existent – not what exists, but
that ⫹ its existence. I carefully state that a proposition is not to be
understood as any thought or words, but the concepts ⫹ their rela-
tion of which we think. It is only propositions in this sense, which
can be true, and from which inference can be made. Truth therefore
does not depend on any relation between ideas and reality, nor even
between concepts and reality, but is an inherent property of the
whole formed by certain concepts <that> stand in a specific rela-
tion to the concept of existence; and I see no way of distinguishing
such from what are commonly called ‘existents’, i.e. what exists ⫹
its existence. This explains how it should commonly be thought
that a proposition can be inferred from an existent. Existents are in
reality only one kind of proposition. The ultimate elements of eve-
rything that is are concepts, and a part of these, when compounded
in a special way, form the existent world. With regard to the special
method of composition I said nothing. There would need, I think,
to be several kinds of ultimate relation between concepts – each, of
course, necessary.

In reply,55 Russell wrote ‘I had been anxious to know what you felt
about your dissertation when it finally went in…I shall certainly attend
the [Dec. 9] lecture’, and it is clear that he has not seen the final draft of
the dissertation.56 But – characteristically – Russell swiftly latches onto
a key point: ‘I agree most emphatically with what you say about the
several kinds of necessary relations among concepts, and I think their
discovery is the true business of Logic (or Meta[physics] if you like).’57
This remark, I would argue, captures the revolutionary essence of the
effect that Moore’s doctrines had on Russell. In that letter, Russell goes
on to describe in detail the work he is engaged on in AMR:58

I am really discussing all relations of a certain type. If a relation

be indicated by ‘傽’ and A and B be two terms having this relation,
symmetrical relations are defined by these 2 axioms:
(1) if A 傽 B, B 傽 A
196 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

(2) If A 傽 B, and B 傽 C, then A 傽 C. The type is equality, or identity

of content. Unsymmetical relations do not satisfy one or other of
these necessarily, and never satisfy the deduction from them, A 傽 A.
The first type does not always satisfy case (2); such as the diversity of
content. Math[ematical] relations, however, normally satisfy case 2
but not case 1. Such are whole and part, greater and less, before and
after, cause and effect…

The problem taking shape for Russell is that some types of relations
were resisting analysis under the permitted Bradleian formulation of
‘identity-in-diversity’. Russell’s response in 1910 to a request from Philip
Jourdain for a summary of the development of his early views provides
more detail:59

…I first read Cantor’s work early in 1896; I was not then convinced
that it was valid. I then worked for some time on the Principles of
Dynamics…Gradually I found that most of what is philosophically
important in the principles of dynamics belongs to problems in
logic and arithmetic. This opinion was encouraged by my adop-
tion of Moore’s views in philosophy…Until I got hold of Peano, it
had never struck me that Symbolic Logic would be any use for the
principles of mathematics, because I knew the Boolian [sic] stuff and
found it useless…I had already discovered that relations with assigned
formal properties (transitiveness, etc) are the essential thing in mathe-
matics, and Moore’s philosophy led me to make relations explicit,
instead of using only ␧ and ⊂. This hangs together with my attack
on subject-predicate logic in my book on Leibniz… Peano gave just
what I wanted.

It must be said that it is not obvious how what Russell calls his ‘adoption
of Moore’s views in philosophy’ could have encouraged his view that
‘what is important in the principles of dynamics belongs to problems in
logic and arithmetic’. The answer turns, of course, on Moore’s formula-
tion of the relations of concepts in ‘The Nature of Judgment’. While
Russell was working on dynamics, he was at the same time investigating
the foundations of pure mathematics,60 and became increasingly aware
that the same contradictions were affecting in both areas of his work. The
contradictions that affected the account of number as continuous
quantity, for example, were just the same contradictions that affected
space – both continuous quantity, and space, must be both infinitely
divisible and yet homogenous.61 This makes it clearer how a careful
 Consuelo Preti 197

formulation of relations needed to be worked out, and how ‘Moore’s

philosophy led [Russell] to make relations explicit’. Moore’s metaphysics
of ‘necessary relations among concepts’ – his view that such necessary
relations were independent of mind – showed that there was no need
any longer to account for relations as a mental unity indistinguishable
from the relata themselves. Moore’s doctrines emphasised a rejection
of the Idealist conception of judgment as a unifying act, and Russell
swiftly adapted that rejection to the allied rejection of the conception
of relations as internal. By the time he delivers ‘The Classification of
Relations’ to the Moral Sciences Club on January 27, 189962 Russell,
characteristically, has the bit firmly between his teeth. In this paper,
Russell prefigures the logic of relations that emerges by 1900, under-
scoring ‘the very great degree of difference which exists between relations
of different kinds’. Here Russell argues, significantly, that ‘relations may
be between two or between more than two terms’ (1899: 138) and that
there are, as against Bradley’s view, transitive and asymmetrical rela-
tions, which are genuine relations, but ‘are not reducible to agreement
or disagreement in respect of predicates, i.e. to identity or diversity of
content’ (1899: 139). The rebellion was firmly on its way.63

5 Conclusion

I have argued that the logical realism that Moore defends for the nature
of judgment in 1898 can best be understood as the result of the con-
vergence of a variety of forces in his intellectual environment. We saw
above that a standard criticism in neo-Hegelian views was directed onto
the notion of ‘idea’ in classical empiricism; even if, in Bradley’s case, it
was to claim that the only associations were between universal ideas, not
individual subjective ideas. These criticisms, as I argued, are mirrored in
the psychological literature against associationism and on the nature of
consciousness. We also saw above that Bradleian Absolutism depended
on a form of logical holism concerning the nature of judgment: the
act of judgment is formulated as an act of synthesis or unity with its
objects. This concern about the nature of judgment is mirrored in the
psychological literature, as it grappled with making sense instead of a
substantive distinction between an act of judgment and the (putative
scientific objectivity of) its objects.
Thus we can say that Moore’s work at this period can be seen as dis-
tinctively combining this variety of influences. Moore’s early intellectual
achievement was to join together a number of common elements in the
seemingly metaphysically disparate views that surrounded him at this
198 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

period: (i) the anti-empiricism in Bradley and the anti-associationism

in the psychological literature on the nature of judgment; and (ii) the
anti-psychologism characteristic of Bradley’s Absolute and the anti-
psychologism in the work of the nineteenth-century psychologists
on the nature of the objects of judgment. And not only did Moore’s
logical realism help in large measure to spell the end of the dominance
of Hegelian Idealism in British philosophy, the shift in emphasis to
the mind-independent nature of propositions might have been even
more significant for the history of twentieth-century philosophy, for it
introduced, in embryonic form, the prevailing notion of propositional
content at the heart of contemporary philosophy of language, logic,
and mind.64 This emphasis on the early Moore as a (perhaps unwitting)
metaphysician of content is not, of course, meant to substitute for an
emphasis on the role of Moore’s work in the development of twentieth-
century ethics. But the story has needed more detail, as no one can
claim that the philosophical evolution from Moore’s dissertations to
‘The Nature of Judgment’ and subsequently to Principia Ethica is entirely
perspicuous.
Principia Ethica was published in early October 1903 and had an
immediate impact on Moore’s circle at Cambridge, which had by now
expanded to include Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, and Maynard
Keynes. Strachey wrote to Woolf to say (October 11, 1903):65

Have you read it? The last two chapters – glory alleluiah! And the
wreckage! That indeterminate heap of shattered rubbish among
which one spies the utterly mangled remains of Aristotle, Jesus,
Mr Bradley, Kant, Herbert Spencer, Sidgwick and McTaggart. Plato
seems to be the only person who comes out even tolerably well. Poor
Mill has simply gone.

It may seem an incongruity, particularly to contemporary analytic

philosophers, that Principia Ethica should have ignited Bloomsbury’s
imagination as it did.66 Bloomsberrian transports aside, however, what
Principia Ethica did indisputably ignite was twentieth-century analytic
philosophy, and, more specifically, twentieth-century ethical theory,
which is incomprehensible without reference to Moore. So the greater
irony, perhaps, is that Moore failed to secure a position at Cambridge
after its publication.67 When his Fellowship came to an end, Moore had
no academic position. During these years he published reviews and arti-
cles, delivered papers to the Aristotelian Society,68 and gave two sets of
lectures at Morley College in 1910–11.69 In 1911, when he was offered
 Consuelo Preti 199

a lectureship to teach either logic or psychology (after John Neville

Keynes gave up the post), Moore returned to Cambridge. For the next 28
years, until his retirement in 1939, Moore lectured first on Psychology,
and then on Metaphysics. He never taught Ethics.70
Leaving Cambridge in 1904 at what was then the height of his accom-
plishments did not have as much of a detrimental impact on Moore’s
career or his influence as might have been expected – even though,
once away from Cambridge, he ceased to have quite as much close
contact with the students and friends that surrounded him at Society
meetings, meetings of the Moral Sciences Club, and the like. We can
most likely put this down to the effect Moore was said to have on his
intimates.71 Upon his return – and in spite of the long shadows cast
both by Wittgenstein’s first appearance at Trinity, and Russell’s appar-
ently irksome presence72 – Moore settled in to establish the career that
has come to represent a cornerstone of analytic philosophy, in method
and style. This approach to philosophy dominated Cambridge until the
mid-century, and has come to govern twentieth-century philosophy, in
many guises, ever since.

Notes
1. I am grateful to Tom Baldwin, Kenneth Blackwell, Nick Griffin, and Gary
Ostertag for discussion. All references to Griffin 1993 are to his introduction
to the Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, (vol. 2, vii–xxxix). Moore’s papers
are archived in the Cambridge University Library Manuscripts Reading Room;
I cite them by their classmark prefixes (Add. 8830 and 8875). Moore’s disserta-
tion manuscripts are archived in the Trinity College Library, and published in
Baldwin and Preti 2011.
2. Moore 1899a.
3. Russell 1959a: 54. Russell considered this break with neo-Hegelianism as
uniquely abrupt in his philosophical development; a ‘revolution’ instead
of the more characteristic ‘evolution’ (1959a: 11). This may explain why he
credited Moore so fulsomely for it.
4. Especially since Moore’s two earlier published papers (1897; 1898) seem to
defend recognisably Idealist positions. ‘The Nature of Judgment’ was pieced
together from Moore’s 1898 Trinity College Prize Fellowship dissertation. The
surviving dissertation manuscript is missing pages from Chapters I and II,
which were used by Moore in the composition of (1899a). See Baldwin and
Preti 2011 for a reconstruction of the 1898 manuscript, substantiating the
connections between its extant portions and 1899 in its published form. See
also Baldwin 1990; Griffin 1991; Hylton 1990; Preti 2008.
5. During a walk in Berlin’s Tiergarten in 1895. See Griffin (1991: 204–7; 1993).
See also below, Section 5.
6. Papers published as 1–17 (144 pages of printed material) in CPBR vol. 2
(1993), part I (The Dialectic of the Sciences).
200 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

7. McTaggart was the conduit of Bradley’s ideas at Cambridge. Russell dedicated

EFG to McTaggart.
8. See Grattan-Guinness (1977: 132–3); Griffin, 1991; 1993.
9. And certainly Moore had not, by 1897, produced anything like the amount
of work that Russell already had.
10. The other symposiast was Shadworth Hodgson (1832–1912). Though not an
outright Idealist, he nevertheless espouses a subjectivism about Time in this
symposium.
11. Add. 8875 12/1/11. I believe the two papers are about a month apart (the
Aristotelian Society meeting will have been held in late 1896).
12. Add. 8330 2/5/4 ( Jan. 18, 1897).
13. See Baldwin and Preti 2011 for details. See also Preti 2008.
14. Moore to his parents (June 30, 1897 (Add. 8330 2/1/71)).
15. ‘Why do We Regard Time, But not Space, as Necessarily a Plenum?’ (CPBR, vol. 2
(1993), 91–7). Russell wrote to Alys during its composition, ‘The answer is
simple, and applies to many other questions also. It is: because we are fools.’
Russell goes on to claim that ‘…empty space is not only possible, but neces-
sary, while empty time becomes unmeaning’. Griffin speculates that the paper
was written just for the purpose of discussion with Moore (1992; 1993: 91–7).
16. Russell had also by 1897 begun to join issues in dynamics with issues in
the foundations of mathematics. Griffin 1991: 198–207; 1993. See below,
Section 5.
17. Moore described it to his parents as follows: ‘What I have written is almost
entirely taken up with Free Will, and hardly reaches the Ethics proper.
I hardly expect to succeed; I should not be surprised at the very worst verdict
on my work. Only, if it is thought well, of which, for all I can tell, it may’
(August 26, 1897).
18. That is, Moore denies that Pure Practical Reason is coherent. See Baldwin and
Preti 2011.
19. The examiners’ comments are published in Baldwin and Preti 2011.
20. See Baldwin and Preti 2011 for the details of composition.
21. Even Moore was prepared to concede that this paper ‘probably had some
good in it’ (1942: 21).
22. This material survives (Add. 8875 10/3/3). Copies of Russell’s notes are at
McMaster (RA3 Rec. Acq. 385, fos. 98–121); originals are with the Morrell
papers archived at the University of Texas at Austin.
23. The paper was given by Russell, but is lost (Griffin 1992: 177–8).
24. Moore (Add. 8330 1/1/1).
25. The turning-point, that is, for Russell. As we will see, Moore does not seem
to have been caught under the Bradleian spell quite as much as Russell was.
This period also marks a turning-point in Moore’s relations with Russell. See
Preti 2008–9.
26. CPBR, vol. 2, Part II (1993), 155–242. AMR represents the transition in
Russell’s thinking from the neo-Hegelianism of the Tiergarten Programme.
It was written and abandoned in a matter of months.
27. See Griffin 1991; 1993.
28. Russell particularly refers to Moore’s review of EFG, where he tells Couturat
that he agrees with nearly all Moore’s criticisms, ‘which are rather severe’.
Griffin 1992: 189.
 Consuelo Preti 201

29. See Baldwin 1990; Griffin 1991; and Hylton 1990.

30. See Hylton 1990 for extensive detail.
31. Perhaps impolitic, given that Caird was one of the examiners for the 1897
dissertation.
32. And in any case, relations belong to appearance, not reality.
33. And further subject to the regress argument of its own: the truth-value of a
judgment would have to be thus conceived as a relation of the subject and
predicate. But what makes it a relation? We need another relation to explain
the relation that truth-value has to its relata. And so on.
34. It is this Bradleian analysis of judgment that had begun to stymie Russell’s
thinking circa 1897. The only permissible Bradleian account of relations –
‘identity-in-difference’ – began to prove inadequate to support Russell’s
increasingly complex analysis of mathematical judgment. See below,
Section 5.
35. Baldwin and Preti 2011.
36. (October 30, 1898; Add. 8330 8B/16/1). Probably Bosanquet’s co-founder,
Sidgwick, put Moore up for the job.
37. See n. 66. Bosanquet also reviewed Principia Ethica for Mind (1904), Vol. 13,
254–61; his review there does not differ appreciably in substance from his
examiner’s comment.
38. An important exception is Passmore 1957.
39. Most of these survive (Add. 8875 11/2/8–14).
40. In spite of Russell’s characterisations. See Griffin 1991; Preti 2008.
41. And probably because he was so caustically dismissive of it (1942: 21). Moore
never reprinted his early papers (they were first reprinted in 1986, nearly
forty years after his death); his son Timothy, as executor, refused for years to
allow publication of material like the dissertations.
42. See Preti 2008. Van der Schaar 1991; 1996 confirms the line of thought.
43. His successor as editor of Mind, of course, was Moore. Stout was not a
member of the Apostles Society, but he took a mentoring interest in the
young Moore (see Preti 2008).
44. Stout 1896. Moore does not refer to Stout directly in his dissertations, but,
as Passmore 1957 notes about Lotze, credit for ideas in the late nineteenth
century was very different than it is today. However, see Preti 2008 for the
archival evidence that Moore was familiar with Stout’s work at this period.
See also Van der Schaar 1991; 1996.
45. For all that Brentano is hailed today as having bequeathed the contemporary
account of representational content as intentional, Brentano himself would
not have recognised the contemporary formulation as his own.
46. Stout 1896. Van der Schaar 1991; 1996 argues that Brentano’s student
Twardowski was more of an influence than Brentano on Stout.
47. ‘We may, I think, confidently affirm that the object of thought is never a
content of our finite consciousness. If the object exists at all in the sense in
which the thinker refers to it, i.e. means or intends it, it exists independently
of this consciousness…If an object is to be identified with the special modi-
fication of consciousness whereby we think it, we could never think of what
does not actually exist…’ Stout 1896 I: 40.
48. Note that the problem of the unity of the proposition appears to be fore-
shadowed in the literature at this time with respect to the role (if any) of the
202 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

unifying act of mind upon its objects. Although Moore and Russell’s early
theories of judgment rejected the Idealist conception of the unifying act of
mind, the problem of unity reasserted itself at the level of the proposition
(Russell 1903, sec. 51–5) and both Russell and Moore struggled to come to
grips with it (Moore 1953). See Hylton 1984; 1990; Griffin 1985; 1991; Van
der Schaar 1991.
49. There is precedent for this kind of move from Moore, which may explain
why Russell later claimed (1959b) that Moore’s early philosophy had an
‘intellectual passion’ that was missing from his later work (See above, where
Moore describes it to MacCarthy as ‘perfectly staggering’; and below, where
he tells Russell he was ‘shocked’ by the formulation). His 1897 and 1898 dis-
sertations show Moore boldly dismissing Kant’s transcendental arguments as
obviously and unacceptably mentalist (and worse); he does not, that is, read
Kant charitably. See Baldwin and Preti 2011; See Preti 2008.
50. Stout himself refers to Johnson, who claimed that ‘A proposition is simply
the expression of a truth or a falsity.’ Johnson, like Bolzano, argued that the
truth-and-inference-bearing character of propositions was entirely indepen-
dent of the act of apprehending their truth or their inferential relations. Van
der Schaar 1991: 16 identifies Herbart (as early as 1808) as defending a dis-
tinction between act of judgment and object to underscore the distinction
between logic and psychology. Stout himself published a two-part analysis
of Herbart’s psychology in Mind (Stout 1888).
51. Stout, for example, distinguishes acts of mind like ‘belief’ from ‘mere pre-
sentations’ in AP as a distinction between understanding a proposition and
assenting to a proposition (1896 I: 110). Stout discusses Bradley in detail
on ‘the concept of mental activity’ in AP Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter 1 (1896:
I, 165–77); also in his 1901 and 1902, collected in Stout 1930. See Van der
Schaar 1991.
52. ‘How is pure mathematics possible?’, in Griffin 1992.
53. See Griffin 1991; 1993. Russell still had not conceived of logical form as other
than subject-predicate at this juncture – that takes another few months, and
emerges as he prepares his lectures on Leibniz for Lent term, 1899.
54. Moore to Russell, September 11, 1898 (McMaster Archives 710.052981).
Although ‘The Nature of Judgment’ appeared in the April, 1899 volume of
Mind, Moore delivered it at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club in October,
1898; and again (as he tells Russell here) at an Aristotelian Society meeting
on December 9, 1898 (these occasions will have provided the motivation to
assemble the paper from parts of the 1898 dissertation). Russell was in Italy
in October; we do not know if he made good on his promise to attend the
December 9 lecture.
55. Russell to Moore, September 13, 1898 (Add. 8330 8R/33/8).
56. Russell didn’t read it until November (Russell to Moore (December 1, 1898)),
Add. 8330 8R/33/10.
57. Add. 8330 8R/33/8. On December 1, 1898 Russell wrote to Moore that he has
read the dissertation, and that ‘when I see you, I should like to discuss some
difficulties which occur in working out your theory of Logic’ (Add. 8330
8R/33/10).
58. Moore had said that he hadn’t been able to look at the work yet in the
previous letter.
 Consuelo Preti 203

59. Grattan-Guinness 1977: 132–3.

60. Griffin 1993.
61. As we noted above, Russell was thinking about the concept of number even
in 1897. He wrote to Alys on April 6, 1897 to tell her he delivered a paper to
the Aristotelian Society the day before called ‘On the Relations of Number
and Quantity’:

most people seemed to like it, though no one agreed with it. Moore, however,
despised it. I heard…that he was going to pulverize me, but when I asked him,
he said I was so muddled that it was impossible to show I was wrong…We had
a long argument at the Davies’ afterwards, in which he completely vanquished
me as usual, but I couldn’t find out how he proved his own view…

We must regret that Russell does not tell us what Moore’s view was, especially
as Russell claims Moore vanquished his own argument ‘as usual’.

62. If Russell did attend the Aristotelian Society meeting on December 9, 1898,
where Moore read ‘The Nature of Judgment’, then it was on that occasion that
he heard Moore’s doctrines formally presented for the first time. Typically,
Russell had digested them, advanced his own thinking, and prepared a detailed
paper setting out his views in that direction, only a few weeks later.
63. In spite of the paradox, we should probably say.
64. This may make it clear why Ryle called ‘The Nature of Judgment’ ‘the De
Interpretatione’ of twentieth-century philosophy (cf. Ryle 1970).
65. Levy 2005: 19. The letter, however, opens with a blunt ‘Christ! I have just
written off a letter to the Yen [their nickname for Moore]. It had to be done...
Nominally, of course, about his book. I hope I have managed it all right, the
difficulty is of course supreme. If it doesn’t come off the doom is too fright-
ful’ and ends with ‘I don’t know whether I shan’t burn my letter to the Yen.’
Strachey didn’t burn it (Add. 8330 8S/44/1).
66. Russell’s astringent later comments seem correct (1959b): ‘Moore’s ethical
doctrines, were taken up and I think considerably distorted by his immediate
successors at Cambridge…they noticed only what he said about intrinsic
excellence, and ignored altogether the more utilitarian aspects of his doc-
trine. They seem also not to have noticed a certain moralistic fierceness
which intrudes surprisingly in some passages in Principia Ethica, though not
in his later work’.
67. A diary entry dated February 27, 1914 reads: ‘Feel depressed. Fletcher tells
me that why the older members of Council voted against my Research
Fellowship [added in margin ‘1904’] was because of unfavorable reports from
English philosophers (Bosanquet)’ (Add. 8330 1/3/4).
68. See Moore 1942. One of his most well-known papers, ‘The Refutation of
Idealism’, was also published in 1903. And although he spent a lot of time
writing and revising a review of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics (Add. 8875
15/2), it was never published.
69. Moore 1953.
70. Moore’s lecture notes survive. Moore published Ethics in 1912 for the Home
University Library, which he claimed to have liked ‘better than Principia
Ethica’ (1942: 27). But this work has had nowhere near the impact of PE.
204 The Origin and Influence of G.E. Moore’s ‘The Nature of Judgment’

71. Even Strachey professed himself unequal to capturing it: ‘it’s quite impossible
to describe anything about him in a letter – and probably out of it’; though
he was warmly affectionate to Moore directly: ‘Dear Moore! I hope and
pray you realize how much you mean to us’ (Levy 2005: 17). Russell, whose
enthusiasm for Moore certainly waned after Moore returned to Cambridge in
1911, nevertheless maintained a singular (though not uncritical) loyalty to
him, and consistently underscored Moore’s great charm. Even Wittgenstein
had a deep and lasting fondness for Moore, in spite of the quarrel that led to
their estrangement in 1914.
72. Moore’s diaries for this period contain meticulous detail of who sat next to
whom at Hall; and of how often he ‘avoided Russell’ (Add. 8330 1/3/2–4).

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Q. Skinner, 1984. Philosophy in History. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
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Green, T.H. (1874) The Works of Thomas Hill Green. Ed. R. Nettleship. (London:
Longmans, Green and Co).
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—— (1991) Russell’s Idealist Apprenticeship. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
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—— (1993) Introduction, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 2 (Philosophical
Papers, 1896–9), vii–xxxix.
Hylton P. (1984) ‘The Nature of the Proposition and the Revolt against Idealism’,
in Rorty, R., J.B. Schneedwind, and Q. Skinner, 1984. Philosophy in History.
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—— (1990) Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. (Oxford:
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Levy. P. (1979) G.E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles. (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson).
—— (2005) The Letters of Lytton Strachey. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
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—— (1898) ‘Freedom’, Mind, n.s. 7, 179–204.
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—— (1899a) ‘The Nature of Judgment’, Mind, n.s. 8, 176–93.

—— (1899b) Review of Russell, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. Mind,
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—— (1903a) Principia Ethica. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
—— (1903b) ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, Mind, n.s. 12, 433–53.
—— (1912) Ethics. (London: Williams and Norgate).
—— (1942) ‘An Autobiography’, in Schilpp, P. The Philosophy of G.E. Moore.
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—— (1953) Some Main Problems of Philosophy. (London: George, Allen and
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10
The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute:
A New Perspective
Fraser MacBride
University of Cambridge

1 Introduction

In 1910 Russell turned to swim against the tide of European thought.

Bolzano, Meinong, Frege, Moore, Russell himself, they had all of them
conceived of judgment as a binary relation between a judging subject
and what is judged – whether a Satz an sich, an Objektiv, a Gedanke or a
proposition. To this way of thinking, Russell opposed his ‘multiple rela-
tion theory of judgment’. According to this theory, talk of propositions
is just an eliminable façon de parler: there is no more to a proposition
p than the judging of it, an act which consists in the obtaining of a
many-termed relation between the judging subject and, intuitively
speaking, the diverse constituents of p. By contrast, his pupil, Wittgenstein,
chose to strike out with the tide, insisting that there is no judging p
unless there is a proposition p to judge.
In their ensuing dispute, Wittgenstein criticised Russell’s multiple
relation theory on the grounds that unitary judgments cannot be
cognitively conjured from the parts of the propositions Russell left
dismembered. Once the unity of a proposition had been destroyed, its
erstwhile constituents laid out side by side on the mortuary slab, there
was nothing left to guide the judging subject in cognitively stitching
the pieces back together and holding them present before the mind in
a natural rather than monstrous configuration; there was nothing to
prevent, to use Wittgenstein’s example, the assembling and judging of
such a cognitive Frankenstein as ‘this table penholders the book’ (1913:
103). Wittgenstein took it to be a self-evident adequacy constraint on
a theory of judgment, that it should make judging nonsense, i.e. a
miscellaneous assemblage of constituents, impossible (1922: 5.5422).

206
 Fraser MacBride 207

So Wittgenstein’s charge was that Russell’s theory fell short of satisfying

this condition because what it says about the structure of the judgment
relation does nothing to preclude our judging nonsense.
Russell’s shelving of the Theory of Knowledge manuscript (in 1913)
and his subsequent abandonment of the multiple relation theory of
judgment (in 1919) have almost universally been attributed to his appre-
ciation of the overwhelming force of this charge of Wittgenstein’s. But,
I will argue, (i) Russell neither shelved his manuscript nor abandoned
the multiple relation theory just because of Wittgenstein’s criticism.
Moreover, (ii), so far from being overwhelmed, Russell swam more
strongly still against the tide: he developed a yet more radical version
of the multiple relation theory that obviated Wittgenstein’s criticism,
thereby bequeathing to us an intriguing conception of judgment that
continues to merit our attention.
What has obscured from view for so long the depth, the intellectual
resourcefulness of Russell’s thinking about judgment during this period?
The role of our own human sensibilities cannot be discounted. There is
an abiding temptation upon our part to interpret Russell’s philosophical
writings of this period through the prism of what we know about
his personal relationship with Wittgenstein, essentially as described
in his letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell – letters that comprise a living
will, appointing Wittgenstein as his intellectual heir. In one of these
letters, often quoted, written in 1915, Russell portrayed his dispute with
Wittgenstein about the nature of judgment thus: ‘His criticism, though
I don’t think you realised it at the time, was an event of first-rate import-
ance in my life, and affected everything I have done since. I saw he was
right, and I saw that I could not hope ever again to do fundamental
work in philosophy’ (Russell 1968: 281–2).
We should resist the temptation to think about Russell’s dispute with
Wittgenstein in the terms these letters dictate.1 They were written by
one human being to another for a particular purpose – in this letter to
excuse Russell’s resort to ‘casual philandery’ because of Wittgenstein’s
criticism and Ottoline being too ‘occupied’ with her doctor in Lausanne
to provide ‘consolation’. It should hardly be controversial that Russell’s
more impersonal statements thought out for a philosophical audience
ought to be taken as more revealing on an intellectual score. The fact
that Russell, and no doubt Wittgenstein too, inwardly chose to play
out certain roles in their personal relationship with one another does
not constrain – condemn – us to interpret their philosophical dispute
about judgment as an outward manifestation of their inner lives.
208 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

2 Trailer: Russell on Judgment and Relations 1903–19

If we are to move forward our understanding of Russell’s thinking

about the nature of judgment then we need to look right and left to
corresponding developments in his metaphysics. During the period
1903–19 Russell had not only experimented with different answers to
the question:

(1) Is judgment a binary relation between a mind and a proposition, or

a ‘multiple’ relation between a mind and, to speak with the vulgar,
the constituents of a proposition?

He interwove different answers to (1) with different answers to two

other questions about the fundamental nature of relations:

(2) Are relations to be distinguished by their having a ‘sense’ or a ‘direct-

ion’ whereby they travel from one thing they relate to another, or
are they ‘neutral’?
(3) More generally, are relations essentially predicative – ’incomplete’
as Frege described his Begriffe – or are they also capable of occurring
as logical subjects?

In The Principles of Mathematics (1903) Russell had answered (1) by

arguing that judgment is indeed a binary relation between minds and
propositions. At the same time, Russell had advanced the seemingly
ingenuous view, in answer to (2), that relations are endowed with direc-
tions: ‘it is a characteristic of a relation of two terms that it proceeds,
so to speak, from one to the other. That is what may be called the sense
of the relation, and is, as we shall find, the source of order and series’
(§94). This view of relations was destined to become a tenet of analytic
orthodoxy. Nevertheless, in his 1913 Theory of Knowledge manuscript
Russell proceeded to reject his earlier view, arguing instead for a differ-
ent answer to (2), viz. that relations are ‘neutral with regard to “sense”’
(88): ‘whatever a relation is, it must be symmetrical with respect to its
two ends. It must not be pictured as having a hook in front and an eye
behind, but as having a hook at each end, and as equally adapted for
travelling in either direction’ (86).
However, by 1913 Russell had also changed his mind about how best
to answer (1). He had become sceptical of the existence of propositions
conceived as self-standing unities. Russell had reasoned that since
there is no difference in metaphysical status between true and false
 Fraser MacBride 209

propositions and ‘it is repugnant to admit the reality of false propositions’

that this ‘forces us to seek a theory which shall regard true and false prop-
ositions as alike unreal, i.e. as incomplete symbols’ (109). So he could
no longer conceive of judgment as a binary relation that holds between
a psychological subject and one of them. So, instead, Russell proposed
that judgment be conceived as a multiple relation between minds and
the objects, properties and relations that he had previously thought to
constitute propositions. But, to Russell’s dismay, the theory that relations
are inherently lacking in direction proved to be incompatible with the
theory that judgment is a multiple relation: the former theory appeared
to demand what the latter denied – that talk of propositions be more than
an eliminable façon de parler. Shortly before abandoning the manuscript,
Russell was reluctantly drawn to reflect that the neutral theory of rela-
tions ‘seems to demand a mode of analysing molecular propositions
which requires the admission that they may contain false atomic propo-
sitions as constituents, and therefore to demand the admission of false
propositions in an objective sense’ (154).
It was a growing appreciation of this incompatibility, more than
any nascent grasp of the force of Wittgenstein’s criticism, that led to
the Theory of Knowledge, where the neutral theory of relations played
a prominent role, being shelved.2 Rather than abandon the multiple
relation theory of judgment – which he continued to maintain – Russell
chose to restore coherence to his system by giving a different answer
to (2), by abandoning the neutral theory of relations instead. He sub-
sequently reverted to the view that relations are inherently directional,
declaring in his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy: ‘the “sense”
of a relation goes from x to y… The fact that a relation has a “sense”
is fundamental, and is part of the reason why order is generated by
suitable relations’ (1919: 49).
In the Principles Russell had also argued, in answer to (3), that relations
are ‘concepts’ expressed by verbs, where concepts are distinguished by
their ‘curious two-fold use’ – their capacity to occur in some proposi-
tions as predicates and other propositions as logical subjects (§48). In an
Appendix to the Principles Russell accordingly set himself against Frege’s
doctrine that concepts ‘are essentially predicative’, concluding that ‘the
doctrine of concepts which cannot be made subjects seems untenable’
(§483). Russell’s continued commitment to the doctrine that concepts
have a ‘curious two-fold use’ is still evident in his Theory of Knowledge:
he continued to distinguish there between the predicative occurrence
of the preceding relation in the complex expressed by the sentence
‘A precedes B’ from its occurrence as a logical subject in the complex
210 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

expressed by the sentence ‘preceding is the converse of succeeding’.

Russell consequently defined a relation as ‘an entity which can occur in
a complex as “precedes” occurs in “A precedes B”’ (80).
What Wittgenstein’s criticism of the multiple relation theory revealed
to Russell was that the doctrine of the ‘curious two-fold use’ of con-
cepts was incompatible with the view – part and parcel of the multiple
relation theory – that our (apparent) commitment to propositions can
be paraphrased away. To restore coherence once more to his system,
Russell abandoned the doctrine of the ‘curious two-fold use’ of con-
cepts in order to hang onto the multiple relation theory of judgment.
This meant that by the time Russell came to deliver his Lectures on the
Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918) he had undertaken a complete
turnaround on concepts. His considered position, that provided his
latest answer to (3), was (implicitly) that Frege had been right all along
about concepts: ‘a predicate can never occur except as a predicate...
Exactly the same applies to relations... A relation can never occur except
as a relation, never as a subject’ (205–6). It is frequently maintained that
Russell had abandoned the multiple relation theory of judgment by the
time of his logical atomism lectures, or had at least been reduced to
despairing of it, making no attempt to solve its purported difficulties.3
But by adopting Frege’s view of concepts Russell thought that he had
essentially overcome Wittgenstein’s criticism.
The key development in Russell’s thinking at this point was the
recognition that the judgment relation itself – if judgment indeed be
multiple – requires to be bestowed with significant higher-level structure.
To judge that aRb can neither be to hold present before the mind a mis-
cellany of a, R and b, nor even a, R and b in some order; to judge aRb can
only be to judge concerning R that it holds of a and b. Russell’s idea was
to explain this by attributing to the judgment relation a higher level
argument position fit only for the occurrence of R – the sort of place
where only a relation can go – and (in this case) two other lower level
positions fit only for the occurrence of objects like a and b. Endowing
the judgment relation with this kind of structure makes it impossible to
judge frankenstein (nonsense) configurations of a, R and b – to judge per
impossibile concerning a that it holds of R and b. This is because R, as a
concept, cannot be placed ‘on a [lower] level with its terms as an object
term in the belief’; nor can a and b, as objects, be placed on the same
(higher) level with R (226, 258).4
It is a consequence of the multiple relation theory that the structure
of different judgment acts will vary depending upon the logical com-
plexity of what is judged. For example, by contrast to the judgment that
 Fraser MacBride 211

aRb, the judgment complex that Fa will be held together by a judgment

relation that has only one position earmarked for an object; whereas the
judgment complex that ∃xFx will be united by a relation also possessed
of a higher-level position earmarked for a property of properties
(a quantifier). Some commentators already consider this consequence
of Russell’s view – that judgment isn’t a univocal kind – as refutation
enough of his view. But Russell did not take it this way. Instead he
made a bold and far-sighted manoeuvre. Anticipating Wittgenstein’s
own later development, he abandoned the assumption that there is
such a thing as the logical form of judgment. Instead, Russell offered
an essentially schematic conception of propositional attitudes. Thus, for
example, ‘belief cannot be strictly be logically one on all different cases
but must be distinguished according to the nature of the proposition
that you believe’ (226). So, far from despairing, Russell was accordingly
emboldened in his lectures to continue to endorse, without being hide-
bound, the multiple relation theory of judgment:

you are not to regard a belief as a two-term relation between yourself

and a proposition, and you have to analyse up the proposition and
treat your belief differently. Therefore the belief does not really con-
tain a proposition as a constituent but only contains the constituents
of the proposition as constituents. (1918: 224)

To make the case compelling for this historical reconstruction of the

Russell–Wittgenstein dispute about judgment it needs to be established
that the dots described really can be joined up. But before tracing out the
connections between them let me offer a final consideration – one that
is almost invariably underweighted by recent commentators – in favour
of an interpretation that denies Wittgenstein the knock out blow.
A year later, in 1919, Russell did definitively renounce the multiple
relation theory of judgment; but not because of Wittgenstein’s criticism
that his development of this theory had failed to make it impossible
to judge nonsense. Russell’s official line was that he had given up the
multiple relation theory because he could no longer believe in the self
as a self-standing entity, and so could no longer believe that judgment
is a multiple relation holding between such an entity and the diverse
constituents of a belief complex: ‘The theory of belief which I formerly
advocated, namely, that it consisted in a multiple relation of the subject
to the objects constituting the “objective”... is rendered impossible by
the rejection of the subject’ (1919: 306–7). It is also noteworthy that
when Russell lists the ‘advantages’ of giving up the multiple relation
212 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

theory, they do not include avoiding Wittgenstein’s criticism: ‘The

advantages are those derived from the rehabilitation of the content,
making it possible to admit propositions as actual complex occurrences
and doing away with the difficulty of answering the question: what do
we believe when we believe falsely?’ (307). After struggling for almost
twenty years with the first of our questions, Russell ended up rejecting
(1) altogether (since if there are no selves then judgment cannot be a
binary relation between them and propositions either).
Why should we doubt Russell’s own description of his reasons for
renouncing the multiple relation theory, especially during a period
when Russell went to great pains to acknowledge the influence of
Wittgenstein upon the development of his thought?5 Would it not be
extraordinarily cavalier to reject the historical record out of hand, to
prescribe that whatever Russell wrote at the time Wittgenstein must
have been the prime mover in this debate? Evidently we ought to prefer
an interpretation of their dispute that makes some sense of the fact that
Wittgenstein’s criticism no longer seemed especially salient to Russell by
the time he abandoned the multiple relation theory of judgment.

3 Rewind: The Problems of False Propositions and

Converse Relations
Let’s rewind to 1903. In The Principles, Russell had conceived of judging
as an act whereby minds are related by a binary cognitive relation
to propositions that are themselves denizens of the external world.
Each proposition is a mind-independent complex that contains the
very entities indicated by the words that occur in the sentence used
to express that proposition (§47). Judgment thereby reaches right out
to reality; there are no intermediary ideas or senses or sense data to
potentially veil the world from view. Propositions are entities possessed
of that distinctive unity that enables them to bear truth-values. To explain
the difference between complexes that have this distinctive unity from
mere collections that lack it – collections that are just one thing after
another – Russell appealed to the power of ‘concepts’ (relations). For
Russell, ‘concepts’ are to be distinguished from ‘things’. Whilst things
(Socrates, Plato) are only capable of occurring as logical subjects in a
proposition, concepts are capable of occurring in two roles, not only as
logical subjects (difference) but also as relating (differs). It is by occurring
in the latter role that concepts bestow upon propositions the distinc-
tive unity that distinguishes truth-value bearing complexes (Socrates
differs from Plato) from mere collections (Socrates, Plato, difference). An
n-ary concept performs this unifying role in a proposition by ‘actually
 Fraser MacBride 213

relating’ the other n constituents of the proposition (difference actually

relates Socrates to Plato) (§48, 54).
Frege had already struggled with this particular leviathan, the prob-
lem of how to account for ‘the unity of the proposition’. It was essential
to Frege’s account of this unity that at least one of the constituents of
a proposition must not only occur predicatively, but be incapable of
occurring otherwise. Only so, Frege maintained, was such a constitu-
ent capable of serving as a unifying link.6 By contrast to Russell, Frege
offered his account of propositional unity at the level of sense rather
than reference. But it was also integral to Frege’s view that essentially
predicative (‘unsaturated’) senses picked out ‘concepts’ at the level of
reference: roughly speaking, features of the world that are only capa-
ble of being picked out predicatively (by grasping unsaturated senses).
Russell balked at admitting concepts like these – entities that occur
predicatively but cannot be logical subjects; he argued that Frege’s com-
mitment to them was ‘self-contradictory’ (§49). The details of Russell’s
text suggest a variety of slightly different arguments, all of which may
play in one way or another with the familiar ‘Concept horse paradox’,
but we can interpolate.
Suppose that ξ occurs predicatively in some proposition p. (Russell’s
own example concerns a proposition expressed using an adjectival
occurrence of a number word.) Now consider the following proposition
q that purports to identify ξ as one of Frege’s concepts:

(q) ξ occurs nowhere as a logical subject.

Since ξ occurs as the logical subject of this proposition, q must be false.

