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Subsections
7.1 Change as Actualising
Change is a regular fact in the natural world, as opposed for example
to any kind of mathematical or formal existence. We therefore need an
intelligible account of it, and how it is required by the nature of the
actual particulars we have postulated. Since an actuality cannot itself
change, a given actuality must therefore be related to
potentialities for other subsequent actualities. The
realisation of one of these potentialities will be the event or the change
which generates new actualities.
Kinesis
I regard this process of `realising of a potentiality to produce a new
actuality' to be the basic paradigm of change.
Following Leclerc [1972, ch. 7], I call it kinesis, the Greek
word used by Aristotle for this process. The process of kinesis can also
be seen as the producing, realising, actualising, starting existing,
creating and/or becoming of a new actuality.
I argue that the fundamental nature of all change can be modelled on the
example of kinesis. This does not mean that all changes
necessarily lead to the pure actualities defined in the previous chapter,
as those actualities were identified as past-events of a rather special
kind. Rather, we begin our analysis of change by considering
kinesis in some detail. Later chapters will show that a great
many natural events can be identified as kinesis of
some kind. It is hence most important to conceive of kinesis
properly.
It is not, in particular, to be reduced to change in location, i.e. to
locomotion.
It should not be necessary at this stage to analyse kinesis further in
terms of any uniformly flowing time t, by means of phrases
such as `at time t1' and `at time t2', etc.
Rather, kinesis or becoming is to be regarded as the fundamental nature of
all change, and in a sense `ontologically prior' to any
measures of time. We could argue this because a coordinate
system is something which is constructed, and so is something which must
be analysed in terms of the kineses, the actualisings, which constitute
the measuring system, but this is an epistemological argument which does
not deal with the more basic ontological relations. In our philosophy of
nature we want to consider directly questions of what exists, and not let
questions of how we know to dictate answers. Once we know what exists in
general, we can then perhaps derive methods of observation and experiment
to find out what exists in particular situations.
More importantly, there is no guarantee that there is any particular time
coordinate which can accurately represent the order of the real
kineses as they occur in nature.
In fact, we will see in chapter
8
that in certain cases, namely if spacetime is relativistic rather than
Newtonian, then a single metric time most certainly does not truly
represent the intrinsic relations between the kineses occurring in the
world. It will turn out that there is some order in which
actualities do come to be, but that this `order of becoming' is not
necessarily represented by any time variable in a particular inertial
coordinate system.
Kinesis, as the act of realising of a potentiality to produce a new
actuality, is thus the act of becoming of that new actuality. It is its
`coming to be' or its `actualising'. But here again we must be careful
exactly how we conceive `becoming' and `actualising'. There
has been considerable debate, in particular, as to whether,
before an actualising, we can uniquely identify the actual
thing which will exist. This question is at the heart of the
problem of conceiving change, time and events.
I want to assert that before the act of becoming there is
no new actuality at all, in any sense, so no actuality can be
identified in advance, and so no kind of `subsistence' should be necessary
for it. Conversely, after the act of becoming, the actuality
exists as a full-blown concrete particular, with determinate
characteristics. The new actuality has then being or existence in the full
or concrete sense (so long as it continues to exist). Because the (act of)
becoming results in full being immediately, it is not to be
conceived as `coming' from `non-being' to `being', or as the particular
entity changing from `potential' (or `possible') to `actual' just as a
chamaeleon changes its colour. This is because before the becoming, I want
to maintain, the entity does not in any way exist.
We may use the phrase `x exists potentially' only provided we
remember that it means `there are potentialities for such-and-such
characters to be instantiated in an actualisation, and that they are not
yet instantiated'. This paraphrase does not imply the actual existence
of any such x, or even its non-actual existence, if sense could be
made of that expression. After all, if x is as yet only potential, it
may very possibly never be realised at all. Very often a great many things
are potential in a given situation, whereas we do not want to give them
all some kind of `potential being'. It should be feasible to
indicate only that the present potentialities are over a given range of
possibilities, without creating spurious references to individual objects
which do not actually exist.
This view advocated, whereby new entities or beings are created, is not
the only one which has been advanced. There has always been the
alternative view that `potential objects' are still objects, and
though they of course do not actually exist, they still
`subsist' in some way or another. Let us look at the arguments which
might lead us to this view, and then see whether they can be modified to
permit true `becoming' as described just above.
Parmenides' arguments
One of the original motives for ascribing say `subsistence' to
not-yet-actual individuals was to meet certain objections that stem from
arguments attributed to Parmenides. His main argument is that `what
is' (`being' in the most general sense) cannot change.
