CHAPTER VII. 



EXISTENTIAL IMPORT OF CATEGORICAL JUDGMENTS AND 



PROPOSITIONS. 



123. REFERENCE OF TERMS AND PROPOSITIONS TO A 

 SPHERE OF OBJECTIVE REALITY: THE POSSIBLE AND THE 

 ACTUAL. We have already made passing references to the 

 question whether or how far the categorical judgment or pro 

 position implies the actual existence of the objects denoted by its 

 subject or predicate in the realm to which the judgment refers. 

 At this stage an investigation of the question will reflect some 

 light upon certain interpretations of the judgment (80, 109), and 

 upon some processes of Immediate Inference (in n. I ; 120); 

 while it will serve as a natural transition to the treatment of 

 Hypothetical and Disjunctive judgments. 



It is important to understand clearly the meaning of the 

 present inquiry. We have already seen that every judgment 

 must refer to some objective sphere of reality, i.e. to some realm 

 over and above the subjective, passing thought of the individual 

 thinker s mind, to some universe of discourse in which the claim 

 of the judgment to truth may be checked and guaranteed (80). 

 Every such sphere is called objective reality, in the sense of being 

 a something beyond the subjective thought of the individual 

 thinker. 1 In this sense every judgment must refer us to some 

 portion or other of objective reality ; and this latter might thus 

 be rightly said to constitute the ultimate subject of all our 

 judgments. We have referred also (80) to a certain definition 

 of the act of judgment which would even make all reality the 

 logical subject of every judgment. This merely exaggerates the 

 truth that every judgment makes a predication which REFERS 

 US to some objective sphere or other which is a portion^ at least, of all 



1 Of course if the individual, by a process of psychological reflection, thinks and 

 judges about the present current of his own thoughts, the &quot;objective sphere&quot; will 

 be the sphere of his own thoughts considered as objects ; but even then, these will 

 be &quot; objective &quot; to his acts of reflex judgment. 



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