Kant: Modality

This paper investigates Kant’s account of “real essence” and of a thing’s “nature”. Notwithstanding their wide negligence in the literature, these concepts belong to the central ones of Kant’s metaphysics. I argue that, on the one hand, Kant is in continuity with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition of essence. But, on the other hand, he also follows Locke in distinguishing between “logical” and “real” essence. Contrary to recent attempts of aligning real essence with contemporary approaches to essence, I will defend the thesis (...) that Kant equates real essence and (formal) nature, and that real essence has a causal, but no constitutive role. I shall also respond to potential objections and discuss some developments of Kant’s views. (shrink)

Kant’s postulate of possibility states that possible is whatever agrees with the formal conditions of experience. As has often been noted, this is a definition of real possibility. However, little attention has been paid to the relation of Kantian real possibility to the German philosophical tradition before him. I discuss three kinds of possibility present in this tradition – internal, external, and (Crusian) real possibility – and argue that Kant endorses internal and external possibility. Furthermore, I show, specifically with respect (...) to the concept of state (Zustand), that the three traditional conceptions are reminiscent of three conceptions of real possibility that Kant implicitly distinguishes. Lastly, I argue that, according to Kant, we need experience to prove real possibility (at least as regards the three conceptions of the real possibility of states) because otherwise we could not know whether the formal conditions of experience obtain. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel reading of Kant’s account of the dependence of possibility on God in the pre-Critical Beweisgrund. I argue that Kant has a theistic-potentialist conception of the way God grounds possibility, according to which God grounds possibility by his understanding and will. The reason is that Kant accepts what I call the Principle of Possible Existence: If something is possible, then it is possible that it exists. Furthermore, I explore the connection between causal powers and possibility, the (...) influence of Crusius on Kant, and the significance of the distinction between internal and external possibility. (shrink)

Kant holds that all existential judgments are synthetic, yet he denies that existence is a real predicate. This generates a puzzle: if judgments are synthetic by virtue of featuring real predicates, how can existential judgments be synthetic? I argue that Kant's '100 thalers passage' solves this problem by distinguishing two ways judgments relate to objects: analytic inclusion and synthetic addition. Merely possible objects are analytically included in judgments—they depend on acts of judgment for their being. Existent objects are synthetically added—they (...) are independent of our judgments. This independence makes existential judgments synthetic: their truth depends on objects external to thought, not on conceptual relations alone. This reading attributes an ontology of non-existent objects to Kant. I support this interpretation by contrasting Kant's example with its source in Bering (1780), who denies that merely possible objects have being. Kant's invocation of non-existent objects marks his disagreement with Bering and supports a proto-Meinongian reading of Kant's modal metaphysics. (shrink)

Recent scholarship challenges the once-prevailing view that Kant’s view of existence is incompatible with an ontology of non-existent objects. This raises the question: What does the nature of, and difference between, existent and non-existent objects consist in? In this article, I expound Kant’s first response to this question, formulated in the pre-critical _Only Possible Argument_, in three steps. First, I show that, for Kant, being in general consists in qualitative determinacy. Second, I argue that Kant countenances only one type of (...) non-existent object, merely possible ones, which are clusters of states of affairs that do not obtain and which are tied together by grounding relations. Third, I establish that the nature of existent objects consists in their exemplification of internal predicates. (shrink)

This essay reassesses the relation between Kant and Kripke on the relation between necessity and the a priori. Kripke famously argues against what he takes to be the traditional view that a statement is necessary only if it is a priori, where, very roughly, what it means for a statement to be necessary is that it is true and could not have been false and what it means for a statement to be a priori is that it is knowable independently (...) of experience. Call such a view the Entailment Thesis. Along with many Kant scholars, Kripke thinks that Kant endorses the Entailment Thesis. Thus Kripke and many others take his arguments against the Entailment Thesis to tell against Kant and to mark an important point of disagreement with him. I will argue that this is a mistake. Kant does not endorse the Entailment Thesis that Kripke and many others attribute to him. He does endorse two quite different theses concerning the relation between necessity and the a priori, as he conceives them. One is a matter of definition and the other is a very substantial philosophical thesis indeed—to establish it is the aim of the entire Critique of Pure Reason. But Kripke’s arguments against the Entailment Thesis tell against neither of Kant’s theses, as they involve crucially different conceptions of necessity and the a priori. This superficial lack of disagreement masks deep disagreements, but these result from divergent views regarding matters such as realism, modal epistemology, and philosophical methodology; views which Kant does a lot, and Kripke very little, to argue for. (shrink)

I offer a brief introduction to my book, Thinking of Necessity, and respond to discussions by Sam Kimpton-Nye, Sònia Roca Royes, and Naomi Thompson. I engage with Thompson on questions concerning the distinction between subjective and objective thought, and the role this distinction plays in my account of the role of modal concepts. I engage with Kimpton-Nye on questions concerning the relation between metaphysical and natural necessity, and the duality of possibility and necessity, and constraints on real modality. I engage (...) with Roca Royes on questions concerning metaphysical necessity as the strictest real necessity, de re necessity, and implications for my account of metaphysical necessity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper articulates a grounding-based criterion for distinguishing between the objective and the subjective in response to some arguments made by Jessica Leech in Thinking of Necessity (2023). It claims that this criterion fares better than Leech's own proposal in that it is likely to be more widely acceptable, and is also able to do the philosophical work that Leech requires.

In Kantian philosophy, the term “condition of possibility” is central, but carries the following ambiguity. According to one reading, “condition of possibility” merely means “necessary condition”. However, it is demonstrated that a deeper interpretation of the term “possibility” proves to be more fruitful. This reading allows us to reconstruct an important background assumption of Kant: Every condition of the possibility of experience holds necessarily, provided that experience is possible. Or more generally: All conditions of the possibility hold necessarily as long (...) as the conditioned is actually possible. -/- This conclusion is understood through the axiomatic system S5. Therefore I argue by referencing the schematism chapter that Kant’s notion of modal terms can be formalized through S5. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes several key themes in Kant’s views about modality. We begin with the pre-critical Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, in which Kant distinguishes between formal and material elements of possibility, claims that all possibility requires an actual ground, and argues for the existence of a single necessary being. We then briefly consider how Kant’s views change in his mature period, especially concerning the role of form and thought in defining modality. (...) Kant’s mature views, however, present two difficult interpretive puzzles. The first puzzle concerns whether Kant has a generally reductive view of modality. While Kant’s views on logical modality, the role of actuality in grounding possibility, and the relation of modality to cognition all suggest reduction, we argue that the categorial status of modal concepts and the difficulty in even identifying amodal grounds for modal facts all suggest a non-reductive view. The second puzzle concerns whether Kant accepts modal facts or properties at the noumenal level. While Kant’s appeal to noumenal necessary connections, the contingency of noumenal willing, and the idea of a necessary noumenal being suggest that he endorses noumenal modality, his claims that modal concepts express only relations to the faculty of cognition and his claim that modal concepts arise from our distinctive psychological structures, we argue, suggest that he rejects noumenal modality. We conclude by considering potential solutions to these puzzles. (shrink)

Despite recent essentialist approaches to Kant’s laws of nature, it is unclear whether Kant’s critical philosophy is compatible with core tenets of essentialism. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s position by identifying the key metaphysical and epistemological features of his notion of ‘nature’ or ‘essence’. Two theses about natures can be found in the literature, namely that they are noumenal in character (_noumenal thesis_) and that they guide scientific investigation as regulative ideas of reason (_regulative thesis_). I argue that (...) Kant’s notion of nature does not entail the noumenal thesis and, based on his model of causal explanation, I propose a novel, _phenomenal thesis_, that allows for a better understanding of the function of natures as regulative ideas. In the last part of the paper, I show that Kant’s ‘essentialism’ is a genuine form of essentialism committed to _de re_ modality, although it differs in several respects from major contemporary essentialist accounts. I conclude by suggesting that Kant’s essentialism (if appropriately updated) can be relevant to the contemporary debate, which has so far been dominated by Humean and Aristotelian proposals. (shrink)

