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Full Idea
I take it that anything deprived of its potential lacks capacity. But then anything not currently happening will lack the capacity to happen. ...Our brilliant Megaran friends will now have done away with all process and generation!
Gist of Idea
Megaran actualists prevent anything from happening, by denying a capacity for it to happen!
Source
Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a15)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Metaphysics', ed/tr. Lawson-Tancred,Hugh [Penguin 1998], p.259
A Reaction
The reply, implied in Idea 15490, is that you answer this by examining more closely exactly what is meant by a 'capacity', and showing that it can only boil to down to what is actual.
Related Ideas
Idea 11938 The Megarans say something is only capable of something when it is actually doing it [Aristotle]
Idea 15490 Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB]
11938 | The Megarans say something is only capable of something when it is actually doing it [Aristotle] |
15766 | Megaran actualism is just scepticism about the qualities of things [Aristotle] |
15767 | Megaran actualists prevent anything from happening, by denying a capacity for it to happen! [Aristotle] |
21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
9499 | Megarian actualists deny unmanifested dispositions [Bird] |
14350 | If a disposition is never instantiated, it shouldn't be part of our theory of nature [Corry] |
19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |