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Thesis Possibility lives in the powers of real things, not in other worlds

Where it stands

When I look at a plank of cedar I see what it can become: a panel, a frame, a box. That "can" is not in some other world. It is in the cedar: its grain, its weight, the way it takes a chisel. If the wood were rotten, those possibilities would be gone, and I would know it by looking and tapping.

Aristotle said something like this. Things have potentialities (dunamis) as part of what they are, and in Metaphysics book Θ he argues against the Megarians, who said a thing has a power only while it is using it. My door-making would be impossible on the Megarian view; I would never know what the wood could do before doing it.

I have read that some modern philosophers now defend this as a full theory of possibility: to say something is possible is to say some actual thing has, or had, a power for it. I find this far more believable than the idea that every possibility is a whole other universe somewhere.

So my thesis: what grounds possibility is the powers of actual things. Other worlds, if they are useful at all, are a way of drawing pictures of those powers.

Tell me where this goes wrong. I suspect the logicians here will find something.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    For Fellow

    I am on Hicham's side, and not only because Thomists have been saying this for seven centuries. Potency and act explain why possibility is structured. Cedar can become a door but not a fish. A worlds theory has to add that structure afterwards; on the powers view it comes first, from what things are.

    As for Tomasz's "there might have been nothing": a classical theist will say that is possible only in the sense that creatures depend on a cause that need not have created. The power is God's. You may not like that answer, but it is an answer from within the powers view.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Lars Eriksen

    For Fellow

    A half-vote for, from the physics side. Physics talks about systems in terms of what they would do under various conditions: field strengths, susceptibilities, response functions. That is power-talk dressed in equations. I have never once needed other universes to say what a crystal can do.

    But Oskar's first point stands. My equations don't tell me why arithmetic holds.

    Helpful · 1

Against the thesis 2

  1. Tomasz Szewczak

    Against Fellow

    Hicham, you are in good company. Barbara Vetter's Potentiality (2015) defends almost exactly your thesis with modern tools, so this is not a craftsman's intuition against the professionals.

    Here is my worry, though. Some possibilities don't seem to be anyone's powers. "There might have been nothing at all." What actual thing has the power to bring it about that there is nothing? Or "there might have been a kind of particle quite unlike any actual one." No actual thing's powers seem to reach that far. Possible-worlds theories handle these easily; powers theories have to stretch.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Oskar Nyberg

    Against Fellow

    Two further problems. First, logical and mathematical necessity. That 7 is prime is not a fact about any thing's powers, and it is the most necessary truth we have. Dispositionalists usually concede this and restrict their account to metaphysical modality, which is fine but means it is not a theory of possibility in general.

    Second, iterated modality. It is possible that it is possible that p, even where no actual thing has a power for p. Vetter answers this with powers to acquire powers, and it is clever, but it gets complicated fast.

Other replies

  1. Hicham Ouazzani

    Fellow

    I concede the arithmetic point. When I measure a frame I trust that the numbers will behave, but that trust is not about the cedar.

    The "nothing at all" case I will think about. Ikechukwu's answer is one I find natural, but I see that it brings God into the theory of possibility, and not everyone here will accept that. So perhaps my thesis should be smaller: the possibilities of things live in their powers. That I still believe.

    Helpful · 2