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    What is possible is limited to what either is or will be ... — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
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    42
    Home/Modality & Possibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    What is possible is limited to what either is or will be true at some point in the future

    Modality & Possibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Truths about the past are necessary — they cannot be other than they are, since nothing has the power to change the past
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    • 2.Nothing impossible follows from what is possible
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    • 3.The proposition that there is something which is possible but does not happen is incompatible with the above two theses
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.A sea-battle tomorrow is genuinely possible regardless of which outcome will actually obtain, as Aristotle argues in De Interpretatione 9.
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    • 2.The truth-value of future contingent propositions is not yet determined, so possibility cannot be derived from future actuality.
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    • 3.Diodorus's Master Argument illicitly treats the openness of the future as equivalent to the necessity of the past, conflating two distinct modal categories.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.David Hume's conceivability criterion establishes that whatever is distinctly imaginable without contradiction is genuinely possible, independently of what occurs.
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    • 2.A gemstone that is never cut remains intrinsically capable of being cut even if no future event actualizes that capacity, as Leibniz's notion of individual substance entails.
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    • 3.Limiting possibility to actual or future occurrences eliminates the explanatory distinction between latent causal powers and their manifestations, which is required for any adequate natural science.
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    Topics

    Modality & Possibility

    Connections

    1 topic

    Free Will & Foreknowledge1 linked

    Related

    A gemstone that is never cut remains intrinsically capable of being cut even if ...A sea-battle tomorrow is genuinely possible regardless of which outcome will act...David Hume's conceivability criterion establishes that whatever is distinctly im...Diodorus's Master Argument illicitly treats the openness of the future as equiva...
    +5 moreShow less
    Limiting possibility to actual or future occurrences eliminates the explanatory ...Nothing impossible follows from what is possibleThe proposition that there is something which is possible but does not happen is...The truth-value of future contingent propositions is not yet determined, so poss...Truths about the past are necessary — they cannot be other than they are, since ...

    Similar

    Nothing is possible which neither is nor will be true89%Diodorus defines possibility as what either is or will be true84%A proposition that is currently false but will later be true would shi...84%Ability ascriptions such as 'S is able to A' are possibility claims, t...84%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: stoicism
    View source passageHide passage
    The Stoics confronted a theory of modality (i.e. a theory of possibility and necessity) that claimed precisely this. Diodorus Cronus of the Dialectical school had argued that what is possible is limited to what either is or will be true at some point in the future (Boethius, 38C). So if we in fact don’t ever get around to rowing out to fight the Megarians in a sea battle, then a sea battle with the Megarians was always impossible (and of course it made no more sense to consider how we should go
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit