Potentiality and Contingency

“[T]he rational powers are powers for two contrary effects: but two contraries cannot be actualized at the same moment by the same power. What is thus necessary (ananke) — but this time by a logical necessity, dictated by the principle of non-contradiction — is that there intervenes, in addition to dunamis, another principle: desire or deliberated choice, orexis or prohairesis, which chooses between the two contraries.”

“We can thus reformulate the definition so that it serves for the dunaton kata logon: it is necessary (ananke) when that which is capable according to reason [what was called a rational power] desires something for which it has the power, that it does that thing. The necessary sequence begins this time from the power insofar as it is modified by desire and/or by choice — and thus by liberty. It remains that, here again, the attribution of such a power implies the taking into account of the circumstances of its effectuation. According to this new determination, that is possible which is decided or desired by the agent, and which the circumstances allow (which its deliberation must take into account)” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, pp. 127-128, my translation throughout).

Aristotle doesn’t literally offer a new definition of possibility at this point, but the effect is similar. In Sachs’ translation, he says that one having a rational power too “has the potency in the sense that it is a potency for acting, and this is not in every situation but when things are in certain conditions…. [E]ven if one wishes and desires… to do contrary things, one will not do them, for… there is no potency for doing them at the same time, since a thing will do the things it is capable of in the way that it is capable of them” (Metaphysics, book Theta ch. 5, p. 173).

All power or potency for Aristotle is the power to do something definite, and every power to do something definite is capable of doing it only under certain conditions. Consequently, there could be no such thing as an indefinite or unlimited power.

The emphasis on contraries in the case of rational powers is a little confusing, but it seems to be a further consequence of the notion that all power is definite. He seems to consider deliberation about the use of definite powers as revolving around the question whether to use them or not, which does thus acquire a kind of binary flavor. But it seems to me that a being having multiple powers might also deliberate about which of several to apply in a given situation.

What is really essential here is that rational power belongs to beings that deliberate. This is what makes it “rational”. And Aristotle sees a kind of “rational” (rather than physical) necessity that a being that desires or chooses something and has the power for it, will do it. But because it incorporates deliberation and choice among its conditions, this kind of necessity is not that of determinism. It is a hypothetical necessity that is compatible with contingency.

Returning to Aubry’s argument, “Proairesis [choice based on deliberation] thus intervenes as a principle of contingency, capable of inaugurating a necessary causal sequence. If the circumstantial definition of the possible leaves no place for logical possibility but tends to identify possible and potential, on the other hand the distinction between potential and actual is maintained.”

“But to this it is necessary to add — and this is what Theta 8 will do — that power considered in itself, and not in relation to its effect, is a principle of contingency. Every power, taken not as principle of action but in opposition to act, considered thus in its ontological determination and not only a kinetic one, is the place of an essential indetermination” (p. 129).

So by a sort of dialectical twist, Aubry momentarily attributes a kind of determinism to Aristotle, and then refutes it two pages later. On pedagogical grounds, I don’t favor the deliberate construction of unnecessary dialectical surprises, just as I don’t stylistically favor the kind of construction that first seemingly makes an unqualified statement, then adds qualifications later on. If a statement will later be qualified, it is good to give some indication of that up front. But in context this a minor point, and partly a personal preference of mine that Aristotle doesn’t follow either. The thing to emphasize here is that Aristotle simultaneously argues for an essential contingency in all power that is incompatible with determinism, and at the same time for the role of a hypothetical, delimited necessity that is compatible with contingency.

“It is on this essential contingency of power that the antideterminist argument of On Interpretation rests. Aristotle there distinguishes not only, like in Theta 4, the impossible from the false, but the possible from the true: of certain possible propositions, one cannot say in advance whether they will be true or false…. The possible is thus distinguished at once from the actual, the necessary, and the true” (ibid).

She summarizes Aristotle’s famous discussion in On Interpretation of the sea battle that may or may not happen tomorrow. At the most obvious level, this has to do with human deliberation and choice.

