Appendix 13. - (227)

A symptom of error occasionally concealed in an accepted theory is uncertainty in expression and undue concern to justify it by the use of intellectual subtlety. This shows the authors' perplexity and how, deep in their conscience, they hear the murmuring of a voice alerting them to the hidden error which they would discover if they were brave enough to listen to this voice. There is perhaps no philosophical viewpoint more readily accepted than that which posits the operations of the human understanding in the following order: 1. idea; 2. judgment; 3. reasoning, and there is perhaps no other in which we find, when reading philosophers' explanations, such obvious manifestations of this symptom of hesitation.

I have already pointed out how, in the age of Bossuet, there were some who doubted the correctness of the order (cf. 219) and how Fortunato da Brescia (cf. 89), to evade the difficulty he felt, was cautious enough to add to the definition of the idea the express phrase: 'The idea, to be such, must not contain any judgment' - as if the idea could cease to contain what it actually contains because a philosopher ejects it from his definition. However, all these indications which show how authors realise the mistakes they have made are valuable. They make errant philosophers into witnesses to the truth and reveal the extent of its hold over human beings. It will be helpful, therefore, if I mention the efforts Wolff made to retain for notions the status usually assigned them by making them constitute the first operation of the human understanding.

Wolff did not grasp the force of Plato's statement: 'Thought is merely an internal conversation.'
He distinguished between the notion thought only by the intellect, which he called cognitive intuition, and the same notion expressed in words or signs, which he called symbolic knowledge. According to him: 'In symbolic knowledge, the first operation of the intellect (the notion along with pure perception) is merged with the second' (Psychol. Ration., para. 398). This does not occur in purely intuitive knowledge. This distinction is simply flight from the difficulty. When I express a notion in words, why do I have to express it in the form of a judgment? Am I obliged to express in words more than is contained in ideas? In that case, if I express in words something not contained in ideas, I am using meaningless words which are unrelated to the mind. This would be a lapse into an absurd nominalism. For example, if I wish to express my notion of a triangle, I shall say: 'The triangle IS, a three-sided figure.' Now the verb 'IS'S*, which expresses the possible existence of the triangle, is not, in fact, a mere external word but corresponds to something in my mind, that is, the notion itself perceived as something distinct from me.

'But,' says Wolff, 'the word IS does not merely indicate that the triangle is seen as a subject but rather expresses the in-existence of three sides in this subject. But purely intuitive knowledge does not consider this connection. By this knowledge, qualities are represented in a thing as being different from each other and different from the thing in which they are found. (Psychol. Emp., para. 331). On the other hand, in symbolic knowledge, they have to be expressed as linked and in-existing in the subject. Symbolic knowledge, therefore unlike intuitive, includes a judgment.'

I would like to make the following observations on Wolff's argument:
1. I deny that the word 'IS', in the quoted proposition, has the force which he attributes to it. The statement: 'A triangle is a three-sided figure', corresponds exactly to this other statement: 'What I conceive and call by the word triangle is a three-sided figure.' The word 'IS' thus expresses nothing more than the existence of the notion of a triangle in my mind, without involving the slightest alteration in that same notion expressed exactly as it exists in my mind with the words 'three-sided figure.' If, on the other hand, I were to say: 'This figure which I conceive HAS three sides,' the verb 'HAS' would in that case express the in-existence of the three sides in the imagined figure. However, the verb 'IS' does not refer in any way to such in-existence.
2. According to Wolff, in intuitive knowledge the qualities of a thing are perceived as separate from each other and as separate from the thing itself. Is this possible? Is this actually how our first knowledge of things occurs? The opposite seems to be the case; we first perceive the thing furnished with its qualities and then, by a process of abstraction, we separate out all these things and we consider them one by one. My experience would seem to bear out that our first knowledge of things comes about in this way. Furthermore, I have already shown (cf. 55-61) that the opposite is impossible. In our first perception, it is quite impossible that we intellectually perceive accidents apart from the subject in which they exist. It is different for the external sense which perceives only accidents, not their concepts. Wolff may have been led into error here by his failure to distinguish sufficiently the characteristics of sensation from the characteristics of the idea, although he establishes the universality of notions which, according to him, are the object of our intellectual first operation. From this universal characteristic, he would have found it easy to form a very accurate concept of intellective knowledge relative to which it is impossible for us first to conceive initially the accident in isolation from the subject and then unite it to that subject, as Wolff maintains. In fact, when we perceive the accident of a subject we either know from the very beginning that it is an accident (and in that case we conceive it in relation to its subject), or we do not know this (and in that case we form a subject from the accident itself, that is, we conceive it as something independent, possessing being and a mode of being). This amounts to conceiving a subject (ens) and a predicate (a mode of that ens). Consequently, the basis of Wolff's theory is impossible.

This can also be proved from a study of Wolff's own writings. He defines the first operation of the intellect: Prima intellectus operatio est plurium IN RE UNA singillatim facta repesentatio [The first operation of the intellect is the representation of a number of things one by one in ONE SINGLE THING (Psychol. Emp., 330). He inserts the word singillatim [one by one] to show us that we perceive piecemeal all the qualities of the thing of which we have an idea. Let us ignore the fact that this successive perception of several existent qualities in a thing cannot as a series of intellectual operations be the first operation of the mind. My question is: where do we perceive these various qualities? In re una [in one single thing], our philosopher replies; all of them in the thing of which we have the idea. But in that case we do not perceive them in themselves separate from the thing, but as qualities or parts pertaining to the thing; qualities and parts which exist in the thing, not apart from it. But this means attributing them all to the thing itself; it means judging implicitly that they belong to it. Perceiving those conditions, parts or qualities individually, as Wolff claims, would make what I am saying even more obvious. It would mean that for each of them we make a particular, internal judgment enabling us to assign them to the thing to which they belong.

However, I am not asking Wolff to go that far, and I willingly forego the assistance he so generously awards me in putting my case. I merely say that all the qualities, of whatever kind, whether they are perceived as either united or in isolation from one another, are perceived through the first operation of our intellect in a real, or imaginary, or merely possible subject. Thus, in our first intellective operation, we always perceive two things: 1. a being (subject); 2. a mode of being (predicate); and we perceive these two things together. Consequently, a judgment is included in this first operation.
For these reasons, Wolff's distinction between intuitive knowledge and symbolic knowledge, introduced to defend the received order of intellectual operations, is without foundation. It is one of those ingenious makeshifts which, by their vacuity, reveal the feebleness of the system which they are intended to bolster up.