About this topic
Summary There are at least four primary areas of concern when we consider Kant’s views on modality, i.e. his views concerning possibility, actuality, and necessity. First, modality is one of the four main sections of the table of judgments in the Critique of Pure Reason (A70/B95), under which problematic, assertoric and apodictic forms fall. Hence, we may ask what these modal forms of judgment are, and what Kant intended their role to be in his wider system. Second, modality is accordingly also one of the four main sections of the table of categories (A80/B106), under which the concepts of possibility-impossibility, existence-non-existence, and necessity-contingency fall. These categories and the principles arising are then discussed in the section of the Analytic of Principles entitled The Postulates of Empirical Thinking in General, where we find a principle each for possibility, actuality and necessity. Hence, we may ask ourselves what the contents of these modal categories and principles are, and again how they contribute to Kant’s system. Third, Kant makes an important distinction between real and logical modality. It is of interest, not only what the content of this distinction is, and how Kant applies it in his work, but also how this brings out a contrast between Kant and his predecessors. In broad terms, the rationalists took logical modality to determine what must, can, and can’t exist, whereas for Kant only real modality concerns being. Finally, modal concepts suffuse Kant’s work, for example, in his notion of a transcendental condition as a necessary condition of possible experience, and in his discussions of arguments for the existence of a necessary being. Given the centrality of modality to the wider context of Kant’s philosophy, it is all the more important to gain a clear view of his specific understanding of the modal concepts. Does work on Kant on existence belong in the category of “Kant and modality”? On the one hand, existence is one of the modal categories. On the other, this topic far outruns work on Kant’s on possibility and necessity. As such, including all work on Kant on existence would risk swamping this category. In general, where papers have been proposed as additions, they are accepted, but papers on Kant on existence have not been sought out to be included.
Key works The modal forms of judgment are primarily discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1998) and the Jaesche Logik (in Kant 1992). The modal categories and principles arising from them are primarily discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason, particularly in the section “The postulates of empirical thinking in general” (A218-235/B265-287). There is also an interesting discussion of the role of modal concepts in sections 76-77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, 5:401-410 (Kant 2000). The distinction between real and logical modality appears in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s pre-critical essay “The one possible basis for a demonstration of the existence of God” (the “Beweisgrund”) is also a valuable source (in Kant 1992). The Critique of Pure Reason is a central example of how modal concepts permeate Kant’s work. One can also find helpful and interesting remarks on modality throughout Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics (Kant 1997).
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  1. God, Powers, and Possibility in Kant’s Beweisgrund.Michael Oberst - manuscript
    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 (...)
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  2. Kant’s Account of Real Possibility and the German Philosophical Tradition.Michael Oberst - manuscript
    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 (...)
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  3. Kant on Essence and Nature.Michael Oberst - manuscript
    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 (...)
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  4. Kant on Modality.Colin Marshall & Aaron Barker - forthcoming - In Anil Gomes & Andrew Stephenson (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Kant. Oxford University Press.
    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. (...)
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  5. Kant and Kripke: Rethinking Necessity and the A Priori.Andrew Stephenson - forthcoming - In James Conant & Jonas Held (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy. London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.
    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 (...)
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  6. Thinking of Necessity: A Kantian Account of Modal Thought and Modal Metaphysics.Jessica Leech - 2023 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    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 (...)
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  7. Noumenal Freedom and Kant’s Modal Antinomy.Uygar Abaci - 2022 - Kantian Review 27 (2):175-194.
    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 (...)
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  8. The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds: New Essays on Kant's Metaphysics and Epistemology.Schafer Karl & Stang Nicholas (eds.) - 2022 - Oxforrd University Press.
    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 (...)
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  9. Of modal concepts in Kant's transcendental discourse.Claude Piché - 2022 - In Giovanni Pietro Basile & Ansgar Lyssy (eds.), System and Freedom in Kant and Fichte. Routledge.
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  10. Kant's Proof of the Existence of the Outer World.Bianca Ancillotti - 2021 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 25 (1):163–189.
    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 (...)
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  11. Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality by Uygar Abaci.Ralf M. Bader - 2021 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (2):334-335.
    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 (...)
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  12. Alternate Possibilities, Divine Omniscience and Critique of Judgement §76.Kimberly Brewer - 2021 - Kantian Review 26 (3):393-412.
    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 (...)
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  13. Kant and the ‘Antinomy’ of the Actually Existing Thing.Héctor Ferreiro - 2021 - In Beatrix Himmelmann & Camilla Serck-Hanssen (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress. De Gruyter. pp. 485-494.
    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 (...)
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  14. Rationalism and Kant's Rejection of the Ontological Argument.Dai Heide - 2021 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (4):583-606.
    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 (...)
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  15. Kant on the Necessity of Necessity.Jessica Leech - 2021 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis (1):1-29.
    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 (...)
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  16. Kant and the Possibility of Transcendental Freedom.Christian Onof - 2021 - Kant Studien 112 (3):343-371.
