display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 15779 | Possibility is when the necessity of the contrary is false [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The potential occurs when it is not necessary that its contrary be false. For example, it is potential that a man should be seated, since it is not false of necessity that he is not seated. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019b26) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard point in modal logic that possibly is equivalent to not-necessarily-not (◊p → ¬□¬p). |
| 15769 | Anything which is possible either exists or will come into existence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If what we have stated either is the possible or something connected to it, there can of course be no question of its being true to say that x is capable of being but will not be. ...What is not but is capable of being either is or comes into being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047b05) | |
| A reaction: I'm a bit startled to find the great Aristotle spouting this nonsense. It's possible that every bird in England could simultaneously land in my home town, but it ain't never going to happen. Modern women could bear 50 children, but won't. |
| 14544 | Potentialities are always for action, but are conditional on circumstances [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The possession of a potentiality just is the possession of a potentiality to act, and such a potentiality is not unconditional but depends on the obtaining of propitious circumstances, which includes the satisfaction of a ceteris paribus condition. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1048a18) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be pretty exactly what we mean by a 'power', as something which requires no other driving force, but which only expresses itself with the endless complexity of the rest of nature. |
| 15774 | We recognise potentiality from actuality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is from the actuality that the potentiality is recognised. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051a29) | |
| A reaction: I presume it is from this simple fact that Sider and others draw the mistaken inference that there are no potentialities in the actual world. |
| 15777 | A 'potentiality' is a principle of change or process in a thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is a principle of change or process is said to be a 'potentiality' [dunamis], whether in something else or in the thing itself qua something else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019a18) |
| 15778 | Things are destroyed not by their powers, but by their lack of them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things are broken, compressed, bent and, in a word, destroyed not by dint of having a potentiality but by dint of not having one and by missing out on something. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019a27) | |
| A reaction: Presumably an ontology entirely based on powers would not also need to catalogue absence of powers. The positive ones do the job. No power, no destruction. |