On Negation and Negative Facts

bY

H A N S REGNELL

w o r d s such as mou, mot,, mobody,, mothing)) are indeed

among the most common every-day expressions. Yet we are like-
ly to be puzzled if requested to explain exactly what they mean.
This is because difficult philosophical problems are involved in
the concepts of negation and negative facts. ~

Since the speculations of Parmenides these subjects have been

very much discussed by metaphysicians and logicians. However,
in this short paper I am not going to pay much attention to the
history of the problems concerned. Nor shall I give any special
references to the views of present-day writers on the theme. In
a later, more elaborate and accurate investigation I hope to be
able to deliver a more satisfactory account in these respects as
well as in several others. Yet the brief survey I will give here
may be of interest. It has the advantages of supplying a simple
outline.
Our first task will be to examine what is implied in a denial.
A synonym for ,deny, is .reject,. In this context the Latin
word ,rejicere, is obviously used in a metaphorical sense. Liter-
ally it means ,throw back,.
Moreover, the positive .accipere)>, .accept, literally means
,take, or ))receive,.
Thus in these metaphors affirmation and negation are com-
pared with the opposite actions of taking and throwing back.
W e are here concerned with an instance of physical antagonism.
 ON NEGATION A N D NEGATIVE FACTS 21 1

There are opposite physical processes such as attraction and re-

pulsion, construction and destruction. If you press both your
hand,s against each other, you will vividly experience the strife of
antagonist forces. Now, if you push with equal strength from
both sides, no motion will take place. In this respect the oppo-
site forces reduce or nullify each other’s effects.
The opposition between positive and negative numbers in
mathematics and science expresses such a physical antagonism.
This matter was examined by KANT in his investigation of 1763
entitled nVersuch den Begriff der negativen Grossen in die Welt-
weisheit eintufiihren,.
Mental negative and positive processes or attitudes in general
seem to be opposed in a corresponding way. In so far as they
are expressed in behaviour, we may very well distinguish be-
tween physically opposite reactions of the body. On the one
hand : approaching, taking, keeping, cooperation, and on the
other hand : flight, throwing back, disregarding, resistence, in-
ertia, hostile behaviour, etc.
T o introspection a negative attitude may appear principally
as the will which conditions the latter kind of reactions. This
kind of .no, means .I will not,, ))I refuse,, e . g . ,I will some-
thing different)), or ))I will remain as I am,, ))I will be left in
peace.. It often implies the negation of a request or an impera-
tive.
The emotional aspect of the negative attitude involves dis-
pleasure, disgust, or hate, often mingled with pleasure, in so
far as the resistance is successful. People, of course, often enjoy
very much saying mop, and in that case the pleasure may even
predominate. Their negative attitude is simply due to a wish for
self-assertion.
A .no)) may also express fear, suspicion, avarice, or reserve.
The opposite positive attitudes are confidence, self-sacrifice,
generosity, and open-heartedness. It should be noted that these
))positive, feelings from the ethical point of view generally are
considered to possess a positive value, the negative correspond-
ences being regarded as bad.
2 12 HANS REGNBLL
Of course, the contest between Byes, and .no. does not only
take place between different persons. When it occurs within a
single mind we are concerned with states of hesitation, irresolu-
tion, or temptation.
In the more intellectual field (to which I am now going to
pass) hesitation corresponds to doubt. A .no, may, of course,
be more or less unemotional and uninterested. For example, it
may be just an expression of astonishment: .No, is that really
so!, In a particular case a surprise may be ever so welcome, or
it may contain a severe disappointment, but it may also be in-
different. In itself it is neutral from the emotional point of view.
In cases of astonishment we are concerned with some kind of
either instinctive or conscious anticipation which is disproved by
subsequent experience. A person is .prepared% for a certain
kind of future stimulus, for instance for a heavy weight to lift.
Then it turns out not to be heavy at all. The surprise accord-
ingly felt is a negative cognitive experience on a primitive level.
When in doubt you are prepared for opposite alternatives. More-
over, there is the decidedly disbelieving attitude which is af-
firmed by the negative experience, which is then rather to be
understood as the negation of another person’s expectation. I
need not here treat all this in detail.
If the negative experience contains a clear idea, it will be that
facts are related otherwise than they were expected or wanted
to do. An action is not appropriate for a certain purpose, e.g.
it causes other effects than those wanted. A key does not fit into
the key-hole. A portrait is unlike the person represented. Actions
or works of art deviate from the ethical and aesthetical ideals
of a certain period, a certain people or culture, or certain critics.
A proposition is at variance with observed facts, or with other
propositions, or it is constructed otherwise than the accepted
rules of language prescribe. An experienced phenomenon has
to other phenomena certain relations which make us exclude it
from the general system of acknowledged facts.
It is obvious that the values right and wrong, beautiful and
unbeautiful, true and false, real and unreal apply to such cases
 ON NEGATION A N D NEGATIVE FACTS 213
as the above examples. Thus we are concerned here with cogtu-
tive experiences of relations of opposite nature. These are in
themselves independant of emotions and volitions. Generally
the correct, the appropriate, the true, etc., will be preferred and
recommended, but, as everyone knows, this is very far from
always so. A lie or a fiction may be very positively appreciated
from other points of view than the purely cognitive one.
Fundamental standards of ethical or aesthetical value may
have developed instinctively or consciously with reference to
positive interests and emotions. But after these standards have
been acquired and made conscious the comparison with particular
cases is a purely cognitive affair and will give rise to genuine
judgements and propositions of value. Moreover, emotional and
volitional reactions in an individual person and also in a society
are to a rather great extent uniform, so that scholars may ac-
cordingly conceive of dominating patterns or standards of which
most individuals wiI 1, of course, be completely unconscious
themselves.
The choice of theoretical principles may also be a matter of
conveniance, or simplicity, or general interest. Thus, for example,
it is a general interest, of course, that expressions of language,
or symbols in general, are used accurately, consistently, and in
accordance with current rules. Moreover, when they are pro-
posed as means of communicating knowledge, they should re-
present correctly what would be perceived or inferred by the
standard or ideal man. If this be not the case, an expression of
language will be a harmful source of confusion, misunderstand-
ing, or deception, in about the same way as a displaced shop
sign, or an incorrect map, or a picture that does not resemble
the object it is claimed to represent.
A linguistic form of this harmful kind will accordingly be
rejected as possessing negative value. It may be either senseless,
formally incorrect, or false.
A significant and formally correct sentence that proposes to
communicate knowledge can be proclaimed as false or true.
Further, if we consider that the same piece of information may
214 HANS REGNBLL
be given in different languages, or in the same language with
different words, we may form the notion of a kind of general
symbol, called proposition, which can be .expressed)> by a par-
ticular sentence, or any other equivalent to it. Thus we may also
argue about the affirmation or the negation of a proposition.
Then we must consider that there are symbols other than lin-
guistic, for example memory-images, ))thoughts., pictures, etc.
In so far as such symbols represent inaccurately they will, of
course, justly be negated.
In this context, however, I will pay exclusive attention to
sentences and propositions. (For sake of brevity I will here use
the term .sentence, for the more accurate .sentence or proposi-
tion..) Now, the negation of a sentence may be equivalent to
its pronouncing as false. For example, .It is false that the
cathedral of Lund has four towers, is equivalent to .The cathe-
dral of Lund has not four towers,. It must be observed, of
course, that certain operations are obligatory concerning such
sentences as ,Some Scandinavians are not Swedes.. The true
correspondence here is: ,It is false that all Scandinavians are
Swedes,. Also the meaning of >>AllA are B. is the same as that
of .It is false that some A are not Bn. This is certainly elemen-
tary Logic, and I need not develop the point further. Nor need
I comment on the fact that an affirmation of a sentence is equi-
valent to the negation of the negation of it.
Of course, the ideas which are expressed by negative sen-
tences are not ideas of nothing. We have just now been con-
cerned with real relations between symbols and facts, or between
different symbols. Further, our rejecting attitude is implied.
However, what is a negation from the formal point of view,
cannot always be adequately analysed in this way. If someone
says, for instance, ,That is not bad., what he wants to say may
be that it is rather good. He does not want to reject an assertion
that it is bad. Logical character is not determined by linguistic
form. As in the above example a sentence with negative form
may express that something is otherwise than this or that. If an
object is assumed to exist and to possess properties, and if we
 ON NEGATION A N D NEGATIVE FACTS 215

further declare that it has not certain properties, it is clear that

it does have other properties. And we often know by linguistic
convention that this property may be a particular opposite, or
one of a few different properties contained in a common class.
All that is quite obvious. In Plato’s doctrine of negative facts
this is considered to be the one conceivable function of negative
expressions.
Moreover, suppose someone says: .In the village there is a
house that has not got a chimney.. If it is assumed that all other
houses of the village do have chimneys, the sentence just quoted
will describe the house quite accurately and sufficiently so that
it can be easily recognized. The negative sentence here implies
a particular difference between the house and other houses of
the village. Thus it contains more than the mere rejection of a
symbol. It expresses more than the observation that the proposi-
tion is discrepant with real facts, or with other propositions, etc.
It communicates knowledge concerning the difference between
non-symbolic objects.
Many scholars have contended that difference and contrast
are what arouses consciousness and what we primarily and prin-
cipally react on. I am inclined to agree with them. In any case,
the missing of a characteristic or a part may really be the most
striking and remarkable about an object. The absence of some-
one, or a defect in a person or a thing may very well be what
we consider first of all. In these cases we are struck by the un-
expected and surprising difference between a particular object
and other standard objects which belong to the same kind. This
difference is attributed to the object in question as a property.
There are other important cases in which awareness of con-
trasts apparently explain distinctions between positive and nega-
tive opposites. I refer to such ones as light and dark, sound and
silence, matter and empty space, and, at last, present and past
or future time.
The dark, the silent, and the empty are certainly perceived no
less than their positive opposites. It is true that they do not act
upon our sense-organs, but what is essential to perception seems
2 16 HANS R E G N ~ L L

not to be the mere influence from outside itself, but the altera-
tions with it, and also its interruption. Thus a negative pheno-
menon of the kind is perceived as the contrast to, or the inter-
ruption of the positive one. The end of the one is the commence-
ment of the other, and conversely, and the one will continue
until it is bounded by the entrance of the other.
Thus we may perceive a series of alternate sounds and pauses.
I believe that in this very simple fact there is a very important
point to be brought out, and which has often been neglected
by epistemologists. It has been assumed that just .impressions.
caused by positive .stimuli. make out the content of our direct
experience of the external world. Negative phenomena are ac-
cordingly sometimes considered as non-existent. A hole, or a
pause is just nothing, it may seem. But in that case should we
really be able to perceive what does not exist? - I think it
should be admitted that our conception of existence is unclear
on that point.
Also, I believe, the distinctions between past, present, and
future time are derived from experiences of contrasts. We, no
doubt, perceive boundaries in time, interruptions and appearings
of phenomena. When a sound is suddenly interrupted we are
immediately aware that from now it belongs to the past. As the
contrast to the succeeding phenomenon is apprehended, both
terms of the contrast are directly given to consciousness, the
former as past, or .passed>, the latter as present. What is past
ndoes not exist any more.. Yet it can be immediately perceived.
It cannot reasonably be denied, I think, that we really perceive
structures developing in time, for example a string of tones. Such
a string is given to us as a configuration, and as a whole it is
present until the last part of it is past. Thus we should say, I
think, that a perceived phenomenon is present until we have
experienced its end as a contrast to something new, or until the
moment it was finished according to the experience of another
perceiver or of our own inference. At the same time, early sub-
ordinate parts of the present whole will be past, as a later sub-
ordinated part is present.
 O N NEGATION AND NEGATIVE FACTS 217

