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In Kant’s major critical work, The Critique of Pure Reason1, explicit at- tention to modality occurs chiefly in the context of the Table of Judgments and the Table of Categories. The modality of a judgment concerns a fea- ture of the making of a particular judgment, irrespective of content. By contrast, the modal categories are concepts one of which must be applied in any cognition of an object, i.e. they feature in the content of a judgment.

1_{Kant (1781, 1787). In the following, where this work is referenced, I will cite only the} standard A/B paragraph numbers.

The table of judgments lays out the different forms a judgment may take. More specifically, it lays out the different functions which act to unify representations (concepts, intuitions, and other judgments) into judgments. For Kant a judgment is ‘the mediate cognition2 of an object’ (A68/B93). A judgment is a cognition, eine Erkenntnis. The contemporary German word ‘Erkenntnis’ can mean something like an instance of coming to know and hence, as a term relating to knowledge, is factive. However, the use of the term in Kant’s time commonly meant something weaker: to represent or conceive of something.3 Furthermore, Kant himself wrote about false Erkenntnisse (A58–9/B83–4), showing that he cannot have meant a factive notion such as ‘knowledge’. So a judgment is a representation of some kind. It is mediate, meaning that it represents more immediate representations (concepts and intuitions) as being some way, i.e. as being connected accord- ing to the forms of judgment. E.g., the judgment that all dogs are animals represents the concepts of dog and animal as being universally, affirmatively and categorically related, and thereby mediately represents whatever it is that those concepts more directly represent (supposedly dogs and animals). Judgments must also have an object: they must be objective, i.e. about the world. They are not mere relations amongst concepts in the mind: they represent things as objectively being a certain way, and are thereby truth- evaluable.4

One can think of the table of judgments as presenting four determinables for the form of a judgment—quantity, quality, relation and modality—each with three determinates.

2_{I have here changed the translation of ‘erkenntnis’ from the misleading ‘knowledge’} to the more neutral ‘cognition’. I will continue to make this change where appropriate.

3

“2. To conceive of a thing, whether we may conceive of it clearly or obscurely, dis- tinctly or confusedly; in this widest meaning it is commonly used by the recent philoso- phers. To recognize a thing obscurely, clearly, distinctly. A merely obscurely recognised truth. To indicate something to someone, to awake an idea in him, either by means of words or in some other way. The heathens recognized God in a very confused way. In common language, as well as in the sciences, this is the most common usage.” (Adelung, 1808, vol. 1, p. 1906, passage translated by Mark Textor)

Table of Judgments I Quantity of Judgments Universal Particular II Singular III Quality Relation Affirmative Categorical Negative Hypothetical Infinite Disjunctive IV Modality Problematic Assertoric Apodeictic (A70/B95).

The first three determinables concern how the content of a judgment is organized. An instance of a judgment that is universal, affirmative and categorical might be ‘All dogs are animals’, whereas a similar judgment, that is universal, affirmative and hypothetical might be ‘If something is a dog, then it is an animal.’

The moments of modality are different. They do not provide a form for the content of the judgment, but rather concern how the content is judged on a particular occasion.

The modality of judgments is a quite peculiar function. Its dis- tinguishing characteristic is that it contributes nothing to the content of the judgment (for, besides quantity, quality, and re- lation, there is nothing that constitutes the content of a judg- ment). . . (A74/B99–100)

The modalities of judgment are best understood as concerning where a par- ticular token judgment occurs in a course of reasoning or inferential struc- ture. E.g., a problematic judgment (lacking assertoric force) is typically one in disjunctive or antecedent position, an assertoric judgment is typically one in premise position, and an apodeictic judgment is typically judged as the conclusion to an inference.

Thus, for instance, in a hypothetical syllogism the antecedent is in the major premise problematic, in the minor assertoric, and what the syllogism shows is that the consequence follows in accordance with the laws of the understanding. The apodeictic proposition thinks the assertoric as determined by these laws of

the understanding, and therefore as affirming a priori ; and in this manner it expresses logical necessity. (A75–6/B101)

The claim that every judgment has a modality, combined with the claim that the modality of a judgment is its location in a course of reasoning, gives rise to the intriguing thesis that every judgment occurs in a course of reasoning. This is an interesting view to consider, but it falls outside of the remit of the current project. Kant’s modalities of judgment do not concern what it is for a proposition to be necessarily or possibly true, or what it is for an object to possibly exist, or to have necessary properties. These are claims that concern the content of a judgment: either by occuring in that content, or by depending upon the content (in the case of truth). The modality of a judgment concerns only its position in an inferential structure, and not at all the content of the judgment.5

Kant goes on to take the table of judgments to provide a “leading thread” (Leitfaden) towards the table of categories. Where the functions appearing in the table of judgments are said to apply to the combination of representa- tions into a judgment, the table of categories presents a priori concepts, one of which from each of the four groups must be applied in order to produce a bone fide representation of an object of experience.

In this manner there arise precisely the same number of pure concepts of the understanding which apply a priori to objects of intuition in general, as, in the preceding table, there have been found to be logical functions in all possible judgments. (A79/B105)

The categories concern groups of concepts of which one of each must be applied in any represention or experience of an object. Again, one can understand them on the model of determinables and determinates. Every object must have a size, shape, causal profile, and so on.

5

See Leech (forthcoming). See also Longuenesse (1998, pp. 157–161). E.g. . . . the modality of judgment is determined by its relation to the forms of thought involved in deductive reasoning (judgments and syllogisms), not by its internal components (its “matter”). (Longuenesse, 1998, p. 159)

Table of Categories I Of Quantity Unity Plurality Totality II III Of Quality Of Relation

Reality Of Inherence and Subsistence

Negation (substantia et accidens)

Limitation Of Causality and Dependence

(cause and effect ) Of Community (reciprocity

between agent and patient) IV Of Modality Possibility—Impossibility Existence—Non-existence Necessity—Contingency (A80/B106)

Each group of categories is expounded upon in further detail: categories of quantity in the Axioms of Intuition; categories of quality in the Anticipations of Perception; categories of relation in the Analogies of Experience; and categories of modality in the Postulates of Empirical Thought in General.