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Full Idea
The Megarian actualist denies that a disposition can exist without being manifested.
Clarification
See Idea 5998 for Megarian Actualism
Gist of Idea
Megarian actualists deny unmanifested dispositions
Source
Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 5.4)
Book Ref
Bird,Alexander: 'Nature's Metaphysics' [OUP 2007], p.109
A Reaction
I agree with Bird that this extreme realism seems wrong. As he puts it (p.109), "unrealized possibilities must be part of the actual world". This commitment is beginning to change my understanding of the world I am looking at.
Related Idea
Idea 5998 From the necessity of the past we can infer the impossibility of what never happens [Diod.Cronus, by White,MJ]
| 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] |