The Act and Object of Judgment

Historical and Philosophical Perspectives

Brian Ball, Christoph Schuringa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138351387
• eBook ISBN: 9780429787614
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Logic in Philosophy

This book presents 12 original essays on historical and contemporary philosophical discussions of judgment. The central issues explored in this volume can be separated into two groups namely, those concerning the act and object of judgment. What kind of act is judgment? How is it related to a range of other mental acts, states, and dispositions? Where and how does assertive force enter in? Is there a distinct category of negative judgments, or are these simply judgments whose objects are negative? Concerning the object of judgment: How many objects are there of a given judgment? One, as on the dual relation theory of Frege and Moore? Or many as in Russell's later multiple relation theory? If there is a single object, is it a proposition? And if so, is it a force-neutral, abstract entity that might equally figure as the object of a range of intentional attitudes? Or is it somehow constitutively tied to the act itself? These and related questions are approached from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy.

1
Affirmation, Judgment, and Epistemic Theodicy in Descartes and Spinoza

Martin Lin

Both Descartes and Spinoza develop their theories of judgment in the service of what may be called epistemic theodicy, in that they seek to reconcile human error with the existence of a perfect God. They have, however, very different conceptions of God and the relationship of the human mind to that God and, therefore, develop very different conceptions of judgment.

Descartes’s God is a transcendent being in whose image the human mind has been made and whose commandments we seek to fulfil. Human error is compatible with the existence of a perfect God because we are free to use our cognitive capacities well or poorly. In particular, judgment (affirming, denying, or suspending judgment with respect to the content of an idea) is a matter of a free act of will. God has given us a faculty that allows us to discover a rule for applying our free will in judgment so that we will never affirm a false proposition and that allows us to unerringly affirm certain truths. And, thus, when we err, the responsibility for error falls to us and not God.

For Spinoza, unlike Descartes, God is not a transcendent being; rather, he is the one substance in which all else, the human mind included, inheres. Indeed, for Spinoza, the human mind is an idea in God’s infinite intellect and constitutes God’s knowledge of the human body. This entails that every idea in the human mind is identical to an idea in God. Since all ideas, insofar as they are in God, are true and, indeed, known, all ideas, in and of themselves, are affirmed. This thesis has at least two troubling consequences. First, it seems difficult to reconcile with the apparent existence of cognitive attitudes such as denial and suspending judgment. Second, it appears to entail that all ideas are believed.

In this paper, I begin by setting out Descartes’s account of judgment and how it accomplishes an epistemic theodicy. I then discuss Spinoza’s official argument for the claim that every idea is affirmed and note certain difficulties with it that prompt recent interpretations according to which Spinoza’s notion of affirmation is reducible to his notion of conatus or striving for self-preservation. I argue that such interpretations must be rejected on the grounds that they fail to preserve the connection between affirmation and truth that Spinoza endorses. I suggest instead that, for Spinoza, every idea is affirmed in the sense that every idea purports to represent the world as it really is. Striving for self-preservation does not ground this affirmation, but it looks to it for guidance so that each idea pushes us to act in ways that would be conducive to our self-preservation if it were true. When different ideas push us in different directions, how we act is a function of the respective degrees of power associated with each idea, considered as an individual in its own right. I conclude by arguing that Spinoza’s notion of affirmation should be regarded as a technical one that is unconnected with the ordinary conception of belief, which, I argue, plays no role in Spinoza’s psychology.

1. Descartes’s Theory

In the Third Meditation, Descartes proposes the following rule: whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive is true.¹ But before he accepts this rule, he must prove that God exists and is no deceiver because he needs to fore-close the possibility that God designed me in such a way that my faculties mislead me and what I clearly and distinctly perceive is false.² Proving the existence of such a God is the principal task of the Third Meditation.