In all three of his major works on moral philosophy, Kant conceives of moral obligation, moral permissibility, and moral impermissibility in decidedly modal terms, namely in terms of moral necessity, moral possibility, and moral impossibility respectively. This terminology is not Kant’s own, however, but has a rather long history stretching back to a group of Spanish Jesuit theologians in the early seventeenth century, and it was used in two contexts: first, in the context of divine and human action to explain (...) how volition can be both metaphysically and physically free and yet morally necessary, and second in a deontic context to refer to moral obligation, permissibility, and impermissibility. In this paper, my first and primary aim is to sketch the way in which four of Kant’s most important German predecessors, namely Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Christian August Crusius, used the language of moral necessity, possibility, and impossibility in both the context of action and obligation. My second, more limited aim is to suggest that Kant’s use of these terms can be clarified by taking this background into consideration. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:In Morning Hours (1785), Moses Mendelssohn presents a proof for the existence of God from the grounding of possibility. Although Mendelssohn claims that this proof is original, it has not received much attention in the secondary literature. In this paper, I analyze this proof and present its historical context. I show that although it resembles Leibniz's proof from eternal truths and Kant's precritical possibility proof, it has unique characteristics that can be regarded as responses to deficiencies Mendelssohn identified in these (...) earlier proofs. I argue that by analyzing the semantics of judgments about dispositions, Mendelssohn provides a novel explanation for the basic premise shared by these proofs, namely that possibility is grounded in actuality. Additionally, this analysis simplifies the inference to a unique infinite mind grounding all possibility. Thus, the proof is worth studying both for historical reasons and for its original account of modal concepts. (shrink)

This book sets out a Kant-inspired theory of modality, driven by a methodology which takes seriously questions about the function of modal judgment as a guide to a metaphysics of modality. It argues that we need logical modal concepts as a condition on our ability to think, and metaphysical modal concepts as a condition on our ability to think objectively. Concordant with this, it argues that logical necessity has its source in the laws of thought and that metaphysical necessity is (...) relative to conditions on objective thought. This this account of metaphysical necessity, which is termed “Modal Transcendentalism”, is then further developed, covering questions concerning necessary and contingent existence, de re necessity, essentialism, and modal epistemology. (shrink)

In his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, Kant distinguishes between logical and real essences. While the former is related to concepts and is knowable, the latter is related to things and is unknowable. In this paper, I argue that the unknowability is explained by the modal characteristic of real essences as a necessitating ground on which a priori knowledge is impossible. I also show how this claim is related to the unknowable necessity of particular laws of nature. Since laws of (...) nature are conceived as grounded in real essences, the unknowability of the latter is equivalent to Kant's other claim that there can be no knowledge of the necessity of particular laws of nature. Necessity can only be known a priori, and therefore, the necessity of particular laws is only assumed and conceived as grounded in something unknowable, a real essence. This conclusion will allow me to attribute to Kant a position I label as “regulative essentialism”, meaning that real essences have an indispensable role in accordance with the rational interest to explain nature as a system of laws and natural kinds, combined with an epistemic humility about the correspondence of our empirical concepts to real essences. (shrink)

This essay considers Kant’s theory of modality in light of a debate in contemporary modal metaphysics and modal logic concerning the Barcan formulas. The comparison provides a new and fruitful perspective on Kant’s complex and sometimes confusing claims about possibility and necessity. Two central Kantian principles provide the starting point for the comparison: that the possible must be grounded in the actual and that existence is not a real predicate. Both are shown to be intimately connected to the Barcan formulas, (...) and Kant’s views on what he distinguishes as three different kinds of modality are then considered in light of this connection. (shrink)

