Cicero had access to more of the Corpus than we do (cf. http://www.protrepticus.info/protreprecon2015i20.pdf for a reconstruction of one text he likely had in mind). Aristotle had dialogs and true essays, etc. and all we have for the most part are lecture notes.

In any case the straightforward absurdity is that potentialities have no motion of their own. They exist as concrete possibilities of the actual. Fire exists as a potentiality of wood but it would be mistaken to say it exists as an actuallity does. It doesn't exist in the wood as does say smoothness. Fire moving itself into being in the wood with no actualizing force is absurd in a way similar to the way nothing actualizing itself into something would be. In saying that it's a potentiality of wood you're telling me that what it is for fire to be is to come into being *from out of* wood in the presence of certain other actualities (heat, air, etc) and to otherwise be not anything at all but that. Its coming into being some other way means either that it wasn't a potentially at all but rather actual or else that there were further conditions of actualizing it of which you were unaware etc etc. Qua potentially it can do nothing on its own no more than potential running in a man makes a man begin to run.

Edit: What's the temptation to think this way? The mistake is essentially a misake in noun usage. Nouns are flat existenial indicators, and their gramattical place is too clumsy to indicate the mode in which a thing exists. Moreover when we give a name, even if we know better, there is a tendency to treat it not merely as if it exists, but as if it exists as an actuality, especially when describing a potentiality. Consider:

"The flamibility of wood depends upon heat."

One could hardly be blaimed for thinking that there is something much like an actuality *in* the wood which stands in an active relationship to heat, just as I presently and activly depend upon air, but this is obviously not so.

Last edited by iwpoe (7/07/2016 7:12 am)

iwpoe wrote:

What's the temptation to think this way?

Quantum mechanics.

Let's suppose we have a binary system {A, B}. The system can be entirely in state A, or entirely in state B, or in a linear combination of both states (called superposition). Sometimes, it appears that a system that is in superposition of both A and B can "collapse" for no apparent reason into one or the other state.

This seems at first to be a real nice physical model of "actuality" versus "potentiality," except for the spontaneous collapsing property.

Yes, I know that in theory, philosophy and physics are non-overlapping magisteria, but in practice, it's very difficult to clearly make out the borders.