George Edward Moore

“ For the existential judgment, which is presupposed in Kant’s reference to experience or in Mr. Bradley’s reference to reality, has turned out to be, as much as any other, merely a combination of concepts, for the necessity of which we can seek no ground, and which cannot be explained as an attribution to "the given". A concept is not in any intelligible sense an "adjective," as if there were something substantive, more ultimate than it. ”

“ Existence is itself a concept; it is something which we mean; and the great body of propositions, in which existence is joined to other concepts or syntheses of concepts, are simply true or false according to the relation in which it stands to them. It is not denied that this is a peculiarly important concept; that we are peculiarly anxious to know what exists. It is only maintained that existence is logically subordinate to truth; that truth cannot be defined by a reference to existence, but existence only by a reference to truth. ”

“ I endeavour to show, what I must own appears to me perfectly obvious, that the concept can consistently be described neither as an existent, nor as part of an existent, since it is presupposed in the conception of an existent. It is similarly impossible that truth should depend on a relation to existents or to an existent, since the proposition by which it is so defined must itself be true, and the truth of this can certainly not be established, without a vicious circle, by exhibiting its dependence on an existent. ”

“ It seems rather to be this: that time alone is sufficient for some sort of experience, since it alone seems to be involved in the simplest kind of existential proposition, e.g., "Pleasure exists"; and that again time and space together will suffice to account for the possibility of other pieces of knowledge, without the use of the categories. It is necessary to make a fresh assumption of propositions such as even Hume recognised, and such as are universal in physical science, in order to find the principles of substance and accident and causality implied. ”

“ For this proposition does not only involve, like "This body is heavy" or "All bodies are heavy," the necessary judgments that body is a thing, and heaviness an attribute; it asserts a relation between a "heaviness" and "corporeity" such as no experience can prove or disprove. If we found a body which was not heavy, that would indeed lead us to deny the truth of the proposition; but it would also entitle us at once to the opposite necessary proposition "Body cannot be heavy". ”

“ It will be our endeavour to show, on the contrary, that the "idea used in judgment" is not a part of the content of our ideas, nor produced by any action of our minds, and that hence truth and falsehood are not dependent on the relation of our ideas to reality. (¶ 3)
I shall in future use the term "concept" for what Mr. Bradley calls a "universal meaning"; since the term "idea" is plainly full of ambiguities, whereas "concept" and its German equivalent "Begriff" have been more nearly appropriated to the use in question. ”

“ In order to represent even "This body is heavy" as an empirical proposition, it would be necessary to analyse it into the form "Heaviness and the marks of body exist here and now". But this is certainly not its whole meaning. We must, therefore, suppose that in order to obtain a clear definition of what Kant meant by empirical propositions, we must base it upon the nature of the concepts used in them. Empirical concepts are those which can exist in parts of time. ”

“ But the theory must be rejected as an ultimate one, because not all true propositions have this relation to reality. For example, 2 + 2 = 4, whether there exist two things or not. Moreover it may be doubted here whether even the concepts of which the proposition consists, can ever be said to exist. We should have to stretch our notion of existence beyond intelligibility, to suppose that 2 ever has been, is, or will be an existent. ”

“ Bradley, be the nature of a concept and no other: and then the old conclusions follow. Nor, finally, is a vicious circle involved in our own attempt to establish conclusions with regard to truth, by rules of logic in which that conception is presupposed. For our conclusion is that truth is itself a simple concept; that it is logically prior to any proposition. But a vicious circle occurs only where a proposition is taken as prior to a concept, or a more complex proposition (one involving more concepts) as prior to one which is more simple. ”

“ But if this constituted the truth of a proposition, concepts too might in themselves be true. Red would be a true concept, because there actually are red things; and conversely a chimera would be a false concept, because no such combination either has been, is, or will be (so far as we know) among existent things. ”

“ A thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its constituent concepts. The material diversity of things, which is generally taken as starting-point, is only derived; and the identity of the concept, in several different things, which appears on that assumption as the problem of philosophy, will now, if it instead be taken as the starting-point, render the derivation easy. Two things are then seen to be differentiated by the different relations in which their common concepts stand to other concepts. ”

“ If the division were to be based on the nature of the propositions, as such, as Kant pretends to base it, we saw that pure existential propositions alone could be thought to have a claim to form a class by themselves, as empirical propositions. ”

“ It is true Kant states that this empirical universality is merely arbitrary. We ought, he says, to express our proposition in the form: "So far as we have yet observed, there is no exception from" the rule that all bodies are heavy. ”

“ To all of them Kant would seem to oppose as purely a priori propositions, those which make an assertion solely with regard to a priori concepts and which for that reason can imply no assertion of existence, since an a priori concept is one which cannot exist in the limited sense above explained. ”

“ For we must, if we are to be consistent, describe what appears to be most substantive as no more than a collection of such supposed adjectives: and thus, in the end, the concept turns out to be the only substantive or subject, and no one concept either more or less an adjective than any other. ”

“ But though this fact, which Kant points out, is very important against empiricists, we cannot regard it with him as establishing the truth of geometry and of the corresponding propositions about time. For existential propositions which are false, as well as those which are true, involve the same propositions about space and time. No existential proposition of any sort seems discoverable, which might not thus be false ”

“ These do indeed obviously form the basis of the other division; for a simple concept cannot be known as one which could exist in time, except on the ground that it has so existed, is existing, or will exist. But we have now to point out that even existential propositions have the essential mark which Kant assigns to a priori propositions—that they are absolutly necessary. (¶ 27)
The distinction of time was said to be ultimate for an existential proposition. ”

“ This difficulty is removed, when it is acknowledged that the relation of premisses to conclusion is an objective relation, in the same sense as the relation of existence to what exists is objective. It is no longer necessary to hold that logical connexions must, in some obscure sense, exist, since to exist is merely to stand in a certain logical connexion. (¶ 16)
It will be apparent how much this theory has in common with Kant’s theory of perception. It differs chiefly in substituting for sensations, as the data of knowledge, concepts ”