Abstract

Justus Buchler sees human utterance or judgment as being of three kinds: assertive, or "saying," active, or "doing" and exhibitive, or "showing". According to Buchler human query can be undertaken in any of these modes; we thus have assertive query , active query and exhibitive query . Buchler assigns the three modes ontological parity; that is, they all contribute equally importantly to human knowledge. ;As modern people we are trained to deliberately strive to narrow down query to the assertive and active modes when seeking knowledge. My thesis advocates the use of all three modes of judgment, including the deliberate use of exhibitive judgments which heretofore have been methodically applied only in the "arts." ;Chapter I has three sections. The first section Chapter I represents assertion. This part, called "Theoria" discusses the shift towards assertion occasioned by the early cosmological theories of Thales of Miletus and his successors. The second part of chapter I discusses what Justus Buchler calls "exhibitive utterance" or "exhibitive judgment." The third part of chapter I is on perception seen as active judgment. ;Chapter II is on ways of seeing the self and Chapter III is on ways of seeing in science. Psychoanalysis is a "talking cure," or assertive explication, but the royal road to the unconscious is via exhibitive judgments like those revealed by dreams. The way of seeing in the new physics comprises a new way of seeing in science that methodologically employs all three modes of judgment or utterance and allots them some measure of parity. ;The last chapter, chapter IV is on philosophy. According to Buchler, philosophical query functionally combines assertive and exhibitive query. My aim here is to expose the exhibitive aspects in Wittgenstein's, Heidegger's and Whitehead's philosophies and to show these different forms of philosophy as indispensable and complementary "ways of seeing." ;My overall aim is to point out the equal importance of all three modes of judgment in human query and to rectify modern society's neglect of exhibitive judgment