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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · language, naming, and meaning · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · will, choice, and freedom · will equals understanding · volitions are ideas · speculative truth · socrates examples · real essence · prudence and practical wisdom · practical reason · particles and discourse
Usually: argument (4) · detachment (3) · reflection (1) · curiosity (1) · skepticism (1)
“Truth lies in so joining or separating these representatives, as the things they stand for do in themselves agree or disagree; and falsehood in the contrary, as shall be more fully shown hereafter.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 · precept
“Besides words which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great many others that are made use of to signify the CONNEXION that the mind gives to ideas, or to propositions, one with another.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · observation
“There will be excess if something false is affirmed, as though something were, which in reality it is not: and there will be deficiency if something is falsely denied, and declared not to be, whereas in reality it is.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · observation
“In the case of 'positives' and 'privatives', however, change in both directions is impossible. There may be a change from possession to privation, but not from privation to possession.” Aristotle, The Categories · insight
Locke concludes that truth or falsehood requires affirmation or negation (a judgment), while ideas themselves are never simply false; errors arise when judgments wrongly fit ideas to other minds, existence, adequacy, or essence.
19. Truth or Falsehood always supposes Affirmation or Negation. Though, in compliance with the ordinary way of speaking, I have shown in what sense and upon what ground our ideas may be sometimes called true or false; yet if we will look a little nearer into the matter, in all cases where any idea is called true or false, it is from some JUDGMENT that the mind makes, or is supposed to make, that is true or false. Fo…
Locke explains that besides words naming ideas, languages use “particles” to signal mental connections between propositions, enabling coherent reasoning through affirmation and negation.
OF PARTICLES. 1. Particles connect Parts, or whole Sentences together. Besides words which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great many others that are made use of to signify the CONNEXION that the mind gives to ideas, or to propositions, one with another. The mind, in communicating its thoughts to others, does not only need signs of the ideas it has then before it, but others also, to show or intimate so…
Aquinas argues intellectual virtues also observe a mean: speculative virtues are measured by things themselves, while practical virtues are measured in conformity with right appetite, with excess in false affirmation and deficiency in false denial.
the case of contemplative virtue, it is the true taken absolutely (Ethic. vi, 2); in the case of practical virtue, it is the true in conformity with a right appetite. Now truth apprehended by our intellect, if we consider it absolutely, is measured by things; since things are the measure of our intellect, as stated in *Metaph.* x, text. 5; because there is truth in what we think or say, according as the thing is so …
Aristotle explains differences in how contraries can change into one another while preserving identity, but privatives and positives cannot reverse (possession to privation only), and he contrasts both with affirmation/negation.
and that in a determinate sense. It is, therefore, plain that 'positives' and 'privatives' are not opposed each to each in either of the senses in which contraries are opposed. Again, in the case of contraries, it is possible that there should be changes from either into the other, while the subject retains its identity, unless indeed one of the contraries is a constitutive property of that subject, as heat is of fi…
Spinoza argues that the mind has no absolute faculties of understanding or willing beyond particular ideas and volitions, that will equals understanding, and that will and affirmation/negation reduce to what ideas entail.
positive or negative volition; but (by I. xxviii.) it must be determined by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another, &c. Q.E.D. *****Note--In the same way it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, &c. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract and general …