KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

68 Kant's Logic
outside the sphere of an other." 1 8 Kant generally uses a Latin
example to illustrate the distinction between negative and infinite
judgments, since it is possible in Latin to distinguish between a
negated copula and a negated predicate by the word order of the sentence
(non est, est non).
Since the argument that Kant is trying to make with the figure
of the antinomy seems to hinge on the distinction between a
negative judgment (The world is not finite) and an infinite judgment
(The world is non-finite), it will be worthwhile to study this difference
more closely. 19 The distinction between the two is basically that
in negative judgments, the statement itself is negated, or for
singular judgments simply the copula, whereas in infinite judgements
the negation applies merely to the predicate term. Kant
apparently sees a difference between denying the ascription of a
predicate and asserting the negation of a predicate.
Kant was certainly not the first to distinguish infinite and
negative judgments, although the distinction was not part of the
dominant tradition. According to a survey by Tonelli 16 of the 49
eighteenth century German logic books examined list the infinite
judgment as a separate category. 20 But even those logicians who
rejected or ignored infinite judgments (iudicia infinita) often had a
place in their systems for negated or infinite terms (termini infiniti,
18 Kant, Logic, §22 (Ak 9,103-4; W 3,534). This extensional characterization of
the differences between the forms of judgment states that affirmative judgments
place the things referred to by the subject term in the class of objects characterized
by the predicate. The negative judgment denies their membership in this class.
The infinite judgment asserts their membership in an incompatible class which
is not necessarily coextensive with the complementary class.
19 The distinction was apparently not universally observed in Kant's time, and
some logicians seem to have equated or conflated contrary and contradictory
oppositions (cf. Lambert, fn 24 below). In one of his lectures Kant remarks: "It is
puzzling that logicians have called contrariety a contradiction." (Ak 24,470).
20 There is no definitive analysis of the function of Kant's distinction of a third
quality of judgment. In general, the infinite judgment is treated along the lines
set by Schopenhauer as "a false window, of which there are many attached for the
sake of symmetrical architectonics" (p. 541). Menne's otherwise very helpful
study, "Das unendliche Urteil," also suffers from this 'Schopenhauer syndrome'
of explaining a text by psychological speculation instead of philosophical analysis.
Tonelli, "Voraussetzungen," examined close to 50 different eighteenth century
logic texts and found that a third of them accorded some official status to
infinite judgments. On the background of Klaus Reich's interpretation, L.
Krüger in "Wollte Kant...?", makes a number of suggestions for interpreting
this section of the CPR which will be taken up below.