`Being' cannot change to (or from) `non-being', because
`non-being' does not in any way exist. And it cannot change into
another being, because `being', as what is, is all there is.
Parmenides used his argument to deny that there can be any
change. Whether or not this is correct, his logic does have force against
any account of `becoming' which has actualities `popping into
existence' from nowhere. How can `being' be suddenly created in
this way? Parmenides claimed that creation ex nihilo does not
make sense.
The conclusion against all change can be avoided if we follow Aristotle
and insist that Parmenides had failed to distinguish the different manners
of `being'. If this were to be done, real changes could be
intelligible as the change from one manner of `being' to another.
`Being' is then not itself affected in such a change, and therefore
Parmenides' conclusion from his argument that no change is
possible is not warranted. The manners of `being' envisaged by
Aristotle were two:
-
- 1.
- `being-in-actuality', equivalently `being-in-complete-fulfilment', and
- 2.
- `being-in-potentiality'.
Do potential trees really exist?
The difficulty with using this Aristotelean distinction is that it is
still far from clear precisely what is meant by `is-potential'.
It does not suffice to say, as Aristotle did, that `is' has many senses,
and that we must distinguish between `is-actual' and `is-potential'. To
leave it at that is to give only part of the answer that is required, as
the account above seems to lead to identification of `potential
individuals' in a way open to serious equivocations. Aristotle's `concise
restatement' of his resulting conclusions, for example, is
In one sense things come-to-be out of that which has no `being' without
qualification: yet in another sense they come-to-be always out of `what
is'. For coming-to-be necessarily implies the pre-existence of something
which potentially `is', but actually `is not'; and
this something is spoken of as both `being' and `non-being'.7.1
As Leclerc remarks
7.2, Aristotle's `conclusions' still leave the problem of how this
`potential-being' is to be conceived and analysed, a problem which has
occupied thinkers for centuries, in the Middle Ages and on into the
seventeenth century.
There is one way of conceiving `potential-being' which is strongly
suggested by Aristotle's writings, despite his equivocations. This is that
change can be conceived as the future product changing from
being-in-potentiality to being-in-actuality. The product itself then
endures through the change, as a substratum of being. That is, the
particular being that once only was-potentially has changed its
properties, and now is-actually, in `complete fulfilment'. An example from
Aristotle is that of an acorn changing into a oak tree after growing. At
first only the acorn is-actual, while the tree is-potential. Growth is the
change in which the tree comes to be actual, so the tree, which was once
only potentially, now is actually - in complete reality. Because a tree
that only is-potentially still has being, that underlying being is
unchanged as it comes to be actual.
This conception of potential beings requires that objects which as yet
only `exist potentially' still have some definite sense of
`existing'. Whatever sense is meant cannot be our usual sense
whereby `particular objects exist in the world', for a potential
being may quite often never be actualised, and hence never exist as a
particular in the world. It might be argued that they exist as
`possible objects', rather than as `actual objects'. Such an
option will be discussed further in chapter
8
when we discuss the notion of possibilities. We will see that there are
definite difficulties with such an idea of `possible objects',
particularly concerning their individuation and determination of their
identity. The world would seem to have to be completely full with all the
possible `might have been' objects, which, though they never exist
in any actual sense, might still be said to `subsist' in some new
sense.
Can potentialities themselves be objects?
The problem of having all these `possible objects' can be avoided if the
process of kinesis (i.e. becoming or actualising) is conceived instead as
the producing of a completely novel actuality. We must avoid the picture
of some pre-existing entity changing its character from `potential' to
`actual'. There is no tree hiding inside an acorn. Since new actualities
are now being created, Aristotle's account of what is meant by
potential-being and actual-being must be reworked in order that another
reply to Parmenides' argument be found. That is the argument which
requires, in a nutshell, that `being' is always being, and hence can never
start or stop being.
An alternative account of potential-being is, when there are
potentialities for some future actualities, to attribute being
(existence) to the set of potentialities itself (rather than to any
alleged `future actualities'). That is, a set of potentialities is
now to be regarded as a particular entity in the world, along with all the
other particular entities in the world.
Potentialities are not be be seen as merely the properties of the previous
event after which these potentialities came to be, as that event may have
been some finite time in the past.
Nor are they (after Locke) to be viewed as a relation between the initial
and produced actualities, because they are there even before the effect
exists.
