KINDS OF JUDGMENTS AND PROPOSITIONS. 183 



necessarily involves the other and thereby renders the predication necessary. 1 

 Though all predication presupposes some experience that at least by which 

 the concepts in question are acquired, not all predication is grounded on 

 experience. When the comparison of two concepts which represent abstract 

 aspects of reality irrespective of the existence of the concrete things from 

 which these concepts were derived (88) shows that they necessarily involve 

 each other, the proposition which expresses that judgment, even although it 

 be stated in the merely assertoric or non-modal form, must be interpreted as 

 apodeictic in its modality. 



The distinction between the apodeictic and the problematic 

 modal may be simply expressed by saying that the force of the 

 former is to affirm some connexion of concepts to be absolutely 

 necessary, and of the latter to deny some connexion to be abso 

 lutely necessary. We confine the apodeictic proposition to the 

 expression of an absolutely necessary connexion of concepts, i.e. 

 to the modal expression of the judgment in materia necessaria. 



Some logicians embrace under the apodeictic proposition all grades 

 of necessity all judgments which are conceived to be based on &quot;the opera 

 tion of law &quot;. 2 We do not think that the moral necessity involved in judg 

 ments expressive of human laws, nor the physical necessity involved in judg 

 ments expressive of the uniform activities of physical phenomena, should be 

 classed with the absolutely inviolable necessity which is characteristic of ab 

 stract, &quot;metaphysical&quot; judgments (88). The categorical proposition which 

 expresses a mere moral or physical necessity, should not, therefore, be inter 

 preted apodeictically. All such &quot; operations of law &quot; physical or human 

 can, however, be expressed hypothetical ly in such terms as to make the rela 

 tion in thought between antecedent and consequent an absolutely necessary 

 relation, thus giving rise to a truly apodeictic proposition. 



90. THE SUBJECTIVE VIEW OF MODALITY. Many modern 

 logicians, after Kant, take a somewhat different view of modality 

 from that just explained. They mean by the modality of a judg 

 ment not the necessity or contingency of the predication, but the 

 certitude or probability of our assent to the judgment. For them, 

 distinctions of modality are subjective, not objective expressions 

 of the grades of firmness in our belief, not of the kinds of con 

 nexion between the objects of our thought. .Kant distinguished 

 three degrees of assurance in our attitude towards judgments ; and 

 these degrees he held to be reflected in the three forms of pro 

 position, 5 must be P (apodeictic}, S is P (assertoric], and 5 may 

 be P (problematic], 



1 The assertoric judgment, based on experience, contains, however, an implica 

 tion of the real existence of the objects compared, while this implication is absent 

 iroin the modal. The importance of this we shall see later on (130). 



3 KEYNES, op. cit., pp. 88, 89. 



