Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

It is evident that an affirmative intuitive judgment is very analogous to a conscious perception. A conscious perception is a very simplified type of affirmative intuitive judgment; and a direct affirmative intuitive judgment is a very sophisticated case of conscious perception. The difference between the two has its origin in the fact that one involves a perceptive feeling, and the other involves an imaginative feeling. Only one set of actual entities is involved in the formation of the perceptive feeling. These actual entities are the logical subjects of the proposition which is felt. But two sets of actual entities are involved in the formation of an imaginative feeling. Only one of these sets provides the logical subjects of the proposition which is felt; the other set is finally eliminated in the process of origination. The difference between the two feelings, the perceptive feeling and the imaginative feeling, does not therefore lie in the proposition which is felt. It lies in the emotional patterns of the two feelings. In either case this emotional pattern is derivative from the process of origination. In the case of the perceptive feeling, the emotional pattern reflects the close connection of the predicate with the logical subjects, throughout the process of origination. In the case of the imaginative feeling, this emotional pattern reflects the initial disconnection of the predicate from the logical subjects. This example illustrates that in the integration of feelings, components which are eliminated from the matter of the integral feeling may yet leave their mark on its emotional pattern. The triumph of consciousness comes with the negative intuitive judgment. In this case there is a conscious feeling of what might be, and is not. The feeling directly concerns the definite negative prehensions enjoyed by its subject. It is the feeling of absence, and it feels this absence as produced by the definite exclusiveness of what is really present. Thus, the explicitness of negation,p. 418 which is the peculiar characteristic of consciousness, is here at its maximum.

The two cases of intuitive judgment, namely, the affirmative intuitive judgment and the negative intuitive judgment, are comparatively rare. These two cases of intuitive judgment, together with conscious perception, correspond to what Locke calls ‘knowledge.’ Locke’s section (IV, XIV, 4), on this subject is short enough to be quoted in full: “Judgment is the presuming things to be so without perceiving it. . . . Thus the mind has two faculties conversant about truth and falsehood.

“First. Knowledge, whereby it certainly perceives, and is undoubtedly satisfied of the agreement or disagreement of any ideas.

“Secondly. Judgment, which is the putting ideas together, or separating them from one another in the mind, when their certain agreement or disagreement is not perceived, but presumed to be so; which is, as the word imports, taken to be so before it certainly appears. And if it so unites or separates them as in reality things are, it is right judgment.”

What Locke calls ‘judgment’ is here termed ‘inferential judgment.’

The process of origination of a suspended judgment consists in (i) the ‘physical recollection’ and the ‘indicative feeling,’ (41) the ‘conceptual imagination,’ derivative from the ‘physical recollection,’ (iii) the ‘propositional imagination,’ derived by integration of the ‘indicative feeling’ with the ‘conceptual imagination,’ (iv) the ‘suspended judgment,’ derived by integration of the ‘indicative feeling’ with the ‘propositional imagination,’ the relation between the objectifying predicate and the imagined practice being such as to preclude either case of direct judgment.

The suspended judgment thus consists of the integration of the imaginative feeling with the indicative feeling, in the case where the imagined predicate fails to find identification with the objectifying predicate, or with

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any part of it; but does find compatible contrast with it. It is the feeling of the contrast between what the logical subjects evidently are, and what the same subjects in addition may be. This suspended judgment is our consciousness of the limitations involved in objectification. If, in the comparison of an imaginative feeling with fact, we merely knew what 7s and what is not, then we should have no basis for discovering the work of objectification in effecting omissions from the formal constitutions of things. It is this additional knowledge of the compatibility of what we imagine with what we physically feel, that gives this information. We must not oversimplify the formal constitutions of the higher grade of acts of concrescence by construing a suspended judgment as though it were a negative judgment. Our whole progress in scientific theory, and even in subtility of direct observation, depends on the use of suspended judgments. It is to be noted that a suspended judgment is not a judgment of probability. It is a judgment of compatibility. The judgment tells us what may be additional information respecting the formal constitutions of the logical subjects, information which is neither included nor excluded by our direct perception. This is a judgment of fact concerning ourselves. Suspended judgments are weapons essential to scientific progress. But in intuitive judgments the emotional pattern may be dominated by indifference to truth or falsehood. We have then ‘conscious imagination.’ We are feeling the actual world with the conscious imputation of imagined predicates be they true or false.

When we compare these three cases of intuitive judgment (involving attention to truth) with conscious imagination (involving inattention to truth), that is to say, with ‘imputative feeling,’ we note that, except in the case of negative judgments, the datum of the conscious imagination is identical with the datum of the corresponding judgment. Nevertheless, the feelings are very different in their emotional patterns. One emotional

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