Vetter (2015) Potentiality 1.1

Vetter, Barbara (2015). Potentiality From Dispositions to Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press

 

1. The Variety of Potentiality:

① Potentiality classified as an ability: the ability to read English

② Potentiality not classified as an ability: the paper’s potential to burn

③ Dispositions: the vase’s fragility, a person’s irascibility, and an atom’s disposition to decay

Potentials are often ascribed simply with the auxiliary ‘can’: paper can burn, the acorn can become a tree, some people can run a mile in less than four minutes. This, in fact, is one simple way of stating what all the properties I have so far mentioned have in common: they concern what a given individual can do. I call any such property a potentiality

David Hume’s empiricist criticism of ‘necessary connections’ has been particularly influential, and the notion of potentiality has been very much out of favour, a fate it shared with many other modal notions, such as essence and a metaphysically substantial notion of necessity and possibility [1]

Kit Fine argues that essence is irreducible to, and prior to, necessity. Disposition has recently gained attention among metaphysicians.

This book is a plea for potentiality. It is a plea for recognizing a unified notion of potentiality instead of selectively focussing attention on only some kinds of potentiality; and most importantly, it is a plea for recognizing potentiality as an explanans [설명항] in the metaphysics of modality, rather than as something in need of explanation and reduction. [2]

 

2. Localized and Non-Localized Modality

① A potentiality is localized in the sense that it is a property of a particular object.

② Possibility, on the contrary, is not localized in this way. Its being possible that such-and-such is not primarily a fact about any one particular object; it is a fact about how things in general could have turned out to be.

The proper operator for ascribing a potentiality is thus a predicate operator: . . . has a potentiality to . . . (fill in a singular term for the first blank, and a predicate for the second). Possibility, on the other hand, is aptly expressed by a sentential operator: it is possible that...(fill in a sentence).

 

3. Essence

The relation between essence and necessity

Essence is localized: a property is essential to a particular object.

Necessity is not localized: its being necessary that such-and-such is not primarily a fact about one particular object, but a fact about how the world must be.

It is necessary that Socrates is a member of his singleton set; but this necessity does not have its source in Socrates himself: it is not essential to him.

Potentialities, in short, are possibilities rooted in objects; they are like possibilities, but they are properties of individual objects. They stand to possibility as essence (on the Finean view) stands to necessity. 

My plea for potentiality is to show precisely that taking potentiality as a primitive or basic notion is philosophically fruitful; that we can say a great deal about potentiality without defining or reducing it; and that we can say a great deal about other things in terms of potentiality [3]

Vetter는 possibility를 potentiality로 설명하고자 함 (modal dispositionalism).

to develop an account of possibility (and, thereby, of necessity) that is based entirely on potentiality. Potentiality is, metaphorically speaking, possibility anchored in individual objects; I claim that all possibility is thus anchored in some individual object(s) or other. [3]

크게 두 가지 동기를 유추해볼 수 있음 (1) Essence로 Necessity를 설명하는 Fine의 기획, (2) Possible worlds 개념의 불안정성

의문: possibility와 potentiality를 단순히 국지화된, 비-국지화된 것으로 분류하는 것이 타당한가? possibility는 공간적인 것으로 보이지만 potentiality는 시간성과 연관된 것처럼 보임.