Principia mathematica, by Alfred North Whitehead ... and Bertrand Russell.

46

INTRODUCTION

[CHAP.

what was perceived. But if our judgment has been so derived, it must be
true. In fact, we may define truth, where such judgments are concerned, as
consisting in the fact that there is a complex corresponding to the discursive
thought which is the judgment. That is, when we judge " a has the relation
R to b," our judgment is said to be true when there is a complex "a-in-therelation-R-to-b," and is said to be false when this is not the case. This is
a definition of truth and falsehood in relation to judgments of this kind.
It will be seen that, according to the above account, a judgment does
not have a single object, namely the proposition, but has several interrelated
objects. That is to say, the relation which constitutes judgment is not
a relation of two terms, namely the judging mind and the proposition, but is
a relation of several terms, namely the mind and what are called the constituents of the proposition. That is, when we judge (say) "this is red,"
what occurs is a relation of three terms, the mind, and " this," and red. On
the other hand, when we perceive " the redness of this," there is a relation of
two terms, namely the mind and the complex object "the redness of this."
When a judgment occurs, there is a certain complex entity, composed of the
mind and the various objects of the judgment. When the judgment is true,
in the case of the kind of judgments we have been considering, there is a
corresponding complex of the objects of the judgment alone. Falsehood, in
regard to our present class of judgments, consists in the absence of a corresponding complex composed of the objects alone. It follows from the above
theory that a " proposition," in the sense in which a proposition is supposed
to be the object of a judgment, is a false abstraction, because a judgment has
several objects, not one. It is the severalness of the objects in judgment
(as opposed to perception) which has led people to speak of thought as
"discursive," though they do not appear to have realized clearly what was
meant by this epithet.
Owing to the plurality of the objects of a single judgment, it follows
that what we call a "proposition" (in the sense in which this is distinguished
from the phrase expressing it) is not a single entity at all. That is to say,
the phrase which expresses a proposition is what we call an "incomplete"
symbol*; it does not have meaning in itself, but requires some supplementation in order to acquire a complete meaning. This fact is somewhat
concealed by the circumstance that judgment in itself supplies a sufficient
supplement, and that judgment in itself makes no verbal addition to the
proposition. Thus " the proposition 'Socrates is human'" uses "Socrates is
human" in a way which requires a supplement of some kind before it
acquires a complete meaning; but when I judge "Socrates is human," the
meaning is completed by the act of judging, and we no longer have an
incomplete symbol. The fact that propositions are "incomplete symbols"* See Chapter III.