At the start of the Fourth Meditation, Descartes confronts the worry that he has proved too much. If the existence of a non-deceiving God gives us a reason to trust our clear and distinct perception, wouldn’t it also give us a reason to trust all of our perceptions?³ After all, if God is no deceiver, wouldn’t he design us in such a way that our cognitive capacities never deceived us? This question is especially troublesome to Descartes because he thinks that our sensory perception of the world provides us with ample opportunities to err: it presents the world to us as having qualities that it does not, in fact, have. It presents, for example, an apple to me as red, fragrant, and sweet when in fact it is none of those things. (At least it is none of those things in the way they are presented to me in sense perception, that is, as intrinsic properties of the apple distinct from its geometrical ones.) Rather, the only properties that the apple truly has are modes of extension: size, shape, and motion. Why then did God, who is no deceiver, design me in such a way that my sensory capacities consistently give misleading testimony?

This is where his theory of judgment comes in, which is, as we will see, designed to show that we, and not God, are responsible for our errors. For Descartes, the mind is composed of two faculties or powers: intellect and volition.⁴ The intellect is that aspect of my mind that accounts for its ability to represent the world and various possibilities concerning it. For example, sense perception, memory, perception of universals, and essences are all ideas that a mind possesses in virtue of the intellect. The will is the aspect of my mind that accounts for my ability to take certain attitudes to the contents represented by my ideas. For example, affirming, denying, wanting, and fearing are all volitions that a mind possesses in virtue of the will.

Merely having an idea, all by itself, cannot constitute an error, even if that idea represents what is not the case. Only if we affirm an idea that represents what is not the case or deny an idea of what is the case do we err.⁵ When we affirm or deny an idea, we make a judgment. Judgment, thus, for Descartes, involves the cooperation of two distinct mental faculties: intellect and volition.

It is useful to contrast Descartes on this score with some of his scholastic predecessors, such as Aquinas, who thought that (apart from the special case of religious faith) judgment was an act of the intellect alone. According to this scholastic tradition, the first operation of the intellect involves cognizing accidental and substantial form.⁶ By themselves, the representations of these forms are neither true nor false, but when we relate them to each other by a process that Aquinas calls combining and separating, we form judgments, which are either true or false.⁷ For example, the first operation of the intellect may abstract from sense perception of a red apple a representation of the accidental form of red and a representation of the substantial form of an apple. A judgment results when I combine my representation of redness with my representation of an apple into the form the apple is red.

There are at least two ways in which Aquinas and Descartes differ on the issue of judgment. The first difference concerns the nature of the object that receives the action. In the case of Aquinas, the objects of the action are the mental representations of the forms. They are joined together in such a way that one is predicated of the other. For Descartes, on the other hand, the object of the action is an idea, the content of which already has propositional structure. For example, in the case of thinking about a red apple, judgment for Aquinas is the process by which the concept red is combined with the concept apple. We judge of the apple that it is red.

An interesting result of this difference is that Descartes’s theory of judgment allows for attitude to vary independently of content, whereas Aquinas’s does not. For example, take the idea that the apple is red. We could affirm or deny that very idea, on Descartes’s view, merely by changing the quality of our will with respect to it. But, for Aquinas, the actions of combining and separating are not directed at the bearers of propositions but at sub-propositional elements, and thus separating cannot be like judging a proposition to be false. What is more, separating cannot merely be refusing to combine. Not predicating redness of an apple is not the same as judging the proposition that the apple is red is false. A natural solution to this difficulty for Aquinas would be to hold that separating is somehow like negation. For example, it would result in a judgment that it is not the case that the apple is red. The content of this judgment is, however, different from the content of the judgment that the apple is red. Thus, for Aquinas, unlike Descartes, attitude and content cannot vary independently.

The second point of contrast is that judgment for Aquinas is an operation of the intellect alone, whereas, for Descartes, judgment requires the cooperation of the will, the same faculty that is responsible for purely conative attitudes such as wanting and fearing. This is a curious feature of Descartes’s account. Why think that the attitudes involved in wanting that p and affirming that p are the products of the same faculty?