“But again Aristotle gives this another extension: if the future depends on decision and on human action, it is also true, and this time in a general (holos) manner, that ‘in all that which does not act always, there is a possibility of being and of not being. This indetermination in virtue of which the future must be called contingent, and the propositions concerning it neither true nor false, also affects events involving irrational powers” (p. 130).

Here we come full circle, to Aristotle’s rejection of strict determinism in the action of natural powers as well rational ones.

Next in this series: The Relativity of Dynamis

An Aside on Necessity

“The question remains to know whether a thing can be called possible, or again in-potentiality, when it will never be the case. In other words, can the possible designate the unreal, that is to say that which, while not being contradictory, is not and will never be the case? It is to this question that Theta 5 responds: the text opens with a new division of dunamis, according to which it is innate (for example, sensation) or acquired (by practice, like the art of playing the flute, or by study. It also recalls the distinction between rational and irrational powers” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 126, my translation).

Aubry notes that Aristotle introduces a new definition of the possible (dynaton). “The possible is in effect relative to actual circumstances: that which is possible is so kai pote kai pos, at a given moment and in a certain way…. Aristotle has a tendency to think the possible not as that which can be conceived, and is non-contradictory, but as that which can be: in other words, he does not distinguish neatly between logical possibility and real possibility, and in effect resists calling possible that which, while being capable of being in the sense that it is non-contradictory, will never be. In virtue of this new definition, one indeed calls possible that which, if all the conditions are present, must be actualized, and indeed must necessarily be actualized. The formula is one of determinism” (p. 127).

She immediately goes on to explain how Aristotle limits this determinism to irrational or natural powers, as opposed to rational ones. I would supplement this with another distinction.

In the bigger picture, even in the natural realm I think that for Aristotle, there is no strict predetermination of the overall unfolding of events. An animal gets its food in one way and not another on a given day, but this is in part due to “accident” in the ways that things come together.

The case Aubry is speaking about here is a hypothetical consideration of what would be really possible, at a given moment, and given a complete definition of the applicable circumstances. In this case, which by hypothesis is fully specified, Aristotle wants to say there should be a determinate answer, which should be subject to hypothetical necessity.

But in the case in which we consider what is really possible, this is not hypothetical, because we are not working from a hypothesis at all. Neither is there any “if”, nor are we “given” anything specific. We do not have a complete specification of the applicable circumstances. So here the conditions for hypothetical necessity do not apply. If we cannot even say what the hypothesis is, we cannot claim to draw a necessary conclusion. Accordingly, what is really possible cannot be answered in terms of hypothetical necessity.

Hypothetical necessity is a viable kind of claim because it is specific and delimited in its scope of applicability. It is also all that is needed to explain the successes of science and engineering. Given certain definite things, we can say with confidence that something definite will happen. We can iteratively improve our hypotheses and level of confidence as we go.

What is necessary for Aristotle is just what always follows. The applicability of “always” in a generalization about the natural world (as distinct from, say, mathematics or formal logic) is a question of fact. No implacable force stands behind it. And what always follows is implicitly bounded by our knowledge. “Always” simply means we have never encountered an exception. If we did, we would need to look for additional conditions to explain the new case. Necessity belongs in the register of a certain kind of intelligibility of what happens, not in the raw occurrence of events.

What I mean to have been explaining here is that if Aristotle appears to endorse a limited “determinism” with regard to natural powers, the terms in which this is expressed further limit it to a notion grounded in hypothetical necessity. The reason this is so important is that hypothetical necessity is fully compatible with the absence of predetermination, whereas determinism is commonly associated with predetermination. I would prefer to simply say that natural powers can be analyzed in terms of hypothetical necessity. And it turns out that Aubry refutes this appearance two pages later.

