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Negation: Bradley and Wittgenstein

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Guy Stock
Guy Stock
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
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Extract

There are two main claims that Bradley makes concerning negative judgment in the Principles of Logic:

(i) Negative judgment ‘stands at a different level of reflection’ from affirmative judgment.

(ii) Negative judgment ‘presupposes a positive ground’.

I will consider what Bradley means by these claims, and draw comparisons with Wittgenstein's views on negation as they developed between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Remarks.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 234 , October 1985, pp. 465 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

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References

1 Bradley, F. H., Principles of Logic, Vols I and II (Oxford University Press, 1928), Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 2, p. 114.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 3, p. 115. Cf. Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Remarks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), Sect. 4, para. 43, p. 78. Here Wittgenstein seems to express a similar idea when he says ‘The reality that is perceived takes the place of the picture’.Google Scholar

6 PofL, Bkl, Ch. Ill, para. 2, p. 114.

7 Ibid.

8 PofL, Bkl, Ch. Ill, para. 2, p. 115.

9 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 3, p. 115.

10 Ayer, A. J., Philosophical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1963), Ch. 3, ‘Negation’, 38. Cf. Schlick, M., General Theory of Knowledge (Wien, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1974), Pt I, para. 10, p. 34. Here Schlick seems to put forward an account of negative judgment of the kind Ayer is attacking.Google Scholar

11 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 4, p. 115.

12 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 4, pp. 115–116.

13 PofL, Bkl, Ch. Ill, para. 2, p. 115.

14 Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), cf. 4.022; 4.1; 4.21; 4.5.Google Scholar

15 Cf. TLP 3.1–3.12; 3.5–4.

16 Frege, G., Logical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977), ‘Thoughts’, 1-30.Google Scholar

17 Cf. TLP 3.144; 4.461.

18 TLP 2.1511 and also Wittgenstein's article ‘Logical Form’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume (1929), 169.

19 TLP 4.0621.

20 Cf. TLP 5.5151

21 PofL, Bk I, Ch. V. para. 28, p. 158.

22 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 6, p. 116.

23 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 16, p. 123; also Bradley, F. H., Appearance & Reality (Oxford University Press, 1930), 121-122.Google Scholar

24 PofL, Bk I, Ch. Ill, para. 16, p. 123.

25 Cf. TLP 6.1–6.12; 6.124–6.126; 6.375–6.3751.

26 Cf. TLP 2.061–2.062; 4.211; 5.134; 5.634.

27 I do not intend to imply that Leibniz's system really succeeded in allowing for this. In fact I do not think it succeeds in giving an intelligible account of the difference between the merely possible and the actual.Google Scholar

28 PofL, Vol. II, Terminal Essay, VI, 662.

29 PofL, Bk I, Ch. IV, para. 14, p. 137.

30 PofL, Vol. II, Bk III, Ch. II, p. 426, footnote 24.

31 PofL, Vol. II, Terminal Essay, VI, 662; cf. also PofL, Bk I, Ch. V, p. 167, footnote 25.

32 I mean by ‘real world’ here what Bradley means by it, namely the particular spatio-temporally extended series of things that we can identify in our thought as containing these things (e.g. our own bodies) currently available to us in sense perception and which we can draw attention to in language with the help of indexicals. The real world therefore is not to be confused with Reality with a capital ‘R’. The real world is something (=x) identified in our thinking by means of an ideal content referred to Reality. Cf. Bradley, F. H., Essays on Truth & Reality (Oxford University Press, 1914), Chs III and xVl. See also Manser, A. and Stock, G., The Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (Oxford University Press, 1984), Ch. 7, ‘Bradley's Theory of Judgment’, Stock, G..Google Scholar

33 PR Sect. IV, para. 39, p. 75.

34 In fact Wittgenstein's reasoning was no doubt in the opposite direction. It was his realization that the primary language required in the Tractatus was ultimately incoherent (e.g. because of its conception of negation, etc., as only operating outside the context of elementary propositions) that led him to abandon the idea that there was something called ‘the general form of a proposition’ and to change the emphasis of his investigations along the lines they began to take in the PR.Google Scholar

35 PR Sect. VIII, para. 82, p. 109.

36 PR Sect. VIII, para. 83, p. 111.

37 Ibid.

38 PR Sect. VIII, para. 82, p. 110.

39 PR Sect. VIII, para. 82, p. 111. I would like to thank Bernard Harrison for drawing my attention to the significance of this important remark. I would also like to thank the Bradley symposium at the American Philosophical Association (Western Division), Cincinnati, 1984, the University of St Andrews Philosophical Club, and the staff seminar at the Universities of Aberdeen and Exeter for their discussions of an earlier version of this paper.Google Scholar