I agree with WILLIAM JAMES, and many other scholars, that

our conception of the past would be incomprehensible, if we
had not an immediate awareness of past phenomena. A ))repro-
duction, of a past phenomenon would merely be a present con-
tent of mind, and its reference to the past could not possibly be
realized unless we had already a direct experience of the past.
The future should be understood, I think, as what is expected
to follow the present in the same way as the present followed
the past. This is a very rough and inaccurate analysis of the
concept of future time, but I cannot elaborate it further here.
In a more complete theory of negative facts the occurence of
continuous transitions from one phenomenon to another must
also be duly considered, of course. However, I cannot see that
the serious special difficulties which are hereby introduced into
the problem will at all affect the general analysis which I have
suggested in the present paper.
If the above conclusions are correct, we must state that what
does not exist, or does no more exist, can really be perceived
immediately. Of course, you may say that it is immediately re-
membered, and that any perception presupposes immediate me-
mory, but this is only a matter of terminology.
Lastly, I will pay attention to the distinctions between exist-
ence and non-existence, and reality and illusion. I cannot give
anything like an exhaustive account in the present short paper,
but I will try to elucidate some points which seem to me to be
especially important in this context.
When we say that a phenomenon is real or unreal, we attribute
to it a positive, respectively a negative value, e.g. a cognitive
value. However, we are here no longer concerned with the truth-
values of symbols, in so far as we do not regard our experiences
as pictures or signs of a transcendent world. But, in any case, we
cannot possibly relate our phenomenal world with a transcendent
one. Thus the cognitive value of phenomena can be decided only
with reference to the relations in which they stand to each other.
I will presently give a short outline of the non-metaphysical
view which I think is most natural.
218 HANS R E G N ~ L L

Our normal attitude to the products of memory and imagina-

tion is, no doubt, intrinsically different from our attitude to
ordinary perceived phenomena. The former do not count in a
way, though they may be considered as very useful surrogates
for the latter, that possess a genuine value which the former
have not. Or, otherwise expressed, a memory-image has merely
a representative value of about the same nature as a picture or
a sign. But a picture or a sign has also a presentative value as
being a particular piece of matter with genuine properties of
its own. - I have recently dealt with these questions in my
book On Symbolization and Fictional Reference, and I need not
say more about them here. - Now, what appears to us in cases
of hallucination or illusion may be completely rejected or ignor-
ed. Thus it is given a pure negative value. In this way a very
great number of phenomena are more or less decidedly discri-
minated and isolated from the rest.
But for what purpose is this separation made? How are we
to explain the different attitudes?
The metaphysician may answer that we reject such pheno-
mena as do not accurately represent the transcendent reality.
This is the one world, common to all perceivers, whereas the
phenomena of the same object experienced by different persons
are always more or less contradictory. The rejection is supposed
to be made according to the directions of an innate instinct.
But even if this view be conceivable, it is completely unverifi-
able. W e do experience, however, that the instinctive process
of rejection really affects such variations as are conditioned by
the special nature of the medium of perception, or by the special
states or standpoints of different perceivers, or of the same per-
son on different occasions. In this way the immense manifold
and variance of the phenomenal appearances are very consider-
ably reduced, and the experiences are harmonized, made con-
sistent, and to a great extent made independent from such special
conditions as those just mentioned. All this means, of course, a
very great advantage both to society and to individuals.
However, the remarkable unification in question presupposes
 ON NEGATION A N D NEGATIVE FACTS 219