Kant states in §76 of the third Critique that the divine intuitive intellect would not represent modal distinctions. Kohl and Stang claim that this statement entails that noumena lack modal properties, which, in turn, conflicts with Kant’s attribution of contingency to human noumenal wills. They both propose resolutions to this conflict based on conjectures regarding how God might non-modally represent what our discursive intellects represent as modally determined. I argue that these proposals fail; the viable resolution consists in recognizing that (...) we modalize human noumenal wills as a merely regulative-practical principle in our judgements of imputation. (shrink)

The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds represents a new wave of interest in 'the metaphysical Kant'. In recent decades Kant scholars have increasingly become skeptical of interpreting Kant as a philosopher who wished to truly "leave metaphysics behind". The contributors to this volume share acommon commitment to the idea that Kant's philosophy cannot be properly understood without careful attention to its metaphysical presuppositions and, in particular, to how those metaphysical presuppositions are compatible with Kant's critique of more "dogmatic" forms of metaphysical (...) thought.The authors approach Kant's thought from a wide variety of different perspectives - emphasizing not just the familiar Leibnizian background to Kant's metaphysics, but also its broadly Aristotelian underpinnings and its relationship with metaphysical themes in post-Kantian German Idealism.Similarly, although most of the essays in this volume relate in some way to the familiar question of how best to interpret Kant's transcendental idealism, they also deal with a wide range of other topics, including Kant's modal metaphysics, his views on the continuum, his epistemology of the apriori, and the foundations of his "metaethical" views. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a novel interpretation of Kant’s proof of the existence of the outer world in the Refutation of Idealism. According to this interpretation, Kant’s proof does not provide a regressive explanation of our capacity to determine the temporal order of our experiences. Rather, it expresses a counterfactual reflection on what it takes for something to be actual in contrast to being merely imagined. On the ground of this reflection, Kant argues against the Cartesian sceptic that, even (...) if all our representations of empirical objects other than ourselves failed to be veridical, we would still know a priori that in every situation in which we, as thinking things, actually exist, something outside us in space must necessarily exist. (shrink)

Uygar Abaci's Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality starts with a helpful and illuminating historical contextualization of Kant's theory of modality. It sets out the ontotheological debates that form the backdrop of Kant's pre-Critical modal theorizing. Abaci covers the proofs of the existence of God by Anselm and Descartes, as well as Leibniz and Wolff. The first two start from the idea of God as the ens perfectissimum and then try to establish the existence of God by arguing that existence is (...) a perfection. The last two, by contrast, consider God to be the ens necessarium, such that God exists necessarily, provided the concept of God is not self-contradictory; they then attempt to establish the possibility of... (shrink)

A philosophically and historically influential section of the Critique of Judgement presents an ‘intuitive intellect’ as a mind whose representation is limited to what actually exists, and does not extend to mere possibilities. Kant’s paradigmatic instance of such an intellect is however also the divine mind. This combination threatens to rule out the reality of the mere possibilities presupposed by Kant’s theory of human freedom. Through an analysis of the relevant issues in metaphysical cosmology, modal metaphysics and philosophical theology, I (...) show that Kant in fact possesses the resources to reconcile the philosophical claims of §76 of the Critique of Judgement with his keystone commitment to the reality of human freedom. (shrink)

The thesis that existence is radically different from the determinacy of an actually existing thing –Kant considers this thesis to be the unsurmountable objection against the cosmological and the ontological argument– is the same thesis that demands a specific explanation of the existence of that actually existing thing. The notion of existence that results from its complete exclusion from the realm of the contents thoroughgoing determined by real predicates requires, thus, precisely because this thoroughness excludes it, a specific reason that (...) explains that in the actually existing thing its own actual existence is in fact united with its own determinacy; that notion of existence, however, cancels at the same time the requirement of a sufficient reason of the existence of what actually exists, and again for the same reason, namely, because since existence is as such excluded from the determinacy of the existing things, it radically differs from the specific realm where determinacy is constituted (that is why existing things are thoroughgoing determined as possible), and, therefore, it invalidates any application to itself of the logical laws that are valid only for the merely possible domain of determinacy. (shrink)

