CHAPTER II. 

 KINDS OF JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS. 



83. PROBLEMS ON THE IMPORT OF JUDGMENT : BASIS AND 

 AIM OF CLASSIFICATION OF JUDGMENTS. The preceding chapter 

 dealt with (a) some of the essential characteristics of judgment : its 

 relation to reality, for instance, and the immutability and universa 

 lity of the truth embodied in it. We also (f) pointed to the neces 

 sity of interpreting, or fixing the meaning of, prepositional forms, 

 and of the words (&quot;all,&quot; &quot;some,&quot; etc.) entering into these forms. 

 And finally, (c) we indicated the possibility of selecting and com 

 paring various schedules or schemes of prepositional forms to 

 which ordinary statements might be more or less conveniently 

 reduced in order to admit of exact logical treatment. 



In reference to the latter points, (b) and (c\ it must be borne 

 in mind that no one scheme of prepositional forms will be found 

 adequate to express in a fully satisfactory way all the different 

 mental forms which the act of judgment may assume ; that the 

 determination and interpretation of verbal or propositional forms 

 are to some extent matters of convention ; and that, therefore, the 

 choice between those various schemes is a choice between what is 

 more or less convenient or suitable, not between what is right and 

 wrong absolutely (p. 165, n. 2). 



Questions, however, which fall under the first head (), con 

 cerning as they do the nature of the act of judgment itself, are 

 questions of right and wrong, and are independent of all conven 

 tions. Such was the question of the truth or objective reference 

 of the judgment (80). Such, too, are the questions raised below, 

 concerning the implication of existence in the judgment (123 sqq.\ 

 the modality of judgments and propositions (89, 90), the distinc 

 tion between necessary and contingent matter in the judgment (85- 

 88), the function of the negative judgment as compared with the 

 affirmative (97-98). These v/ould properly be described as 

 &quot;problems relating to the import of judgments and propositions&quot; ; 



167 