Descartes’s motivation is revealed by the context in which he introduces his theory of judgment. As mentioned previously, Descartes is concerned that the existence of a non-deceiving God is incompatible with the fact of human error. Descartes’s strategy for absolving God of guilt for our errors is to show that (1) he did not design us imperfectly in giving us the intellect that he did; (2) he did not design us imperfectly in giving us the will that he did; and (3) it lies within our control to use our will and intellect in a way that will never result in error.

Our intellect, Descartes argues, is perfect in its kind. We are, of course, finite beings, and as such there are many things about which we have no ideas. But we must, from Descartes’s perspective, distinguish between ideas that we merely lack and ideas that we ought to have but lack. If a lack of ideas is to count as a defect or privation, it would have to be the case that we should have ideas of these things. There is no reason to think, Descartes claims, that we should have ideas of everything.⁸ After all, a craftsman, no matter how skilled, is under no obligation to include everything in every design. Thus, this limitation is not a defect or privation.

We also have ideas, especially those deriving from sense experience, that are confused and obscure. But even these involve no error so long as we do not pass judgment on them. Therefore, that we have confused and obscure ideas does not, by itself, show that the design of our intellects is to blame for our errors.

Next, Descartes argues that our will, too, is perfect in its kind. Indeed, we are perfectly free because our ability to affirm, deny, pursue, and avoid is not limited in any way. Of course, the manifestation of these attitudes in action is limited by our various cognitive and physical imperfections, but the attitudes themselves are not. It is in virtue of this unlimited power of will that we understand ourselves “to bear in some way the image and likeness of God”.⁹ The divine will may be more efficacious than ours in virtue of God’s greater knowledge or power, but with respect to the will considered in itself, ours is as perfect as his.

What remains to be shown is that God designed us in such a way that the interaction of will and intellect that results in judgment can always take place in a way that is free of error. That this is so is suggested by the rule that Descartes takes himself to have established in the Third Meditation: whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive is true. Thus, if I only judge true what I clearly and distinctly perceive and in every other case suspend judgment, then I will never fall into error. Because judgment involves the application of the will, or freedom of choice, if I judge something true that I did not clearly and distinctly perceive, the fault lies with me and not God.¹⁰

Descartes’s theory of judgment has been criticized on many grounds, but perhaps the most serious is his claim that judgment involves the exercise of a free will. By affirming that p, I come to believe that p. Thus, if affirmation is a free volition, then what I believe is up to me. This has struck many commentators as implausible.¹¹ There are two main reasons for this. First, if belief were a matter of decision, then belief would be sensitive to practical reasons. Belief, however, is insensitive to practical reasons. For example, there is some amount of money that would make it prudent for me to believe that the moon was made of blue cheese, and yet there is no amount of money that, in reality, could get me to believe that the moon is made of blue cheese. It is simply not in my power to believe on such a basis.

Second, how I respond to considerations that do affect belief (i.e. epistemic reasons) does not appear to be under my control. For example, if, upon reflection, I conclude that my reasons to believe that the number of grains of sand in the Sahara Desert is even are no greater or less than my reasons to believe it is odd, then it isn’t under my control whether or not to affirm or deny either proposition. Of course, I can verbally affirm or deny anything, and such an affirmation or denial can be responsive to practical considerations or unresponsive to what I take to be my epistemic reasons for belief, but such verbal affirmations or denials are not what Descartes is talking about...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Affirmation, Judgment, and Epistemic Theodicy in Descartes and Spinoza
• 2 Locke and Leibniz on Judgment: The First-Person Perspective and the Danger of Psychologism
• 3 Kant’s Logic of Judgment: Against the Relational Approach
• 4 Time and Modality in Hegel’s Account of Judgment
• 5 Bolzano’s Theory of Judgment
• 6 Correctness First: Brentano on Judgment and Truth
• 7 Judgment, Reasons, and Feelings
• 8 Twardowski on Judgment
• 9 Attitudinal Objects: Their Ontology and Importance for Philosophy and Natural Language Semantics
• 10 About vs Concerns
• 11 Predication and Two Concepts of Judgment
• 12 How Is Logical Inference Possible?
• Contributors
• Index