Appendix 16. - (246)

I have already pointed out that Aristotle's mistake may have been occasioned by a solecism of the kind Plato was so addicted to. He attributes, perhaps, to the word judge a wider meaning than is appropriate, or uses it in two essentially distinct senses: 1. in the sense of producing in the animal an instinct to tend towards certain things which as a result are designated as good or else to shun others which are called bad. This creates a species of de facto discernment between relative good and bad which can be mistaken for and confused with rational judgment; 2. in the sense of the association our intellect makes between a predicate (positive or negative), that is, a universal, with some individual or at least less general subject than this predicate.

Only the second operation is truly intellectual; the first (inclination towards certain things or aversion from others) can be unaccompanied by any act of knowledge, and is due to instinct in animals and aroused by sense. Moreover, the things pursued or shunned by instinct are not, in fact, good or bad in themselves prior to, and independently of, instinct. They are called good or bad to show that the instinct pursues or shuns them. Goodness or badness in this case is relative to the desire of instinct.

This observation makes it easy for us to grasp the infinite difference between instinctive discernment and judgment. Instinctive discernment is the cause motivating us to say that some things are good and others bad in such a way that goodness is the effect of this discernment. Judgment, on the other hand, is not prior to the goodness of things but subsequent to them; it is not the cause of the goodness of the things which it judges. The goodness of things, on the other hand, is the cause of the judgment which declares them good - judgment is an effect. In short, judgment arises from reason; instinct operates blindly and without reason. Judgment must conform to things as they are, good or bad. Instinct does not conform to things, but things to instinct, and this accidental suitability is what we call their goodness. However, when we use the word good about things pursued by instinct, we form a judgment by associating a rational judgment with an instinctive discernment.

My conjecture regarding the misuse of the term judge by Aristotle will be proved and demonstrated by a comparison with other passages from his works. For example, he maintains (in bk. 3 of De Anima, lect. 11, 12) that affirmation and denial pertain solely to the mind. He says that sense, when apprehending what is sensible, judges it in its own way. When sense is attracted or repelled, it pursues or shuns what is sensible as though it were affirming it as good or bad. He does not say that it affirms what is sensible as such because this operation (as St. Thomas says in his comment) is proper to the intellect alone; rather, it carries out an operation which, relative to its effects as pursuit or flight, resembles an intellectual affirmation. Facere affirmationem et negationem est proprium intellectus... sed sensus facit aliquid simile huic, quando apprehendit ut delectabile et triste [Affirming and denying operations is proper to the intellect... but sense does something similar when it apprehends something as desirable or unattractive]. A little further on, Aristotle, although he had previously attributed judgment also to phantasy (De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 5, 6), nevertheless subsequently removes affirmation and negation from it and of course knowledge of the truth, which is proper to the intellect alone. Nam cognoscere verum et falsum est solius intellectus [knowing what is true and what is false pertains to the intellect alone], as the Angelic Doctor explains. We have to say, therefore, that Aristotle might have imagined a species of judgment that did not affirm or deny. This judgment would not involve giving or denying assent, but be formed without any opinion about what is true or what is false. In short, Aristotle retains the word judgment but then removes what is essential to the concept which the term expresses in ordinary language. I have to say that I do not think it acceptable to use the word judgment to refer to an operation in which no affirmation or negation is made and which does not have what is true or false as its object. I would call this operation, - as, I feel, the rest of mankind would - either mere feeling, or experiencing an instinctive movement, and nothing else. This feeling and this movement will certainly produce in the animal the same external actions or movements as rational judgment reproduces in us, although the seemingly identical nature of the effects is not on this occasion able to prove the identical nature of the proximate cause which produced them. I shall reserve the term judgment to refer to this cause in us in so far as we act rationally; the term feeling or instinct will refer to this cause in animals.

What more is there to say ? In other passages, where Aristotle reverts to the normal use of language, the philosopher takes judgment as equivalent to stating what is true or false (De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 5). This, it would seem, is the meaning he assigns to judging when he uses it in its correct sense and attributes it to the understanding. On the other hand, when he attributes it to feeling or phantasy, he intends it in a figurative or metaphorical sense.

This vagueness in his manner of speaking was one of the reasons preventing our philosopher from explaining the formation of ideas in a thorough, clear manner. By his misuse of the word judging, he deprived his followers and himself of the chance to face the difficulty inherent in the question. In fact, we are accustomed to give the word judgment the meaning of affirmation and denial of a predicate relative to a subject, and occasionally forget, when we attribute this word to sense, that we are not speaking of a similar operation. But once we conceive sense as a faculty of judgment, we have no difficulty in explaining the acts of our understanding. Our reasoning runs like this: the difficulty of which we are speaking lies entirely in the understanding; it does not lie in sense, and consequently not in judgment because sense judges. The difficulty has vanished. In fact, however, the difficulty is in the understanding because judgment resides in the understanding. Transferring judgment to sense would indeed remove the difficulty. The understanding will then judge without difficulty because it receives judgments already formed from sense, and has only to perfect them, give them a form, render them more explicit and obvious. In this way it will have its very own affirmation and negation. Knowledge of what is true and what is false will conventionally begin here. But this is to confuse and disguise the issue, not to solve it.