    What does Kant claim to have shown in the Resolution of the Third Antinomy? 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 is examined in much of the RTA. Ludwig’s own proposal that Kant (...)
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  17. Bering and Kant on a Hundred Actual and Possible Thalers.Rogelio Rovira - 2021 - Kantian Review 26 (2):209-234.
    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 (...)
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  18. Systematicity, Purposiveness, Necessity: from the transcendental deduction of the ideas to the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature.Lorenzo Sala - 2021 - Aisthesis: Pratiche, Linguaggi E Saperi Dell’Estetico 14 (2):41-53.
    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 (...)
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  19. Syntheticity and Recent Metaphysical Readings of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.Simon R. Gurofsky - 2020 - Kant Studien 111 (1):104-132.
    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 (...)
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  20. Kant on Laws by Eric Watkins.Paul Guyer - 2020 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 58 (3):617-618.
    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 (...)
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  21. The Dialectical Illusion in Kant’s Only Possible Argument for the Existence of God.Noam Hoffer - 2020 - Kantian Review 25 (3):339-363.
    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 (...)
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  22. A priori intuition and transcendental necessity in Kant's idealism.Markus Kohl - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (4):827-845.
    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 (...)
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  23. Was sind transzendentale Modalbegriffe?: Konzeption und Grenze der kantischen Modalbegriffe und Hegels Gegenentwurf.Hannes Gustav Melichar - 2020 - Kant Studien 111 (2):161-190.
    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 (...)
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  24. The Possibility Proof is Not What Remains from Kant's Beweisgrund.Michael Oberst - 2020 - Kantian Review 25 (2):219-242.
    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 (...)
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  25. Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality.Uygar Abacı - 2019 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    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.
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  26. Modal Empiricism: What is the Problem.Albert Casullo - 2019 - Oxford Studies in Epistemology 6.
    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 (...)
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  27. The Actual and the Possible: Modality and Metaphysics in Modern Philosophy ed. by Mark Sinclair. [REVIEW]James Messina - 2019 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 57 (4):767-768.
    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. (...)
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  28. Nicholas F. Stang: Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016, 360 Seiten. ISBN 978-0-19-871262-6. [REVIEW]Jannis Pissis - 2019 - Kant Studien 110 (4):676-681.
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  29. What real progress has metaphysics made since the time of Kant? Kant and the metaphysics of grounding.Eric Watkins - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 13):3213-3229.
    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 (...)
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  30. Kant's principles of modality.Ian Blecher - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):932-944.
    Kant presents three principles of modality in the Critique of Pure Reason. Historically, commentators have mostly disregarded them; a few have rejected them outright. In recent years, however, a consensus has begun to develop around the idea that the role of these principles is to rule out certain metaphysical doctrines. I argue that this understates their importance. Rather, the principles of modality are essential conditions of the possibility of experience. I conclude by examining the question of their truth, which, I (...)
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  31. On Kant’s Derivation of the Categories.Santiago de Jesus Sanchez Borboa - 2018 - Kant Studien 109 (4):511-536.
    In this paper, I put forth a novel interpretation of how the third categories under each heading in the table of categories are derived. Drawing on a passage from the first Critique and a letter to Schultz, I argue that in order to derive these categories, a special act of the understanding is required. I propose that we interpret this special act as consisting of an application of the third logical function under the corresponding heading that unites the combination of (...)
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  32. The origins and “possibility” of concepts in Wolff and Kant: Comments on Nicholas Stang, Kant's Modal Metaphysics.Katherine Dunlop - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1134-1140.
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  33. The problem of grounding natural modality in Kant's account of empirical laws of nature.Kristina Engelhard - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 71:24-34.
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  34. Kant and Frege on existence.Toni Kannisto - 2018 - Synthese (8):01-26.
    According to what Jonathan Bennett calls the Kant–Frege view of existence, Frege gave solid logical foundations to Kant’s claim that existence is not a real predicate. In this article I will challenge Bennett’s claim by arguing that although Kant and Frege agree on what existence is not, they agree neither on what it is nor on the importance and justification of existential propositions. I identify three main differences: first, whereas for Frege existence is a property of a concept, for Kant (...)
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  35. The totality of predicates and the possibility of the most real being.Srećko Kovač - 2018 - Journal of Applied Logics - The IfCoLog Journal of Logics and Their Applications 5 (7):1523-1552.
    We claim that Kant's doctrine of the "transcendental ideal of pure reason" contains, in an anticipatory sense, a second-order theory of reality (as a second-order property) and of the highest being. Such a theory, as reconstructed in this paper, is a transformation of Kant's metatheoretical regulative and heuristic presuppositions of empirical theories into a hypothetical ontotheology. We show that this metaphysical theory, in distinction to Descartes' and Leibniz's ontotheology, in many aspects resembles Gödel's theoretical conception of the possibility of a (...)
