Note 52 — Chapter IV · DE INTERPRETATIONE.

Ammonius (in the Scholia on De Interpret. p. 130, a. 16, seq., Brand.) ranks all modal propositions under the same category, and considers the number of them to be, not indeed infinite, but very great. He gives as examples: “The moon changes fast; Plato loves Dion vehemently.” Sir W. Hamilton adopts the same view as Ammonius: “Modes may be conceived without end — all must be admitted, if any are; the line of distinction attempted to be drawn is futile.” (Discussions on Phil. ut sup. p. 145.) On the other hand, we learn from Ammonius that most of the Aristotelian interpreters preceding him reckoned the simple proposition τὸ ὑπάρχειν as a modal; and Aristotle himself seems so to mention it (Analytica Priora, I. ii. p. 25, a. 1); besides that he enumerates true and false, which undoubtedly attach to τὸ ὑπάρχειν, as examples of modes (De Interpet. c. 12, p. 22, a. 13). Ammonius himself protests against this doctrine of the former interpreters.

Mr. John Stuart Mill (System of Logic, Bk. I. ch. iv. s. 2) says:— “A remark of a similar nature may be applied to most of those distinctions among propositions which are said to have reference to their modality; as difference of tense or time; the sun did rise, is rising, will rise.… The circumstance of time is properly considered as attaching to the copula, which is the sign of predication, and not to the predicate. If the same cannot be said of such modifications as these, Cæsar is perhaps dead; it is possible that Cæsar is dead; it is only because these fall together under another head; being properly assertions not of anything relating to the fact itself, but of the state of our own mind in regard to it; namely, our absence of disbelief of it. Thus, Cæsar may be dead, means, I am not sure that Cæsar is alive.”

I do not know whether Mr. Mill means that the function of the copula is different in these problematical propositions, from what it is in the categorical propositions: I think there is no difference. But his remark that the problematical proposition is an assertion of the state of our minds in regard to the fact, appears to me perfectly just. Only, we ought to add, that this is equally true about the categorical proposition. It is equally true about all the three following propositions:— 1. The three angles of a triangle may or may not be equal to two right angles. 2. The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. 3. The three angles of a triangle are necessarily equal to two right angles. In each of these three propositions, an assertion of the state of our minds is involved, and a different state of mind in each. This is the subjective aspect of the proposition; it belongs to the form rather than to the matter, and may be considered as a mode. The commentators preceding Ammonius did so consider it, and said that the categorical proposition had its mode as well as the others. Ammonius differed from them, treating the categorical as having no mode — as the standard unit or point of departure.

The propositions now known as Hypothetical and Disjunctive, which may also be regarded as in a certain sense Modals, are not expressly considered by Aristotle. In the Anal. Prior. I. xliv. p. 50 a. 16-38, he adverts to hypothetical syllogisms, and intimates his intention of discussing them more at length: but this intention has not been executed, in the works that we possess.