But since q must be false ξ must occur somewhere as a logical subject.
So ξ cannot be one of Frege’s concepts but – since it occurs predicatively
in p and as the logical subject of q – ξ must be capable of that ‘curious
two-fold use’ definitive of Russell’s own concepts. A related argument
appears in Appendix A to the Principles (‘The Logical and Arithmetical
Doctrines of Frege’). Russell assumes that it always legitimate to ask for
a specification of the reference of an expression (‘ξ’) (‘what is it that is
named by this name?’). If no specification can be given then there is no
reason to think that ‘ξ’ refers to anything. But if a specification can be
given this can only be achieved by expressing a proposition in which ξ
occurs as a logical subject (§483).
Whilst Russell’s 1903 account of the unity of propositions avoided
the perplexities of admitting concepts that cannot be picked out as logi-
cal subjects, it fell foul of another problem: it made a mystery of how
214 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

propositions could ever be false. Consider the following propositions,

(1) Cambridge is north of London, and (2) London is north of Cambridge.
Whereas (1) is true, (2) is false. According to Russell, it is the predicative
occurrence of the relation being north of in (1) and (2) that is responsible
for the constituents of these propositions being bound together into
truth-bearing unities – rather than being mere enumerations of their
constituents. In (1) the relation performs its binding role by actually
proceeding from Cambridge to London; whereas in (2) the relation binds
the terms of the proposition by actually proceeding from London to
Cambridge. But here’s the nub of the problem of ‘false propositions’: if
being north of actually relates London to Cambridge (in that order) then
London really is north of Cambridge. So (2), it appears, cannot be false
but must be true. Russell’s account of unity therefore made it mysterious
how a proposition could ever be unified enough to bear a truth value
without being so unified that it was true. Such concerns threw Russell
back upon the unsatisfactory position of having to treat truth and
falsity as unanalysable simple properties of propositions, properties whose
presence or absence fails to supervene in any way upon the character of
the propositions to which they adhere, or indeed upon the character
of anything else (§52).
There was a further problem – less familiar to us now but there exert-
ing its influence in the back room – that bedevilled Russell during this
early period: the commitment embodied in his metaphysics to an
apparent superfluity of converse relations and propositions unified by
them. Call this ‘the problem of converse relations’. The problem had
its roots in Russell’s acknowledgment of two fundamental facts about
relations.
First, the ‘fundamental logical fact that, given any relation R, there are
two propositions to be formed of these elements, the one relating a to b
(which I call aRb), the other (bRa) relating b to a’ (§218). By acknowl-
edging this fact Russell recognised the reality of a certain phenomenon
in the world, viz. order: that things being arranged one way is different
from things being arranged another way (aRb ≠ bRa). Russell proposed
to explain this fact by assigning to each relation the characteristic
of ‘sense’ or ‘direction’, where ‘sense’ is conceived as a ‘fundamen-
tal notion, which is not capable of definition’ but only elucidation.
Because a relation is possessed of a sense, it has, ‘so to speak’, a direction
of travel: it proceeds from one term it relates to another. Consequently,
Russell declares, ‘We may distinguish the term from which the relation
proceeds as the referent, and the term to which it proceeds as the rela-
tum’ (§94). The difference between a proposition in which a relation
 Fraser MacBride 215

holds between its relata in one way (aRb) and a proposition in which
it holds in a different way (bRa) is thus explained by Russell in terms
of the different directions in which the relation proceeds between
its terms. The phenomenon of order in the world thus emerges, if Russell’s
explanatory strategy works out, from relations having direction.
Second, Russell acknowledged ‘another fundamental logical fact’:
that R and its converse R* are distinct relations. Russell’s acknowledged
this second fact (R ≠ R*) because he perceived it to be a consequence
of the commitment to relations having sense or direction that he had
incurred in the course of explaining the first fact about relations (aRb ≠
bRa). According to the explanation of order Russell had given, a binary
(non-symmetric) relation R has one sense, whereby it proceeds from
a to b. This means that its converse, R*, may be defined as the relation
with the ‘opposite’ sense or direction, that proceeds from b to a. Russell
offered greater and less, before and after, implying and implied by as exam-
ples of mutually converse relations, pairs of relations forever destined to
circle around one another because of their opposite senses. Because he
deemed these relations to be distinct – their directions being different –
and because he assumed that a proposition can have only one relating
relation, Russell was also led to recognise as a further corollary of the
manner in which he had explained the emergence of order from the
senses of relations that the propositions whose terms are unified by
converse relations are distinct too (aRb ≠ bR*a).
However, Russell was troubled by the need to commit to converse
relations; he therefore wondered whether it was really necessary to
recognise the second of these facts about relations, in addition to the
first. He asked: are aRb and bR*a ‘really different propositions, or do
they only differ linguistically’? Russell’s intuition was that we are really
expressing the same proposition regardless of whether we employ the
statements ‘a is greater than b’ or ‘b is less than a’ to do so. He hankered
after a more sparse ontology that excluded mutually converse relations:
‘It may be held that there is only one relation R, and that all necessary
distinctions can be obtained from that between aRb and bRa. It may be
said owing to the exigencies of speech and writing, we are compelled
to mention either a or b first, and that this gives a seeming difference
between “a is greater than b” and “b is less than a”; but that, in reality,
these two propositions are identical’ (§219).
The problem of converse relations that bedevilled Russell was this:
that despite wishing to do without such relations, Russell could see no
credible way of acknowledging the first fact about relations (aRb ≠ bRa)
without appealing to the notion of sense that made acknowledging the
216 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

second fact appear inevitable (R ≠ R*). If the only way to distinguish aRb
from bRa was to bestow R with a sense then the conclusion appeared
inescapable that R must be distinct from R* because they have opposite
senses. So Russell could see no way of avoiding either the conclusion
that converses ‘are distinct relations’ or, consequently, that the
transition between aRb and bR*a must be ‘a genuine inference’, i.e. an
inference between distinct propositions (aRb ≠ bR*a). But the problem
of converse relations, like the problem of false propositions, had gotten
under Russell’s skin; lingering doubts about a commitment to an appar-
ent superfluity of converse relations remained with him.

4 Fast Forward: The Theory of Knowledge

Only two years later, in ‘On Denoting’, Russell made the break-through
that would subsequently embolden him to simultaneously solve the
problem of false propositions and the problem of converse relations.
What Russell discovered in 1905 was that definite descriptions are
‘incomplete symbols’: expressions that make a meaningful contribution
to the contexts in which they occur but which because they disappear
upon analysis need have nothing to correspond to them in the world.
However, it was not until 1913 that the idea occurred to Russell of
solving these problems together by conceiving both symbols for propo-
sitions and symbols for converse relations as incomplete.

4.1 The Multiple Relation Theory

Russell’s conception of propositional phrases as incomplete symbols
was made possible by his ingenious reversal of a conceptual polarity
that he and his predecessors had altogether taken for granted. Consider
the following equivalence:

[ J] S judges that aRb iff S ascribes R to a and b

Whereas the left-hand-side of [ J] describes a binary relation between a

mind and a proposition, the right-hand-side describes a ternary relation
(ascription) between a mind and the constituents of the proposition
described on the left-hand-side. Ascription is the relation, expressed
in the vernacular, that Russell described in the Theory of Knowledge as
the multiple relation of judgment. According to the early Russell, the
left-hand-side of [ J] enjoys explanatory priority over its right-hand-
side. This is because the left-hand-side perspicuously displays what the
right-hand-side obscures: the form of a judgment complex, a binary
 Fraser MacBride 217

relation between a mind and a proposition. To talk about S ascribing R

to a and b is just a high-faluting way of saying that S judges aRb. The
multiple relation theory of judgment arose from Russell’s turning this
way of thinking on its head. According to the later Russell, it is the
right-hand-side of [ J] that has priority, the left-hand-side that obscures
the true form of a judgment fact, a multiple relation between a mind
and the erstwhile constituents of a proposition. To talk about S judging
aRb is just a fancy, potentially misleading way of saying that S ascribes
R to a and b.7 Since the right-hand-side of [ J] does not describe the
proposition judged as an isolable constituent of S’s ascribing R to a
and b, establishing that the right-hand-side has priority would reveal
that the propositional phrase ‘aRb’ that appears on the left-hand-side
is an incomplete symbol. If it could indeed be established that the
right-hand-side enjoyed this kind of priority, Russell’s programmatic
conjecture was that employing equivalences like [ J] would provide
a mechanism for systematically paraphrasing away the ostensible
commitment to propositions generated by our judgment talk.
Russell’s argument for assigning priority to the right-hand-side of [ J]
was simply that assigning priority the other way around leads us straight
back to the problem of false propositions. If the left-hand-side has prior-
ity then judgment is a binary relation between minds and propositions.
Since a psychological subject S may falsely judge that aRb this means
that even false propositions must be conceived as self-standing unities
in order for them to be capable of standing at the terminus of the judg-
ment relation. But Russell, as we have seen, could make no sense of a
proposition’s being unified whilst remaining false. By contrast, if talk of
propositions is a mere façon de parler to be paraphrased away by analysing
the left-hand-side of an equivalence like [ J] in terms of its right, then
there simply are no propositions; so the problem of how to unify some
of them, the false ones, cannot even be raised.
Russell’s argument that propositional phrases are incomplete symbols
revealed an ambiguity in the notion of unity that had hitherto gone
unnoticed. Evidently there is a difference between complexes that are
truth-evaluable and mere collections or lists that aren’t; it is incumbent
upon us, it’s absolutely obligatory, to distinguish between them. The
early Russell had endeavoured to fulfill this obligation by making a
high-level theoretical identification: he identified the unity of truth-
evaluable complexes with the unity of propositions – where the latter
are conceived as self-standing denizens of reality. The problem of false
propositions and the subsequent recognition that propositional phrases
are incomplete symbols spoke against this identification. This meant
218 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

that Russell had to conceive of the unity of truth-evaluable complexes

differently.8 He did so by identifying the unity of truth-evaluable com-
plexes with the unity of judgment (ascription) acts; the unity of the
former is realised in the structure of the latter, so it is acts of judgment
rather than propositions that are properly deemed truth bearers.
The cornerstone of Russell’s thinking about unity during this period
was that the act of S’s ascribing R to a and b, and thereby cognitively
conjuring R before the mind as proceeding from a to b, has just enough
unity to make it truth-evaluable, but not so much as to make a mystery
of how false judgments are possible. The truth-evaluable complex that S
ascribes R to a and b differs from a mere collection or list because it is a
fact in its own right, one that consists in the ascription relation actually
relating the other constituents of the act together. But having this much
unity does not present an obstacle to an act of judgment being false.
This is because, in tandem with the introduction of the multiple rela-
tion theory, Russell had adopted a correspondence theory of truth. No
longer conceiving truth and falsity as simple unanalysable properties of
propositions, Russell now defined them in terms of a correspondence
relation between facts: the act of S’s ascribing R to a and b is true if there
is an independently constituted fact in which R really relates a to b; if
not, this act of judgment is false (1910: 15). Since ascription can actually
relate S to R, a and b even if no such corresponding complex exists, it is
possible to judge that aRb even if R doesn’t relate a to b.
Of course this by no means exhausts what needs to be said to account
for the capacity of judgment acts to realise the unity of truth-evaluable
complexes. This, especially, was still left out of the account: how is
it possible for the ascription relation to conjure R before the mind as
proceeding from a to b rather than from b to a? In other words, what
makes the difference between S judging aRb and judging bRa when it is
the right-hand-side of [ J] rather than the left-hand-side that is assigned
explanatory priority? By 1913 Russell had settled upon the general
view that it is a mind thinking about objects, properties and relations
through the prism of a logical form that enables an act of judgment to
embed the structure of a truth-evaluable unity; so ascription also needs
an argument position for a logical form (117–18).9 How this general
view was to be spelt out with respect to the special case of judgments
about non-symmetric relations – where judging aRb is different from
judging bRa – Russell was about to say when he realised that treating
propositional phrases as incomplete symbols was incompatible with the
most significant advance Russell had made in his Theory of Knowledge,
his solution, so long fermenting, to the problem of converse relations.
 Fraser MacBride 219

4.2 The Neutral Theory of Relations

The strength of Russell’s intuitions in favour of a sparse ontology of
relations had not diminished but grown since the Principles. In the
Principles, Russell had raised the question of whether non-symmetric
relations are distinct from their converses by asking ‘Are aRb and bR*a
really different propositions or do they differ only linguistically?’ (§219).
Because of the problem of false propositions, Russell had subsequently
abandoned propositions – conceived as self-standing unities – in favour
of an ontology of facts. Russell’s question about converse relations had
accordingly undergone a metamorphosis to become whether (e.g.) the
sentences ‘A is before B’ and ‘B is after A’ were made true by the same
or a different fact. Russell’s Theory of Knowledge answer was no longer
tentative but assured:

Looking away from everything psychological, and considering only

the external fact in virtue of which it is true to say that A is before B,
it seems plain that this fact consists of two events A and B in succes-
sion, and that whether we choose to describe it by saying ‘A is before
B’, or by saying ‘B is after A’ is a mere matter of language. (85)

Since, according to Russell, ‘A is before B’ and ‘B is after A’ pick out

one and the same fact, he concluded, implicitly appealing to the
assumption that a fact has only one relating relation, that such pairs as
‘before’ and ‘after’, ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ do not correspond to
distinct relations: ‘For any such pair of correlative terms, there is only
one relation, which is neutral as regards sense’ (88). In the particular
case of the pair ‘before’ and ‘after’ Russell lighted upon the expres-
sion ‘sequence’ as a name of the neutral relation that underpins their
application.
The conclusion that relations are neutral receives further support,
Russell claimed, when we reflect upon the possibility of restricted forms
of English that result from deleting either ‘after’ (E-), or ‘before’ (E=),
from our vocabulary. It is ‘obvious’ that both E- and E= are expressively
adequate for the purposes of stating the temporal succession of events:
‘If, for example, the word “before” alone existed, all facts of time-
sequence could be just as fully stated as they can by the help of the two
words’ (85).
In the Principles, Russell (recall) had fought shy of this conclusion
because he could see no credible way of acknowledging the first of the
fundamental facts about relations he recognised – the presence of order
in the world (aRb ≠ bRa) – without attributing direction to relations
220 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

and thereby acknowledging the second – that non-symmetric relations

are numerically distinct from their converses (R ≠ R*). So what Russell
needed to do – if he was to have the courage of his convictions and
substantiate his intuitions about relations – was to find a means of
explaining the first of these facts, viz. the reality of order, without
making appeal to the notion of direction that implicated the second.
In the Theory of Knowledge, Russell was absolutely clear about the theo-
retical obligation that fell upon him: ‘the difference which demands
elucidation is not that between “A is before B” and “B is after A” but
that between “A is before B” and “B is before A”... we must explain the
sense of a relation without assuming that a relation and its converse are
different entities’ (86–7).10
How then, from Russell’s 1913 point of view, was this latter, all impor-
tant, difference to be explained without appealing to the direction of a
relation? A vital piece of Russell’s answer: non-symmetric constructions,
must be construed – in the style of Davidson’s treatment of action
sentences – as containing a concealed place for a bound variable ranging
over complexes. Russell developed his fuller answer to this question via
two levels of analysis. At the first level Russell made appeal to ‘the
notion of position in a complex’ (88). At the second level Russell pro-
vided his own preferred account of the ontology of positions in terms
of relations that relate the constituents of a complex to the complex in
which they occur (135).
Russell began his analysis by drawing attention to our capacity to
recognise the recurrence of argument positions in complexes:

With respect to time-sequence, for example, two terms which have

the relation of sequence have recognizably two different positions,
in the way that makes us call one of them before and the other after.
Thus if, starting from a given sequence, we have recognised the two
positions, we can recognize them again in another case of sequence,
and say again that the term in one position is before while the term
in the other position is after. (88)

For example, if we compare the complex α (A is before B) with β (C is

before D), we can see straightaway that A and B occupy the same (respec-
tive) positions in α as C and D occupy in β. Appeal to these recurrent
features of complexes – in this case the before and after positions –
enables us to state wherein the difference consists between a relation,
in this case the neutral relation of sequence, applying one way rather
than another to its terms without appealing to the direction of a relation.
 Fraser MacBride 221

What distinguishes the complex α (A is before B) from the complex γ

(B is before A) has nothing to do with the fact that the relating relation
of these complexes runs from A to B in one case and from B to A in
the other. What distinguishes these complexes is the neutral fact that
whereas A occupies the earlier position and B the later position in α,
A and B have switched their roles with respect to γ: there B occupies the
earlier position whilst A occupies the later position.
This first level of analysis suggests that Russell intended to account
for the reality of order by adding positions to the ontological inventory
of complexes. But Russell did not avail himself of this suggestion; he
clearly did not think positions fit to be included in the ultimate furni-
ture of the universe; commitment to positions needed to be paraphrased
away too. Instead, this initial level of analysis operated for Russell as an
adequacy constraint on any account of order. Talk about positions, we
have seen, enables us to perspicuously describe the difference between
a non-symmetric relation obtaining one way rather than another. An
acceptable theory, Russell clearly thought, must find a foundation for
this way of talking in reality.
To satisfy this constraint Russell posited, at a second level of analy-
sis, further relations of the constituents to the complex in which they
occur to ‘constitute’ the positions to which he had appealed at the
first level of analysis (88). Russell argued for these posits by a process
of elimination. Russell began by noting that α and γ ‘contain the same
constituents’: A, B and the neutral relation of sequence. α and γ are
also ‘put together according to the same form’ (the form of a dyadic
relational complex ‘R(x, y)’). Therefore, the difference between these
complexes resides neither in their form nor their constituents. Russell
had already argued, as we have seen, that α and γ are not to be distin-
guished by the direction in which their relating relation applies to A and B.
Since the difference between α and γ is grounded neither in their form,
their constituents, nor the direction in which their relating relation
relates, Russell arrived at the important lemma that we must look out-
side α and γ to ground their difference. But if there is nothing inside
what else is there outside?
When we recognise the recurrence of argument positions amongst
the complexes α (A is before B) and β (C is before D) we implicitly reg-
ister the obtaining of two further relations: the relation of occupying
the before position that A bears to α and C bears to β; and the relation
of occupying the after position that B bears to α and D bears to β.
Intuitively speaking, A and B figure in these contrasting ‘positional’
relations to α because A and B occupy different positions in α. Russell’s
222 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

radical idea in 1913 was to reverse the direction of dependency

presupposed by this manner of speaking. According to Russell, it is
rather the case that A and B occupy different positions in α because
they figure in these contrasting positional relations to α; this is because
positions are themselves constituted by these relations. This means
that α and γ, even though they are inwardly indiscernible, are out-
wardly distinguished by the different positional relations that A and B
bear to them. Whereas A and B bear (respectively) the occupying
the before position and the occupying the after position to α, they
reverse the relations they bear with respect to γ. More generally, order,
the sought-after difference between aRb and bRa, is derived from
the different relations that the terms of a dual complex bear to the
complex: ‘sense is not in the relation alone, or in the complex alone,
but in the relations of the constituents to the complex which consti-
tute “position” in the complex’ (88).11
It is a consequence of this explanation of order that the familiar
sentences that we use to describe how things are (non-symmetrically)
arranged contain a concealed place for a bound variable ranging over
complexes. The sentences ‘A is before B’ and ‘B is before A’ do not
describe the world differently by virtue of describing complexes con-
figured in different ways from their constituents. This is because, as we
have seen, the neutral relation of sequence lacks a direction and so there
is no plurality of different ways that A, B and sequence can be config-
ured to make different complexes. Rather, these sentences describe the
world differently by virtue of describing the different positional rela-
tions that A and B bear to the complex composed of A, B and sequence.
In this sense, ‘the actual complex α is irrelevant’; what is relevant are the
different relations A and B bear to it (112). We would normally suppose
that ‘A is before B’ is an atomic sentence that consists of two names and
a two-place predicate of events. But Russell denied that this sentence
was atomic. His proposal was that this sentence has the molecular form,
where ‘#’ is a variable ranging over complexes: ‘there is a complex # such
that A occupies the before position in # and B occupies the after position
in #’. It is a further corollary of this proposal that ‘before’ and ‘after’
are incomplete symbols: ‘it follows that such words as before and after,
greater and less, and so on, are not the names of relations’ (88). This is
because Russell’s molecular analysis has the effect of paraphrasing them
away in favour of two-place predicates denoting positional relations
between events on the one hand and complexes on the other.
But isn’t Russell’s 1913 account open to the most obvious, telling
of objections? Russell set out to explain the difference between
 Fraser MacBride 223

a (non-symmetric) relation R applying one way rather than another

to its relata (aRb ≠ bRa). He purported to do so by treating ‘R’ as an
incomplete symbol that is replaced at a deeper level of analysis by predi-
cates expressing other (non-symmetric) relations ((∃#)(aR1# & bR2#) ≠
(∃#)(bR1# & aR2#)). So far from explaining how order arises Russell’s
strategy appears regressive. Explaining the way in which (macro) rela-
tions (R) arrange things by positing an array of (micro) relations (R1, R2)
just leaves us gasping for an explanation of how the latter relations
arrange the things they relate; it looks as though there will be no end
to the story about relations Russell had begun to tell.
In fact, Russell was very much alive to this concern: ‘It may be
objected that our explanation of the sense of a relation will be applied
afresh to “A precedes in the complex α”, and that we shall thus be
involved in an endless regress’ (111). But he was unmoved and immedi-
ately dismissed the objection: ‘This however is not to be feared, because
A and α differ logically, and the statement “α precedes in the complex A”
is meaningless; thus there are not in this case two logically possible
complexes, and the whole difficulty of sense does not arise’ (111–12).
Appeals to what styles of construction are meaningful, or not, are apt
to appear flimsy when engaged in fundamental metaphysics. However,
Russell’s dismissal relied upon more robust considerations that become
evident as the plot of the Theory of Knowledge unfolds.
Further reflection led Russell to elaborate upon a distinction vital
to his explanation of order, a distinction between ‘homogeneous’ and
‘heterogeneous’ constituents of non-symmetrical complexes (123, 135).
A constituent of a non-symmetric complex is called ‘homogeneous’
with respect to those other constituents of the complex with which it
may be interchanged to produce another logically possible complex.
Prima facie ‘A is before B’ denotes a (non-symmetric) complex where A is
homogeneous with respect to B because the result of interchanging these
terms is another logically possible complex denoted by ‘B is before A’.
By contrast, a constituent is ‘heterogeneous’ with respect to those other
constituents with which it cannot be interchanged to produce another
logically possible complex. Thus, for example, the relating relation of a
complex is always heterogeneous to all the other constituents because
it is impossible for the term of a relation R to relate R to anything else.
Russell’s account of order relied upon the further insight that not only
relating relations are heterogeneous with respect to the other constitu-
ents of the complexes they unite. One term of a relating relation in
a complex may also be heterogeneous with respect to another term of
that complex. Unfortunately Russell did not provide any commonplace
224 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

examples of such heterogeneous terms that might help us ease our

way into an appreciation of his theory, even if these examples are
ultimately discarded. But consider the statement ‘Russell was a Fellow
of Trinity College.’ Prima facie this denotes a complex in which Russell
is heterogeneous with respect to his College. This is because there is no
logically possible complex that results from interchanging them, no
possible complex for ‘Trinity College was a Fellow of Russell’ to denote.
It is a feature of relational complexes all of whose constituents are
heterogeneous with respect to one another that there is no plurality of
ways that they are capable of being arranged. Either they hang together
in a complex, or they don’t. (Either Russell was a Fellow of Trinity or he
wasn’t.) There is no more a plurality of ways in which the constituents
of such relational complexes are capable of uniting to form a complex
than there is a plurality of ways in which a monadic property and an
individual may unite to form a complex. It follows that the relating
relations of complexes of the former kind of heterogeneous complex no
more exhibit order – in the sense that had concerned Russell since the
Principles – than the latter kind. This is because the first fundamental fact
about relations that Russell had identified in the Principles simply does
not apply to them. There are no different possible complexes that it is
incumbent upon us to distinguish. So there is no theoretical imperative
for attributing directions to the relating relation of these complexes in
order to distinguish them from logically adjacent complexes that result
from interchanging their constituents.
The scope of Russell’s vaulting ambition in the Theory of Knowledge
now becomes evident. His extraordinary idea was to explain how order
emerges in the world by reducing non-symmetric complexes config-
ured from homogeneous constituents to complexes configured entirely
from heterogeneous ones. Or, more exactly, to show that phrases that
purport to denote homogeneous complexes are really incomplete sym-
bols that describe thoroughly heterogeneous complexes. There is no
risk of a vicious regress besetting the proposed reduction because the
problem of distinguishing amongst the different possible configurations
of the constituents of these subvenient complexes does not arise. So
the story about relations, about how order arises, can safely end there.
In particular, since there are no alternative possible configurations of
the heterogeneous complex A precedes in the complex α – ‘α precedes
in A’ denotes no possible complex – Russell’s explanation of how
order emerges can safely terminate – without risk of vicious regress –
in descriptions of the distribution of positional relations amongst
constituents and complexes.
 Fraser MacBride 225

