3d. JUDGMENT (διάνοια, λόγος), the Discursive Faculty, or the Faculty of Relations.--According to Plato, this faculty proceeds on the assumption of certain principles as true, without inquiring into their validity, and reasons, by deduction, to the conclusions which necessarily flow from these principles. These assumptions Plato calls hypotheses (ὑποθέσεις). But by hypotheses he does not mean baseless assumptions--"mere theories--"but things self-evident and "obvious to all;" [540] as for example, the postulates and definitions of Geometry. "After laying down hypotheses of the odd and even, and three kinds of angles [right, acute, and obtuse], and figures [as the triangle, square, circle, and the like], he proceeds on them as known, and gives no further reason about them, and reasons downward from these principles," [541] affirming certain judgments as consequences deducible therefrom.
[Footnote 540: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx.
[Footnote 541: ][ (return) ] Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xx.
All judgments are therefore founded on relations. To judge is to compare two terms. "Every judgment has three parts: the subject, or notion about which the judgment is; the predicate, or notion with which the subject is compared; and the copula, or nexus, which expresses the connection or relation between them. [542] Every act of affirmative judgment asserts the agreement of the predicate and subject; every act of negative judgment asserts the predicate and subject do not agree. All judgment is thus an attempt to reduce to unity two cognitions, and reasoning (λογίζεσθαι) is simply the extension of this process. When we look at two straight lines of equal length, we do not merely think of them separately as this straight line, and that straight line, but they are immediately connected together by a comparison which takes place in the mind. We perceive that these two lines are alike; they are of equal length, and they are both straight; and the connection which is perceived as existing between them is a relation of sameness or identity. [543] When we observe any change occurring in nature, as, for example, the melting of wax in the presence of heat, the mind recognizes a causal efficiency in the fire to produce that change, and the relation now apprehended is a relation of cause and effect [544] But the fundamental principles, the necessary ideas which lie at the basis of all the judgments (as the ideas of space and time, of unity and identity, of substance and cause, of the infinite and perfect) are not given by the judgment, but by the "highest faculty"--"the Intuitive Reason, [545] which is, for us, the source of all unhypothetical and absolute knowledge.
[Footnote 542: ][ (return) ] Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 134.
[Footnote 543: ][ (return) ] "Phædo," §§ 50-57, 62.
[Footnote 544: ][ (return) ] "Timæus," ch. ix.; "Sophocles," § 109.
[Footnote 545: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xxi.
The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discursive Reason, Plato does not regard as "real Science." "It is something between Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on the other." [546]
[Footnote 546: ][ (return) ] Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xxi.