Modality
Modality
(from Lat. modus), a philosophical term applied by Kant, who, in treating of our judgments, reduced them to the four heads of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. In reference to modality, he teaches, they are either problematic, or assertory, or apodictical. Hence the category of modality includes possibility and impossibility, existence and non-existence, necessity or contingency. But existence and non-existence should have no place; the contingent and the necessary: are not different from being. Kant was not, however, the first to use the term modality. Aristotle may not have used it himself in the four modal propositions which he defined and opposed ( , c. 12-14), but it is to be found among his commentators and the scholastic philosophers. See Krauth’s Fleming, Vocabulary of Philos. (N.Y., Sheldon & Co.) pages 320, 321; Dict. des Sciences Philosoph. s.v.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Modality
(Kant. Ger. Modalitt) Concerning the mode — actuality, possibility or necessity — in which anything exists. Kant treated these as a priori categories or necessary conditions of experience, though in his formulation they are little more than definitions. See Kantianism. — O.F.K.
Modality is the name given to certain classifications of propositions which are either supplementary to the classification into true and false or intended to provided categories additional to truth and falsehood — namely to classifications of propositions as possible, problematical, and the like. See Strict implication, and Propostitional calculus, Many-valued.
Or, as in traditional logic, modality may refer to a classification of propositions according to the kind of assertion which is contained rather than have the character of a truth-value. From this point of view propositions are classed as assertoric. (In which something is asserted as true), problematic (in which something is asserted as possible), and apodeictic (in which something is asserted as necessary). — A.C.