4.3 Why Did Russell Abandon the Theory of Knowledge?

We are now in a position to appreciate the denouement of the Theory
of Knowledge. In chapter V (‘Truth and Falsehood’) Russell set about
the task of integrating his newly fashioned neutral theory of rela-
tions with the multiple relation theory of judgment. This was no
incidental task for him. First, judgment is a paradigm example of a
non-symmetric relation. Many complexes related by the judgment
relation exhibit an order: judging things one way – that A is before
B – is different from judging them another way – that B is before A.
So if the neutral theory cannot explain how these different judgments
differ then the neutral theory cannot have succeeded in explaining
how order emerges. In this sense, judgment itself provides an impor-
tant test case for measuring the effectiveness of the neutral theory.
But, second, Russell wanted to take advantage of the neutral theory to
address a difficulty that arose from within the multiple relation theory
of judgment.
In Problems of Philosophy Russell had defined truth and falsity for
judgment complexes in terms of correspondence: Othello’s judg-
ment that Desdemona loves Cassio is true when there is a complex
Desdemona’s love for Cassio ‘composed exclusively of the objects of the
belief in the same order as they had in the belief, with the relation
which was one of the objects occurring now as the cement that binds
together the other objects of the belief’, otherwise the judgment is
false; more generally, ‘a belief is true when it corresponds to a certain
associated complex, and false when it does not’ (1912: 74). This
definition of truth in terms of correspondence presupposes an under-
standing of what it means for a judgment to relate its constituents
‘in the same order’ as another relation relates them in an associated
complex. However, by the time Russell set about composing Theory
of Knowledge he had begun to question the legitimacy of taking this
presupposition for granted. Rather, he had begun to think, we have to
earn the right to talk about different complexes ‘corresponding’ – i.e.
arranging their constituents in the same order when their relating
relations are different. His appreciation of the necessity for doing so
arose from the reflection that a judgment complex in virtue of the
order it exhibits can serve as an effective model for a variety of differ-
ent associated complexes. The psychical arrangement of Desdemona
first and Cassio second in a judgment complex indeed models the
complex Desdemona’s love for Cassio. But it provides an equally
effective model for Cassio’s love for Desdemona. So it seems that there
are no more grounds for saying that Othello’s judgment complex
226 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

corresponds to one of these associated complexes when it is true rather

than another:

We may say: There are two understanding-complexes consisting of

the subject, the form x and y in a relation, sequence, A and B, and
of these two complexes, one is called the understanding of ‘A is
before B’, while the other is called the understanding of ‘B is before
A’. But the difficulty here is that we cannot tell which is to be called
which. (135)

So it remains to be established that the way in which a judgment

complex is configured from its constituents – its order – is sufficiently
intimately connected to what, intuitively speaking, the judgment repre-
sents that truth and falsity can be adequately defined for this complex:
‘In fact, the association of belief and complex may be said to be too
external in our definition’ (154).
Russell set about resolving this problem – call it ‘the problem of
externality’ – by introducing a distinction between ‘permutative’ and
‘non-permutative’ judgment complexes. A permutative judgment is a
complex such that another possible judgment results from permuting
its constituents. For example, S’s judging that A is before B is permutative
because a different judgment, S’s judging that B is before A results from
permuting its terms. By contrast, a belief like S’s judging that A is similar to
B is non-permutative ‘because no different belief results from permuting
the objects’ (144).
What Russell saw was that the problem of externality does not arise
for non-permutative judgment complexes. Take S’s judging that A is
similar to B. This judgment complex is non-permutative because there
is no plurality of different ways that the objects of this judgment – A,
B and similarity – can be configured to make up associated complexes
about which S might entertain different beliefs: A, B and similarity
hang together in a complex, if they do, without their being arranged
one way rather than another. Consequently S’s judging that they
hang together does not turn upon S’s psychically arranging A, B and
similarity one way rather than another. This fact enables Russell to
define truth and falsity for non-permutative judgments without hav-
ing to appeal, as he had done in Problems of Philosophy, to the idea of
the judgment relation arranging A, B and similarity ‘in the same order’
that similarity arranges A and B. Because there is only one logically
possible complex that results from the objects of a non-permutative
belief forming a complex, the truth and falsity of such judgments
 Fraser MacBride 227

can be defined directly in terms of the constituents of the judgment

complex. Thus, S’s judging that A is similar to B is true ‘when there
is a complex whose constituents are A and B and similarity, while
otherwise it is false’ (144). More generally, ‘A non-permutative belief
is said to be true when there is a complex consisting of its objects;
otherwise it is said to be false’ (144–5). Because non-permutative
beliefs and their uniquely associated complexes are alike unordered,
it is possible for thought to reach out directly to these complexes
without the way in which a judgment complex is itself arranged by
its relating relation presenting a potentially obfuscating medium that
interposes between a judgment and what it represents. Consequently
the problem of externality, the problem of how to define correspond-
ence for these complexes, does not arise for non-permutative beliefs:
in such cases, ‘the complex formed of the objects of our belief seems
as intimately associated with our belief as anything purely objective
can be’ (154).
To overcome the problem of externality, Russell accordingly set
himself the task of showing that phrases that describe permutative
judgments may be paraphrased away in favour of phrases that describe
only non-permutative ones: ‘In logical terms, our problem is: When
several complexes can be formed by the same constituents to find associ-
ated complexes unambiguously determined by their constituents’ (145).
This was a task Russell was anyway committed to undertaking. If
Russell’s neutral theory of relations is right about how order emerges,
then the phrases that describe permutative judgments – because
they exhibit order – must be incomplete symbols. It must be possi-
ble to paraphrase them away in favour of phrases that describe only
non-permutative judgment complexes. But the Theory of Knowledge
foundered when Russell discovered that he couldn’t find the associ-
ated non-permutative complexes he needed to complete the task of
paraphrase without running up against a version of the old problem
of false propositions.
According to the neutral theory, the sentence ‘aRb’, where ‘R’ is a
non-symmetric verb, is really an incomplete symbol that needs to be
spelt out employing the molecular form ‘there is a complex # such
aR1# and bR2#’. This means that to judge that aRb is to make a cor-
respondingly molecular judgment. More generally, in Russell’s words,
‘If I have a belief whose objects appear verbally to be R, x1, x2, ... xn,
there are really other objects expressed by inflexions, order of words,
etc., and what I am really believing is: “There is a complex γ in which
x1C1γ, x2C2γ, ... xnCnγ”‘ (148). The problem now presented itself to
228 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

Russell that a molecular judgment complex could not be construed as

non-permutative unless its constituents included propositions:

One special objection is that, in order to regard the associated com-

plex as non-permutative, we have to regard its atomic constituents
x1C1γ, x2C2γ etc., as really its constituents, and what is more, we
have to regard the corresponding propositions as constituents of the
proposition ‘there is a complex γ in which x1C1γ, x2C2γ, etc.’ (154).

But the admission of propositions runs counter to the multiple relation

theory of judgment, that was supposed to have paraphrased them away,
and this leads us straight back to the problem of falsehood: ‘This seems
to demand a mode of analysing molecular propositions which requires
the admission that they may contain false atomic propositions as con-
stituents, and therefore to demand the admission of false propositions
in an objective sense.’12
Let us work our way through the details of the difficulty Russell had
tripped over a little more patiently than he did. Consider the phrase
(1) ‘S’s judging there is a complex γ in which x1C1γ, x2C2γ, ... xnCnγ’. This
phrase ostensibly describes a permutative judgment complex the logical
interchange of whose constituents gives rise to other possible judgments,
one of which is described by the phrase (2) ‘S’s judging there is a complex
γ in which xnC1γ, xn–1C2γ, ... xnCn1γ’. The task Russell had set himself was
to show that these phrases are incomplete symbols that can be para-
phrased away in favour of descriptions of non-permutative judgments,
i.e. judgments the truth and falsity of which can be defined solely by
means of an enumeration of their constituents. Since the judgments
described by (1) and (2) cannot be true together, Russell was committed
to revealing by analysis that they ultimately differ in their constitu-
ents, constituents in terms of which the underlying non-permutative
judgments may be defined.
What are the constituents of these complexes? Unfortunately Russell
shelved the Theory of Knowledge before developing an explicit theory of
the constituents of molecular judgments. But the exact details of the
constituency of these complexes are irrelevant to an appreciation of
the difficulty at hand. Whatever the higher-order logical paraphernalia
may be (variables, quantifiers etc.) that a mind must grasp to make
a molecular judgment, because they share the same logical form, S’s
judging there is a complex γ in which x1C1γ, x2C2γ, ... xnCnγ must have the
same logical constituents as the contrary judgment S’s judging there is a
complex γ in which xnC1γ, xn–1C2γ, ... xnCnγ. So the described judgments
 Fraser MacBride 229

cannot ultimately differ by virtue of containing different logical

constituents. But they cannot differ in virtue of their ultimate non-
logical constituents either since these are the same, viz. x1... xn,, C1...
Cn. Intuitively speaking, the described judgments differ because they
arrange their ultimate logical and non-logical constituents in different
ways, for example, the x1C1γ rather than the xnC1γ way. But Russell
cannot appeal to the different order of these cognitive arrangements on
pain of falling back upon the problem of externality.13 This explains
why Russell should leap straightaway to the conclusion there is only
one option left remaining to reduce these permutative judgments to
non-permutative ones: namely to distinguish them by virtue of the
different complexes they contain: to say that whereas the judgment
complex that (1) describes has x1C1γ as a constituent, the judgment com-
plex that (2) describes has xnC1γ as a constituent (etc.). But since the
judgments that (1) and (2) describe differ even when they are false, this
means admitting x1C1γ, xnC1γ as worldly constituents of these judgment
complexes even when it’s not the case that x1C1γ, xnC1γ, ‘This is a real
difficulty’ (153).14
What Russell had discovered, then, was an (in)compatibility problem
between the two programmes he wanted to run, namely, the multiple
relation theory of judgment and the neutral theory of relations. Non-
symmetric verb constructions and propositional phrases cannot all
of them be incomplete symbols if we are to account for (i) the deter-
minacy of judgment (S’s judging that aRb ≠ S’s judging that bRa) whilst
(ii) avoiding the problem of falsehood that had earlier afflicted the binary
theory of judgment Russell had advanced in the Principles (allowing for
the possibility of S’s judging that aRb even though ∼aRb).15

5 Closing Scenes: 1914–18

The questions that now present themselves: how did Russell respond to
the resurgence of the falsehood problem? And what has any of this to
do with Wittgenstein’s criticism of the multiple relation theory of judg-
ment? The answer to this second question is straightforward. None
of this had much to do with Wittgenstein. The problem of falsehood
had returned because Russell had attempted to combine the multiple
relation theory with the theory of neutral relations. Russell responded
to this calamity by salvaging the multiple relation theory from the
wreck, leaving the neutral theory for the fishes. He did not explicitly
endorse the directional theory of relations until some years later in
the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919: 49). But there is clear
230 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

evidence that Russell abandoned the neutral theory of relations when

he shelved the Theory of Knowledge.
It must be granted that in the Lowell lectures of 1914, published
as Our Knowledge of the External World, Russell continued to classify
relations without making appeal to their directions. For example, he
called a relation asymmetrical, ‘when, if it holds between A and B,
it never holds between B and A’ (57). This contrasts with the classi-
fication of relations in the Principles where Russell drew explicitly
upon the behaviour of converse relations (with opposite senses) to
distinguish asymmetrical from symmetrical relations. In the Principles
what makes a relation asymmetric is the fact that each such relation is
incompatible with its converse. What makes before asymmetric is that
it cannot proceed from A to B if after proceeds from A to B. By contrast,
the symmetry of such relations as diversity arises from the fact that
each is identical with its converse (§28). However, it is also true that
even in the Principles, when Russell was firmly committed to relations
having senses, he admitted the legitimacy of classifying relations in
the now more familiar manner of the Lowell lectures, chararacterising,
for example, a relation as asymmetric when ‘xRy always excludes yRx’
(§208). And this should hardly be surprising. Even though there is no
explicit appeal to the notion of direction there is nothing said to rule
out relations being bestowed with sense either. So the fact that Russell
speaks in the same manner in 1914 no more belies a commitment to
the directional theory than similar remarks he made in 1903. More
significantly, in the Lowell lectures, Russell committed himself to the
existence of atomic facts and propositions in which non-symmetric
relations figure. He wrote, for example, ‘Whether an atomic proposi-
tion, such as “this is red”, or “this is before that” is to be asserted of
denied can only be known empirically’ (1914: 62). But this is obvi-
ously contrary to the theory of neutral relations developed in Theory of
Knowledge where phrases like ‘this is before that’ are treated as incom-
plete symbols describing molecular complexes.
Wittgenstein’s criticism of the multiple relation theory was evidently
another matter. It wasn’t to do with the resurgence of the problem of
falsehood and it wasn’t a criticism that could be addressed by abandon-
ing the theory of neutral relations. It was, recall, to do with Russell’s
failure, as Wittgenstein saw it, to preclude our being absurdly beset by
an impossible abundance of judgment complexes. We cannot judge, to
use Wittgenstein’s example from the Notebooks, that ‘this table penholders
the book’; but the multiple relation theory Russell had developed
contains no safeguards against our judging such nonsense (1913: 103).
 Fraser MacBride 231

Wittgenstein was later to express this objection in the Tractatus: ‘The

correct explanation of the form of the proposition ‘A judges p’ must
show that it is impossible to judge a nonsense. (Russell’s theory does
not satisfy this condition)’ (5.5422).16
When Russell returned to discuss the multiple relation theory in his
Lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918–19), he was explicit
that the problem of falsehood and Wittgenstein’s criticism were quite
different:

There are really two main things that one wants to notice in this
matter that I am treating of just now. The first is the impossibility of
treating the proposition believed as an independent entity, entering
as a unit into the occurrence of the belief, and the other is the impos-
sibility of putting the subordinate verb on a level with its terms as an
object term in the belief. (226).

The first impossibility Russell noted in this passage was the difficulty –
that he had identified himself years before – upon which the binary
theory of judgment advanced in the Principles had foundered. A judg-
ment complex cannot contain propositions conceived as self-standing
worldly unities, because their being so unified makes a mystery of how
it is possible for them to be false. As we have just seen, the Theory of
Knowledge ran up against an especially involved version of this problem,
impossibly demanding the existence of unified complexes (x1C1γ,
xnC1γ etc.) to serve as the objects of non-permutative judgments
even when they are false. The second impossibility is a corollary of
Wittgenstein’s criticism. The relation that occurs as a non-relating
constituent of a judgment complex (the relation expressed by the
‘subordinate verb’ in the description of a belief complex) is not on
a ‘level’ with the other constituents of the belief, i.e. cannot in this
pre-theoretical sense be significantly interchanged with them. The
attempt to swap (e.g.) loves for Desdemona in the complex Othello
believes that Desdemona loves Cassio does not result in a possible
judgment being formed.
Russell continued to think that he could avoid the first impossibil-
ity by continuing to deny the existence of propositions, paraphrasing
propositional phrases away in favour of descriptions of judgment acts.
Russell’s 1918–19 reflections on the multiple relation theory of judg-
ment are often dismissed by commentators as a ‘non-theory’.17 But
Russell wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet; he thought that he could
avoid the second impossibility, i.e. obviate Wittgenstein’s criticism, by
232 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

introducing further constraints upon the judgment relation that would

bar us from judging nonsense:

That is a point in which I think that the theory of judgment which

I set forth once in print some years ago was a little unduly simple,
because I did then treat the object verb as if one could put it as just
an object like the terms, as if one could put ‘loves’ on a level with
Desdemona and Cassio as a term for the relation ‘believe’. (226)

Russell’s plan was to leap free in a single bound from the problems that
had afflicted earlier versions of the multiple relation theory by recog-
nising the existence of a new kind of fact. It is a feature of spatial facts
(A is to the right of B) that they contain only one relation, the relating
relation that binds together the other constituents. By contrast, judg-
ment acts (Othello’s judging that Desdemona loves Cassio) contain two
relations, albeit only one relating relation, viz. judgment. It is because of
this radical difference in their logical forms that facts of the former kind
cannot be used to pellucidly model facts of the latter kind. To come to
terms with the nature of judgment is accordingly necessary to free our
(spatially orientated) minds: ‘I have go on here to a new sort of thing, a
new beast for our zoo, not another member of our former species, but a
new species. The discovery of this fact is due to Mr. Wittgenstein’ (226).
Unfortunately Russell did not feel in a position to tell us much more
about this new beast: ‘I hope you will forgive the fact that so much of
what I say to-day is tentative and consists of pointing out difficulties.
The subject is not very easy and it has not been much dealt with or
discussed’ (226–7). But there are other indicators of the trajectory of his
thought. Together they suggest that Russell was heading in the direction
of a clear solution to the problems he and Wittgenstein had identified.
It seems an unlikely hypothesis that Russell’s continued championing
of the multiple relation theory during this period was merely a conse-
quence of intellectual inertia.
Whilst Russell had continued to maintain a commitment to the mul-
tiple relation theory of judgment, by 1918 he had overturned two other
long-standing commitments. The first has already been mentioned:
Russell gave up the doctrine of the Principles that concepts (now called
universals) admit of a ‘curious two-fold use’, capable of occurring both
as logical subjects and predicatively. A number of factors had led to this
change of heart – most notably, a shift in his thinking about Bradley’s
Regress and the various paradoxes that had occupied his attention after
completing the Principles. Russell had come to the view that neither
 Fraser MacBride 233

the regress nor the paradoxes could be solved without appeal to the
doctrine of types. Consider how Russell envisaged that the theory of
types would enable him to address Bradley’s conundrum about rela-
tions.18 What Bradley had brought so forcibly to our attention was the
following line of reasoning: if a relation between two objects is con-
ceived as standing on a level with the objects it relates then we need
to explain how it is hooked up to them; but if the hooking up is to be
understood by appealing to a further relation that remains on a level
with the objects and relations already recognised then our explanation
will never be completed. If it is possible to shunt relations into subject
position and ask the question about them: how are they related to their
relata? then this line of reasoning appears ineluctable. But if relations
are incapable of occurring in subject position, the question about how
relations relate cannot even be raised. Russell therefore proposed to
sidestep Bradley’s regress by reversing the position he had held in 1903:
rejecting the ‘curious two-fold use’ of the concept in favour of Frege’s
doctrine that relations are essentially incomplete.
Russell’s change of heart about concepts (universals) emerges in the
Lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism when he declares that ‘You
can never place a particular in the sort of place where a universal ought
to be, and vice versa’ (258). Any attempt to interchange particulars and
universals will result in statements that are ‘not false, but strictly and
exactly nonsense’. Consequently, ‘a predicate can never occur except
as a predicate. When it seems to occur as a subject, the phrase wants
amplifying and explaining, unless, of course, you are talking about the
word itself’ (205). Thus, for example, the statement (1) ‘Unpunctuality
is a fault’ where a universal appears to occupy subject position in the
proposition expressed, is paraphrased away by Russell in favour of
(2) ‘For all x, if x is unpunctual, then x is reprehensible’ where the uni-
versal occupies predicate position. Russell held exactly the same view
of relations: ‘A relation can never occur except as a relation, never as a
subject’ (206).
What is important for us right now is the fact that Russell paraphrased
away statements that appeared to describe substantival occurrences of
universals (1) in favour of purely hypothetical statements (2) that only
describe universals occurring predicatively. Because these statements
are hypothetical in form, the universals they describe do not occur in
the propositions they express as relating relations. Since, ex hypothesi,
they do not occur as subjects either, Russell’s Fregean turn had the
unforeseen consequence of throwing into relief a greater logical variety
of positions than Russell had ever dreamt in the Principles. Whereas the
234 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

Principles admitted only subject positions and the positions of relating

relations, the Lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism also admitted
purely predicative positions.
The other change of heart that emerged during this period concerns
Russell’s thinking about general, negative and existential facts. In
Principia Mathematica (1910) Russell and Whitehead had fought shy of
such commitments. They had accordingly defined complexes (facts)
as ‘any such object as “a in the relation R to b” or “a having the qual-
ity q”, or “a and b standing in the relation S”‘(44). And they hoped to
account for the truth of general, negative and existential propositions
(judgments) in terms of these singular complexes. For example: ‘If φx
is an elementary judgment, it is true when it points to a corresponding
complex. But (x).φx does not point to a single corresponding complex:
the corresponding complexes are as numerous as the possible values of
x’ (46). However, by 1918, Russell had come around to the view that
‘you must admit general facts as distinct from and over and above parti-
cular facts’ (236). His argument for this turn around was that a mere
enumeration of all the atomic facts in the world would fail to suffice for
the truth of the general proposition that these are all the atomic facts.
Russell accordingly introduced general facts to ground the truth of such
propositions: ‘in addition to particular facts, there are also general facts
and existence facts, that is to say, there are not merely propositions, but
also facts of that sort’ (234–5). Russell also argued for the inclusion of
negative facts into his inventory of the world in order to make negative
propositions true and non-negative propositions false (211–15). Russell
did not profess to know what the right analysis of general, existential or
negative facts might be. But whatever position a universal occupies in
(e.g.) a negative fact it cannot be the position of an attributed attribute
or a relating relation: if nothing is F or nothing Rs anything, then it can
hardly be the case that something is F or that something Rs something
else. Since, according to Russell’s Fregean turn, universals can never
occur except as universals, never as a subject, it follows that the occur-
rence of universals in facts like these must be purely predicative too.
The trajectory of Russell’s development was therefore towards a
recognition of far more beasts in the logical zoo than he had hith-
erto imagined possible. More specifically, it was towards recognition
of purely predicative occurrences of universals. Frege had long since
admitted argument positions of this kind, recognising the occurrence of
lower order concepts in the argument positions of higher-level ones.19
Thinking along these Fregean lines – commensurate with Russell’s
Fregean turn – the idea immediately presents itself that the admission
 Fraser MacBride 235

of complexes whose argument positions are higher-order is just what

Russell needed to provide a solution to the problems that had beset the
multiple relation theory of judgment. If the relation that is ascribed
in an act of judgment (the relation expressed by the subordinate verb)
occurs in a purely predicative position in the judgment fact, then the
problem of falsehood is avoided because the relation is not required to
actually relate anything else to occur there. Moreover, because the posi-
tion is predicative, the other objects of belief, being particulars, cannot
occur in this position bespoke for a relation; nor, for that matter, can
the relation occur in the subject positions bespoke for these objects.
Wittgenstein’s criticism is thereby avoided too. Putting the pieces
together, we can see the outlines of Russell’s upgraded version of the
multiple relation theory in 1918. Judgment (ascription) is a relation
with its own internal structure: a higher-order argument position
reserved for the relation denoted by the subordinate verb in the sym-
bolic expression of the judgment, and lower-order argument positions
for the objects to which the relation is ascribed.
A final speculative flourish, albeit one that sails more closely to the
wind. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Russell recog-
nised (as we have seen in section 2 above) that it was a consequence
of the multiple relation theory that the logical form of judgment must
vary depending upon the content of what is judged: ‘it would seem
that belief cannot strictly be logically one in all different cases but must
be distinguished according to the nature of the proposition that you
believe’ (226). This passage is usually interpreted as suggesting that
a mind will need to deploy different ascription relations of different
degrees to make different judgments of different forms: a three-place
ascription relation to judge that a monadic quality holds of a thing, a
four-place relation to judge that a binary relation holds between two
things, and so on. Now Russell had certainly noticed that this was a
consequence of the multiple relation theory before.20 But set against the
backdrop of other developments in Russell’s thought another meaning
for this passage hoves into view. When the higher-order argument posi-
tion of an ascription relation is completed by the occurrence of a binary
relation R what results is a three-place compound relation (x ascribes R
to y and z).21 This suggests that what Russell may have been tentatively
edging towards in this passage is an appreciation of a far more radical
version of the multiple relation theory of judgment than hitherto count-
enanced. According to this version, the relating relation of a judgment
complex is neither the relation expressed by the subordinate verb (so
avoiding the problem of falsehood), nor the ascription relation (thereby
236 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

side-stepping Witttgenstein’s criticism): it is the relation expressed by

the compound verb ‘... ascribes R to ... and ...’. It follows from this that
judgment cannot, as Russell declared, ‘strictly be logically one’ because
what constitutes the unity of a judgment act will vary depending upon
the character of the compound relation that is responsible for relating
the other constituents of the complex together.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to audiences in Birkbeck, Bristol, Cambridge, Dublin,

Glasgow, Geneva and Zurich for their helpful feedback on a variety of
talks that intersected in different ways with the present paper. I would
also like to thank Tim Button, Stewart Candlish, Sacha Golob, Jane Heal,
Herbert Hochberg, Nick Jones, Frederique Janssen-Lauret, James Levine,
Mike Martin, Kevin Mulligan, Chris Pincock and Barry C. Smith for fur-
ther discussion of the nature of judgment and relations.

Notes
1. A temptation to which, for example, Hylton 1984: 24; Hanks 2007: 122–3;
and Landini 2007: 66 succumb.
2. I build here upon Hochberg’s speculation that ‘Such problems may have
contributed to Russell’s rejecting the later parts of the manuscript’ (2000:
87). However, as will become evident, I understand the (in)compatibility
problem that arises between the multiple relation theory of judgment and
the neutral theory of relations somewhat differently to Hochberg. Pincock
(2005: 128), also influenced by Hochberg, draws attention to the compati-
bility problem in the Theory of Knowledge as well. But, by contrast to Pincock,
I do not think (1) that Russell found the problem insurmountable: Russell
addressed the problem by abandoning the neutral theory of relations. Nor
do I think (2) that the problem was essentially connected to Wittgenstein’s
criticism of the multiple relation theory of judgment. As will also become
evident, the compatibility problem and Wittgenstein’s ‘nonsense’ objection
are quite distinct, the former causing Russell to reinstitute his directional
theory of relations from the Principles, the latter resulting in Russell’s adop-
tion of a Fregean theory of concepts that he had rejected in the Principles.
Consequently I also reject Pincock’s contention that (3) Russell effectively
responded to Wittgenstein’s ‘nonsense’ objection in the Theory of Knowledge:
he didn’t, indeed couldn’t, respond to them there and that explains Russell’s
subsequent modifications of the multiple relation theory to meet the non-
sense objection in Lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918).
3. See, for example, Wahl 1986: 393; Candlish 2007: 73; Landini 2007: 65; and
Pincock 2008: 136.
4. According to Griffin 1985: 242, Russell had intended the multiple relation
theory of judgment to provide an epistemological foundation for the theory
 Fraser MacBride 237

of types; Wittgenstein’s criticism was essentially that the former theory

already presupposed the latter. If this was the content of Wittgenstein’s criti-
cism, then this would indeed speak against an interpretation that attributed
to Russell the conviction that appeal to the theory of types would enable
him to defend the multiple relation theory against Wittgenstein’s criticism.
However, (a) it speaks against Griffin’s interpretation that Russell did actu-
ally appeal to type theoretic considerations to bolster the multiple relation
theory of judgment after receiving Wittgenstein’s criticism. It is, anyway,
(b) independently doubtful that Russell ever intended the theory of judg-
ment to perform the role of an epistemological foundation (see Weiss 1995;
Stevens 2003; and Hanks 2007 for reservations about Griffin’s interpretation
along these lines). Moreover, (c) the textual grounds for attributing such an
involved concern with the theory of types to Wittgenstein are slim.
5. See Russell 1914: 9, 213; 1918: 177, 226; 1921: 272; 1924: 333.
6. See Frege 1892: 54. See MacBride 2006: 455–72 for further elaboration
about the dispute about the concept horse paradox and the present author’s
favoured solution that also bears upon the matter of converse relations.
7. According to Sainsbury’s (1979: 63–4) elucidation of Russell’s multiple rela-
tion theory, a belief sentence expresses a relation of the following form:
‘A believes, concerning ..., that it is —’ where the pronoun picks up the refer-
ence of what fills the dots. Sainsbury suggests that Russell’s analysis goes too
far since typically the positions in belief sentences fail to be transparent. He’s
absolutely right that this is a major problem here for the multiple relation
theory that (interestingly) neither Russell nor Wittgenstein explicitly raised
or addressed. But it will need to be tackled before we can be assured that the
left-hand-side of [ J] is necessary and sufficient for the right-hand-side.
8. The failure to notionally distinguish between truth-evaluable unity and the
unity of propositions may go some way towards explaining the incredulity
that Russell’s rejection of propositions has occasioned amongst his less
sympathetic commentators. This is because if the two are unquestioningly
identified from the start, then the denial of the latter will be tantamount to
the rejection of the former, and then of course judgment will be impossible.
However, it cannot be assumed, but needs to be argued, that this identification
is necessary.
9. Russell’s other significant advance in Theory of Knowledge was to recognise
that ‘understanding’, rather than judgment, was the primary relation
between a person and a proposition, a relation ‘presupposed equally by
assertion, suggestion, doubt and volition’ (107). This gave Russell room to
allow for (e.g.) the possibility of a subject assuming aRb without thereby
being obliged to actually ascribe R to a and b, to do so Russell need only have
appealed to the unifying potential of other cognitive relations conceived
as differentiations of understanding. Unfortunately, for reasons of space,
I cannot explore here the issue of whether, as Russell assumed, these different
relations are plausibly conceived as multiple.
10. It is important to take note of the fact that Russell sometimes employs the
expression ‘sense’ to mean what I have called order, but on other occasions
what I, and also Russell, have called direction. In this case ‘sense’ is used
in the former sense. Attention to context usually resolves the ambiguity
without indicating any underlying confusion upon Russell’s part.
238 The Russell–Wittgenstein Dispute: A New Perspective

11. Lackey 1981: 130–1 points out that Russell’s 1913 account anticipates the
famous definition of relations as classes that Wiener first proposed in 1914.
12. Before anyone rushes to suggest that an appreciation of the resurgence of
the problem of falsehood is owed to Wittgenstein, they should remember
that Russell made note of the special version of this difficulty generated by
molecular judgments for the multiple relation theory when he first started
experimenting with it four years before Wittgenstein arrived in Cambridge:
‘There is, however, another argument in favour of objective falsehood,
derived from the case of true propositions which contain false ones as con-
stituent parts. Take, e.g., “Either the earth goes round the sun, or it does
not.” This is certainly true, and therefore, on the theory we are considering,
it represents a fact, i.e., an objective complex, which is not constituted by
our apprehension of it. But it is, at least apparently, compounded of two
(unasserted) constituents, namely: “The earth goes round the sun,” and “the
earth does not go round the sun,” of which one must be false. Thus our fact
seems to be composed of two parts, of which one is a fact, while the other is
an objective falsehood’ (1907: 47–8).
13. If the problem of externality doesn’t rule out, it certainly makes uncom-
fortable the option that immediately comes to mind of appealing to the
distribution of a battery of heterogeneous judgment relations (J1... Jn) to
distinguish (1) S’s judging aRb from (2) S’s judging bRa, by rendering (1) as
there is a complex γ in which Sj1γ, aj2γ, bj3γ, etc. and (2) there is a complex γ in
which Sj1γ, bj2γ, aj3γ etc. The problem of externality has bite here because it
seems entirely arbitrary to suppose that a’s figuring in the j2 rather than j3
relation to the relevant judgment complex makes the resulting act true just
in case aRb rather than bRa.
14. Ricketts 1996: 68–9 suggests that the real problem, the recognition of which
he attributes to Wittgenstein, is rather that by the lights of Russell’s theory
there are no atomic judgments of the form aRb: ‘Russell’s revised conception
of relations in the context of the multiple relation theory thus leads him to a
desperate expedient that makes asymmetric relations inaccessible to cognizers
as objects of judgment.’ So far as the historical record goes, the Theory of
Knowledge clearly displays Russell primarily struggling with a very different
problem that arises from these judgments being conceived as molecular –
rather than their failing to be atomic. Moreover, Russell seems unlikely to
have been moved by Ricketts’ criticism. One of Russell’s points, after all, was
that the ultimate constituents of complexes are everywhere heterogeneous
so there are no asymmetric relations of the familiar (homogeneous) variety
out there to be inaccessible to us.
15. Hochberg construes the (in)compatibility problem as arising from Russell’s
treating o’s judgment that aLb as having the binary logical form: J(o,E!(the p)
(aL1p & aL2p). If the judgment is false then there is ‘no fact denoted by
the description’ and so, absurdly, there is nothing to judge when o judges
falsely (2000: 86–7). However, I am doubtful that Russell would have acceded
to even molecular judgments having a binary form, rather than a more
complicated one in which the mind is related to a battery of lower and
higher-order ‘concepts’ that the description in question is used to express
(Russell 1911: 212). Pincock’s treatment (2008: 124–8) is much closer to
the above reconstruction but neglects the all important role of the problem
 Fraser MacBride 239

of externality which blocks the obvious way out of the (in)compatibility

problem Russell raised, namely to appeal to the order in which the judgment
relation relates.
16. In an influential study, Pears 1977 argued that Wittgenstein’s criticism
of the Theory of Knowledge manuscript was really targeted upon Russell’s
employment of logical forms as constituents of judgment complexes. But
whilst Wittgenstein’s opposition to Russell’s conception of logical form and
logical objects is a key and pervasive theme of the Tractatus (see e.g. 4.441,
5.4, 5.4731, 5.55–5.5561) there is no real evidence of these concerns having
been at the forefront of Wittgenstein’s mind in May–June 1913, although
they soon began to ferment in the subsequent Notebooks 1914–1916 (see e.g.
4 September 1914).
17. For example, Candlish concludes his discussion of Russell’s 1918 remarks
on the multiple relation theory of judgment with the reflection: ‘What is
clear to Russell is that he has nothing better to offer in response to these dif-
ficulties; and at this point he leaves them unresolved’ (2007: 75).
18. Russell dwells upon the development of his views about relations since the
Principles in his retrospective essay ‘Logical Atomism’ (1924: 333–6).
19. ‘But obviously there is a very great difference between the logical place of the
number 2, if we predicate of it that it is a prime number, and the concept
prime number, if we say that there is something which is a prime number.
The first place can be filled only by objects, the second only be concepts’
(Frege 1903: 13–14).
20. ‘The structure of an understanding varies according to the proposition
judged’ (Russell 1913: 116).
21. Prior makes a closely related proposal: ‘If Othello thinks that Desdemona
loves Cassio there is a three place relation between Othello, Desdemona and
Cassio, but this relation consists in his thinking that she loves him, that is the
relation is expressed by the whole complex verb “... thinks that.... loves....”,
not the by the simple “... thinks that...”, which does not express any relation
at all’ (1967: 229). Prior distances this conception of judgment as a relation
expressed by a complex verb from Russell’s multiple relation theory. But
in the light of Russell’s Fregean turn, it is far from preposterous to think
Russell was certainly heading in the right direction to appreciate the idea
that ‘loves’ goes with ‘thinks that’ to produce a complex verb (albeit
expressed in the more ontological idiom that ‘thinks that’ expresses a higher
order relation with an argument position reserved for the relation ‘loves’
denotes). Strawson (1979: 108–9) also tentatively endorses a more realist
proposal about the nature of judgment along these lines.

References
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11
Judgement and Truth in the Early
Wittgenstein
Hans-Johann Glock
University of Zurich

The epistemological questions concerning the nature

of judgement and belief cannot be solved without a
correct comprehension of the form of the proposition.
(NL 106)

Two main themes run through this paper. First, the need to understand
Wittgenstein’s early discussions of judgement and truth as part of his
account of intentionality, this account being nothing other than the
famous picture theory. The second theme is an important aspect of that
account, which I call the ‘antecedence of sense’. Sense (aka a particular
notion of sentence meaning) antecedes or is logically prior to both
judgement and truth. Without sense, there is nothing to judge or assert,
and hence nothing to be either true or false. Wittgenstein criticises both
Frege and Russell for failing to pay heed to this antecedence.1
The first part of the paper shows how the picture theory arises out
of two complementary puzzles concerning intentionality, namely the
possibility of falsehood and thought reaching right up to reality. These
puzzles defy, respectively, Russell’s theories of judgement and Frege’s
account of the sense of a sentence, or so it appeared to Wittgenstein. The
second part critically discusses Wittgenstein’s reflections concerning the
logical significance of assertion and his analysis of belief attributions.
The final part considers the role which the antecedence of sense plays for
the notion of truth. It criticises standard interpretations of the Tractatus
account of truth for ignoring this antecedence. I take issue both with
the standard view that the Tractatus contains a correspondence theory
and, to a lesser extent, with recent suggestions that it propounds a defla-
tionary or semantic theory. Wittgenstein’s ‘obtainment’ theory of truth
combines a semantic explanation of the relation between a sentence and
242
 Hans-Johann Glock 243

what it says with a deflationary account of the agreement between what

the sentence says and what obtains or is the case if it is true.
The purpose of the exercise is not just exegetical and historical, but
also substantive. I shall defend some of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of
Frege and Russell, while rejecting others. And I shall find equal fault
with some of the constructive proposals in the Tractatus. My ambition
is not, however, to deliver knock-down blows against either the early
Wittgenstein or his two illustrious predecessors. For that would require
much more expansive scrutiny of the frameworks within which these
thinkers developed both their negative and their positive points.2

1 The Tractatus and Intentionality

The Tractatus revolves around two major topics, the essence of rep-
resentation or intentionality on the one hand, the nature of logic and
philosophy on the other. The two are interrelated, since for Wittgenstein
logic comprises the most general preconditions for the possibility of
symbolic representation.3 This essay is devoted to the first topic, the
relation between thought and language on the one hand, reality on the
other. Wittgenstein’s interest in that relation differs fundamentally from
the epistemological concerns that dominated Western philosophy after
Descartes. Instead, his focus is on logical or semantic questions that are
in some respects prior to those of epistemology and metaphysics. The
issue is not: Do we possess knowledge of reality? How can we can rep-
resent reality accurately, i.e. arrive at beliefs that are true and justified?
It is rather: How can we represent reality at all, whether truly or falsely?
What gives content to our beliefs and meaning to our sentences? What
enables them to be about something?
Wittgenstein’s ‘Theory of Symbolism’ (CL: Wittgenstein to Russell
26 December 1912), seeks to pinpoint the essence of symbolic
representation – what all propositions (Sätze, i.e. sentential signs with
a sense) have in common.4 Various types of propositions differ in their
logical forms, which are to be discovered by the ‘application of logic’,
i.e. logical analysis (5.557). But according to the Tractatus, these possi-
ble forms must share the ‘general propositional form’. The latter marks
the essence of all propositions; it comprises the necessary and sufficient
conditions for something to be a meaningful proposition – not in this
or that natural language, but in any sign-language. The general propo-
sitional form is to say ‘Things are thus-and-so’ (4.5–5.01, 5.54). This
means that all propositions depict how things are – doing so either
truly or falsely.
244 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

Furthermore, all propositions – however complex – are truth-functions

of ‘elementary propositions’ (4.4ff.). Such propositions are supposed
to fulfil two conditions. First, they cannot be analysed further into
truth-functions of simpler propositions. Secondly, they are logically
independent of each other, in that the truth-value of any given ele-
mentary proposition is independent of that of any other elementary
proposition. The ultimate constituents of elementary propositions are
unanalysable ‘names’ or ‘simple signs’. These are not names in the ordi-
nary sense, but the equivalent of Russell’s logically proper names. Every
such name stands for a distinct ‘object’ that is its meaning (3.144–3.26).
Again, these objects are not ordinary medium-size dry goods, but essen-
tially simple metaphysical atoms that cannot be destroyed because they
do not have components. The logico-syntactical form (combinatorial
possibilities) of the names mirrors the metaphysical essence of the
objects they stand for (2.012–2.0272).
For the early Wittgenstein all symbolic representation is rooted
in elementary propositions. Accordingly, by trying to account for these
elementary propositions, his famous picture theory also purports to
account for the intentional relation between language and reality in
general. In doing so, Wittgenstein had to address two interrelated
puzzles, which confronted him through the work of Frege and Russell –
the possibility of falsehood and the possibility of thought reaching right
up to reality.

2 The Possibility of False Judgement

The first of these puzzles of intentionality is the venerable problem of

how a proposition can be meaningful yet false. How can one judge or think
what is not the case? For if it is not the case, then it does not exist, and
what does not exist is nothing. But to think nothing is not to think any-
thing at all, as Plato averred (Theaetetus 189A; see PI §§95, 518; BB 31).
Russell initially fell into the same trap. According to his dual-relation
theory of judgement, sketched in Principles of Mathematics, a belief or
judgement is a dual relation between something mental – a subject or
an act of belief – and what Russell calls a ‘proposition’ and we might
nowadays call a fact, an objective complex entity consisting of real
entities, a complex that exists whether or not it is believed. Tractatus
5.541 dismisses this theory as violating the extensionalist principle that
one proposition can occur in another one only as the basis of truth-
functional operations.5 Both Wittgenstein (NL 95) and Russell (1912:
72–3) also came to reject it for a less dogmatic reason. In
 Hans-Johann Glock 245

(1) A believes/judges that p

what A believes is not a fact. For no fact corresponds to a false belief.

