APPREHENSION (

See also:

• LAT

Lat. ad, to; prehendere, to seize)  , in psychology, a term applied to a mode of consciousness in which nothing is affirmed or denied of the object in question, but the mind is merely aware of (" seizes ") it . " Judgment " (says Reid, ed . Hamilton, i. p . 414) " is an act of the mind specifically different from simple apprehension or the bare conception of a thing "; and again, " Simple apprehension or conception can neither be true nor false." This distinction provides for the large class of mental acts in which we are simply aware of or " take in " a number of familiar objects, about which we in general make no judgment unless our attention is suddenly called by a new feature . Or again two alternatives may be apprehended without any resultant judgment as to their respective merits . Similarly G . F . Stout points out that while we have a very vivid idea of a character or an incident in a work of fiction, we can hardly be said in any real sense to have any belief or to make any judgment as to its existence or truth . With this mental state may be compared the purely aesthetic contemplation of music, wherein apart from, say, a false note, the faculty of judgment is for the time inoperative . To these examples may be added the fact that one can fully understand an argument in all its bearings without in any way judging its validity . Without going into the question fully, it may be pointed out that the distinction between judgment and apprehension is relative . In every kind of thought there is judgment of some sort in a greater or less degree of prominence .

Judgment and thought are in fact psychologically distinguishable merely as different, though correlative, activities of

con- sciousness .