Kant rejects the ontological argument on the grounds that the ontological argument inescapably must assume that existence is a “determination” or “real predicate,” which it is not. Most understand Kant’s argument for this claim to be premised upon his distinctive proto-Fregean theory of existence. But this leaves Kant dialectically vulnerable: the defender of the ontological argument can easily reject this as question-begging. I show that Kant relies upon two distinct arguments, both of which contend that the claim that existence is (...) a determination is inconsistent with bedrock ontological set pieces assumed by rationalist defenders of the ontological argument. (shrink)

One of Kant’s categories—a priori concepts the possession and applicability of which are necessary conditions of possible experience—is a concept of necessity. But it is unclear why the concept of necessity, as Kant defines it, should be a category thus understood. My aim is to offer a reading of Kant that fills this lacuna: the category of necessity is required to make necessity as it features in the world of experience understandable: a concept that the understanding can grasp and employ (...) in cognition of objects. Kant’s view has potential wider significance for accounts of the function of necessity judgments. (shrink)

What does Kant claim to have shown in the Resolution of the Third Antinomy (RTA)? A recent publication by Bernd Ludwig shows the shortcomings of a fairly broad interpretative consensus around the claim that all that is at stake in the RTA is the mode of logical possibility. I argue that there is a lack of clarity as to what logical possibility, and that the real possibility of transcendental freedom (TF) is examined in much of the RTA. Ludwig’s own proposal (...) that Kant shows the real possibility of TF however faces major problems. I formulate an alternative proposal that pays due attention to the claim of the antinomy’s thesis, the evolution of the argument of the RTA, and Kant’s later textual references to it. This also deals with the thorny issue of the relation between practical and TF. (shrink)

This paper has three aims. First, to show Kant’s originality in using the celebrated example of the hundred thalers as a criticism of the ontological proof, despite being inspired by a 1780 booklet by Johann Bering. Second, to assess Bering’s and Kant’s different reasons for supporting the truth meant to be illustrated by the case of the thalers. Third, to point out that the debate on the example demands a discussion of the problem of universals. Indeed, the value and scope (...) of Kant’s (and Bering’s) critique of the ontological argument is decisively determined by his position on this problem. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a strong continuity between the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature and the transcendental deduction of the ideas from the first critique. On these grounds, I provide an interpretation of the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature in which I argue that: 1) the necessity of the principle of purposiveness of nature does not derive from its role in solving some specific philosophical problem but from its relation to (...) a cognitive goal; 2) the representation of nature as conforming to the maxims of judgement is a direct, immediate consequence of a certain cognitive goal that the necessity of the empirical laws mentioned by Kant in the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature is not so much their nomic necessity, but their necessity as consequences of higher laws. (shrink)

Metaphysical readings of Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the Critical period are ascendant. But their possibility assumes the possibility of existence- and real-possibility-judgments about things in themselves. I argue that Kant denies the latter possibility, so metaphysical readings have dubious prospects. First, I show that Kant takes existence- and real-possibility-judgments, as necessarily synthetic, to require a relation to sensible intuition. Second, I show that the most promising metaphysical readings can ultimately neither satisfy nor explain away that requirement for existence- and real-possibility-judgments (...) about things in themselves. I conclude with pessimistic reflections on the prospects for the metaphysical interpretive project. (shrink)

Kant on Laws is a collection of papers that Eric Watkins published from 1997 to 2018, "lightly rewritten," as he says, and accompanied with a new Introduction that states the general thesis that Kant has a univocal conception of law that applies to both laws of nature and the moral law. "Kant's most generic conception of law… includes two essential elements: necessity and the act of a spontaneous faculty whose legislative authority prescribes that necessity to a specific domain through an (...) appropriate act". These conditions are satisfied by both laws of nature and the moral law. They differ, however, in that laws of nature apply ultimately to objects that are given to us through... (shrink)