Othello’s belief that Desdemona loves Cassio cannot be a relation
between Othello and the fact or proposition (in Russell’s terminology)
that Desdemona loves Cassio, since there is no such fact. In response to
this problem, Russell developed his multiple-relation theory of judgement
(1910: ch. vii; 1913: 180): Othello’s belief that Desdemona loves
Cassio is not a dual relation between Othello and a proposition, but
a multiple relation between him and the constituents of the proposi-
tion – Desdemona, love and Cassio. On this account, the occurrence
of the judgement does not entail that the relation of love obtains
between Desdemona and Cassio. More generally, in (1) A is related
to – ‘acquainted with’ – the constituents of the proposition that p, rather
than the proposition as a whole.
According to Wittgenstein, this ensures the possibility of false judge-
ments at the price of allowing nonsensical judgements. The correct
analysis of (1) must ‘show that it is impossible for a judgement to be a
piece of nonsense’ (5.5422). ‘That p’ in (1) must signify a meaningful
proposition, capable of being true and capable of being false (CL: letter
to Russell June 1913; NL 103). By splitting the proposition into its con-
stituents, the multiple-relation theory fails to guarantee the preservation
of logical form between the constituents of the judgement, and hence
allows a judgement like ‘the knife is the square root of the fork’ (simi-
larly, Bradley complained that Russell ignores the unity of judgement).
Here we encounter for the first time our leitmotif – the antecedence of
sense. What we judge to be true must make sense, otherwise there is no
judgement, either true or false.
In the Theory of Knowledge (1913: 80–8) Russell attempted to plug
the hole. He tried to ensure the unity of the proposition – the sense
of what is judged – by holding that A is acquainted not just with the
constituents of the proposition, but also with a ‘logical form’ xΦy,
a completely general fact which holds together the components of the
complex. Wittgenstein showed that this conception of logical forms
is inconsistent: on the one hand they are supposed to be facts, i.e.
complex, on the other they are supposed to be among the ultimate con-
stituents of the proposition, i.e. simple (NL 100–1). The first alternative
creates a third-man regress: it explains why a, R, and b can combine to
form certain facts – aRb, bRa – but not others – RRb, abR – by reference
to a further fact. The second simply adds a further constituent to the
proposition, without ensuring that its constituents are combined in
246 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

a licit way. Furthermore, Russell faces the problem that aRb and bRa
have the same logical form. His solution was that a and b are linked
to R through further relations, which differ in these two cases. Yet
that proposal invites Bradley’s regress-argument against the reality of
relations.6

3 Thought Reaching Right Up to Reality

The other puzzle was discovered by Wittgenstein. What I believe

when I believe truly is what is in fact the case – it is a fact. But what
I believe when I believe falsely is not what is the case – it is not the
fact. Yet in both cases what I believe is exactly the same. How can
this be?
If a proposition ‘p’ is true, it depicts a fact, i.e. what it says must be
what is the case, namely that p. But if ‘p’ is false, it does not depict a
fact, i.e. what it says cannot be what is the case. Yet the proposition
not only remains meaningful; its content – what it says – namely that
p, must be exactly the same in both cases, irrespective of whether it is
true or false. For a proposition has a sense that is independent of the
facts, of what happens to be the case (see 4.061 and sct. 7 below).7
As a result, even a false proposition must in some sense ‘reach right
up to reality’ (2.151f.).8 For the content of a true proposition ‘p’ is
that p, and this is not an intermediary between the true proposition
and the fact that p, it is rather the fact that p itself. By the same token,
the content of a false proposition cannot be such an intermediary
either. For otherwise the type of content that a proposition has would
depend on whether or not it is true – in violation of the antecedence
of sense.
According to Russell’s dual relation theory, thought does reach right
up to reality, since in effect it equates the content of a proposition with a
fact. Yet that theory, as we have seen, pays the price of falling at the hur-
dle of explaining the possibility of false judgement. The second puzzle
also poses a threat to Frege’s proposal that the content of judgement –
the sense of the asserted sentence – is a ‘thought’ (Gedanke), an abstract
entity that stands between the judgement or sentence on the one hand
and reality on the other. Indeed, in some respects this difficulty for
Frege was anticipated by Russell’s rejection of his conception of the
sense of a sentence.9
In correspondence with Russell (13 November 1904), Frege wrote that
‘Mont Blanc with its snowfields is not itself a component part of the
thought that Mont Blanc is more than 4000 metres high.’ What is a
 Hans-Johann Glock 247

component of that thought, according to Frege, is the sense of the name

‘Mont Blanc’. Russell (12 December 1904) responded in the following
infamous passage:

I believe that in spite of all its snowfields, Mont Blanc is itself a com-
ponent part of what is actually asserted in the proposition [Satz]. We
do not assert the thought [Gedanke], for this is a private psychological
matter: we assert the object of thought, and this is, to my mind,
a certain complex (an objective proposition, one might say) in which
Mont Blanc is itself a component part. If we do not admit this, then
we get the conclusion that we know nothing at all about Mont Blanc
[itself]. (Frege 1980: 163, 169, see also 79)

Russell’s alternative, mentioned above, is to treat propositions as real

complexes, n-tuples which consist of both individuals and proper-
ties. Candlish has argued, plausibly in my view, that the motivation
behind this conception was an epistemological one (2007: 53–5). If
what we judge – Frege’s thoughts or Russell’s propositions – consisted
of senses rather than the actual things we think or talk about, then this
will erect an impenetrable barrier to knowing these things. That motif
also features in a passage that young Ludwig was familiar with. Russell
there remonstrates that on the view that ‘judgements consist of ideas’,
‘ideas become a veil between us and outside things – we never really, in
knowledge, attain to the things we are supposed to be knowing about,
but only to the ideas of those things’ (1911: 155).
One caveat. In order to link this passage to the earlier response
to Frege, one has to disregard the latter’s distinction between ideas
(Vorstellungen) on the one hand, and senses on the other. While an idea
is ‘subjective’, an unshareable denizen of the mind of an individual,
a sense is non-actual and yet ‘objective’. This means, among other
things, that a sense ‘may be the common property of many people,
and so is not a part or a mode of the individual mind’. Different people
‘are not prevented from grasping the same sense, but they cannot
have the same idea’.10 This qualification does not allay Russell’s worry,
however. For even senses are part of a ‘third realm’ beyond space and
time, rather than of the actual world – what Frege (1918–19) calls the
‘first realm’.
Russell’s criticism founders nonetheless, but for a different reason. To
be sure, what we know about in judging

(2) Mont Blanc is more than 4000 metres high

248 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

had better be a material object rather than a Fregean sense. Yet this is no
bar to insisting that when we judge or know that p, the content of our
judgement – what we judge or know – is a Fregean thought, the sense of a
sentence composed of the senses of the senses of the constituents of the
sentence. We need to distinguish between the objects of a judgement –
which in our case include at least Mont Blanc – and its content – that
Mont Blanc is more than 4000 metres high.
Nevertheless, the early Wittgenstein may have moved from Russell’s
qualm about Fregean senses being epistemic intermediaries between an
epistemic subject and ‘things outside’ to a qualm about them being logi-
cal or semantic intermediaries between a proposition and the fact that
verifies it if it is true. In his later work he explicitly criticises the idea
of positing a ‘pure intermediary between the sentential sign and the
facts’ (PI §94). And he links this to the idea that even a false thought or
sentence to which no fact corresponds has as its ‘object’ (aka content)
‘a shadow of the fact’, such as a ‘proposition’ or a ‘sense of the sentence’
(BB: 32). In any event, even if the Tractatus account of intentionality
was not intended as a criticism of Fregean senses being intermediaries
between the subject of belief and reality, it can be used in this capacity,
as has been by done by Hacker: ‘… according to Frege, what we think
is never what is the case, but only something, an abstract object – the
sense of a sentence, a mode of presentation of an object as the value of
a function for an argument – that is obscurely connected with what is
the case’ (2001: 208).
This criticism cannot be defused by distinguishing between object
and content. For it concerns what is judged – the content of a propo-
sition – rather than its object, what it is about. At the same time, the
objection should not be that what one judges is an abstract object. For
facts also qualify as abstract, in that they are not located in space and
time (see Glock 2003: 130–1 and sct. 4 below). It should rather be that
Frege regards what we judge explicitly as an intermediary or go-between,
a ‘mode of presentation’, something which presents the truth-value of
the sentence or judgement as the value of a function for an argument.
Admittedly, for Frege the sense of a sentence is not an intermediary
between the sentence and reality, but rather between the sentence and
either one of two logical objects, the True and the False. Even if one
waves obvious qualms about the intelligibility of these logical objects,
however, it remains difficult to see how a mode of presenting one of
them could be the case or fail to be the case.
But now, Frege identifies true thoughts (propositions) with facts.
Accordingly, when one judges truly the content of one’s judgement
 Hans-Johann Glock 249

precisely is a fact. And yet, what one judges remains the same whether
or not one judges truly – namely a thought. So it may appear that Frege
had solved Wittgenstein’s puzzle even before the latter formulated it.
Although this is an important defence, it fails to solve Frege’s
problems. Note first that Frege only identified facts in ‘Der Gedanke’
(1918–19: 74), to which Wittgenstein had access to only after complet-
ing the Tractatus in the summer of 1918. Furthermore, his rationale does
not touch upon Wittgenstein’s puzzles of intentionality. More impor-
tantly, the question arises whether identifying true thoughts with facts
is coherent with the claim that they are the senses of true sentences and
hence modes of presenting a referent (Bedeutung), namely the True. How
could the fact that grass is green be a mode of presenting the True as the
value of the function x is green for the argument grass?
In reaction to this last point, one might relinquish Frege’s notorious
idea that sentences have truth-values as their referents, in line with
the Tractatus. In that case, however, another kind of referents must
be found. The obvious alternative is that the referents are something like
objective conditions, facts in the case of true sentences. But this once
more turns the senses of true sentences into intermediaries distinct from
the facts the sentences state, which means that Wittgenstein’s puzzle
remains. Furthermore, this concession does not allay another worry. It
is difficult enough to fathom how the senses of the components of a
sentence can function as components of the sense of the whole sen-
tence, that is, of thoughts. But how these semantic properties of words
could thereby also turn into components of facts like Mont Blanc being
higher than 4000m is downright mystifying. In response to this worry
one might to drop the machinery of sense and reference altogether.
Yet that would also be to abandon Frege’s semantic framework entirely.
Finally, quite independently of that framework, it remains illicit to
identify true propositions with facts. First, in ordinary parlance ‘fact’
and its cognates have a narrower scope than ‘truth’ and its cognates,
because of their connection with what has been established and their
contrast with what is a matter of value or conjecture (Rundle 1992:
18–21). Secondly, the criteria of identity for true propositions are more
fine-grained than those for facts (Künne 2003: 11–12; Glock 2003:
130). Thirdly, even if one disregards these features, there remain impor-
tant differences between the idiom of facts and the idiom of truth
(Rundle 1979: 328–32; Künne 2003: 6–11). Finally, it is plausible to
hold that far from being identical with true propositions or thoughts,
facts are something that true propositions represent or depict. At any
rate, as we shall see in the next section Wittgenstein’s picture theory
250 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

tries to resolve the puzzles of intentionality by exploiting rather than

impugning this idea.

4 Wittgenstein’s Way Out: The Picture Theory

The contention of the preceding section was that Frege’s and Russell’s
views about the contents of judgements face complementary difficulties
in doing justice to features of intentionality highlighted by the early
Wittgenstein. For Russell’s dual relation theory, a true belief does not
fall short of the fact, idiosyncratically labelled a ‘proposition’. But then
there is nothing to believe when one believes falsely. Conversely, for
Frege (at least prior to 1918) there is always something – some thing –
one believes, even if one believes falsely; but what one believes – a sense
or mode of presenting a truth-value – inevitably falls short of the fact, of
how things are.
These complementary shortcomings, I now want to suggest, also
provide a starting point for Wittgenstein’s own account of intentionality.
When Wittgenstein tried to resolve the aforementioned puzzles of
intentionality through his so-called picture theory, several points were
already in place. First and foremost was the contrast between proposi-
tions on the one hand, names on the other, a contrast that neither Frege
nor Russell had sufficiently appreciated (see NL 97: 101; TLP 3.143–4;
Glock 1996: ‘proposition’; Bonino 2008). Unlike names (referring
expressions) propositions are essentially composite.11 Furthermore, they
represent reality not by standing for something, but through depicting,
either truly or falsely, how things are. What remained unsolved was a
‘deep mystery’, namely the ‘mystery of negation’. A proposition can say
how things are not: it depicts something, although what it depicts need
not obtain. The proposition ‘as it were casts a shadow upon the world’
(NB 15.11.14), even if no fact in reality corresponds to it.
Wittgenstein’s solution of the mystery – aka the aforementioned
puzzles of intentionality – runs as follows. What a judgement or propo-
sition depicts is a potentiality. Whether or not my thought is true, its
content is one and the same possibility, a possibility which is actual-
ised in the first case but not in the second. What I think – the ‘sense
of the proposition’ – is the situation or state of affairs depicted (see
3.11, 4.021). A ‘state of affairs’ (Sachverhalt) is a possible combination of
objects. That combination obtains if the proposition is true, and does
not if it is false. An obtaining situation or state of affairs is a fact, some-
thing which is actually the case (1ff.; 2.201ff., 4.02ff.; NB 2.10./2.11.14).12
The possibility of a state of affairs – i.e. of a particular combination of
 Hans-Johann Glock 251

objects – is guaranteed by the proposition making sense, irrespective of

its truth-value (2.203, 3.02). The world – how things actually are, what
happens to be the case – only decides whether or not the place in logical
space determined by the proposition is filled. Accordingly, proposi-
tions are not just bivalent, as Russell had it, i.e., either true or false, but
bipolar. That is to say that they are capable of being true but also capable
of being false. In this they reflect what they represent. A state of affairs
(combination of objects) either does or does not obtain; but, being a
potentiality, it cannot obtain necessarily.
One might demur that a state of affairs exists independently of
whether it does or does not obtain, and that, in that respect, a state of
affairs is also an actuality. This way of speaking is not countenanced by
the Tractatus, which confines meaningful talk of existence to complexes,
the latter being distinct from both simple objects and states of affairs
(see Glock 1996: ‘names’, ‘objects’). Leaving that aside, the ‘existence’
of Tractarian states of affairs is entirely independent of how things are.
At least in the first instance, that the state of affairs that p exists means
simply that the proposition ‘p’ has a sense. And that in turn means that
it depicts a state of affairs. To break out of this circle, we need to look
at the components of propositions, which is precisely what the picture
theory proceeds to do.
For a proposition to depict, no fact need correspond to it as a whole.
But two things are required. First, something must correspond to
its elements. There must be a one-to-one correlation between these
elements – its constituent names – and the elements of the situation it
depicts – the objects. Second, it must be determined what relationships
between the names depict what relationships between things. If both
‘pictorial relation’ and ‘structure’ are in place, the fact that the elements
of the picture are related to each other in a determinate way represents
that the corresponding things are related to each other in the same way,
whether or not they actually are.

One name is the representative of one thing, another of another

thing and they themselves are connected; in this way the whole
images the situation – like a tableau vivant... ‘The connection
must be possible’ means: The proposition and the components
of the situation must stand in a particular relation...in order for a
proposition to present a state of affairs it is only necesssary for its
components to represent those of the situation and for the former
to stand in a connection which is possible for the latter. (NB: 4–5
November 1914).
252 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

To depict falsely is to depict a non-obtaining combination of existing

elements. ‘In a proposition a situation is, as it were, assembled by way of
experiment’ (4.031, see 2.1–2.15, 4.01–4.1). When we think truly, what
we think is a fact. Yet its components are not senses but ‘meanings’ – i.e.
referents – of linguistic signs, as befits any components facts might
be said to have. The fact expressed by (2) is not composed of modes
of presenting referents (whatever that could mean), but the object to
which the ultimate components of (2) refer.
So far so (reasonably) good, as long as one is entitled to assume the
possibility of logically proper names that are immune to referential
failure. But Wittgenstein took the idea of thought reaching up to reality
to a point that is problematic, even given the framework of logical
atomism. The sense of a proposition – a possible state of affairs – is
‘combination’ or ‘configuration’ of objects or things (2.01–2.011,
2.0271–2.03) and hence has real constituents (Bestandteile), contrary
to Frege. But at least some possible states of affairs obtain, i.e. are facts.
Accordingly, at least some facts have real components or constituents.
As Frege pointed out in letter to Wittgenstein (28 June 1919), however,
this threatens to render inconsistent Tractatus 1.1: ‘The world is the
totality of facts, not of things’. If things are constituents of facts, and
facts are part of the world, then how can the world consist of facts
without also consisting of things?13 One might defend Wittgenstein
on the grounds that he regards (the totality of) objects as ‘the sub-
stance of the world’ (2.021), and indeed of all possible worlds, since
the latter differ only in how these objects are arranged (see 2.0231,
3.4–3.42). And this might be taken to acknowledge indirectly that
the world consists of objects. In that case, however, denying that the
world ‘is’ the totality of objects in 1.1 can amount only to something
along the following lines: the totality of objects does not distinguish
one possible world from another, and hence the (actual) world can-
not be identified with the totality of objects (see Glock 1996: ‘fact’,
‘logical space’).
In the aforementioned letter Frege also pointed out that it is misguided
to regard facts and states of affairs as composed of constituents in the
first place (see PG: 200–1; Geach 1977; McGuinness 1988: 164). The
fact that the circle is red is not a combination of a circle and redness,
the fact that the book is on the table is not composed of the book, the
table and the relation of being on. Consequently, facts are not formed
by objects as a chain is by its links. Moreover, unlike things, facts are not
spatio-temporal occupants of the world: they have no spatial location
and cannot move.
 Hans-Johann Glock 253

Wittgenstein came to accept this criticism when he abandoned not

just logical atomism but also the picture theory at the beginning of
the 1930s. Nevertheless the idea that thought reaches right up to real-
ity without intermediaries is retained and indeed sharpened (see Glock
1996: 185–9; Hacker 1996a: ch. 1; Ammereller 2001). It does not require
a metaphysical underpinning, however, but only grammatical truisms.
To be sure, a proposition determines a possible fact, while reality deter-
mines whether it is actualised. But this boils down to the idea that if
a proposition makes sense, it is clear what would verify it, whether or
not it is actually true (PI §461). Taking these deflationary ideas a step
further, one should question an assumption shared between Frege,
Russell and the early Wittgenstein. It is the orthodox idea that what we
say or think – thoughts or propositions – are genuine entities that have
components or parts in a genuine sense, irrespective of whether they be
mind-independent objects à la Russell, senses à la Frege or constituents
of states of affairs à la Wittgenstein. What gives sense to talk of parts and
wholes in the case of propositions or thoughts is the fact that the lin-
guistic expressions of thoughts – namely sentences – have components
– namely words. What is said or thought can be said to have components
only to the extent to which its linguistic expression has components
(see Glock 2010).

5 The Assertion-Sign Judgement Stroke

So far we have focused on the contents of assertion or judgement. Both

Frege and Russell famously distinguished what is asserted or judged,
the proposition or thought – from the act of asserting or judging. Frege
introduced the sign ‘|–’ to express the act of judging or acknowledging
something to be true, that something being the thought expressed by the
sentence following ‘|–’. Every line in his axiomatic system has the form

(3) |–p

where ‘-p’ (involving the horizontal ‘content-stroke’) expresses the mere

thought without judging it to be true, while the vertical ‘judgement
stroke’ (Urteilsstrich) signals the act of assertion (1879: §§2–3; 1893:
I § 5; 1891: 22). Russell took over ‘|–’, calling it the ‘assertion-sign’, and
used it to add the force of ‘it is true that’ to the unasserted proposition.
He held that true propositions have the quality of being asserted in
a non-psychological, logical sense (1903: 35; 1913: 107, 196; Russell/
Whitehead 1910: 8, 92).
254 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

In 1911 Wittgenstein seems to have maintained that the only things

which exist are ‘asserted’, i.e. true propositions (McGuinness 1988:
89–92). Assuming the Russellian conception of propositions, this antici-
pates his aforementioned claim that the world is the totality of facts
rather than things (1.1). But by the time of Notes on Logic, Wittgenstein
had stopped using ‘asserted’ as equivalent to ‘true’. Indeed, he had
come to deny that assertion is logically relevant (NL: 95–6; TLP 4.023,
4.063f., 4.442).

Assertion is merely psychological. … The assertion-sign is logically

quite without significance. It only shows, in Frege and Whitehead
and Russell, that these authors hold the propositions so indicated to
be true. ‘|–’ therefore belongs as little to the proposition as (say) the
number of the proposition. (NL: 95,103)

The Tractatus makes the same point by reference to Frege:

Frege’s ‘judgement stroke’ » |– « is logically altogether insignificant

[bedeutungslos]; in Frege (and Russell) it only shows that these authors
hold as true the propositions marked this way. A proposition cannot
possibly say of itself that it is true. (4.442, see 3.332; NL: 96)

This passage is sloppy, since Frege’s judgement stroke (Urteilsstrich) is

only the vertical part of ‘|–’ (1893: §5; see Künne 2009: 56). But this
does not settle the question of what logical significance, if any, should
be accorded to the sign in its entirety. In my view, Wittgenstein is right
to deny that a sentential sign that purports to say of itself that it is
true amounts to a proposition with a sense – a proposition that makes
a claim that can be assessed for its truth or falsehood. What claim
is being made by ‘This sentence is true’? Any attempt to provide a genu-
ine answer to this question leads into a regress. If this is along the right
lines, the assertion-sign can only serve to indicate that a proposition
is judged to be true by the person using it. And in that respect, at least,
it indeed signifies something ‘psychological’. Frege himself grants as
much in a letter to Jourdain written in 1912: ‘Judging (or recognising as
true) is certainly an inner mental process’ (1980: 78–9). But then again,
why should that imply logical insignificance?
In Frege and Russell ‘|–’ serves to mark out a proposition as a premise
or conclusion in a proof. This is a potentially useful role. But it is not
an indispensable one. Context generally suffices to distinguish asserted
from unasserted propositions. The need for a special device arises only
 Hans-Johann Glock 255

if, like Frege and Russell, one seeks an artificial language that dispenses
with contextual information. Furthermore, in ordinary parlance, at any
rate, one cannot infer or draw inferences from premises that one regards
as false. Yet Wittgenstein is obviously right to point out that ‘we can
draw inferences from a false proposition’ (4.023; NB 20 October 1914).
Unfortunately, this is something Frege explicitly denied.14 Various
authors have defended Frege on the grounds that in the passages at
issue by Schluss he in effect means proof, an inference that guarantees the
truth of its conclusion (Anscombe 1959: 115; Künne 2009: 56; Pfisterer
2009: ch. 2; Textor 2011: 80–1). But first, Frege does not say so in the
published writings accessible to Wittgenstein. Secondly, one should not
run together the two notions, which fulfil two distinct and important
roles. And thirdly, even as regards proof, Frege’s claim stands in need
of either qualification or further defence, since indirect proof proceeds
from propositions which are neither true nor regarded as true.15
The difference between the early Wittgenstein and his predecessors
regarding the assertion-sign is part of a larger contrast concerning their
respective conceptions of logic (see Glock 1996: 216–20). ‘|–’ is part
of the conceptual notations of Frege and Russell, which stand in the
service of their axiomatic presentations of logic, in which one deduces
theorems from axioms that have to be not just true but self-evident.
Wittgenstein’s rejection of ‘|–’ is equally part of his contrasting conceptual
notation. In that notation truth-tables serve not to define the logical
constants, but as a way of writing down propositions (4.442; see 3.325)
in a way which displays their logical relations – without the need for an
axiomatic structure.
As a result, for Wittgenstein logic is exclusively concerned with the
unasserted proposition, which depicts how things are if it is true. At the
same time, however, he seems to have concurred with Frege and Russell
that such a proposition or picture can be common to the assertion that
p, the question of whether it is the case that p, the command to make
it the case that p, etc. (4.022; see also BT: 149). This does not imply an
inconsistency in his position, however, since logic is exclusively con-
cerned with this common element rather than the diverse mental or
linguistic acts.