Next in this series: Potentiality and Contingency

Potentiality and Possibility

“At the conclusion of Theta 3, we had recognized in dunamis at the same time the condition of becoming and a mode of being, and in energeia the mode of being that is opposed to it and which characterizes, beyond movement, all that which is effective. In defining what is in-potentiality as that which is not in-act, we have also distinguished it from non-being, in characterizing it as that which can be in act. Now we need to pursue the examination of what is in play in this division, or the modality of the relation of the in-potentiality to act” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 124, my translation throughout, with Becker number citations to Aristotle’s Greek text elided).

“The discussion of Theta 4 concerns neither dunamis nor what is dunamei, but rather the dunaton. This term nonetheless can designate both the possible and that which has power, or the capable, just as much as adunaton can designate the impossible as well as that which lacks power. In Theta 3, the dunaton had been defined in terms of dunamis as ‘that for which nothing makes it impossible for the act (energeia) to exist, when it is said to have power (dynamis)'” (ibid).

Clearly, dynamis, dynamei, and dynaton all have related etymologies. My Greek isn’t strong enough to just casually read Aristotle’s original the way I can mostly read Aubry’s French without a dictionary, so this is a bit of an eye-opener. This is why Aristotle’s discussions of what we render by English words that have different etymologies are so closely related.

Because the English words do not have this visible relation to one another, it is easy to be confused by the ways in which Aristotle relates the corresponding Greek terms. For years, I have been puzzled by English translators’ seemingly random alternations between respective uses of power, potentiality, and possibility for what was supposed to be the “same” concept in Aristotle. Aubry’s highlighting of the Greek words tells me I should have long ago studied this more carefully with the side-by-side Greek and English texts in the Loeb edition. The translators’ alternations are probably not random at all, just not commented upon. We are not dealing here with things confusingly said of one same concept, but rather with things more clearly said about each of several related concepts. This is just the kind of disambiguation that Aristotle himself pioneered.

“Book Delta defines [the possible] differently, as that of which the contrary is not necessarily false; that which is true; that which can be true. Thus characterized without relation to dunamis, dunaton no longer means having power, but possible. Delta opposes it to the impossible, adunaton, defined as ‘that of which the contrary is necessarily true’ (for example, the commensurability of the diagonal of a square with its sides), and distinguishes the possible and the impossible thus defined, from power (dunamis) and the lack of power (adunamia)” (ibid).

“Nevertheless, the definitions of Delta again carry an equivocity: in its second sense (that which is true), the possible includes the necessary, or what cannot not be: according to the first and third definition, on the other hand, it is identified with the contingent (to endekhomenon). It is this last sense that is mentioned in Prior Analytics book I: ‘that which is not necessary, and of which one can think that it exists without that leading to any impossibility'” (pp. 124-125).

“The possible is indeed defined sometimes as including, sometimes as excluding the necessary. In its first sense, it can be identified with logical possibility: that is called possible which is not contradictory; the necessary — that which cannot not be the case — can thus be called possible, in the sense that it is true (noncontradictory) to say that it is the case. But the possible can also be identified with the contingent: it thus no longer [indifferently] designates that which cannot not be, or again that which can be this or that. In this second sense, the possible is opposed no longer to the contradictory, but seems to be identifiable with power, understood as the power of contraries (being A or not-A), and of contradictories (being or not being” (p. 125).

We saw previously that both of two contradictories cannot be in act or be the case at the same time, but contradictories can both potentially be in act or be the case.

“The remainder of Theta 4, up to the beginning of Theta 5, nonetheless has the object of opposing determinism. This begins from the distinction between the impossible and the false. A strong determinist position in effect comes back to saying that nothing is possible that is not and will not be true. This position assumes a triple reduction, not only of the possible to the potential and of the potential to the actual, but also of the actual to the true” (p. 126).

This leads back to the position of the Megarians. But Aristotle clearly affirms that the non-actual is not impossible. She quotes, “It is false that you are standing right now, but it is not impossible” (ibid).

Aristotelian potentiality encompasses alternate possibilities.

Next in this series: An Aside on Necessity