Appendix 3. - (120)

The efforts that people make when they are beset on all sides by a problem are worth consideration. They try every possible way out, overturn every obstacle to free themselves and escape from their predicament. They even go so far as to alter the notions of things; they deny the most commonly accepted definitions; they cast doubt on even the most obvious truths. They then become very watchful of others and will almost certainly find the slightest slip if this is in any way helpful to them. They adopt the same approach as they do when falsifying the meaning of so many other words and distorting so many ideas.

Among other efforts made by philosophers to evade the problem which I raise against Reid's theory is their attempt to deny the definition of judgment. Degerando tells us that judgment cannot be a comparison of ideas because, if it were, ideas would have to precede judgment; Reid's argument, on the contrary, shows that judgment necessarily precedes ideas.
Degerando's view does indeed point to an inaccuracy in the common definition although it provides no answer to the objection which I raise against Reid. I think this is the place to point out both the valuable aspect of Degerando's view and its defect.
Degerando argues thus:

This argument (assuming that we are speaking of the reality of bodily entia) brooks no reply. Up to this point, therefore, Degerando's reflection is true and can be fittingly used in argument.
However, the consequence from such a reflection is this: 'The definition which sees a judgment as a mere comparison of ideas is therefore inadequate.' That is all that can be inferred from the argument, nothing else.

There still remains the other definition of judgment which I usually adopt: 'Judgment is an operation of the spirit by which we attribute a predicate to a subject.' This is a broader definition than the former, 'Judgment is the comparison of ideas.' My definition says nothing about ideas nor does it stop at comparisons; it speaks of predicate and subject. To reduce it to the definition criticised by Degerando, we would need first to demonstrate that predicate and subject were necessarily in every case two ideas. Now this is precisely what I show not to be the case. I maintain instead that only the predicate must in every case be an idea, not the subject which may be a feeling, a complex of sensible qualities, a felt element. By means of this view I explain the primal judgment to which we resort when judging the real existence of things outside us. I show that this does not arise from linking two ideas, but from linking the real, felt element (in which form it is not yet an ens for us but a complex of sensations) and the idea of existence. It is the second linking which enables us at one and the same time to judge the real existence of external objects, and form some concept of them.

Degerando, however, did not see this intermediate link between saying: 'Judgment consists in the comparison of two ideas' and saying: 'A judgment occurs without the need for ideas.' He did not see that there is another proposition between these two: 'A judgment is sometimes formed by linking an idea and a feeling.' So, having shown by means of a sound argument that defining judgment solely in terms of a comparison of ideas was inadequate, he felt justified in establishing that judgments are made even independently of ideas, that is, by a simple act without the need for two elements (predicate and subject), from the mingling of which the act results.
He endeavours to establish that 'there are elementary judgments which consist in the mere perception of objects' and that our knowledge arises from these.

I shall use Baron Galluppi's own words to criticise this strange statement, that is, the words of one who is basically in agreement with the French philosopher.

Galluppi, then turns back to the view that simple perception is the initial operation of our spirit and that the simple apprehension (the idea) of objects is prior to a judgment about their real existence. However, this theory cannot be sustained after the comments Reid made upon it.
Having demonstrated that the initial operation of the spirit cannot be a simple intellectual perception (an idea) Reid concluded:

Degerando, aware of this difficulty wrote:

Galluppi came along subsequently and found Degerando's solution contradictory. In fact, simple perception can never be a judgment because, in simple perception, the two terms of a judgment cannot be discerned. Nor can a judgment ever be simple perception because in reducing the two terms to one, the judgment would be destroyed or even rendered it impossible. Degerando's intermediate solution is as self-contradictory as saying that two is one or one is two.
Escape from such an intricate maze is possible by asserting with me that: 1. the simple intuition of being is innate in human beings, and that consequently, 2. if we exclude the natural act which renders us intelligent, the first operation of our spirit is a judgment which unites sensations with the idea of being and thus forms the ideas of bodies.

According to this theory, a judgment is not the union of two ideas, but of a predicate and a subject - the subject is the felt reality. It is therefore a union of idea and felt element. Prior to such a judgment, we do not have the simple apprehension or idea of things but only the sensation. We form a judgment on their real existence, and from this judgment and subsequent persuasion of their real existence, we derive their simple perception by abstracting or excluding entirely from our persuasion of their existence.
We must therefore either admit that the problem of the origin of ideas is inexplicable or accept the proposition to which we seem so reluctant to subscribe: there is within us some primal, natural form of information. I trust that as this work develops, the truth will emerge in all its clarity.