Now, for our purpose, we may take the clearest cases of judgment, viz. the meanings of propositions.
The distinctive character of Judgment as contrasted with every other act of mind is that it claims to be true, i.e. pre-supposes the distinction between truth and falsity.
First, we have to consider what is implied in claiming truth.
Secondly, by what means truth is claimed in Judgment.
{67} Thirdly, the nature of the ideas for which alone truth can be claimed.
What is implied in claiming truth
(i.) Claiming truth implies the distinction between truth and falsity. I do not say, “between truth and falsehood,” because falsehood includes a lie, and a lie is not prima facie, an error or falsity of knowledge. It is, as may be said of a question, altogether addressed to another person, and has no existence as a distinct species within knowledge. Thus a lie is called by Plato “falsehood in words”; the term “falsehood in the mind” he reserves for ignorance or error, which he treats as the worst of the two, which from an intellectual point of view it plainly is.
No distinction between truth and falsity can exist unless, in the act or state which claims truth, there is a reference to something outside psychical occurrence in the course of ideas. Falsity or error are relations that imply existences which, having reality of one kind, claim in addition to this another kind of reality which they have not. In fact, all things that are called false, are called so because they claim a place or property which they do not possess. They must exist, in order to be false. It is in the non-fulfilment, by their existence, of some claim or pretension which it suggests, that falsity consists. And so it is in the fulfilment of such a claim that truth has a meaning. A false coin exists as a piece of metal; it is false because it pretends to a place in the monetary system which its properties or history [1] contradict.
[1] For it is, I suppose, technically false, even if over value, if not coined by those who have the exclusive legal right to coin.
As the claim to be true is made by every judgment in its {68} form, there can be no judgment without some recognition of a difference between psychical occurrences and the system of reality. That is to say, there is no judgment unless the judging mind is more or less aware that it is possible to have an idea which is not in accordance with reality.