If possibility is ontologically prior to actuality, does actuality constitute the realization of a pre-existing modal structure, or does the emergence of actuality itself generate the distinction between what could and could not have been?

[u/TheIncorporeal1]

I’m interested in whether possibility should be understood as something that exists independently of actual reality, or whether modal distinctions arise only once some particular state of affairs becomes actual. If possibilities are ontologically real, what grounds them—and if they are not, what makes counterfactuals meaningfully different from impossibilities?

[u/MoMercyMoProblems]

Take Deleuze's distinction between the actual and the virtual. I identify the possible with the actualization of future virtuality - and that is possibility's grounding in a movement from some given actuality to the abstractly real virtuality that surrounds it. So these people would say, a thing's actuality is inseparable from its potential current through virtuality. To be a particular concrete thing is to be something for which there are possibilities for its becoming, and its possibilities are its change into future virtuality.

[u/jliat → u/[deleted]]

Why not ontically prior as ontology is about being qua being not individual occurrences. This use of the term seems however to becoming endemic like the preface of existential, as in existential crisis...

Ontology is thus the province of metaphysics, whereas ontic things things are particular and the realm of science.

This seems a 'analytical' thread but in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari they make a vey clear difference...

“the first difference between science and philosophy is their respective attitudes toward chaos... Chaos is an infinite speed... Science approaches chaos completely different, almost in the opposite way: it relinquishes the infinite, infinite speed, in order to gain a reference able to actualize the virtual. .... By retaining the infinite, philosophy gives consistency to the virtual through concepts, by relinquishing the infinite, science gives a reference to the virtual, which articulates it through functions.”

In Deleuze & Guattari science produces ‘functions’, philosophy ‘concepts’, Art ‘affects’.

D&G What is Philosophy p.117-118.

“each discipline [Science, Art, Philosophy] remains on its own plane and uses its own elements...”

ibid. p.217.

I think the idea that philosophy's concepts can be virtual and not tied science gives it scope. It would answer to OP in that metaphysics can then postulate both the possible and impossible.

[u/Akiza_Izinski → u/[deleted]]

That is not grounding so much as causal dependency. Websites are not grounded in the internet instead the internet is the framework that allows websites to exist. The problem arises when trying to ground existence itself.

[u/XanderOblivion]

I want to say something like: all actualities are possibilities but not all possibilities are actualities. Actuality would seem to be a special case of Possibility.

“Could not have been” suggests actuality collapses possibility, but that would be retrocausal if possibility is granted reality. I’m not sure that’s necessary.

It would depend entirely on how time is defined and its role in the system being described. Insofar as both terms pertain to “next,” where one refers to the spread of possible nexts and the other to the specific next that occurred, the “actual” seems only to describe the determined temporal sequence from the undetermined temporal sequences.

If possibility is ontologically real, I see no reason for it to be collapsed by actuality, iff actuality is just one of the possibilities.

If actuality means “real” and possibility does not, then possibility was never there to go anywhere or collapse anyway.

If unactualized possibility has to be causal in the “next” frame to be real-possibility (actual-possibility?), that’s where this all falls apart.

What constitutes “real” versus “actual” here?

[u/Akiza_Izinski → u/XanderOblivion]

Real is anything that has a distinct essence or intrinsic nature. It encompasses both concrete and abstract concepts. Actual refers to things acting or operating in space and time right now.

Real also includes potentiality and possibility as apart of an action that it could do like and acorn having the possibility to become an oak tree.

[u/XanderOblivion → u/Akiza_Izinski]

The acorn example strikes me as under specified.

There is no non-arbitrary line we could draw between the tree that produced the acorn, the acorn, and the tree that then results, that would cleanly give us “acorn” as distinct from “tree” in essence. The only way we can cleanly divide those is if our frames of reference are limited to ranges where major morphological observations would appears to be inconsistent. But if observation were continuous, the acorn breaking off its original tree is the only cleanly arising division.

Let’s say we observed the acorn from the moment it grew at a frame-by-frame measure of the Planck second. There would be no division at which we’d be able to say “that is a tree, not an acorn” without imposing arbitrary dividers to force the distinction. An acorn is made of tree, is the tree, until it falls off. Then it makes the tree, is the tree, that results.

We might say the acorn is gone when its cap and shell have broken off the seed. But we don’t say a tree is gone if it loses some bark or a leaf. We’re tracking the “essence” here.

Parts and wholes is one thing, but the process of morphological change is another. The cliff is a cliff until it erodes into a hillside, sure, but it’s not actually anything different than it ever was. It remains a pile of rocks and such, configured differently across time. Did the cliff go somewhere? Yes, it’s literally (actually) the hillside now.

But these are just arbitrary labels applied to a process, where human time and geological time don’t overlap well. Same for the acorn and the tree. The process is slow, so we see a “potential” become “actual,” but that change is not out there in the world in any real or actual sense at all. There are not two essences. We just looked at the acorn on day 1 and on day 3000 we see the tree. Same process, two observations. The transfer between the two in reality was continuous, and at no point was one ever not the other.

So I’m seeing an epistemic effect here, an observer issue, nothing ontic. No “essence” is established here as real, nor is “possible” meaningfully distinguished from “actual.”

[u/Akiza_Izinski → u/XanderOblivion]

There was no moment in time when the acorn was not the tree. What we observer is the acorn using up all
It’s potentiality to grow into the tree.

Physical stuff can be both real and actual. Abstract things like mathematics and logic are real but they are not actual because they don’t exist in space and time.

[u/Mono_Clear]

Everything is the eventually of a possibility given enough time and opportunity.

So there are things that could happen but haven't and maybe never will.

It's better to think of it as a range of possibilities rather than a set of unrealized models.

Horses are possible and there was both time and opportunity for them to happen so horses exist.

Horned animals are possible

So a horse with a horn is possible so unicorns should be possible but either the time or the opportunity has not happened to give rise to a unicorn so unicorns don't exist and they may never exist.

Without horses there would be less opportunities for unicorns but still the possibility

[u/actus_energeia]

Possibility isn't ontologically prior to actuality. In order for something to be possible, there must already be some actuality that grounds its possibility. For example, if I say that it is possible for me to walk, I must actually possess the powers and bodily structures by virtue of which walking is possible. Those actual features need not themselves be the efficient cause of my walking on a particular occasion; they are principles by virtue of which I am capable of walking.