Judgement, question and command are all on the same level. What
interests logic in them is only the unasserted proposition. (NL: 96)

More worrying is the claim that an elementary proposition ‘asserts

the obtaining of a state of affairs’ (4.21, my emphasis; see also 4.122,
256 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

see 4.064). What elementary propositions do can hardly be logically

insignificant. That apart, however, the Tractatus position is coherent.
The sense of a proposition is ‘what it represents’, namely a possible
state of affairs or situation, an arrangement of objects which may or may
not obtain, depending on whether it is true or false. The proposition
shows its sense, i.e. ‘how things stand if it is true. And it says that they
do so stand’ (4.022, see 2.201ff., 4.0621). It is reasonable to assume that
asserting is the same as affirming or saying that. And in that case one
can simply distinguish between what an elementary proposition shows,
its sense, and what it does, namely asserting that this sense – a possible
state of affairs – obtains, which comes to the same thing as asserting the
obtaining of that state of affairs.

6 The Tractatus Account of Judgement

As we have seen, according to Wittgenstein, Russell’s multiple rela-

tion theory ensures the possibility of false judgements at the price
of allowing nonsensical judgements. The correct analysis of (1) must
‘show that it is impossible for a judgement to be a piece of nonsense’
(5.5422); it must ensure that what we judge – that p – is a meaningful
bi-polar proposition ( June 1913, CL: 29; NL: 103). Wittgenstein meets
this challenge by treating the logical forms of a proposition not as
an additional component of the proposition, but as a function of the
logical forms – i.e. combinatorial possibilities – of their constituents.
Whether a combination of names amounts to a proposition with
a sense depends on the combinatorial possibilities of these names,
which are laid down by their logical syntax. However, the com-
binatorial possibilities of names in turn reflect the combinatorial
possibilities of the objects which the names have as their meanings.
Ultimately, therefore, it is the metaphysical essences of objects that
circumscribe logical space, the totality of possible states of affairs
that can be judged to be the case (see Glock 1996: ‘logical form’,
‘logical space’).
This way of ruling out the judging of nonsense relies on the idea
that the logical syntax of language reflects the metaphysical essence
of reality, an idea Wittgenstein himself came to reject. The Tractatus
also invites more immanent criticisms, however. 5.542 presents an
analysis of belief intended to avoid both the appearance that in state-
ments of form

(1) A believes/judges that p

 Hans-Johann Glock 257

p occurs in a non-truth-functional way; and the possibility of judging

nonsense. Wittgenstein’s solution is to incorporate the propositional form
in expressions of belief. (1) is of the form

(4) ‘p’ says p.

Like (4), Wittgenstein contends, (1) correlates not a fact (p) and an
object (A), but two facts, the depicted fact (assuming that p is a fact),
and the thought-constituting fact. It does so through correlating their
components, namely the elements of thought with objects in reality.
(1) means that in A there is a mental fact which pictures the fact that
p. Only composite things with an articulate structure consisting of ele-
ments correlated with objects can say or picture something. This implies
that there is no unitary subject ‘A’, no soul-substance, but only a com-
plex array of mental elements.
This analysis guarantees the meaningfulness of what is judged by
insisting that it is not a complex of objects which can be combined in
any odd way, but a fact in which objects hang together subject to their
combinatorial possibilities. But it also replaces Russell’s inchoate rela-
tion between a mind and the uncoordinated terms of judgement by
the obscure idea that ‘thinking the sense of p’ projects thought onto
reality (3.11). Moreover, it is prima facie unclear how 5.542 eschews the
problem of non-truth-functional occurrences. (4) can be understood in
three different ways. If what appears in quotation-marks is a descrip-
tion of accidental features of the propositional sign, (4) would always
be false, since without a ‘method of projection’ signs cannot depict
anything. Alternatively, (4) might express an external relation between
two facts: the fact that the speaker thinks or means such-and-such and
the fact that p. For instance, there might be an empirical law of the
kind invoked by contemporary causal theories of content, according
to which subjects form certain thoughts when confronted with certain
external facts. In that case (4) is a bipolar proposition alright. Yet it’s
truth-value is not determined simply by that of p, but by an empirical
relationship between the fact that p and a mental fact. Accordingly, the
truth-value of (4) would not be a function of that of ‘p’. Finally, the
relation between the two facts might be internal, namely if the descrip-
tion in quotation includes the method of projection, i.e. identifies p as
precisely the proposition that says that p. But in that case (4) would be
necessarily true, i.e. its truth-value would again not be a function of that
of p. Moreover, by virtue of expressing an internal relation (4) would
be a pseudo-proposition which tries to say what can only be shown
258 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

by the proposition p. None of these alternatives allows for p to occur

truth-functionally in (4), or, consequently, in (1). The last preserves the
extensionality thesis insofar as propositions occur in genuine proposi-
tions only as the bases of truth-functional operations, although at the
price of branding belief-ascriptions as pseudo-propositions. Waismann
later suggested that the analysis should be confined to the first-person
case ‘I believe that p’ for which it was first developed (NM: 119). But it
is hard to see how this avoids the aforementioned problems.

7 Truth

Let us now turn from the questions of what constitutes the content of
a proposition and what constitutes asserting or judging such a content
to be true to the question of what constitutes its truth or falsehood.
The received story about the Tractatus account of truth runs roughly as
follows. Traditional correspondence theories invoked a vaguely defined
and possibly vacuous relation of correspondence between thought or
language and reality. The early Wittgenstein, in an uneasy alliance
with middle Russell, improved matters. They gave specific content to
a notion of correspondence by explaining it as a structural congruence
or isomorphism between truth-bearers (true sentences, propositions,
beliefs etc.) and something that makes them true (facts).
Correct about this story is that the picture theory appeals to an iso-
morphism: a situation and any proposition (Satz) depicting it must share
a logical form, a logico-mathematical multiplicity. Unfortunately, the
standard interpretations also assume that the isomorphism between a
proposition and the situation it represents is the relation of correspond-
ence that is supposed to make a proposition true. Thus Susan Haack
equates the correspondence underlying the correspondence theory of
the Tractatus with the ‘structural isomorphism’ between elementary
propositions and facts (1978: 92; see also Engel 1991: 97; Grayling 1997:
140). Similarly, Lawrence Johnson (1992: 49) sums up the Tractatus
account of truth as follows: ‘True propositions are those which share the
structure of the reality they are about, which they picture …’.
According to the standard interpretation, the Tractatus propounds an
isomorphism theory of truth:

(5) A proposition p is true iff it is isomorphic to what it depicts.

A thesis of isomorphism does indeed play a crucial role in the Tractatus.

But the standard interpretation ignores that this structural identity or
 Hans-Johann Glock 259

isomorphism holds between an elementary proposition and its sense,

the possible state of affairs – a possible combination of objects – it depicts
(2.202–2.221, 4.031). It does not just hold between a true elementary
proposition and an actual fact. For Wittgenstein, isomorphism explains
sense rather than truth. Sharing a form of depiction with a situation
is a prerequisite of representing; yet to represent is not the same as to
represent truly.

There must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts,

to enable the one to be a picture of the other. (2.161)

What the picture must have in common with reality, in order to be

able to depict it – correctly or incorrectly – in the way it does, is its form
of depiction. (2.17; my emphasis)

The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth

or falsehood, through its form of depiction. (2.22)

According to the picture theory, all meaningful propositions, not just

the true ones, are pictures of reality and hence isomorphic with what
they depict. The relation of isomorphism explains not what it is for a
proposition to be true, but what it is for a proposition to say something.
That the configuration of objects in a possible situation corresponds
to that of the simple signs in the sentential sign means not that the
latter is true, but that it depicts the former. The Tractatus links the sense
of a proposition to the conditions under which it is true. To under-
stand a proposition is to know what is the case if it is true (4.024). To
know what is the case if a molecular proposition is true is to know
what elementary propositions make it true, to know what is the case if
an elementary proposition is true is to know what possible combination
of objects make it true (see, respectively 4.2, 4.4–4.431 and 2.01, 2.221).
Isomorphism ensures that a proposition does have truth-conditions,
not that these truth-conditions are fulfilled.
This failure of the standard correspondence interpretation has been
noted – independently and without mention of any culprits – by
Ansgar Beckermann (1995) and Peter Hacker (1996: 291n19, 318n13;
2001, 123–4n). In its stead, Beckermann proposes that the Tractatus
features a semantic conception of truth that anticipates Tarski, while
Hacker maintains that it features a deflationary conception of truth
that anticipates Ramsey. In fact, however, the appearance of a con-
trast may be more terminological than real. For there are passages
260 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

which can be read in both a semantic or a deflationary light. In 1914,

Wittgenstein wrote:

‘p’ is true, says nothing else but p! (NB: 9)

‘p’ is true = ‘p’ . p. Def.: only instead of ‘p’ we must here introduce
the general form of a proposition. (NB: 113)

And in the Tractatus we read:

… a proposition is true if things are as we say they are by using it

(… wahr ist ein Satz, wenn es sich so verhält, wie wir es durch ihn sagen).
(4.062)

If we keep in mind that ‘p’ in the middle quotation is the description

of a proposition that says something, and that the ‘general form of a
proposition’ is ‘Things are thus-and-so’ (4.5), then these passages point
to the same semantic/deflationary account of truth:

(6) Proposition p is true iff things are as p says they are.

Both Beckermann and Hacker attribute to the Tractatus something

like (6). For Beckermann, (6) advances a semantic theory because it
revolves around notions concerning the meaning or content of linguistic
expressions and, more specifically, the idea that a proposition has
sense by virtue of saying that things are thus-and-so. For Hacker, (6) is
deflationary, because it does not analyse truth in terms of a ‘correspond-
ence-relation’ between a proposition and a fact, or in terms of any other
‘truth-relation’ that being true consists in, including relations to other
propositions of the kind invoked by coherence theories.
Unfortunately, we cannot simply rest content with this synthesis of
semantic and deflationary readings. For there are also passages in the
Tractatus that strongly suggest a correspondence interpretation:

A picture agrees with reality (stimmt mit der Wirklichkeit überein) or

fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false. (2.21)

The agreement (Übereinstimmung) or disagreement of its sense with

reality constitutes its truth or falsity. (2.222)

In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it

with reality. (2.223)
 Hans-Johann Glock 261

These passages are explicitly about what distinguishes true pictures

from false pictures, rather than about what gives sense to pictures
in general. Furthermore, they feature claims which would grace any
correspondence theories. They spell out truth in terms of an agree-
ment between a truth-bearer and reality, which is supposed to be
a characteristic of correspondence theories. In the same vein, they
specify that to tell whether a truth-bearer is true one must compare it
with reality, that is, establish whether a certain relation between the
two obtains.
Nevertheless Beckermann (1995: 536–7) denies that these passages
evince a correspondence theory. He maintains that a correspondence
interpretation ignores the fact that, according to 2.222, it is the sense
of a proposition rather than the proposition itself that agrees with
reality. But in 2.21 it is the picture-cum-proposition rather than its
sense that is said to agree if it is true and fail to agree if it is false.
There is no reason to suppose that 2.21 can be set aside on account
of 2.222.
Consequently, the failure of the standard correspondence interpreta-
tion need not spell ruin for a correspondence interpretation as such. If
there is a comeback for opponents of a correspondence interpretation
here, it concerns the sense in which either a proposition or its sense
agrees with reality. As we shall see now, however, exploring that comeback
only confirms that the Tractatus propounded a correspondence theory,
albeit not the one standardly ascribed to it.

8 From Obtainment to Correspondence

That the proposition agrees with reality (2.21) involves two things: first,
it has a sense, that is, depicts a possible state of affairs; secondly, that
sense agrees with reality (2.222). The crucial question is what this second
claim amounts to. The Tractatus provides a straightforward answer. The
sense of an elementary proposition is a possible state of affairs. That
sense agrees with reality if that possible combination of objects actually
obtains, that is, if it is a fact.

The simplest kind of proposition, an elementary proposition, asserts

the obtaining (Bestehen) of a state of affairs. (4.21)

If an elementary proposition is true, the state of affairs obtains

(besteht): if an elementary proposition is false, the state of affairs does
not obtain. (4.25)
262 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

In the Tractatus the term ‘states of affairs’ is confined to possible

combinations of objects depicted by elementary propositions, whereas
the term ‘situation’ includes possibilities depicted by molecular propo-
sitions (see fn. 13). For ease of presentation, I shall leave aside this
complication and employ ‘state of affairs’ in a way that includes situa-
tions. In this way we arrive at an obtainment theory of truth:

(7) Proposition p is true if the state of affairs p depicts obtains.16

(7) combines the explicit statements about agreement in 2.21–2.223

with the picture theory’s explanation of what such agreement amounts
to. It is therefore the official theory of truth in the Tractatus, the one
on which any interpretation must be based. The question is how this
obtainment theory is to be assessed. Is it a type of correspondence
theory, or is it a version of a deflationary-cum-semantic account?
The obtainment theory of (7) differs from the semantic/deflation-
ary account as formulated in (6), and from the spirit of deflationary
approaches in particular, in two respects:

• it involves an ontology of states of affairs and facts (obtaining states

of affairs)
• it explicitly features a bona fide relation, namely depiction.

Furthermore, (7) can be transformed into a version of the correspond-

ence theory. The first step is to move to

(8) Proposition p is true iff p depicts an obtaining state of affairs.

(8) is not just a grammatical variant of (7), since its right-hand side
is an existential statement. It amounts to

(8⬘) Proposition p is true iff p there is a state of affairs that p depicts

and which obtains.

And for molecular propositions, (8⬘) can be false, since the right to left
implication can fail. Assume that p1 is true and p2 false. In that case
there is an obtaining state of affairs that the molecular proposition
‘p1 & p2’ depicts, yet the conjunction itself is false.
Nevertheless the move from (7) to (8) or (8⬘) is licit, since we are
dealing exclusively with elementary propositions. And for each elemen-
tary proposition, whether true or false, there is just one distinct state
 Hans-Johann Glock 263

of affairs that verifies or falsifies it depending on whether or not it

obtains.
The second step consists in noting that an obtaining state of affairs is
a fact. Accordingly, (8) is equivalent to

(9) Proposition p is true iff p depicts a fact.

Next, (9) can be reformulated with the help of a quantifier:

(10) Proposition p is true iff there is a fact which p depicts.

Finally, we gloss ‘p depicts’ as ‘p corresponds to’. This delivers:

(11) Proposition p is true iff there is a fact to which p corresponds.

Given the idea of obtainment, of a possible state of affairs that can

either obtain or not obtain, one can accept that the isomorphism
between language and reality is a matter of depiction, and yet explain
truth by reference to this isomorphism. A proposition is true if it is
isomorphic to and thereby depicts a state of affairs that actually obtains.
The Tractatus does indeed give content to the notion of correspondence,
because it provides an elaborate account – the picture theory – about
how propositions come to depict states of affairs, and hence of how true
propositions come to depict obtaining states of affairs or facts.
At the same time, the correspondence of (11) is not the ‘agreement’
between a proposition or its sense and reality mentioned in 2.21 and
2.222. That agreement is the agreement between what a proposition
says – that p – and what is the case if it is true – that p. For this reason,
opponents of a correspondence interpretation might stage the follow-
ing comeback. On the one hand, the agreement between what is said
and what is the case makes for truth rather than falsehood. Yet it is not
a genuine relation between a truth-bearer and a truth-maker, but the
kind of logical equivalence or even identity stressed by deflationary and
semantic theories. On the other hand, (7) and (11) invoke a genuine
relation between a proposition p and what it depicts. However, this
relation makes for depiction rather than truth. Neither idea provides the
truth-making relation sought by correspondence theories. What makes
the difference between a true proposition and a false one is not the
existence of such a relation, but the obtaining of the state of affairs.
In my view, this claim is correct. For two reasons, however, it does
not disqualify (11) from being a correspondence theory. First, a similar
264 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

position was held by Moore and Russell. In Problems of Philosophy

Russell wrote: ‘a belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and
false when there is no corresponding fact’ (1912: 75). In his 1910–11
lectures Moore toed a similar line:

To say that this belief is true is to say that there is in the Universe
a fact to which it corresponds; and to say that it is false is to say
that there is not in the Universe any fact to which it corresponds.
(1953: 276–7)

Replace ‘fact to which it corresponds’ by ‘fact which it depicts’, and

you arrive at (10). According to Moore, the relation of correspondence
cannot be defined in the sense of being analysed. The Tractatus takes up
this challenge, by providing an elaborate explanation of what depiction
amounts to.
Both Moore and Russell subscribed to a version of (11) in which
beliefs rather than propositions feature as truth-bearers. In both cases,
moreover, the notion of correspondence is best explained as a (loosely
speaking) semantic relation between a belief or proposition and its con-
tent. A belief is true if there is a fact that it represents, a belief is false if
there is no fact that it represents.
Moore and Russell some time after 1900 count as paradigmatic cor-
respondence theorists (Kirkham 1992: ch. 4.2; Künne 2003: ch. 3.2).
Consequently, one cannot deny that the Tractatus propounded a cor-
respondence without raising similar doubts about these paradigmatic
cases. But why not opt for such a wholesale taxonomic revision? This
is where my second reason for sticking to a (non-standard) correspond-
ence interpretation comes in. It would be uncharitable to turn the idea
of a truth-making relation between a true proposition and the fact it
depicts or expresses into a sine qua non of a correspondence theory, since
that idea is incoherent. If we take it literally, a true proposition stands in
one sort of relation to the fact it expresses, namely that of correspond-
ing or fitting. By the same token, a false proposition stands in a different
relation to that same fact, namely that of not fitting it. Yet, if s is false,
what s expresses cannot be a fact to begin with, and hence there is no
item that s could fail to fit (Williams 1976: 75; Kirkham 1992: 137). By
definition, a false proposition does not express a fact.
But can one not simply avoid the idea that a false proposition stands
in a relation of non-fitting to a fact by insisting that proposition is false
if it fails to stand in a relation of fitting to a fact? Certainly, yet this is
cold comfort to the idea of truth-making. For the relation of fitting here
 Hans-Johann Glock 265

can only be something like signifying or depicting. And that means once
more that no truth-making relation is in play.
One might try to salvage the idea of truth-making instead by main-
taining that a true proposition and a false proposition stand in different
relations of signification to one and the same item, the first being
truth-making, the second not. The Tractatus seems to have anticipated
this gambit as well.

It must not be overlooked that a proposition has a sense that is inde-

pendent of the facts: otherwise one can easily suppose that true and
false are relations of equal status between signs and what they signify.
In that case one could say, for example, that ‘p’ signifies in the true
way what ‘~p’ signifies (bezeichnet) in the false way, etc. (4.061)

This passage is part of an intricate debate with Russell. In ‘The

Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ Russell had admitted not just general
but also negative facts into his ontological ‘zoo’, even though his adop-
tion of the latter ‘nearly produced a riot’ at Harvard in 1914 (1918:
211–16). According to Russell, if the positive proposition ‘fa’ is false,
it is made false by the negative fact NFA, a fact that at the same stroke
verifies the negative propositions ‘~fa’.
By contrast, for the Tractatus a negative fact is simply the non-
obtaining of a possible state of affairs (2.06). If ‘fa’ is false, what makes
it false is not a negative fact NFA but the non-obtaining of a positive
state of affairs FA. In contrast to names – whether names of individuals
like ‘a’ or names of properties like ‘f’ – nothing in reality corresponds
to ‘~’. The only effect of ‘~’ is to reverse the truth-value and the sense
of a proposition. Although ‘fa’ and ‘~fa’ have opposite senses, both
mention the same configuration of the same objects (see 2.01, 4.0312,
4.0621, 6.1203).
At the same time, Russell’s acceptance of negative facts was tentative.
Mentioning Wittgenstein, and presumably influenced by the latter’s
remarks on the bipolarity of the proposition and on correspondence as
reference, he also suggested that ‘the essence of a proposition is that it
can correspond in two ways with a fact, in what one may call the true
way or the false way’ (1918: 185, see 187). Accordingly, ‘fa’ and ‘~fa’ cor-
respond to the same fact, but in different ways. On the assumption that
correspondence amounts to signification or depiction here, Russell’s
view is that, if ‘fa’ is true, it signifies in the true way the positive fact
FA which ‘~fa’ signifies in the false way. For Wittgenstein, on the other
hand, ‘fa’ signifies/says that FA, while ‘~fa’ signifies/says in precisely the
266 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

same way that not FA. Yet the ‘not’ does not stand for an element of a
situation, it expresses an operation that must be performed to turn a
proposition into its negation.
Assuming that ‘fa’ is true, the two positions can be contrasted as
follows:
Russell (‘Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ 185)
fa ~fa
signifies truly signifies falsely

FA
Wittgenstein (Tractatus 4.061)
fa ~fa
signifies obtaining signifies non-obtaining

says that says that not

FA
But 4.061 also has a wider moral. A proposition has just one kind of
relation to what it depicts (expresses, states), and this relation does not
make the difference between the proposition being true and its being
false, because it antecedes that difference. We have once more returned
to the guiding idea that sense is prior to truth and falsehood, being a
precondition of truth-aptness.

