Abstract
This paper outlines a theory of possibility based on the potentialities of individual objects. The motivations for such a theory are twofold. On an intuitive level, potentialities of objects (the fragility of a given glass, for instance) are much closer to common sense and much better understood than the more usual philosophers’ device in understanding modality, possible worlds. On a theoretical level, we can see that potentiality and possibility are closely related, and I argue that potentiality cannot be understood in terms of possibility (Sect. 2); this provides some motivation to try to reverse the direction of explanation. To formulate (and defend) a potentiality-based theory of possibility, we need first to gain a better and general understanding of potentiality. Section 3 provides the beginnings of such an understanding, with special emphasis those features that are crucial for the account of possibility: in particular , it introduces what I call iterated potentialities. Section 4 formulates the account: roughly, it is possible that p just in case some object has a potentiality for p to be the case. Section 5 looks at two obvious objections to the account and formulates strategies for dealing with them.
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Notes
- 1.
A note on chronology (added in 2017): this paper was written in 2011 and minimally revised in 2013. My own views have developed further in the meantime and can be found, along with more details, in Vetter (2015). For critical discussion of the view that is proposed here, see Yates (2015) and Wang (2015).
- 2.
The straightforward route is not precluded in principle, but it is narrower than it might appear at first glance. I will say nothing to advance that route in this paper. Doing so would require identifying the limit to the range of an object’s potentialities. I will here only be concerned with pushing that limit and extending the range of objects’ potentialities.
- 3.
McKitrick (2003) has made a very convincing case for the existence of extrinsic dispositions, and her arguments can be carried over to potentialities in general. Prior to her paper, it was commonly assumed that all dispositions were intrinsic. It may still be that all fundamental dispositions are intrinsic; but as I have noted in Sect. 1, my interest here goes far beyond the fundamental properties.
- 4.
- 5.
To be more precise, we would have to say: the cut-off point for things to be truly called ‘fragile’ varies from one context to another. This merely reinforces the idea that in any given context, we are not cutting nature at its joint in distinguishing the fragile objects from the non-fragile ones.
- 6.
See Schnieder (2008) for discussion.
- 7.
As the question of distribution over conjunction has already indicated, this is a question of great importance for the logic of potentiality; but providing such a logic goes far beyond the scope of this paper. See Vetter (2015) for more details.
- 8.
This is to say that the possibility of my great-granddaughter’s being a painter is, in a sense, a fact about me. And indeed this is the basic idea of the account: all possibilities are ultimately rooted in, and thus are in some sense facts about, the objects that there are. What kind of fact about me might be responsible for the possibility in question? As a start, the answer is: my biological ability to give birth to children with intact reproductive capacities of their own. The potential (further down the line of iterations) to give birth to a daughter with the potential to be a painter requires hardly more than the potential to give birth to a daughter with healthy hands and brains, and so on—a potential that most women have.
- 9.
For the anti-realist about modality, potentiality does not seem to be a good starting point. If modality is a matter of what we can conceive [see Bealer (2002) and Peacocke (1999) or, for a radically anti-realist approach, Blackburn (1987)], it had better start with a propositional operator, such as ‘It is possible that…’, since what we conceive seems to have propositional structure.
- 10.
Cf. Williamson (1998) and Jubien (2007) for contemporary versions of this kind of criticism. Of course, there are various lines of response available; see, for instance, Lewis (1986, Chaps. 2.1 and 2.4). For present purposes, the argument I have sketched is to serve merely as a preliminary motivation. My goal is to describe an alternative to orthodoxy, not to refute orthodoxy.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Lewis uses alien properties to argue against ersatzist views on possible worlds. More recently, Divers and Melia (2002) have argued that Lewisian modal realism itself has difficulties in dealing with certain intuitions concerning alien properties without appealing to modal concepts. So whatever the potentiality view’s standing is with regard to alien properties, it will not face problems alone.
- 14.
- 15.
This paper is based on my DPhil thesis at the university of Oxford (Vetter 2010). I am greatly indebted to my supervisors, Timothy Williamson and Antony Eagle. In working on the DPhil thesis, I have received financial support from the Arts and Humanities Council (AHRC), the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, and the DAAD, as well as a Hanfling scholarship from the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford, for which I would like to thank the Hanfling family. For comments specifically on this paper, I would like to thank Stephan Schmid, Romy Jaster, Sebastian Bender and Kristina Engelhard.
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Vetter, B. (2018). From Potentiality to Possibility. In: Engelhard, K., Quante, M. (eds) Handbook of Potentiality. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1287-1_11
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