Nor are they (after Aristotle) to be constituted by the actual entities
which might be produced, as a great many actual entities may possibly come
to be, and we don't want to give existence to all of them.
`Potential-being' is now regarded as requiring that a set of
potentialities be able to exist separately from all other beings, so that
it has `being' on its own account. Exactly how this existence of a
`set of potentialities' is to be conceived and analysed will be
investigated in chapter
9:
we will see that they are best formulated as `fields of
propensities'. A set of potentialities is most certainly not a pure
actuality, as a particular set of potentialities is not yet resolved or
determinate as to what effect will result.
It is more like a `partially determinate particular', as something which
is still further determinable, or something which is still capable of
being further determined by actualising to give a fully-determinate
actuality.
Potentialities are now to be seen as kinds of thing. They have definite
characteristics when considered in themselves.
They have future possibilities `latent' within themselves, not as
`preformed' future individuals, but as the present means of realising
certain possibilities. When potentialities are realised, they are
transformed into actualities, so we may truthfully think of actualities as
`dried up potentialities'. Potentialities dry up to form an actual
`residue' for only one of the enfolded possibilities. This `drying up'
or transformation of potentialities is not to be imagined as
merely the rearrangement or locomotion of some hidden `internal parts',
but is the real and characteristic mode of operation of potentialities.
If we use the terminology of Bohm [1980], we say that the future
possibilities are `enfolded' in the potentialities, and that the process
of actualising is an `unfolding' in some way of what is `implicate' in the
potentialities themselves.
Potentialities are objects whose nature is (under suitable circumstances)
to change into actualities. They are not merely `modes' of how actual
things can exist.
The issue here can be framed as one of the `logical subject' to the
change. Are potentialities a kind of actuality (e.g. `possible
actualities' existing `in limbo'), or are actualities a kind of
potentiality (e.g. a restricted kind)? Which is the logical subject: the
actualities, or a potentiality? Before the actualising, are there
many individuals (e.g. the future possibilities), or is there
only one individual (e.g. the set of potentialities for those
possibilities)? I argue for the second option in all these questions.
Finally, it must be investigated whether this alternative notion of
`potential being' can give us an intelligible account of natural
change, and whether it is consistent from the point of view of
Parmenides' argument. Consider the event when one of the set of
potentialities is realised in the creation of a new actuality as the
causal effect. Parmenides requires in this event that `being' is
constant throughout. Here the being (the continued existence) of the set
of potentialities remains to become the being (the continued existence) of
the resulting actuality. In one act, therefore, it occurs that the set of
potentialities cease existing and the actuality is created, while
`being' (continued existence) is continuous through this act.
This may not seem a real answer to Parmenides, because potentiality
becoming actuality, as described here, is more a destruction and then a
creation, than the continuous being of being. In reply to this objection,
I admit that if there were in fact a destruction event, and then a
creation event, Parmenides' conclusion would stand that this is not
intelligible. However, in this case the realisation of the potentiality
and the becoming of an actuality, while two distinct occurrents which
could be said to occur, are in fact two aspects of the one and the same
event. The two occurrents are strictly identical. There is no moment or no
`then', therefore, that is after the destruction and
before the creation, so there is no moment at which it could be
said that being had not been continuing to exist.
To return to the example of the acorn becoming the tree, we do not now
have the successive stages of the tree changing from being potential to
being actual, in some process of changing from non-actual existence to
actual existence. Instead, the whole process of growing is a definite
sequence of elementary events, whereby the plant (in interaction with soil
and sunlight) changes itself from a smaller stage to a slightly larger
stage. As each event is sufficiently elementary to be an actualising
event, it produces one more actual past-event by the transformation of the
potentialities existing at that time. The process of growing is seen as
the progressive transformation of more and more potentialities into more
and more actualities. Because for a long period there are always
potentialities for growth, there will always exist potentialities which
can be transformed into actualities in new actualising events. This
process of progressive transformation will be more clearly described (in a
pictorial manner) in chapter
9.
The conclusion of this section is that we have a new notion of
potentialities, so that potentialities are not merely properties or
relations of actualities, but have a kind of being or substance in their
own right. Actualities are therefore potentialities which `dry up', in a
sense, to form a specific residue at one of their enfolded possibilities.
We will see later that these ideas enable a new concept of substance, and
that there are important consequences for the understanding of quantum
reality.
Next: 7.2 The Analysis of
Up: 7. Potentiality
Previous: 7. Potentiality
Prof Ian Thompson
2003-02-25
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