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  36. ‘Real Grounds’ in Matter and Things in Themselves.Rae Langton - 2018 - Kantian Review 23 (3):435-448.
    Matter’s real essence is a ground for certain features of phenomena. Things in themselves are likewise a ground for certain features of phenomena. How do these claims relate? The former is a causal essentialism about physics, Stang argues; and the features so grounded are phenomenally nomically necessary. The latter involves a distinctive ontology of things in themselves, I argue; but the features so grounded are not noumenally nomically necessary. Stang’s version of Kant’s modal metaphysics is admirable, but does not go (...)
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  37. The function of modal judgment and the Kantian gap.Jessica Leech - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 13):3193-3212.
    What is the function of modal judgment? Why do we make judgments of possibility and necessity? Or are such judgments, in fact, dispensable? This paper introduces and develops an answer to these questions based on Kant’s remarks in section 76 of the Critique of Judgment. Here, Kant appears to argue the following: that a capacity to make modal judgments using modal concepts is required for a capacity for objective representation, in light of our split cognitive architecture. This split cognitive architecture (...)
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  38. Laws of Nature and Nomic Necessity.Michela Massimi - 2018 - In Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur Und Freiheit. Akten des Xii. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. De Gruyter. pp. 397-414.
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  39. Nicholas Stang’s Kant’s Modal Metaphysics.Kris McDaniel - 2018 - Kantian Review 23 (3):461-472.
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  40. Nicholas Stang, Kant's Modal Metaphysics. [REVIEW]Colin McLear - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (4):523-528.
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  41. Predication and Modality in Kant’s Critique of the Ontological Argument.Lawrence Pasternack - 2018 - Kant Yearbook 10 (1):149-170.
    There is perhaps no more famous objection to the Ontological Argument than Kant’s contention that existence is not a predicate. However, this is not his only objection against the Ontological Argument. It is rather part of a more comprehensive attack on the OA, one that contains at least four distinct arguments, only one of which involves. It is the purpose of this paper to explore Kant’s case for, consider three contemporary strategies used to reinforce it, assess their merits, and then (...)
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  42. Kant on the Existence and Uniqueness of the Best Possible World.Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra - 2018 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 21 (1):195-215.
    In the 1750s Optimism, the Leibnizian doctrine that the actual world is the best possible world, popularized by Pope in 1733 in his Essay on Man, was a hot topic. In 1759 Kant wrote and published a brief essay defending Optimism, Attempt at some Reflections on Optimism. Kant’s aim in this essay is to establish that there is one and only one best possible world. In particular, he argues against the claim that, for every possible world, there is a possible (...)
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  43. Real possibility and relation to an object. Remarks on Kant's Modal Metaphysics.Tobias Rosefeldt - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1148-1152.
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  44. 6. Apperception and the Categories of Modality.Dennis Schulting - 2018 - In Kant’s Deduction From Apperception: An Essay on the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. De Gruyter. pp. 123-167.
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  45. Kant's Modal Metaphysics: A reply to my critics.Nicholas F. Stang - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1159-1167.
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  46. Kant on real possibility.Nick Stang - 2018 - In Otávio Bueno & Scott A. Shalkowski (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Modality. Routledge.
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  47. Logicism and Formal Necessity: Reflections on Kant’s Modal Metaphysics.James Van Cleve - 2018 - Kantian Review 23 (3):449-459.
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  48. Kant, The Actualist Principle, and The Fate of the Only Possible Proof.Uygar Abaci - 2017 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2):261-291.
    one important product of kant's pre-critical metaphysics is the proof of God's existence that he presented in The Only Possible Argument of 1763.1 Kant's proof moves from what I will call here the 'actualist principle', every real possibility must be grounded in actuality, to the conclusion that there exists a unique necessary being, i.e. an ens realissimum, which grounds all real possibility. The pre-critical proof deserves interest in its own right, for not only does it have an intriguing logical structure, (...)
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  49. Kant’s Modal Metaphysics by Nicholas F. Stang.Uygar Abaci - 2017 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (1):169-170.
    Nick Stang offers an extremely meticulous and original study of Immanuel Kant’s theory of modality. It is the first book dedicated solely to Kantian modality in the Anglophone Kant literature, crowning the recent surge of articles on the subject, while also setting up a fertile ground for further discussion. The book’s appeal is not limited to Kant readers. Considering its historical focus and scope, Stang’s book is unusually rigorous, analytically argued, and well informed by twentieth-century modal metaphysics and logic, making (...)
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  50. Kant on the Necessity of Causal Relations.Toni Kannisto - 2017 - Kant Studien 108 (4):495-516.
    There are two traditional ways to read Kant's claim that every event necessarily has a cause: the weaker every-event some-cause and the stronger same-cause same-effect causal principles. The focus of the debate about whether and where he subscribes to the SCP has been in the Analogies in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. By analysing the arguments and conclusions of both the Analogies and the Postulates as well as the two Latin principles non (...)
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