DISJUNCTIVE JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS 289 



On this we must observe that ordinary usage forbids us to set up as the 

 ideal of the alternative judgment the one that would make our knowledge of 

 a system explicit by enumerating all the classes contained in it ; and it is only 

 on the assumption that the alternative judgment attains to this ideal of exhaus 

 tive enumeration that Professor Welton claims for it superiority over the 

 hypothetical. 



If we could know things only in so far as we classified them and gave 

 them a &quot; systematic connexion &quot; with all other things, if classification were 

 the only ideal of human knowledge, &quot; the only form in which we [could] think 

 reality,&quot; then, perhaps, the alternative form of proposition could be set up as 

 the expression of our highest knowledge. But our highest knowledge is not 

 based on classification, nor does it tend to such an ideal. The law of gravita 

 tion, for example, has no affinity with any process of classification or of dis 

 junctive or alternative thought. 1 Its natural form of expression is the condi 

 tional, or the categorical, proposition the latter being, perhaps, superior to 

 the former in so far as it may be held to eliminate any element of doubt 

 (about the reality, existence, occurrence of the things or events thought 

 about), suggested or implied by the &quot;If&quot; judgment ; or at all events in so 

 far as it is the form of thought which, in ultimate analysis, is found to underlie 

 both the &quot;If&quot; judgment (132) and the alternative judgment. 



The transition from the &quot;If&quot; form, &quot; If S is M it is P,&quot; to the cate 

 gorical &quot; 5 M is P,&quot; or &quot; S because it is M is P&quot; does not necessarily 

 involve the mediation of an alternative judgment. If we ask why is M a 

 ground for P, and reply &quot; M because it is N is P,&quot; we are showing that the 

 evidence for our former statement is mediate, and that we are tracing it back 

 to its sources. Now it is quite true that this process of backward search in 

 justification of our original statement, &quot; If S is M it is P,&quot; must come to an 

 end somewhere. Mediate evidence must ultimately be based on evidence 

 that is immediate. We must come to some statement, e.g. &quot; N because it is 

 is P&quot; the ground for which is s elf -evident : to a point at which, when we 

 are asked why O is P, we can answer : because it is so, self-evidently. The 

 recognition of some truth, e.g. &quot; O is P&quot; as self-evident, is all that is 

 involved in the grounds of any &quot;If&quot; judgment. But that the only way of 

 reaching such self-evident truths, and thus avoiding an endless &quot; regress,&quot; is 

 &quot; by assuming that the judgment refers to some self-contained system,&quot; and 

 by making that system explicit in an &quot; ideal &quot; alternative judgment that is 

 what has not been shown, and cannot be shown, to be universally true. 



Provided we interpret &quot; If&quot; judgments and alternative judg 

 ments similarly as regards modality, we may pass from either form 

 to the other. &quot; If S is M it is P&quot; will yield &quot; 5 is either M 

 or P&quot;. Its contrapositive, &quot; If S is P it is M&quot; will yield exactly 

 the same alternative, &quot;S is either P or M&quot; : which shows that 

 equivalent propositions in one form may yield identical proposi 

 tions in another. Similarly, the forms &quot; If A then C&quot; and &quot;IfC 

 then A &quot; yield &quot;Either A or C&quot;. 



1 C/. KEYNES, op. cit., p. 283, n. 2. 

 VOL. I. 19 



