 As an idealist philosopher, Royce entered the study of logic (with other idealists of his time) interested in the operations of the will and the formalization of judgment. The central operation in judgment is the selection of one alternative and the rejection of others. In the debates about the central logical operations that emerged in the 1890s and early 20th century, realist philosophers argued against founding logic on the basic relation that emerges in judgments. Rather, they argued in favor of using the inclusive disjunction as the starting point. The reason given for this alternative was that the inclusive disjunction provided a better model for the logic of burgeoning empirical science in two ways. First, it began with objects already in existence that can be put in relation to other already existing objects. Second, the exclusive disjunction requires the recognition of objects that do not exist in the ordinary sense (negated objects, for example). When the debates ended with the start of World War One, the realist logicians held the field and Royce’s alternative (and the work of other idealist logicians) faded from view.