The Synthetic Judgment in the Addition of Numbers

by Wolfgang Cernoch

Our question ist not a transcendental problem. I wrote in my first

letter: "there is a difference between putting two numbers
together (this give us two elements) or to add the number 5 and
the number 7: the second operation give us 12 elements."
This means, that Bolzano dont think at first on the natural series
of numbers (1, 2, 3, ... n), he think on a series of Elements, of
which we can say, it is the first element, the second, and so on,
but its count every Element only as "one". We can also count the
series of natural numbers: "1" ist the first number, "2" is the
second number, and so on, but every Element of this series is a
number, which count not the same; "1" count one , "2" count two,
and so on.

Addition is not counting numbers. If I count the numbers 1, 2, 3, I

get three, like if I count three elements with the value 1 or a other
value. If I add the numbers 1, 2, 3, than I get 6. How Russell tells
us also, means "1" one element, "2" two elements, "3" three
elements, and so on. Addition means, that we have to count the
Elements, which given by the numbers. 1 + 2 + 3 as numbers
give one and two and three elements, counting this elements give
us six elements, which means everything, numbers, triangels,
sunsystems. Counting three numbers, give as three elements,
which means three numbers. — You see the difference!

Kant start to think about this as a problem of grammar in simple

S - P-sentences (Subjekt und Prädikat eines einfachen Satzes, z.
B.: VxFx). To give a predicat (not a statement!) to the subjekt is in
one point similar to counting: it says nothing about, how we can
construct the subjekt to get the quality of the predicat. In former
centuries, we have called this problem the ontological problem of
"Inhärenz" or "inesse". So is the next step, to think about numbers
as proposition, and addition should be a defined relation between
sentences (propositions). A number is now a propostion, which
say something like "This element ist the first, second, third, ...
and so on" or "This number have one, two, three ... and so on
elements". For example: If I say: "There is a cow and a horse",
than I can count one cow and one horse, but two animals, or at
least two "things". It is the same structur of the judgment (means
logical proposition). — Bolzano called the first kind of sentences
"unvollständige Summendefinition", the second kind of sentences
"vollständige Summendefinition". The first kind of sentences
defined the place in a series of undefined elements, and the
relation between such sentences are not formal definable,
because, for example, we dont know, from which side we have
start to count.

Only the second kind of sentences allowed to define a complete

relation between the propositions, we called "numbers“, and the
relation is defined with a operation, we called in arithmetics
"addition": counting the "elements“ of all given numbers (this are
the predicats of the elements as subjekt of the propositions).
Each number is a proposition in the form VxFx, in which »x«
means the name of the cipher as the subjekt, and »F« means the
numbers of elements in the subject of the cipher. To add the
ciphers is to count the elements in the predicats of each S-P-
propositions. But this operation is not longer a grammar or
logical operation like the copula in a sentence but the logical
possible relation of the conjunction »and« between sentences.

This operation is a synthetic judgment, because (1) we can

construct the number in the propositions between cipher in the
subject and counted number of elements of the subject as the
predicate, and (2) we can construct the addition with the logical
conjunction between the propositions, and it is a formal judgment
a priori, because the rules of this construction in two steps is
complete defined.

There is no platonic idea "behind" a number in the formal

solution, about Kant start to think, and which Bolzano have
worked out. "Every concept must be defined by a schema of
constructing"!