more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Is it not possible that there be objects with (natural) properties that no actual thing ever had the potentiality to have, to produce, or constitute? (Call such properties 'super-alien properties').
Gist of Idea
Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce?
Source
Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5)
Book Ref
Vetter,Barbara: 'Potentiality: from Dispositions to Modality' [OUP 2015], p.269
A Reaction
This is a problem for her potentiality account of possibility. Her solution is (roughly) to either deny the super-aliens, or have chains of iterated possibility which take this case back to actuality. That sounds OK to me.
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| 5039 | If non-existents are possible, their existence would replace what now exists, which cannot therefore be necessary [Leibniz] |
| 16986 | That there might have been unicorns is false; we don't know the circumstances for unicorns [Kripke] |
| 17590 | A merely possible object clearly isn't there, so that is a defective notion [Inwagen] |
| 17591 | Merely possible objects must be consistent properties, or haecceities [Inwagen] |
| 18925 | If talking donkeys are possible, something exists which could be a talking donkey [Williamson, by Cameron] |
| 15142 | Our ability to count objects across possibilities favours the Barcan formulas [Williamson] |
| 13719 | Barcan Formula problem: there might have been a ghost, despite nothing existing which could be a ghost [Sider] |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |