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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: [email protected]
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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 

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