Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:41:40.554Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making Modal Distinctions: Kant on the Possible, the Actual, and the Intuitive Understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2014

Jessica Leech
Jessica Leech*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield Email: jessica.leech@sheffield.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One striking contrast that Kant draws between the kind of cognitive capacities that humans have and alternative kinds of intellect concerns modal concepts. Whilst ‘it is absolutely necessary for the human understanding to distinguish between the possibility and the actuality of things’ (5: 401), the very distinction between possibility and actuality would not arise for an intuitive understanding. The aim of this paper is to explore in more detail how the functioning of these cognitive capacities relates to modal concepts, and to provide a model of the intuitive understanding, in order to draw some general lessons for our ability to make modal judgements, and the function of such judgements.

Keywords

Kantpossibilityactualintuitive understandingdiscursive understandingintellectual intuitionmodalityconceptsmodal judgement
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 339 - 365
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barcan Marcus, R. (1961) ‘Modalities and Intensional Languages’. Synthese, 13/4, 303–322.Google Scholar
Blackburn, S. (1993) ‘Morals and Modals’. In Essays in Quasi-Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Divers, J. (2010) ‘Modal Commitments’. In B. Hale and A. Hoffman (eds), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Divers, J., and Elstein, D. Y. (2012) ‘Manifesting Belief in Absolute Necessity’. Philosophical Studies, 158, 109–130.Google Scholar
Förster, E. (2012) The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction. Trans. B. Bowman. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, S. (1999) Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gram, M. S. (1981) ‘Intellectual Intuition: The Continuity Thesis’. Journal of the History of Ideas, 42, 287–304.Google Scholar
Hale, R. (1999) ‘On Some Arguments for the Necessity of Necessity’. Mind, 108, 23–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1974) ‘Logic’. Trans., with an introduction, by R. S. Hartman and W. Schwarz. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1992a) Lectures on Logic. Trans. and ed. J. M. Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1992b) Letter to Marcus Herz 1772’. In A. Zweig (ed.), Correspondence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1997) Lectures in Metaphysics. Trans. and ed. K. Ameriks and S. Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgement. Ed. P. Guyer trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kreines, J. (2007) ‘Between the Bounds of Experience and Divine Intuition: Kant’s Epistemic Limits and Hegel’s Ambitions’. Inquiry, 50/3, 306–334.Google Scholar
Kripke, S. (1980) Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Leech, J. (2010) ‘“Creationism” and the Contingent A Priori’. Ratio, 23, 168–183.Google Scholar
Leech, J. (2012) ‘Kant’s Modalities of Judgment’. European Journal of Philosophy, 20/2, 260–284.Google Scholar
McFetridge, I. (1990) ‘Logical Necessity: Some Issues’. In John Haldane and Roger Scruton (eds), Logical Necessity and Other Essays. Aristotelian Society Series, 11 (London: Aristotelian Society) 135–154.Google Scholar
Mensch, J. (2011) ‘Intuition and Nature in Kant and Goethe’. European Journal of Philosophy, 19/3, 431–453.Google Scholar
Rumfitt, I. (2010) ‘Logical Necessity’. In B. Hale and A. Hoffman (eds), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 35–64.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1912[1998]) The Problems of Philosophy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Westphal, K. R. (2000) ‘Kant, Hegel, and the Fate of “the” Intuitive Intellect’. In S. Sedgewick (ed.), The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy, 283–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar