HE CONTENT OF THE JUDGMENT. What
takes place may be a process of association of ideas, of
imagining, or the like, but is not a process of judging. An
experienced psychologist will be able by careful observation
to detect that in this process there is wanting just the
specific element of the objective dependence of the
predicate upon the subject which is characteristic of a
judgment. It must be admitted, however, that an exceptional
power of observation is needed in order to distinguish, by
means of introspection, mere combination of ideas from
judgments."

(1) Self-evidence.--Some of our beliefs seem to be peculiarly
indubitable. One might instance the belief that two and two are four,
that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, nor one
thing in two places, or that a particular buttercup that we are seeing
is yellow. The suggestion we are to examine is that such: beliefs have
some recognizable quality which secures their truth, and the truth of
whatever is deduced from them according to self-evident principles of
inference. This theory is set forth, for example, by Meinong in his
book, "Ueber die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens."

If this theory is to be logically tenable, self-evidence must not
consist merely in the fact that we believe a proposition. We believe
that our beliefs are sometimes erroneous, and we wish to be able to
select a certain class of beliefs which are never erroneous. If we
are to do this, it must be by some mark which belongs only to certain
beliefs, not to all; and among those to which it belongs there must be
none that are mutually inconsistent. If, for example, two propositions
p and q were self-evident, and it were also self-evident that p and q
could not both be true, that would condemn self-evidence as a guarantee
of truth. Again, self-evidence must not be the same thing as the absence
of doubt or the presence of complete certainty. If we are completely
certain of a proposition, we do not seek a ground to support our belief.
If self-evidence is alleged as a ground of belief, that implies that
doubt has crept in, and that our self-evident proposition has not
wholly resisted the assaults of scepticism. To say that any given person
believes some things so firmly that he cannot be made to doubt them is
no doubt true. Such beliefs he will be willing to use as premisses in
reasoning, and to him personally they will seem t