The nature of Kant’s criticism of his pre-Critical ‘possibility proof’ for the existence of God, implicit in the account of the Transcendental Ideal in the Critique of Pure Reason, is still under dispute. Two issues are at stake: the error in the proof and diagnosis of the reason for committing it. I offer a new way to connect these issues. In contrast with accounts that locate the motivation for the error in reason’s interest in an unconditioned causal ground of all (...) contingent existence, I argue that it lies in reason’s interest in another kind of unconditioned ground, collective unity. Unlike the conception of the former, that of the latter directly explains the problematic ontological assumption of the possibility proof, the existence of intelligible objects as the ground of possibility. I argue that such Platonic entities are assumed because they are amenable to the kind of unity prescribed by reason. However, since the interest in collective unity has a legitimate regulative use when applied to the systematic unity of nature, the conception of God entailed by the possibility proof is retained as a regulative idea of reason. (shrink)

I examine how Kant argues for the transcendental ideality of space. I defend a reading on which Kant accepts the ideality of space because it explains our (actual) knowledge that mathematical judgments are necessarily true. I argue that this reading is preferable over the alternative suggestion that Kant can infer the ideality of space directly from the fact that we have an a priori intuition of space. Moreover, I argue that the reading I propose does not commit Kant to incoherent (...) modal views. If we carefully distinguish between different senses of modality, the fact that our spatial form of intuition is (in some sense) contingent does not undermine the claim that this form can explain how our mathematical judgments are (in some sense) necessary. (shrink)

The relation between Kant’s conception of modalities in the Postulates of Empirical Thought and Hegel’s conception in the Logic of Essence has not been addressed in the current scholarship. I argue that there is in fact a close connection that becomes visible if the desideratum which is implied by Kant’s conceptions is understood. Thus, after an analysis of the Kantian modal postulates, the article shows that they are sufficient to characterize the necessity of Kant’s Grundsätze and, hence, a specific form (...) of synthetic propositions a priori. However, I will prove that they are insufficient to characterize Kant’s synthetic propositions a priori about transcendental philosophy. This insufficiency in the characterization of transcendental philosophy itself brings into the arena Hegel, who supplements the Kantian modalities with a self-reflexive form of transcendental modality. (shrink)

The so-called ‘possibility proof’ in Kant's pre-CriticalBeweisgrundhas been widely discussed in the literature, and it is a common view that he never really abandoned it. As I shall argue, this reading is mistaken. I aim to show that the natural illusion in theCritique of Pure Reason, which is usually taken to be the possibility proof turned into a transcendental illusion, has both a different conclusion and a different argument than the possibility proof. Rather, what remains fromBeweisgrundis what I will call (...) the ‘proofa posteriori’, which theCritiqueturns into a transcendental illusion that is of regulative use for reason. (shrink)

This chapter offers a general framework for reading ontotheology, according to which any version of the ontological argument consists of two logical steps. First, it introduces existence into the concept of God in one way or another; second, it infers the existence of God from the concept of God and asserts identity between two distinct notions of God, viz. as the most real being and as the necessary being. With this framework in place, the chapter then examines the classical version (...) of the ontological argument, introduced by St Anselm and popularized by Descartes. It demonstrates that while Kant’s primary objection, i.e. existence is not a real predicate, applies equally to both Anselm’s and Descartes’ arguments, Descartes importantly anticipates the actualist principle, i.e. facts about possibility must be grounded on facts about actuality, which will come to be a major insight in Kant’s theory of modality. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs Kant’s revolutionary account of real modality as presented in the Schematism and the Postulates chapters of the _Critique_. Here we find his precritical theses on existence, both negative and positive, transform into a strong ‘peculiarity’ thesis about modal categories in general: “as a determination of the object they do not add to the concept to which they are ascribed in the least, but rather express only the relation to the faculty of cognition” (A219). Each of possibility, actuality, (...) and necessity posits the conceptual representation of an object in a different relation to the background conditions of our empirical cognition of objects. Each such act of positing constitutes a peculiar, i.e. ‘subjective,’ type of synthetic judgment, where the intension of the subject-concept is not at all enlarged, but a relation with a distinct cognitive faculty (i.e. respectively, with understanding, perception, and reason) is added to it. (shrink)

