| 释义 |
modality|məʊˈdælɪtɪ|
[ad. med.L. modālitās, f. modālis: see modal and -ity. Cf. F. modalité.]
1. a. The quality or fact of being modal. Also, a modal quality or circumstance; the modal attributes of something; † a question or point relating to mode, manner, or method, and not to substance. Now rare.
a1617Bayne On Eph. (1658) 144 Liberty in this sense,..contingency, necessity, these are modalities agreeing to effects, as effects are in order to their second causes. 1647M. Hudson Div. Right Govt. ii. iii. 87 Even the temporal part of that promise..was performed exactly in the reality, though not in the Modality thereof. 1656Burton's Diary (1828) I. 44 Shall punctilios and modalities and forms, bind and tie up a Parliament? 1704Norris Ideal World ii. x. 401 We cannot conceive the modality of any substance as a Being distinct from that substance... We cannot conceive a circle as a being distinct from extension whose modality it is. 1825New Monthly Mag. XIV. 474 The resemblance takes its colour from the modalities of thought and feeling of the artist by whom it is sketched.
b. In diplomacy, politics, etc.: a procedure or method; a means for the attainment of a desired end.
1957G. F. Kennan in Listener 28 Nov. 868/1 The modalities of German unification must flow from the will of the German people, expressed in free elections. 1960Guardian 23 Aug. 7/6 He did hear nine members of the Council praise his statesmanship and the procedures (‘modalities’ is the new and foolish word) he had adopted. 1970New Yorker 17 Oct. 162/2 The new word that is constantly being heard here is ‘modalities’. Everyone involved in the peace talks agrees that the military modalities of a cease-fire are more easily negotiated than the political modalities.
2. Logic.
a. In the scholastic logic, the fact of being a modal proposition or syllogism. Also, the particular qualification by the presence of which a proposition is rendered modal.
1628T. Spencer Logick To Rdr., The modalitie of propositions doth explicate the subject or predicate of the proposition wherein it is. 1725Watts Logic ii. ii. §4 But whether the modality be natural, moral, &c. yet in all these propositions it is the mode is the proper predicate. 1843Mill Logic i. iv. §2 Those distinctions among propositions which are said to have reference to their modality. 1870Jevons Elem. Logic vii. 70 All these assertions are made with a different degree of certainty or modality.
b. In Kantian and subsequent use, that feature of a judgement which is defined by the class in which it is placed when judgements are classified into problematic, assertory, and apodictic.
This is a development of the older sense 2 a; the distinctive features of ‘problematical’ and ‘apodictic’ judgements being ‘modalities’ in the earlier sense, the term was extended to apply also to that of ‘assertory’ judgements. In Kant's classification ‘the Categories of modality’ are those of possibility and impossibility, existence and non-existence, necessity and contingency; the term is coordinate with Quantity, Quality, and Relation.
1836Penny Cycl. VI. 368/1 These Categories consist of four primordial classes: 1. quantity, 2. quality, 3. relation, 4. modality; each class containing three Categories. 1884tr. Lotze's Logic 53 What modality have such sentences as these, ‘S will be P’, ‘S ought to be P’, ‘S may be P’, ‘S has been P’? No one of them affirms reality, but the unreal which is past in the last is something quite different from that which is permitted, enjoined, or future in the others... If all these shades of meaning had been taken into account, the forms of modality might have been correspondingly increased in number. 1949Hutten & Reichenbach tr. H. Reichenbach's Theory of Probability x. §80. 404 Like probabilities, the modalities must be regarded as properties not of individual propositions but of propositional sequences. 1951G. H. von Wright Ess. Modal Logic 3 Related to the problems of mixed modalities are the problems of super-imposed or higher order modalities.
3. Civil Law. ‘The quality of being limited as to time or place of performance, or, more loosely, of being suspended by a condition: said of a promise’ (Cent. Dict. 1890).
4. Psychol.
a. (See quot. 1909.)
1895Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. VII. 84 Sinn, sense, sensibility, modality. 1909Cent. Dict. Suppl., Modality, in Psychol.: (a) the nature or character of sensation or stimulus as determined by the sense-department to which it belongs or appeals: a term proposed by Helmholtz, to avoid a confusing use of quality... Hence (b) the sense-department itself: as, the sensations of different modalities. 1925G. B. Phelan (title) Feeling experience and its modalities. 1951G. Humphrey Thinking ii. 57 Sensory presentations of various modalities—auditory, kinaesthetic, and so on. 1971tr. H. von Helmholtz's Sel. Writings xiv. 369 The most fundamental [distinction] is that among sensations which belong to different senses, such as the differences among blue, warm, sweet, and high-pitched. In an earlier work I referred to these differences in the modality of the sensations. 1972D. R. Kenshalo in Kling & Riggs Woodworth & Schlosberg's Exper. Psychol. (ed. 3) v. 119/1 If we insist that each primary sensory modality has its own nerve pathway, the tactile, pain, and temperature senses fail to qualify as different modalities because their nerves are intermingled.
b. A term used to denote qualitatively different attributes or traits of personality.
1946R. B. Cattell in Brit. Jrnl. Psychol. May 159 Three classes or ‘modalities’ of traits: (1) Dynamic traits, e.g. dispositions, sentiments, neurotic symptoms, ergs; (2) Temperament traits, e.g. general emotionality, surgency, preservation, hyperthyroidism, personal tempo; (3) Abilities or cognitive traits, e.g. native general intelligence, acquired perceptual and executive skills. 1962E. R. Hilgard Introd. Psychol. (ed. 3) xvi. 452/2 Guilford..writes of seven ‘modalities of traits’, indicating that the kind of trait we see depends upon the direction from which we view personality. 1964L. J. Bischof Interpreting Personality Theories xiv. 594 Formally, Cattell proceeds to divide traits into three modalities: temperament, dynamics, and ability. 1972Jrnl. Social Psychol. LXXXVII. 52 The conditioning events taking place during this phase leave an indelible imprint on the psychological modalities referred to as personality. |
