What is "apodictic"

Usage examples of "apodictic".

It is, therefore, of great consequence for us to know whether the method of arriving at apodictic certainty, which in the former science was called mathematical, be identical with that which is to lead us to the same certainty in philosophy, and would have to be called dogmatic.

The former consists in rational or mathematical knowledge, arrived at by the construction of the concept, the latter in the purely empirical (mechanical) knowledge which can never supply us with necessary and apodictic propositions.

As its concept, however, such as it is given, may contain many obscure representations which we pass by in our analysis, although we use them always in the practical application of the concept, the completeness of the analysis of my concept must always remain doubtful, and can only be rendered probable by means of apt examples, although never apodictically certain.

What we really insist on is this, that philosophical definitions are possible only as expositions of given concepts, mathematical definitions as constructions of concepts, originally framed by ourselves, the former therefore analytically (where completeness is never apodictically certain), the latter synthetically.

An apodictic proof only, so far as it is intuitive, can be called demonstration.

From concepts a priori, however (in discursive knowledge), it is impossible that intuitive certainty, that is, evidence, should ever arise, however apodictically certain the judgment may otherwise seem to be.

When such experience (anything as an object of possible experience) is presupposed, these principles are, no doubt, apodictically certain, but in themselves (directly) they cannot even be known a priori.

Here the question is not, whether her own assertions may not themselves be false, but it is only to be shown that no one is ever able to prove the opposite with apodictic certainty, nay, even with a higher degree of plausibility.

But there is the same apodictic certainty that no man will ever arise to assert the contrary with the smallest plausibility, much less dogmatically.

So long as those tricks arise from personal vanity only (which is commonly the case with speculative arguments, as touching no particular interests, nor easily capable of apodictic certainty) they are mostly counteracted by the vanity of others, with the full approval of the public at large, and thus the result is generally the same as what would or might have been obtained sooner by means of pure ingenuousness and honesty.

But where the public has once persuaded itself that certain subtle speculators aim at nothing less than to shake the very foundations of the common welfare of the people, it is supposed to be not only prudent, but even advisable and honourable, to come to the succour of what is called the good cause, by sophistries, rather than to allow to our supposed antagonists the satisfaction of having lowered our tone to that of a purely practical conviction, and having forced us to confess the absence of all speculative and apodictic certainty.

Great care, however, should be taken in that case that they should be proved with the apodictic certainty of a demonstration.

Its judgment, therefore, is never opinion, but either an abstaining from all judgments, or apodictic certainty.

For if he had one which (as it ought to be in all matters of pure reason) had apodictic power, what need would he have of others?

On this necessity of an a priori representation of space rests the apodictic certainty of all geometrical principles, and the possibility of their construction a priori.