This chapter examines Kant’s objection to the ontological argument, based on the thesis Kant introduces in _The Only Possible Argument_ (1763), “Existence is not a predicate or determination of a thing” (Ak. 2:72), which means that existence cannot be contained in the intension of the concept of any object. However, the historical novelty of Kant’s conception of existence does not lie in this negative thesis but in his two positive theses, “Existence is a predicate not so much of the thing (...) itself as of the thought which one has of the thing” (_OPA_, Ak. 2:72), and “Existence is the absolute positing of a thing” (_OPA_, Ak. 2:73). These theses point to a radical discovery: existence is to be reinterpreted as a feature of conceptual representations of things and in reference to a cognitive subject. Kant’s later realization of the groundbreaking implications of this discovery will ground his revolution in modality. (shrink)

This final chapter focuses on the two theses Kant introduces in §76 of the _Critique of the Power of Judgment_: the epistemic thesis that while it is a necessary feature of our discursive understanding to distinguish between the merely possible and the actual, an intuitive or divine understanding would cognize only actual objects, and the metaphysical thesis that things in themselves do not have modal properties. Both theses are rooted in Kant’s revolutionary theory of modality. Modal categories express only the (...) various ways in which the representations of objects are related to the cognitive subject, and thus do not signify anything in isolation from this representational relation. Modalization is thus an exclusive feature of a discursive mind to which representations of objects can be related in various ways, as opposed to an intuitive mind which would represent the whole of everything all at once and thus only in one way. (shrink)

This chapter examines the development of Kant’s conception of modality in the period between _The Only Possible Argument_ (1763) and the _Critique of Pure Reason_ (1781). From the mid-1760s on, Kant interprets his discovery that existence involves a relation to the cognitive faculty as more broadly applying to modality in general, and adopts the epistemological interpretation of the actualist principle. This shift plays an essential role in Kant’s realization of the need for a ‘critical turn’ in philosophy, which Kant first (...) formulates in his 1772 letter to Herz in terms of the question of how to cognize that our pure concepts do indeed represent really possible objects. What problematizes this question is the actualist principle, epistemologically interpreted as stating that the cognition of actuality is a prerequisite of cognition of real possibility. Kant’s emerging revolution in modality is thus constitutive of his critical turn rather than a consequence of it. (shrink)

Uygar Abaci presents a comprehensive study of Immanuel Kant's theory of modality - of the notions of possibility, actuality, and necessity. Abaci argues that Kant redefined these notions as ways in which our representations of objects are related to our cognitive faculty and thus as irreducibly subjective, relational, and conceptual.

This chapter focuses on Kant’s account of the modal functions of judgments in the _Critique of Pure Reason_. There are two current strands of interpreting this account. The first understands the modality of a given judgment in terms of the judger’s attitude toward its content, based on their epistemic or psychological states. The second understands it solely in terms of its location in a syllogistic context. On the alternative interpretation defended in this chapter, Kant construes the modalities of judgments as (...) instantiating relative logical modalities and expressing logical coherence relations between a judgment and a set of background judgments. This interpretation not only fits well with Kant’s revolutionary program of redefining modality as a feature of the relation between the conceptual representations of things and the cognitive faculty of the judger, but also captures the formal-logical infrastructure of his account of real modality in the rest of the _Critique_. (shrink)

This chapter examines the way Kant’s revolutionary theory of modality radicalizes his critique of ontotheology in the Ideal of Pure Reason. First it shows how Kant’s downgrading of his own precritical ‘only possible argument’ from an objectively valid demonstration of the real necessity of the existence of God to a subjectively valid demonstration of the necessity of assuming the idea of such a being is due to his shift from an ontological to an epistemological interpretation of the actualist principle. Second, (...) it argues that Kant’s refutation of the traditional ontological argument in the Ideal follows a multilayered strategy, consisting of a combination of two historical lines of objection, only the second of which presupposes his negative thesis that existence is not a real predicate, as well as an additional, third objection based on his further thesis that all existential judgments are synthetic, albeit in a peculiar sense. (shrink)

This chapter examines the prevalent conception of modality in German rationalist school, by looking at the modal version of the ontological argument, propounded by Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, and these figures’ accounts of modality in other metaphysical contexts. It disputes two claims of a common narrative concerning the school metaphysicians: (i) they were committed to logicism, according to which claims about possibility and necessity are exhaustively explained through formal-logical principles, while Kant introduced a real or metaphysical account of modality, involving (...) extra-logical truth-makers of modal claims; (ii) they were committed to the view that existence is a real predicate or determination, which Kant strongly rejected. This chapter demonstrates that contrary to the common narrative, Leibniz and Wolff had robust conceptions of real possibility and necessity, and did not commit to the conception of existence as a distinct determination of things and even anticipated Kant’s position on existence in significant ways. (shrink)

This chapter offers a reconstruction and analysis of Kant’s reformed ontological argument, moving from the actualist principle (AP) that every real possibility must be grounded in actuality to the conclusion that there exists a unique really necessary being, grounding all real possibility. This argument turns on a distinction between real modality, i.e. possibility and necessity of existence, and logical modality, i.e. possibility and necessity of thought. The existing literature on the argument focuses on the problem that the singularity of the (...) ground of all real possibility is not warranted by the premises of the argument. There is, however, an even more fundamental problem: what grounds the actualist principle? The principle can be interpreted ontologically, as expressing the conditions of real possibility _per se_, or epistemologically, expressing the conditions of our cognition of real possibility. The precritical Kant adopts the ontological interpretation, but does not provide a justification for it. (shrink)

Kant contends that necessity is a criterion of the a priori—that is, that all knowledge of necessary propositions is a priori. This contention, together with two others that Kant took to be evident—we know some mathematical propositions and such propositions are necessary—leads directly to the conclusion that some knowledge is a priori. Although many contemporary philosophers endorse Kant’s criterion, supporting arguments are hard to come by. Gordon Barnes provides one of the few examples. My purpose in this chapter is to (...) articulate and examine his argument. I have two goals in doing so. The first is to uncover several significant gaps in the argument. The second is to show that it suffers from a common defect in rationalist arguments. If the argument were successful against empiricist accounts of modal knowledge, it would apply with equal force to extant rationalist accounts of such knowledge. Hence, the cost of refuting modal empiricism is modal scepticism. (shrink)

This edited collection, which grows out of a 2013 British Society for the History of Philosophy conference on the topic of "the actual and the possible" at which early versions of some of the nine essays were presented, explores various episodes in the history of modern metaphysics of modality. It is broad and self-consciously eclectic in its coverage of figures and issues. There are chapters dealing with Spinoza, Wolff, Leibniz and Kant, Kant, Hegel, Russell, Meinong and Łukasiewicz, Heidegger, and Quine. (...) Some of the chapters are synoptic, providing a big picture account of... (shrink)

This paper argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, Kant and contemporary analytic metaphysicians are interested in the same kind of metaphysical dependence relation that finds application in a range of contexts and that is today commonly referred to as grounding. It also argues that comparing and contrasting Kant’s and contemporary metaphysicians’ accounts of this relation proves useful for both Kant scholarship and for contemporary metaphysics. The analyses provided by contemporary metaphysicians can be used to shed light on Kant’s understanding (...) of what a real conditioning relation is, while Kant’s perspective on the practice and goals of metaphysics sheds light on several claims and issues at home in the contemporary debate. (shrink)