From the judgment to judgmental identity

pp. 5-22

in: Giuseppina Moneta, On identity, Berlin, Springer, 1976

Abstract

The predicability of truth and falsity defines for Aristotle the type of discourse of concern to the logician. Indeed, discourse of any type is constituted by sentences understood as unities of meaning. And although a sentence must have a meaning in order to be a sentence at all, only those which can be declared true or false form the area of jurisdiction governed by the laws of logic.¹ Truth and falsity are thus invoked by Aristotle as the primary requirement for the logical sentence or proposition. Nonetheless, in establishing truth and falsity as the primary criteria for logical inquiry, Aristotle leaves unexamined the conditions which must necessarily obtain in order for the logical sentence or proposition to exhibit the possibility of its being true or untrue. These conditions pertain to the ground- constitution of the logical proposition as a unity of sense and meaning; ² this unity, in turn, makes possible the predicability of truth and falsity. Logic is an a priori science concerning itself with a priori possibilities. Conforming to this requirement, a phenomenological analysis of the judgment examines the most radical of all its possibilities, namely the primordial ground of sense as the condition for whatever predicability of truth and falsity.