Notes
1. Two comments are in place. First, in this essay I shall focus on empirical
propositions and disregard the relation between sense and truth in the case
of necessary propositions, which raises special questions. Secondly, the ante-
cedence of sense must be distinguished from a stronger idea also espoused in
the Tractatus. According to what I have labelled the ‘autonomy of sense’, the
sense of an empirical proposition is not only independent of (antecedent to)
its own truth-value, but also of the truth of other propositions stating that
something or other happens to be the case (Glock 1996: ‘object’).
2. I set aside important issues contested between these three concerning the
philosophy of logic. Accounts sympathetic to the early Wittgenstein are pro-
vided by Glock 1996: ‘tautology’, ‘logic’; Glock 2000 and Hacker 2001: ch. 7.
A vigorous defence of Frege is mounted by Künne 2009.
3. For a justification of my reading of the Tractatus see Glock 2006 and Glock
1996: ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’. Unless otherwise specified, all refer-
ences in parenthesis are to numbered sections of Wittgenstein’s Logisch-
Philosophische Abhandlung (1921), translated as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(1961). References to other works by Wittgenstein are by abbreviations listed
 Hans-Johann Glock 267

in the bibliography. Throughout I have modified existing translations where

I saw fit.
4. The German Satz is ambiguous as between ‘sentence’ and ‘proposition’, but
for Wittgenstein a Satz is always an interpreted symbol rather than a mere
sign – a sound or inscription.
5. The passage that serves as motto to this essay constitutes an earlier
version of this material. Bear in mind that for Wittgenstein ‘epistemology
[Erkenntnistheorie] is the philosophy of psychology’ (4.1121), i.e. what we
nowadays call the philosophy of mind.
6. This is not the place to go into the details of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of
the multiple-relation theory. One is expected to add ‘unfortunately’, but
in my case that would be a tad disingenuous. For more elaborate accounts
see Stevens 2004 and Bonino 2008; and for the wider picture, including the
dispute between Russell and Bradley, Candlish 2007.
7. I have phrased the point in this way in order to sidestep the question of
whether in the case of necessary propositions truth and sense are interde-
pendent, something Wittgenstein denies.
8. That idea is not explicitly directed against Frege. Indeed, in alluding to 2.511
‘Remarks on Logical Form’ gloss it rather differently (RLF: 36).
9. The following discussion is indebted to Hacker 2001 and Candlish 2007:
53–5. But while Hacker does not mention Russell’s qualms about Fregean
senses, Candlish does not mention Wittgenstein’s idea of thought reaching
right up to reality. My suggestion is that Russell’s qualms about senses being
epistemic intermediaries may have inspired Wittgenstein’s qualms about
semantic intermediaries.
10. Frege 1892: 29–30, in Beaney 1997: 149, note 11.
11. 5.02 seems to allow for complex names, since it calls ‘Julius Caesar’ a name.
That consequence can be avoided, however, on the plausible assumption
that Wittgenstein is here using ‘name’ in its ordinary sense rather than his
technical one.
12. The Tractatus suffers from terminological unclarities and incoherences in
this area. In a letter to Russell Wittgenstein stated that a Sachverhalt is what
corresponds to a true elementary proposition, e.g. p, while a Tatsache is
what corresponds to a true molecular proposition, e.g. ‘p & q & r’ (19 August
1919, CL: 123–5); and he approved of Ogden’s translation of Sachverhalt as
atomic fact. Nevertheless, ‘state of affairs’ is the literal translation and does
not beg exegetical questions. For there is also evidence that the difference
between Sachverhalt und Tatsache is also one between what is possibly and
what is actually the case – it is essential for a fact to be something which
is the case, whereas this cannot be essential to a state of affairs. Following
that line, states of affairs can be treated as possible combinations of objects
depicted by elementary propositions and situations (Sachlage) as potential-
ities depicted by molecular propositions. Unfortunately, even this reading
does not render the text entirely consistent (see Glock 1996: ‘fact’). Thus
Wittgenstein explains that a fact is ‘the obtaining of states of affairs’ (2),
rather than a state of affairs that obtains. The passage implies that a fact
is not simply a state of affairs that obtains, but an actuality that consists
in the obtaining of several elementary potentialities. But I shall disregard
this complication in the sequel, since it is the contrast between actuality
and potentiality that is crucial to the picture theory.
268 Judgement and Truth in the Early Wittgenstein

13. Letter to Wittgenstein of 28 June 1919 (Frege 1989). See Künne 2009: 35–6.
The issue is complicated by Wittgenstein’s diffuse explanations mentioned
in the previous note, yet these do not affect Frege’s objection.
14. Among the passages known to me in which he does so only one was pub-
lished before Wittgenstein finished writing the Tractatus, namely 1906: 425.
I do not know whether Wittgenstein was familiar with this piece. But the
issue played a role in Frege’s correspondence with Jourdain and most prob-
ably in his conversations with Wittgenstein. A final observation concerning
Lotze, who influenced Frege in certain respects. Appealing to the authority
of Aristotle, he defines inference in a way that implies that a conclusion
must be ‘valid’ (gültig), i.e. true (1874: 108).
15. A possible way out may be furnished by Frege’s letter to Dingler (6 February
1917), see Frege 1980: 19–23.
16. If Satz in the Tractatus always means ‘sentential sign with a sense’ (see n. 4
above), then any linguistic form that qualifies as a proposition must depict
a possible situation. One could circumvent this terminological complica-
tion by speaking of sentential signs instead. But even when one sticks to
the received terminology, it is legitimate to spell out what it means to be a
proposition in the Tractatus sense in specifying the conditions which a true
proposition must fulfil.

Bibliography

Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung [1921] Kritische Edition, ed. B. McGuinness
and J. Schulte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989); Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
[= TLP], tr. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1961).
Notes on Logic [= NL, 1913], in NB 93–107.
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Index
acceptance 83–4, 85, 97, 111–19,
124, 127–30, 132, 168
acknowledgement 2–5, 23, 31, 32,
36, 39–40, 42, 44–6, 49, 56–7,
59–64, 66–7, 71, 92, 97, 108, 109,
110, 115–16, 119, 124, 253
acquaintance 97, 103, 106, 141, 153,
245
affirmation and negation 5, 41,
43–4, 46, 48, 130
agreement 5, 53, 97–134, 197
between truth-bearers and reality
260–3
Alcoff, Linda M. 179
Alston, William 179
anti-psychologism 139–40, 141,
188, 198
anti-realism 169–73, 178
Aquinas, Thomas 59, 70
Aristotle 53–4, 69, 70, 198, 268
assent (Zustimmung) 2, 47, 57, 59,
60, 68, 114, 132, 202
atomism 150, 210, 252, 253
attitude 1, 5, 45, 46, 85, 97, 102–19,
122, 130, 131, 132, 139, 153, 154
judgemental 24–26, 28, 85,
109–12, 119
non-propositional 106–7, 112,
123, 124, 145
Augustine 59, 70
Austin, John L. 68, 111
Ayer, Alfred L. 178
Bain, Alexander 193
Baldwin, Thomas 178
Beaney, Michael 152, 155, 267
Beckermann, Ansgar 259, 260, 261
Bergmann, Julius 41, 43, 49
Betti, Arianna 4, 74, 75, 77, 79, 81,
83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 120
Bishop Stubbs’s objection 166, 167,
178, 179
Blackburn, Simon 161–2, 177
271
Blanshard, Brand 162–6, 178
Bolzano, Bernard 41, 49, 64, 70, 71,
89, 94, 98, 110, 116, 125, 127,
230, 131, 202, 206
Bosanquet, Bernard 35, 157, 161,
175, 178, 183, 185, 191, 201, 203
Bradley, Francis H. 6, 138–42, 143,
144, 145, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155,
161, 162, 163, 164–5, 175, 176,
178, 183, 185, 188, 189–91, 193,
194, 197, 198, 200, 202, 232–3,
245, 246, 267
Braithwaite, Richard B. 58, 70
Brentano, Franz 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 18,
63, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80,
81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91,
92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 101, 105,
108, 118, 124, 130, 135, 142, 144,
145, 146, 154, 155, 193, 201, 204
Broad, Charlie D. 112
Caird, Edward 189, 201
Candlish, Stewart 6, 157, 177,
178, 247, 267
Cantor, Georg 196
Carnap, Rudolf 161, 162, 167,
168, 178
Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz 92, 94
Cohen, L. Jonathan 111, 116–18,
120, 121, 132, 178
confirmation 114, 168
conviction 5, 97, 98, 102–9, 112,
115, 116, 120, 122, 131, 132, 133
correspondence intuition, (platitude)
about 174–5, 179
Curley, Edwin 178
Damnjanovic, Nic 6, 157, 177
Davidson, Donald 162, 169,
172–3, 220
denial 5, 91, 97, 108, 109, 126, 145
Descartes, René / Cartesian 12, 43,
64, 70, 243
272 Index
Devitt, Michael 179
Dickonson, Goldsworth L. 185
direction 77, 142, 177, 209, 214–15,
219–22, 224, 229–30, 236, 237
Dummett, Michael A.E. 4, 127, 162,
169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 178, 179
Ehrenfels, Christian von 142, 147
Ewing, Alfred C. 161
Fact(s) 4, 24, 26–8, 37, 76, 92–3,
139, 151, 159–60, 163, 165,
170–1, 175, 179, 215, 217,
218–19, 221–3, 230, 232, 235,
238, 244–6, 248–54, 257–69
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 10, 33, 130
Fodor, Jerry 253
Frege, Gottlob 4–5, 7, 12, 28, 30,
36–73, 96, 98–9, 110, 116, 124,
127, 130, 134, 136, 137–40, 153–6,
165, 180, 189–90, 206, 208–10,
213, 233–4, 236–7, 239, 242–4,
246–50, 252–5, 266–8, 269, 270
Freud, Sigmund 9, 10, 11, 33
Gabriel, Gottfried 4, 36, 48, 71
Geach, Peter 53, 54, 60, 64, 66, 69,
70, 71, 252
Geiger, Moritz 107
Glanzberg, Michael 177, 178
Glock, Hans-Johann 7, 242, 248,
250, 251, 252, 253, 255, 256, 266
Green, Thomas H. 183, 184, 188,
189–90
Griffin, Nick 138, 141, 199, 200,
201, 202, 203, 237
Hacker, Peter 120, 121, 133, 248,
253, 259, 260, 266, 267
Hegel, Georg W.F. 162, 178
Heidegger, Martin 9, 25, 28, 30, 32,
33, 34
Hempel, Carl 161, 162, 167, 168, 178
Herbart, Johann Friedrich 10, 43, 49,
64, 71, 144, 154, 193, 202
heterogeneity 223–4, 238
higher level 111, 210, 211
higher-order 228, 229, 235, 238, 239
Hildebrand, Dietrich von 107, 131
Hillebrand, Franz 4, 78, 79–80, 81,
83–7, 88, 89, 93, 94
Hodgson, Shadworth 177, 193, 200
Höfler, Alois 75, 76, 79, 93, 96
Hume, David 10, 12–13, 18, 19, 33,
121, 163
Husserl, Edmund 2, 5, 9, 11, 28,
29, 20, 32, 55, 60, 70, 98–103,
108–11, 112, 115, 116, 118–19,
122–4, 126–7, 130, 131, 132, 133
idealism 6, 74, 138, 141, 159, 160,
161, 162–6, 167, 174–5, 178, 183,
184, 185, 188, 189, 198
intentionality 11, 19, 74, 76–7, 81,
89, 93, 95, 97, 103, 106, 112, 116,
118, 122, 123, 124, 142, 144–5,
242, 243–4, 248, 249, 250
isomorphism 258–9, 263
Jacquette, Dale 74–5
James, William 10, 33, 130
Jeffrey, Richard 178
Joachim, Harold 158–9, 161, 162,
163, 165, 176, 177, 178
Johnson, Lawrence E. 258
Johnson, William, E. 58, 70, 202
Jourdain, Philip 196, 254, 268
judgement 1–7, 9, 10, 11–17, 18,
20, 21–32, 36, 39, 40, 41–7, 48,
50, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63–6,
68, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79–84, 86,
87–8, 89, 90–3, 94, 95, 98–100,
128, 130, 137–49, 151–4, 242,
244–50, 253–7
act and content of 1, 2, 4, 5, 12,
13, 16, 23–4, 15, 31, 36, 39, 41–7,
52, 56, 58–60, 62–6, 74–93, 95,
101, 108–10, 123–4, 127–9, 137,
139–49, 152–3, 154, 175, 188,
189, 193–4, 197–8, 202, 206, 212,
218, 231–6, 246, 248, 250, 253,
257, 258
binary relation theory of 159–60,
206, 208–9, 212, 215–17, 229,
231, 235, 238
constitutents 146, 148
false 7, 60, 62, 66, 100, 242,
244–6, 250–3, 256–8

judging 2, 5, 6, 13, 24, 27, 36,
41–7, 52, 56, 59–61, 63, 64, 66,
85–6, 98–9, 100, 101–5, 108–12,
115, 116, 123–4, 128, 130, 131,
148, 149, 177, 206–7, 212, 218,
225, 226–7, 228–30, 232, 238,
247, 253, 254, 256–7, 259
multiple relation theory of 6, 7,
159, 160, 177, 206–7, 209–12,
216–18, 225, 228, 229–32, 235,
236, 237, 238, 239, 245, 256
quality of 138, 146–52, 201, 202,
206, 212–14, 217–18, 237, 245
stroke 36, 45, 49, 55, 71, 253–6
synthesis/unity 1, 2, 140, 146, 147,
190, 193–4, 197, 218, 236, 245
justification, coherence theory of
162, 166, 168, 169–72
Kant, Immanuel 1, 4, 12, 14, 15, 47,
60, 70, 185, 186–7, 189, 190, 193,
198, 202
Keynes, Maynard 198, 199
Kremer, Michael 7
Künne, Wolfgang 5, 52, 249, 254,
255, 264, 266, 268
Leibniz, Gottfried W. 54, 70, 188,
196, 202
Lipps, Theodor 2, 4, 9–32, 33, 34
logic 11–13, 15–17, 28, 30, 31,
36–38, 40–2, 44, 46, 47, 108, 126,
139–41, 164, 186–7, 188–90, 196
logical form 152, 190–2, 218, 228,
232, 235, 238, 239, 243, 245–6,
256, 258, 267
logical realism 137, 138, 140, 143–4,
147, 151, 152, 188, 193, 197–8
Lotze, Rudolf H. 3, 30, 34, 41, 43,
49, 187, 191, 201, 268
MacBride, Fraser 6–7, 206, 237
MacCarthy, Desmond 185, 187, 202
Mancosu, Paolo 178
Martin, Wayne 4, 9, 33
Marty, Anton 4, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81,
83, 87–90, 93, 95
McDowell, John 175, 179
McTaggert, John M.E. 178, 184, 187,
191, 192, 194, 198, 200
Index 273
Meinong, Alexius 70, 71, 75, 76, 79,
83, 93, 94, 112, 142, 160, 206
monism 158–9, 161, 162–6, 174, 176
Moore, George E. 5, 6, 138, 141–2,
143–4, 146, 148–9, 152, 154, 175,
183–99, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204,
206, 264
Morrell, Lady Ottoline 200, 207
Mulligan, Kevin 5, 97, 130, 131,
132, 133
Neo-Hegelianism 183, 185, 188–91,
192, 194, 197, 199, 200
Neo-Kantian 2, 4, 36, 44, 45, 46, 60,
62, 99, 130
Neurath, Otto 161, 162, 167–8, 178
Nietzsche, Friedrich 44
non-attitude 110, 118, 122
non-existents 80, 90–3
nonsense 6, 39, 206, 207, 210, 211,
230, 231–3, 236, 245, 256–7
open question argument 175, 179
paradox 36, 38, 177, 203, 213,
232–3, 237
Peano, Giuseppe 194, 196
Pfänder, Alexander 10, 130
Pigden, Charles 179
pluralism 138, 144, 151, 163–4, 172,
184
positivism, logical 161, 162, 167–8
Preti, Consuelo 1, 5, 6, 154, 183,
199, 200, 201, 202
Price, Henry H. 58, 70
proposition 4, 6, 7, 39, 40, 45, 54,
60, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 110,
124, 137–9, 143–54, 157, 160,
161–2, 165, 166, 167, 174, 175,
176, 177, 178, 179, 183, 184, 185,
187, 193, 194, 195, 198, 201,
202, 206, 208–19, 227–9, 230,
231, 233–6, 237, 238, 239, 242,
243–66, 267, 268
constitutents 6, 148–53, 184,
194, 206, 208–9, 211, 213–14,
228, 244–5
elementary 244, 255–9,
261–2, 267
274 Index
proposition – continued
picture theory of 7, 175, 242, 244,
249, 250–3, 258–61, 262, 263
unity of 138, 147, 148–52, 201–2,
206, 212–14, 217–18, 237, 245
propositional content 31, 39–42, 44,
129, 198
psychologism 10, 11, 26, 28, 29, 30,
34, 152, 189, 190
psychology 3, 9, 10–11, 17, 22, 28,
30, 34, 88, 140–1, 144, 146, 147,
154, 188, 192–3, 199, 202, 267
analytic 142, 144–8, 192
empirical 10, 140, 147, 151, 189
Putnam, Hilary 162, 169, 171–2,
173, 176, 179
Ramsey, Frank 120, 174, 259
refusal 97, 109, 111, 113–15, 116,
118–19, 132
regress 37, 99, 139, 143, 190, 201,
223, 224, 232, 233, 245–6, 254
Reinach, Adolf 2, 3, 5, 10, 47, 50,
101, 102–11, 112, 116, 120,
126–9, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134
relations
as incomplete symbols 208, 209,
216–18, 222–4, 227–9, 233
neutral 208–9, 219–224, 225, 227,
229, 230, 236
non-symmetric 177, 215, 218–225
Rescher, Nicholas 162, 178
Rickert, Heinrich 3, 4, 44, 45, 49, 50,
70, 130
Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo 179
Rollinger, Robin 75, 76, 77–8, 79,
80, 83, 94
Rumfitt, Ian 126–7, 129–30, 133
Russell, Bertrand 5, 6–7, 59, 70, 93,
112, 137–146, 148–54, 158–61, 163,
165–6, 167, 174, 176, 177, 178,
179, 183–4, 186, 187, 188, 189,
190, 192, 194–7, 199, 200, 201,
202, 203, 204, 206–39, 242–51,
253–5, 256, 257, 258, 264–6, 276
Schaffer, Jonathan 178
Scheler, Max 10, 101, 118, 119, 120,
121, 124, 125, 131, 133
Schlick, Moritz 161, 167–8, 178
Schmitt, F.F. 178
Searle, John 43, 49, 108, 111
Sidgwick, Henry 191, 198, 201
Sigwart, Christoph 3–4, 41–2, 43, 44,
49, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81–8, 89, 91–2,
93, 94, 95
Spinoza, Baruch 43, 162, 178
Stein, Edith 5, 9, 33, 101, 107,
111–18, 119, 120, 131, 132, 133
Stern, Robert 178
Stout, G.F. 5, 137–8, 141–2, 143,
144–8, 150–2, 154, 161, 163, 177,
191, 192–4, 201, 202
Strachey, Lytton 198, 203, 204
Stumpf, Carl 80, 142
Sully, James 193
Gendler Szabó, Zoltán 124–5, 133
Tarski, Alfred 168
Textor, Mark 1, 71, 108, 133, 255
truth
coherence theory of 6, 40,
157–82, 260
correspondence theory of 6, 7,
40, 81, 83, 157, 158, 160–1,
163–5, 167, 169, 172, 173,
174–6, 178, 179, 218, 225,
258–65
deflationary and inflationary
theories of 157, 176, 179, 243,
253, 259–63
eliminativism about 167–8, 179
epistemic theories of 169, 172–3
identity theory of 6, 165–6, 174,
176, 179
obtainment theory of 242, 261–6
primitivist theory of 37–9, 159–60,
173, 179
Twardowski, Kazimierz 4, 74–6,
77–8, 79–80, 82, 84, 86–7, 88,
89–94, 95, 154, 201
Uebel, Thomas E.
universals 125, 146, 232, 233, 234
validity 29–32, 41, 43, 47, 48, 98,
130, 167
value theory 36, 40–1, 44, 46

van der Schaar, Maria 5, 72, 93, 94,
132, 134, 137, 201, 202
verification, coherence theory of see
justification
verificationism 40, 100, 119,
169–73, 178, 179, 248, 263, 265
voluntarism 12, 24, 32, 47, 117
Walker, Ralph C.S. 169–71, 177, 179
Ward, James 138, 141, 151, 191, 193
White, Alan 121–2, 133
Whitehead, Alfred N. 234, 253, 254
Index 275
Windelband, Wilhelm 2–3, 4–5, 43–4,
46–8, 49, 50, 60, 70, 76, 81, 94
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 3, 6–7, 36, 38,
45, 50, 107, 116, 130, 131, 132,
175, 177, 199, 204, 206–7, 209,
210, 211–12, 229, 230–2, 235,
236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242–6,
28, 249–53, 254–7, 258–63,
265–6, 267, 268
Woolf, Leonard 198
Wright, Crispin 170, 179
Wundt, Wilhelm 10