The identity of the judgment

pp. 23-36

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

Abstract

The fundamental assumption on which the possibility of science rests is the conception of judgment as an enduring identity. Any discourse which claims to be scientific is based on the presupposition that its propositions have an objective identity at all times and for everybody. The logician as well as the scientist "relies" on the identity of his judgments in understanding them as stable and permanent acquisitions whose identifiability is guaranteed over and above the spatiotemporal conditions under which they are formulated. These thought-formations are relied upon and made use of as entities which have acquired an independent mode of existence which constitutes "the being-sense of abiding validity," i.e., identity.¹