that certain standards, norms, or ideals of mediums, standpoints,

and perceivers are instinctively or consciously recognized and
applied. The trouble is that there is not at all a complete agree-
ment concerning such ideals. Accordingly the discrimination pro-
cess of different perceivers may give quite discrepant results.
Yet, as a matter of fact, some standards of reality are rather
commonly acknowledged. Thus an observation is considered the
more acceptable the more carefully and accurately it is made,
and the more exhaustively the object is examined. The more a
view is founded on memory, speculation, conjecture, or expecta-
tion, the more doubtful it will be considered and the more likely
to be rejected when compared with an ideal observation. Very
many illusions are due to such unsatisfactory observation. -
Moreover, if two contradictory views are equal in such respects,
the one will be accepted which is more simple, or more simply
connected with other views. On the whole, the real world should
be a regular cosmos. The unreal is also often characterized by
a defect in this respect.
It is because of the regularity in question that our ordinary,
recognitions, expectations, and predictions can be successful.
From this point of view we prefer phenomena which are less
likely to .deceive. us, and which are favourable as clues, e . g .
as means of prediction. But, decidedly, the process of rejection
serves other important cognitive purposes also, and above all the
general simplification of experiences. In the >>uncultivated.phe-
nomenal world colours change in different light, and forms and
sizes of objects are modified as the observer passes beyond the
area in which the phenomenon of constancy is prevalent. The
,real. world is enormously less complicated than that, thanks to
the process of rejection.
Then I want to stress very much that also negative pheno-
mena, such as holes and pauses, can be rejected. Moreover, I
think that this is a very important, but hitherto neglected point
in the dispute between realists and phenomenalists. By rejection
of a negative phenomenon an unperceived positive phenomenon
220 HANS R E G N ~ L L

is asserted as existent, irrespective of any .permanent possibilitym

of perceiving it.
Suppose, for example, that you see a bell which is ringing
quietly. You hear a constant sound from it. Now you put a
finger into each ear, and the sound is immediately interrupted,
as it seems. And this happens any time you try it, though the bell
is clearly .seen, to be ringing all the time. - In this case, the
phenomenal pauses perceived are rejected as unreal, and you
conclude that objectively the sound has been uninterrupted. The
.pauses, are rejected as specially conditioned by an unfavour-
able state of your perceiving organ.
In this way a constant and persisting object may be experi-
enced in spite of several interruptions of the perceived pheno-
menon. It should be observed that such an object is not con-
stituted by an addition of separate parts, but by the rejection of
the separating boundaries between them.
Now we can apply our results to other, more significant pro-
blems.
For my individual mind the world came into being as I be-
came conscious of it, but I have to reject this phenomenal be-
ginning as subjective, according to the acknowledged standards
of the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. Nor can
I think that the world as a whole arose when it was first perc
ceived by the first conscious being of the world, or that it will
necessarily disappear with the last conscious individual. I think,
I can very well do this kind of rejection of phenomenal begin-
nings and ends, without questioning that the world, as I experi-
ence it, is always dependent on my particular organization of
mind.
I think that our natural preference for .realistic, philosophy
is due to instinctive rejections of such negative phenomena as
are specially conditioned in the way I have indicated. You do
not arrive at the conception of unperceived real objects by some
mystical innate idea, nor by any misunderstanding of the true
function of language, nor by any hypothetical assumption that
you would experience a certain positive phenomenon in case
 O N NEGATION AND NEGATIVE FACTS 221

you were a perceiver present at this or that place on this or that

occasion. The latter may be quite true, of course, but we need
no other explanation than the reference to the ordinary prin-
ciples for rejecting subjective or illusory perceptions. W e are
here just concerned with the rejection of negative phenomena,
whereas the standard examples of broken sticks in water and
elliptical pennies concern positive phenomena only. W e must
consider, I repeat, that positive phenomena may be experienced
also by the rejection of the opposite negative ones.
And then, before I conclude this short paper, I will stress once
more that the analysis I have given cannot possibly claim to be
complete and exhaustive. It is certainly unsatisfactory also in
other respects, but it may be useful as a basis for discussion
about an important epistemological problem.